The main Conference Hall of the Crimson Ledger was unusually silent. There was no satisfied laughter of absorbing another smaller business or idle murmurs about the previous month's record-breaking profits. Instead, there was only the continuous, rhythmic, and loud clanking of Garrik Holvar's ring against the blackwood table as he kept his index finger tapping against it. It was akin to a ticking time bomb, a countdown before everyone else present gets incinerated by his boiling rage.
Around him, the inner circle of the Ledger sat with apparent tension in their posture, each of them too well aware of the issue that had just arisen a few days ago… One that none of them could have foreseen. When the clicking of Garrik's finger stopped, every eye moved onto his hand, watching as he reached out for a box of cigars, picked one out, bit off its end, and lit it up while spitting the rest out.
Taking it as a sign, Yvessa adjusted her spectacles, knowing that when the first puff leaves his mouth, hell will be let loose. Opposite her, Mairis leaned back in her chair, arms folded, her gauntlets creaking, expecting the worst, while Orlin didn't even fidget with his silver coin this time around.
The reason was simple.
A courier delivered a sealed report yesterday. It did not even originate from one of their hidden agents but from one of the simple, paid watchers on the streets, the kind of people they used for the most basic rumor mills. And if they heard it from there first, it meant the problem had flown past all their professional spies and bribed officials. Which should not have happened. Ever. Puffing out a big cloud of cigar smoke, Garrik opened the folded paper lying before him and read its contents out loudly so everyone present could understand the issue and hear it clearly. After this, there was no chance to deny that they didn't know about it.
When he finished, the paper was crumpled in his fist, and his rage was simmering through his voice, forcing him to take a gulp and start over when he opened his mouth.
"No... Ugh… No one… no one was supposed to enter Silverhaven. How. Did. This. Happen?"
"We…" Yvessa paled. "Um—"
"The watchers we placed there missed it," Garrik growled, his eyes almost killing her with one glance. "Why are we paying them? Pull those who were on duty to the main square and pluck their eyes out!"
"…" At that moment, they all knew it. It wasn't a hyperbole. He ordered it to happen.
"Why is it that I got to learn about this from drunkards and street rats?! The bribes didn't matter... Why are we paying the people around Silverhaven, then?! Someone entered that place… and we don't know who it was; we only know someone went in and out?! Really?! FUCKING REALLY?! I DON'T CARE IF IT WAS RAINING! I AM PAYING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS TO STAND THERE IN A BLIZZARD AND WATCH SILVERHAVEN!"
The last sentences were shouted like a roaring dragon, echoing inside the room for a good few seconds more, almost cracking the windows behind the thick curtains.
"Well…" Orlin swallowed, trying to find his words, "We can't tell if the one entered... Got into the real Silverhaven, no? They do have a shop… No?" He asked, looking around for confirmation.
"Are you stupid for a reason, or are you just born that way?" Garrik snarled at him. "I read you the report. Do I need to stab a new hole in your ear so you can hear it more clearly?"
Even Cedric, who was usually unreadable, shifted where he stood behind the circle of leaders, remaining silent until now. There was one thing in that letter that people began talking about a few days before… About how the Ledger poked Silverhaven. Which they thought to be a baseless rumor, probably started by someone hating them… or by the City Lord. Which seemed more and more valid by the day as the rumor kept spreading amongst every circle of life.
"Do we know what was taken out?" Yvessa asked, not expecting anything, and she wasn't disappointed... unfortunately.
"We don't even know who went in!" Garrik yelled at her, suddenly standing up and slamming the blackwood table with both hands, crushing his cigar into mush… Even the chandelier above them all trembled and began swaying back and forth. "That's the problem, you stupid motherfuckers! Nobody was seen entering or exiting! No alarms went off at our end, which I ORDERED you all to make sure is there! I TOLD YOU to monitor Silverhaven day and night! Yet that bastard Silverhaven's door was opened for someone to waltz in and come back out... and we didn't see it happen!"
By then, his face was redder than a bloody moon, actual smoke coming out from his nostrils, his chest heaving like an exhausted beast. He looked horrifying.
"…" Yvessa's hands trembled as she flicked through her notes, desperate for overlooked reports or some ignored patterns, anything to show... "This can't be a coincidence," she murmured. "The City Lord. He must be the one behind it. He has to be—"
"Or someone he sent," Mairis muttered, trying to latch onto the idea.
"Or," Cedric said evenly, but behind his tone, he sounded a bit shaken, "someone else entirely. Someone who doesn't want either side to know they were there."
"No, that is the least possible option." Garrik's voice dropped low, becoming icy cold. "If someone like that came to the city, I would know about it… I agree that it has to be someone tied to the City Lord… And if the bastard is moving pieces this quietly, then it's worse than I predicted... We will have to react carefully and in a way that won't actually anger Silverhaven."
