Shadowdance 01 - A Dance of Cloaks

to the safe house but never been there before.
    James must have fled here
, she thought.
This place looks to be enormous.
    The basement itself was not lit, but to her right she saw light spilling down a staircase and she worked her way toward it. She kicked a crate once, biting down on her tongue to hold in another curse. She walked more carefully after that. At the bottom of the stairs she looked up. A man was leaning against the door frame at the top, his back to her.
    “Make him roll again,” the man shouted. “I saw Jek shaking them bones a bit too crazy. He’s probably got a rigged pair in his pockets.”
    As he finished talking, Veliana pressed the tip of her dagger against his neck, having climbed all the way up without alerting him to her presence.
    “A lousy guard is a dead guard,” she told him as he jerked his head around, his whole body stiffening.
    “Hey, Vel,” he said, smiling nervously at her. “Glad to see you’re back and cheery as ever.”
    Veliana recognized him as Jorey, a low recruit, promoted most likely because of the attrition caused by the other guilds.
    “Out of my way,” she said, giving him a shove. Several other men in the light grays of the Ash Guild jumped from their seats around a table. Two of them grabbed daggers, while the rest just gawked.
    “You’re supposed to be dead,” said the man holding the dice. She presumed he was Jek.
    “Hate to disappoint,” she said. “Now where is James?”
    “What the fuck happened to your face?” asked one of the thieves. She ignored him and continued glaring.
    “Upstairs,” said Jek.
    “All right. I want torches lit and stuck in the basement. Get two men watching it, and I mean
watching
it, not sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for a crossbow bolt. What about the front doors to the building? Who’s watching them?”
    “Just Gary,” said another. “It’s been quiet here. The guilds have started leaving us alone since James agreed to Thren’s plan.”
    This stopped Veliana in her tracks.
    “He agreed?” she asked. “When?”
    “Earlier this morning,” said Jorey. “Where have you been, Vel?”
    Veliana shook her head, trying to match things up in her mind.
    “No time,” she said. “I’ve got to talk to James. The rest of you, get to the doors, with at least one man patrolling the windows.”
    “Why the attitude?” asked a fat man from the corner.
    “Because Thren knows we’re here,” she said. “He won’t leave us be, not now, not ever.”
    “But we agreed to what he wanted,” said Jek. “Surely he won’t…”
    “The next person that argues with me gets a knife in the throat,” Veliana shouted.
    That shut them up
, she thought as she stormed through the house, searching for a way upstairs. When she came upon a spiral staircase she grabbed the railing and used it to climb up the steps two at a time. Once on the second floor, she looked about, seeing a hallway leading in either direction. She chose one, her head on a swivel. She stopped when a voice called her name.
    “Veliana?”
    She spun, stepped two doors down, and found James sitting on the edge of his bed, naked. Refusing to blush or even avert her eyes, she crossed her arms behind the small of her back. A young blonde lay sprawled out on the bed beside him, her slender form barely hidden by the thin blankets wrapped around her.
    “Apologies for the bad timing,” she said. “I hope I arrived at the end, and not the beginning.”
    James chuckled.
    “We Berens like to think there are no endings or beginnings,” he said. “Just brief interludes in between.”
    He stood and pulled on his trousers. His movements stirred the woman beside him. She pulled the blankets closer and then rolled the other way.
    “Who is that?” Veliana asked as James stepped out of the room and shut the door behind him.
    “One of Leon Connington’s maids. Why?”
    Her jaw dropped open.
    “Are you mad? She could tell him where our safe house is!”
    James laughed.
    “You know how he treats them. He’ll be lucky if he even
gets
his maid back, let alone any information.”
    James’s joy drained away as he truly saw her face for the first time.
    “By Ashhur, what happened to you?” he asked, gently touching it with his fingertips. “Is it still tender?”
    “Hurts like a bitch,” she said. “It won’t heal, either. What is this I hear about you making a deal with Thren?”
    James sighed. He walked into the room opposite his own. There were no