Chapter 4 - Evicted

The Guild summoned me one week later.

It used the same sort of letter as before. The paper was heavy, the wax was black, and Marcus’s handwriting reduced an entire morning to four words.

Report immediately. Come alone.

The first time I received one of those, Felix had been naked in my bed and I had assumed Marcus wanted to send me after a nobleman’s stolen jewelry.

This time Kaniz was half naked in my bed, Felix had stolen the blanket during the night despite sleeping somewhere else, and the Tome was arguing with the egg about whether silence counted as insolence.

“He said alone,” I told the Tome.

Its eye narrowed from the table. “He lacks the COURAGE to address me directly. A common failing among men whose authority depends on furniture.”

“He owns a cane with a sword in it.”

“Compensatory furniture.”

Kaniz sat up against the headboard. Her shift had slid down to her waist during the night, and her full, dark tits were bare to the cold room, nipples drawn tight. I read Marcus’s four words a second time without taking in a single one of them. The red ribbon I had given her still threaded through the iron collar at her throat. She looked from the letter to me.

“I will come.”

“That would make two of us, which is a creative interpretation of alone.”

“I can stand outside.”

“Marcus has windows. He might count you.”

She considered this. I dressed while she considered it, because watching Kaniz think while half naked was dangerous to schedules. My cock pushed against my laces before I had them tied, and I told myself I was simply a man in excellent health. It took me two tries to fasten my trousers over it.

I had to dig through the mess for every buckle of my armor.

My boot was under the bed. My other boot was beneath the egg’s padded crate. The chest under the window could no longer open fully because the black lockbox from the catacombs stood in front of it. Three bundles of clothes occupied the chair. Two packs, four ritual knives, a chipped silver cup, the polished stone tongue, my armor stand, and a length of rope I had absolutely intended to coil properly filled the rest of the floor.

The room had once been small in a pleasant way. A narrow bed, a window over the alley, and its own fireplace had felt luxurious after Willowbrook. I could lie beneath warm blankets and listen to the city outside while a private fire burned six steps away. Felix had come through that window more nights than he had used the door. Lily had laughed at the size of the bed and stayed anyway. Every morning I could walk out with a pack and come back whenever I liked, and nobody asked where I had been.

Now the fireplace was three careful steps away if I turned sideways and did not mind bruising my thigh on a grimoire.

The Tome bit my sleeve as I passed.

“And that is why you’re not coming,” I said.

“Coward.”

Kaniz caught my belt before I reached the door.

“Come home,” she said.

My throat went tight. A year of leaving this room whenever I pleased, and nobody had ever told me to come back to it.

I covered it with a grin. “I’ve survived every Guild meeting so far.”

“That was not what I said.”

Her fingers tightened once, then released me.

I left before she could make punctuality impossible, still hard enough that I took the stairs with my cloak bundled in front of me and told myself the bundle was for warmth.

A week of snow had turned the lower streets into brown rivers and hidden the loose cobblestones under slush, and I found three of them with my left foot. By the time I reached the Guild Hall, my left sock was wet, my cloak weighed twice what it should, and I had developed personal grievances against winter as a concept.

The sword-and-shield sign creaked above the doors.

I stopped under it.

Last winter, I had stood on this exact patch of stone with a crumpled introduction letter in one hand and Bertha’s reins in the other. Ashbourne had been enormous. The doors had been enormous. My chances of embarrassing myself had been completely enormous.

I had opened them anyway.

Now one hinge complained in the cold, and I knew the right door stuck unless you lifted while pushing.

Warmth struck me in the face when I entered.

The massive hearth still dominated one wall. Wet adventurers crowded its couches, boots steaming near the stones. Lanternlight spilled across maps, armor, tankards, and the occasional bandage that should have been handled by a healer instead of three friends with opinions. The air smelled of woodsmoke, leather, mulled cider, and enough wet wool to knit a second city.

Tom the blacksmith shouted, “Thornwood!” from beside the contract board.

I raised a hand.

Mara, the half-elf rogue, glanced up from sharpening a dagger. “Heard you found a cult.”

“They were misplaced.”

“Heard you killed twelve men.”

“The number improves every time someone tells me. Please continue.”

“Samuel Thornwood,” the secretary called.