"The City Lord is also playing a dangerous game spreading this rumor," Rikard added, wiping sweat from his thick neck, "Using their name could also anger them, and if it is a baseless rumor because we for sure did not do anything against Silverhaven, they may act! Punishing the City Lord!"
"That would be the best outcome for us," Garrik's gaze cut across them. "Still, we should double every spy we have near Valcroft. Anything going in and out of his mansion, I want to hear it before his own damn advisors do."
"We will do our best," Yvessa hesitated. "But if this is the City Lord… shouldn't we begin diverting blame? Put pressure elsewhere? He may have made the first move, but we can counterattack."
"Not yet. First, we confirm how this happened. Then we move." Cedric advised, "A rumor like this very well may be his design to urge us into a hasty action. It very well may be just the bait before the actual trap."
The table collectively exhaled, feeling a raging headache rising from their spine.
"But it is just... a rumor. A market whisper, nothing more!" Rikard muttered, "That... someone attacked by the Crimson Ledger had ties to Silverhaven... Who would take that seriously? If that happened, wouldn't we already be dealt with?"
"Ridiculous, yes." Yvessa agreed, "On paper, no one would believe—"
"On paper." Cedric's voice sliced through her sentence, silencing the woman. "But, someone's starting the belief is all that the City Lord needs. It will find its place, and it will grow. We have plenty of enemies who would propagate the rumor just to get back at us. The issue is not the local guilds and merchants; we control most of them anyway. We will find ourselves in a tight spot outside of the city when the rumors spread there, and our foreign partners begin dropping deals with us just to be cautious…"
"Wait!" Orlin exclaimed suddenly, "Could this be about that… girl? The one you tortured?" He asked. "The urchin. It's about her, isn't it?!"
"You are stupid…" Garrik stared at nothing for a moment before looking at him. "No. No, it's not. Who the fuck would care about a worthless trash? A street cockroach? Do you know how many little bastards are being pushed out of whore wombs in this city? And then thrown to the streets? Please! Nobody cares about them, especially not Silverhaven!"
"But," Orlin insisted. "She is the closest to fit these obscene rumors! That's our only connection to anything 'attack-related…' And the timing fits."
"Yes, but she's nobody," Yvessa argued, agreeing with Garrik. "An urchin. A disposable tool for both us, the City Lord, and Silverhaven. She has no money, no power, no bloodline, no worth. Silverhaven doesn't waste time on gutter trash."
"Unless…" Cedric said quietly, "..." The tables turned to him, including Garrik, waiting for his gaze to focus again. "No... I just can't see a connection. But I will look into it. After all, I was the one who killed her."
A long, terrible silence followed… until Garrik spoke again.
"Was she dead?"
"…"
"Cedric, was she dead when you dumped her body?" He asked again, and the ex-adventurer looked at him straight in the eye.
"I didn't check, but even if she wasn't, the water would have done it. I broke her… nothing could have revived that doll, not even Silverhaven."
"Are we sure?" Mairis asked, her voice very low and deathly grim. "If Silverhaven is involved… If we touched one of their runners… then we've misread the board entirely."
"No," Garrik snapped. "This isn't them! The girl wasn't theirs either! No way. If this rumor started, it came from inside the fucking City Lord's palace!"
"…" Listening, everyone was unsure, and they could feel that Garrik's own words were uncertain about it. But he had to believe in that instead of entertaining the idea that they indeed poked Silverhaven.
"Someone," he continued, his voice rising again, "either in our ranks, brushing too close to the City Lord, wanting to switch sides or one of the remnants of our old enemies had to make this. My bet is on the damned Veren brothers that they got a match lit under our damn house!"
He turned toward the wall, slamming his fist into a locked cabinet, breaking off its door, and tearing it out along with its hinges. Inside were rows of documents, profiles, their associated agents, couriers, bought merchants from, and outside the city…and, lastly, all their informants.
"Start digging." He threw everything on the table, scattering it around the air and the ground. "All of you! I want to know who spoke to whom in the last three months and about what! Even if their talking points were about how their dicks burn, sticking it to a cheap whore! I want to know who interacted with Silvehaven when the last open auction was held! Who got paid from an untraceable source for anything that was sold? I want names and connections. I want every whisper turned into reports, checked, double-checked, and then compiled for me by yesterday! GOT IT?!"
"And if it wasn't one of us?" Cedric asked.
"Then it will prove that it was him," Garrik growled. "Valcroft… But first, we must clean house…"
"I think it has to be him and not us… He had let the rumor spread," Yvessa said, nodding grimly. "To see how we'd react."
"For now, we react with silence," Garrik ordered. "We do not react by attacking! We seal every mouth that talks about it amongst our ranks first, and we deny it all second. We then start our own rumors that it's just an overt attack on us! And... We scrub the riverbanks. Make sure we find the remains of that girl. I want to see her corpse! And no more bodies until we find her!" He warned them, especially Cedric, looking at him, "Find the leak... Find the source of this fucking rumor."
Cedric nodded and nodded only once, his eyes cold.
"Yes. I will…"