Shadowdance 01 - A Dance of Cloaks

tighter about himself. He had no idea whether it was day or night, but the room felt cold and he had nothing but his thin clothing for warmth.
    “You’re to teach me,” Aaron said.
    “That’s stating the bloody obvious. What is it I will teach you?”
    He sat down in the middle of the room while still holding the torch aloft. He grunted, and true to his word his back popped when he stretched.
    “I don’t know,” the boy said.
    “A good start,” Robert said. “If you don’t know an answer, just say so and save everyone the embarrassment. Uninformed guesses only stall the conversation. However, you should have known the answer. I tutored a king, remember? Mind my words. You will always know the answer to every question I ask you.”
    “A tutor,” said Aaron. “I can already read and write. What else can an old man teach me?”
    Robert smiled in the flickering torchlight.
    “There are men trying to kill you, Aaron. Did you know that?”
    At first Aaron opened his mouth to deny it, then stopped. The look in his teacher’s eye suggested Aaron think carefully before answering.
    “Yes,” he finally said. “Though I convinced myself otherwise. The Trifect want all the thief guilds destroyed, their members dead. I am no different.”
    “Oh, but you are different,” Robert said as he put his book down and shifted the torch to his other hand. “You’re the heir to Thren Felhorn, one of the most feared men in all of Veldaren. Some say you’ll find no finer a thief even if you searched every corner of Dezrel.”
    Such worship of his father was hardly foreign to Aaron, and something he always took for granted. For once, he dared ask something he’d never had the courage to ask.
    “Is he the finest?” Aaron asked.
    “I don’t know enough of such matters to have a worthwhile opinion,” Robert said. “Though I know he has lived a long time, and the wealth he amassed in his younger years is legendary.”
    Silence came over them. Aaron looked about the room, but it was bare and covered with shadows. He sensed his teacher waiting for him to speak, but he knew not what to say. His gaze lingered on the torchlight as Robert spat to the side.
    “There are many questions you should ask, though one is the most obvious and most important. Think, boy.”
    Aaron’s eyes flitted from the torchlight to the old man.
    “Who are the Trifect?” he asked.
    “Who is what? Speak up, I’m a flea’s jump away from deaf.”
    “The Trifect,” Aaron nearly shouted. “Who are they?”
    “That is an excellent question,” Robert said. “The lords of the Trifect have a saying: ‘After the gods, us.’ When the Gods’ War ended, and Karak and Ashhur were banished by the goddess, the land was a devastated mess. Countries fractured, people rebelled, and pillagers marched up and down the coasts. Three wealthy men formed an alliance to protect their assets. Five hundred years ago they adopted their sigil, that of an eagle perched on a golden branch. They’ve been loyal to it ever since.”
    He paused and rubbed his beard. The torch switched hands.
    “A question for you, boy: why do they want the thief guilds dead?”
    The question was not difficult. The sigil was the answer.
    “They never let go of their gold,” Aaron said. “Yet we take it from them.”
    “Precisely,” Robert said. “To be sure, they’ll spend their gold, sometimes frivolously and without good reason. But even in giving away their coin, they are still master of it. But to have it taken? That is unacceptable to them. The Trifect tolerated the various thief guilds for many centuries while focusing on growing their power. And grow it did. Nearly the entire nation of Neldar is under their control in some way. For the longest of times they viewed the guilds as a nuisance, nothing more. That changed. Tell me why, boy; that is your next question.”
    This one was tougher. Aaron went over the words of his master. His memory was sharp, and at last he remembered a comment that seemed appropriate.
    “My father amassed a legendary amount of wealth,” he said. He smiled, proud of deducing the answer. “He must have taken too much from the Trifect, and they no longer considered him a nuisance.”
    “He was now a threat,” Robert agreed. “And he was wealthy. Worse, though, was that his prestige was uniting the other guilds. Mostly your father tempted the stronger members and brought them into his fold, but about eight years ago he started making