The older woman behind the oak desk had the same silver bun, the same neat stacks of paper, and the same expression suggesting she knew every bad excuse before anyone offered it. A year ago, she had called me honey and sent me to wait.

Now she pointed at the corridor.

“He is in a mood.”

“Am I the cause?”

“You are on the schedule. Draw your own conclusions.”

I considered buying cider first. Marcus’s door waited at the far end of the corridor, dark wood under maps of places I still wanted to see.

The walk felt longer than it used to.

I knocked three times.

“Enter.”

The office had preserved itself out of spite.

Old leather and stale pipe smoke filled the close air. Books lined the walls in ranks too orderly to have been read recently. A small fire burned behind a brass grate, and cold still came in around the window. Marcus sat behind his desk with parchment, quills, sealed evidence bags, and objects piled in a mess only Marcus understood. He would break fingers if anyone tidied it.

His ornate cane leaned against the desk, close to his hand. I tried not to think about the sword inside it.

He packed his pipe without looking at me.

“Close the door.”

“Draft bothering you?”

“Your grimoire is.”

I closed the door.

Marcus lit the pipe from a taper, drew once, then pointed at the chair opposite him. I sat. It creaked under me with familiar resentment.

He slid a report across the desk.

I looked at the first page. The Guild employed mages who believed handwriting was a competition to see who could make ink resemble dead spiders.

“Read it,” Marcus said.

“I was hoping you would summarize.”

“The Guild paid six people for this conclusion. You can suffer through the title.”

I squinted. “Thaumaturgical... ambient... contamination and responsive congregation formation.”

“Five of them argued about responsive.”

“Money well spent.”

Marcus breathed smoke through his nose.

I turned the page.

Maps of the lower city showed rings drawn around the Crooked Nail. Dates ran beside each ring. Pins marked reports from nearby streets. The reports were nightmares, sleepwalking and voices through walls. Seven households claimed every cat on their street had gathered outside the inn on the same night and stared at Samuel Thornwood’s upstairs window until dawn.

Everyone had somehow forgotten to tell me about the cats. “They could have been admiring the curtains.”

“The curtains face the alley.”

“Cats appreciate privacy.”

Marcus tapped another mark on the map. The burned symbols Felix and I had tracked through the sewers radiated outward from the same district, and every one of them pointed back at the Nail.

“The chamber held residue from the ritual,” he said. “The objects you recovered held more. Every trace matched an ambient signature saturating the Crooked Nail and six surrounding streets.”

I knew where this was going. My body knew first. My shoulders tightened and my stomach pulled itself into a hard knot, while heat climbed my neck despite the wet cold still trapped in my cloak.

I kept joking anyway. “Maple cleans regularly.”

“This is not spilled ale.”

“She charges extra for arcane contamination.”

Marcus put his pipe down.

That was worse than shouting. Marcus shouted at people he expected to survive the conversation. When he set things down carefully, someone was about to receive a permanent problem.

“The Tome leaks,” he said. “A small amount. Constantly. Eight months in one location allowed that influence to settle into stone, sleep, instinct, and imagination. Most people experienced nothing worse than disturbing dreams. Animals noticed more. Your congregation appears to have interpreted it as revelation.”

“They were idiots.”

“Idiots still bleed.”

I remembered the wine merchant’s throat beneath a ceremonial knife and the cult leader’s face when the air above the altar split open.

My jokes ran out for several seconds. “Can it be stopped?”

“Contained. Perhaps. Ashara’s compound has suitable wards. The Guild has vaults built for dangerous artifacts. The city does not have a practical method for carving containment sigils around an occupied inn.”

“Maple would object to the dust.”

Marcus opened a drawer.

The last time he had done that, gold improved the meeting.

This time he removed a contract.

The paper was creased, travel stained, and signed at the bottom in my handwriting. I recognized the ink blot where my elbow had slipped. At the time I had blamed the desk.

He turned it toward me and placed one thick finger beside a line halfway down the page.

Recover all ritual texts, grimoires, and arcane instruments belonging to the warlock Malkor and return them to the Ashbourne Guild for examination and containment.

I read the line twice and thought, well, shit.

“You returned from Blackrock eight months ago,” Marcus said. “You reported Malkor dead and seventeen captives recovered. You collected the agreed payment.”

“There were unusual circumstances.”

“There are always unusual circumstances when your name appears on a report.”

“The book chose me.”

“So you have said. Loudly. Ashara confirmed that attempting to separate you by force might produce consequences she preferred to study from a distance. She asserted her prior claim, vouched for your control of the artifact, and requested time. I granted it.”

I had assumed everyone accepted my ownership because arguing with the Tome was exhausting. Apparently the Guild had spent eight months officially putting up with me.

“The cult ends that patience,” Marcus said.

“I killed the cult.”

“You killed some comfortable merchants who played with a force they did not understand. Another group can form. The seepage will continue.”

“Then I move the Tome.”

“Beyond the walls.”

“That seems dramatic.”

“A man nearly had his heart removed under the city.”

“He kept it.”

Marcus stared at me until I heard how stupid that sounded.

He drew out a second document, fresh paper under a black seal, with my name written across the top. I liked it less than the old one already.

“Surrender the grimoire to the Guild for secure containment,” he said. “Or relocate it beyond Ashbourne’s walls within fourteen days. If neither condition is met, the Guild will enforce the original contract and recover its property.”

“No.”

I said it before I had thought it through.

Marcus leaned back.

I should have asked questions. Which vault? What wards? Could I visit it? Would Ashara supervise? What did recover mean when applied by armed Guild Marshals to a book with brass corners and a talent for threats?

Instead, I had said no like someone had reached across the desk for Kaniz’s collar.

My palms were damp.

“Which part are you refusing?” Marcus asked.

“The part where you take it.”

“Then you have fourteen days.”

“You sent me to retrieve it. I retrieved it.”

“You were also expected to return. I assumed that detail survived your education.”

“It belongs with me.”

Marcus’s gaze sharpened. “According to whom?”

The Tome had possessed fourteen owners in eight hundred years. Men had found it, bought it, stolen it, inherited it.

It had chosen me anyway, because in the Pit under Blackrock I had held out my hand to the thing everyone else had fought or run from.

“According to it.”

Smoke curled between us.

Marcus looked tired, and somehow that made my chest hurt more than any of his shouting ever had.

“Samuel, you have built a life here. The Guild knows your work. People trust you with contracts they would not have offered a year ago. Do not throw that away over pride.”

“It isn’t pride.”

“Then give me a better word.”

I had none I was willing to say in that room.

Friend sounded ridiculous. Companion sounded worse. Family was a word for my mother and my old room in Willowbrook, and for people who knew what to do with one another. The Tome was a cold leather book that insulted me during sex and threatened monasteries whenever I put it in a saddlebag.

It had also spent eight hundred years waiting before choosing me. “Fourteen days,” I said.

Marcus pushed the order across the desk.

“At sunset on the fourteenth day, the Guild acts. I would prefer not to send people I value after someone else I value.”

I took the paper.

The black wax pressed against my thumb. The city seal showed a mountain above an open gate, and I decided the gate was there to show me out. “Am I still allowed through the front doors?”

Marcus picked up his pipe.

“For thirteen days and the remainder of this one.”

I stood.

His eyes followed me to the door.

“Thornwood.”

I looked back.

“Find somewhere with stone walls.”

He probably meant it as help. To me it sounded like a man describing a cage.

Ashbourne had let me stay. I had my room, my jobs, Felix on some nights and Lily on others, and nobody who needed me home by dark. All of it came with terms written halfway down an old contract.

Outside, snow struck my face and melted against the heat in my skin.

I walked downhill too quickly. Anger made excellent footing. Every slush-filled gap became Marcus’s fault. Every cart blocking an alley was the Guild’s fault. A boy throwing snowballs at a wall became briefly responsible for the entire institution of written contracts.

By the time I reached Lily’s flower shop, I had constructed nine arguments proving I was right and three plans involving burglary.

The bell above her door killed all of them.

Warm, damp air wrapped around me. Winter roses, white hellebore, pine cuttings, and bundles of dried lavender crowded the shelves. Frost filmed the window edges, but everything on her shelves was green and growing, and I wanted to lie down among the pots until my left foot thawed. Lily stood behind the counter tying blue ribbon around a pot of snowdrops.

Her white-blonde hair hung in a loose braid over one shoulder. She wore her blue scarf indoors with her sleeves rolled to her elbows and her cheeks pink from the stove. When she leaned over the counter to pull the bow tight, her neckline dipped far enough to show the tops of her tits, and my cock stirred in my wet trousers before I had shut the door. I blamed the stove, and I stood dripping on her mat longer than any sensible man would.

She looked up.

“You have your contract face.”

“I’ve got several faces.”

“That one means someone gave you instructions and you are deciding whether arson counts as a counteroffer.”

I placed Marcus’s order on the counter.

Lily finished the bow before touching it. That was Lily. The world could end between two customers and she would still make sure the ribbon lay straight.

She read the first page. Her eyes moved back to the top and began again, slower. Lily only read things twice when she had found my mistake.

“Fourteen days,” she said.

“Marcus enjoys round numbers.”

“You signed the original recovery clause.”

“I was distracted by heroism.”

She tapped the second page, where the order copied the old clause and my initials. “You misspelled grimoire.”

Lily folded the order and put it under the counter.

“Shop closes early today.”

“Because I’ve been evicted?”

“Because you are dripping on my floor and lying badly.”

She turned the sign in the window, locked the door, and took my hand.

“Upstairs.”

“You haven’t heard what happened.”

“You can tell me properly.”

She smiled as she led me through the curtain.

I knew that smile.

I was still angry, and I followed her upstairs anyway. Her ass climbed the narrow stairs at eye level the whole way up, and I was hard again by the third step. I was sure I looked brooding and dangerous. I missed the top step and caught the rail with both hands.

Lily’s bedroom smelled of lavender and warm linen, with flowers hung to dry from the rafters.

Snow hissed against the window. An iron stove ticked near the wall. Her bed stood under the sloped roof, blankets folded neatly, pillows arranged by someone who had never shared a room with a sentient grimoire.

Lily pulled the pins from her hair.

The braid loosened, and her hair fell across her shoulders. I wanted my hands in it badly enough that I nearly skipped the story.

“Start at the Guild doors,” she said.

“There’s nothing interesting about the doors.”

She untied my cloak and let it fall.

“Properly and in order.”

“It was cold.”

Her fingers opened the first buckle of my armor.

“Compelling.”

“There was snow.”

The second buckle.

“I can hardly bear the suspense.”

By the time my story reached the Guild’s hearth, my armor was on her floor. By the time I reached the secretary’s warning, my shirt had joined it. Lily sat on the edge of the bed and drew me between her knees while I described Marcus’s office.

Her hands slid under my belt.

My account of the pipe smoke became extremely detailed.

“Then he showed me the mage report,” I said.

Lily pulled my trousers down.

Cold air touched my thighs. Her warm palm closed around my cock, which had been hard since the stairs and was frankly proud of itself.

The arguments I had rehearsed on the walk vanished.

“What did it say?” she asked, her thumb stroking slowly over the head.

“I’ve got no idea,” I said. “I stopped at the title.”

She laughed against my stomach.

She took me into her mouth, hot and wet, and I grabbed her shoulders to stay upright. Lily took me deep once, drew back, then stopped entirely.

I looked down.

Blue eyes watched me beneath pale lashes.

“The report,” she reminded me.

She was cruel, and I loved it.

“Ambient magical seepage,” I managed.

Her tongue circled me.

“From the Tome,” I said. “Eight months. Six streets. Nightmares. Sleepwalking.”

She pulled away and rose.

“Keep going.”

The blue scarf came off. Her dress followed, sliding over pale skin, small pink-tipped tits, and the compact little ass I had missed despite seeing it a week earlier. My dick jumped so hard I lost my place in the report. A week was far too long to go without that view.

I kicked off my boots and trousers, and she climbed onto the bed and pulled me down onto my back.

“Apparently,” I said as she settled over my hips, “every cat in the district gathered outside my window.”

Lily lowered herself onto me.

My whole body clenched from my ass to my jaw. She was hot, slick, and tight around me, and a moment earlier I had been confident about lasting through this conversation.

“Ashbourne’s finest witnesses,” she said.

With that, she rolled her hips and rode me.

She went slow, hands on my chest, hair falling around us and her body warm from the stove. Each rise dragged her along every inch of me. Each descent pressed her hips against mine and pushed the Guild, Marcus, the contract, and winter several miles farther away.

I gripped her waist and tried to take over the pace, since I was clearly the expert in the room.

She stopped.

“That’s extortion,” I said.

“Narration stops, I stop.”

“Lily.”

“Keep talking.”

Her hips stayed put.

I told her about the ritual marks radiating from the Crooked Nail.

She moved again.

I told her about the Guild vaults. Her rhythm deepened.

I reached Marcus opening the drawer and forgot the next sentence when Lily leaned back, palms on my thighs, taking me deeper. Her breasts lifted with every breath. She looked me in the eye. She knew exactly what she was doing and, unlike most villains, had the decency to look pleased about it.

She stopped.

“He took out the old contract,” I said quickly.

Lily rolled her hips.

“Recover the grimoire. Return it for examination and containment. I signed it. He waited eight months because Ashara asked him to.”

Pressure built at the base of my cock. My balls drew up tight, my stomach clenched, and heat spread through my chest until I suspected I would finish before the story did. “He gave me two choices.”

Lily leaned forward. Her hair brushed my face. Her pace became quicker, precise and maddening.

“Give them the Tome,” I said, “or carry it beyond the walls in fourteen days.”

“And?”

“I said no.”

She stopped.

I stared at her.

“That was the important part.”

“It was also incomplete.”

“You’re an evil woman.”

“Did you consider surrendering it?”

My body and the rest of me happened to agree for once.

“No.”

Lily moved.

Hard.

The bed struck the wall. Once. Again. Her fingers spread over my ribs as her hips drove down, and I lost track of the room. There was warm skin, white hair, blue eyes, the slick pressure of her around me, the ache building until I was about to come.

“What happens on the fourteenth day?” she asked.

“Confiscation.”

“And what did Marcus recommend?”

I was so close that talking hurt. I could barely get the words out. “Stone walls.”

Lily clenched around me.

“Naturally,” she said, “I know a realtor.”

Of all the possible triggers, the word realtor sent me over the edge.

I came with a sound that ruined whatever dignity the Guild had left me. Lily laughed, breathless, and kept moving until laughter broke into a gasp. Her thighs tightened around my hips. Her head tipped back. I watched her come, felt every pulse around me, and held her when she folded down against my chest.

For a while, neither of us solved anything.

Snow tapped the glass. The stove clicked. Lily’s breathing warmed my neck, and I could have stayed under her until the fourteenth day.

“That was a cruel place to mention property,” I said.

“Fenwick Undergable.”

“His parents lost a wager.”

“He buys apology bouquets from me.”

“That doesn’t improve it.”

Lily traced the edge of the panther scar.

“He specializes in difficult properties.”

“Define difficult.”

“A customer said Fenwick once described a collapsed roof as unrestricted access to natural light.”

“I like him already.”

“You will hate him within minutes.”

“I can contain multitudes.”

She kissed my shoulder.

The quiet lasted long enough for my anger to return, smaller and less useful.

“You came here after deciding,” Lily said.

“Marcus gave me fourteen days.”

“You decided before he gave you the days. You said no first.”

Her finger rubbed over my sternum. She was looking at the scar instead of me, which meant she was about to say something accurate and unpleasant.

“Felix would make a joke. Kaniz would tell you to keep anything that chose you. The Tome would spend an hour explaining why the Guild is unworthy of its margins.”

Lily lifted her head and met my eyes.

“Everyone in your room has an interest in your answer. You came because I don’t.”

“Am I being an idiot?”

“Of course. Fourteen days is a terrible time to buy property.” She smiled. “Marcus also gave you the only answer you could live with. You keep the Tome, and it lives outside the walls.”

“That was almost supportive.”

“I sell flowers. I don’t grant absolution.”

I thought about Tom calling my name and Mara with her dagger, and about the secretary pointing me toward the corridor.

I thought about the Tome waiting eight hundred years before it chose me.

“I’m not buying a house.”

I had never wanted a house in my life. Houses belonged to men who had stopped going places.

“Apparently you are meeting Fenwick tomorrow.”

“You arranged that quickly.”

Her smile was sweet enough to sell flowers at twice the price.

“He owes me money.”

Of course he did.