Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Seventy Seven: Envoys

"This doesn't feel like our best idea, Arl." Jesper chewed his lip, and then paced up and down the room again.

"It's not our idea at all," Arlen growled. He wanted to try and massage a burgeoning ache out of his temples, but he also didn't want to take his eyes off the door. "Sit the fuck down, Jes, you're making me dizzy."

With some reluctance, Jesper sat. They'd positioned all of the chairs save for one facing the door with easy access to the single window. Let whoever Callan had scrounged up as a go-between take the risk. Though he'd never admit it, he thought this was lunacy as well. There was no world in which he and Harkenn could work together without ending up with the proverbial, if not literal, knife at their throats.

But he also knew, though he'd never admit this either, that Callan was correct. He'd been slipping. Marick got ahead of him because he was fucking stationary, and had been for a long time. Wallowing in his own self-pity. Drowning in memories and dreaming of revenge instead of taking it. He thumbed the strap of his prosthetic. Before he'd lost the leg, he'd always been proactive about these things; Marick had valued that initiative, for a time. He'd grown lazy. Bitter. Unproductive. Losing Calder for months had sunk him further into entropy.

It was time to change things, and that started with being just as unpredictable as the mad dog everyone thought he was. He was sceptical of this deal, but if he could pull it off? There was no way his enemies would see this coming. And if Harkenn thought he could turn it around on him once Arlen had served his purposes, he had another thing coming.

"Here we go," Usk rumbled, from his station at the door. "There's two of them."

"First impressions?" Arlen said, readjusting himself in the seat as Jesper and Ashe both smoothed the impatience from their faces and became the picture of casual menace. Raziel was stationed on the roof with explosives, just in case Harkenn reneged on Skipper's deal regarding guards. The fact that the old Red Runners' leader had walked out of that meeting alive was miracle enough; the lord really was desperate enough to see if this could work. Arlen still wasn't taking any chances.

"Unspoken," Usk said after a moment, with a frown in his voice.

"Both of them?" Skipper had only mentioned one.

"By the looks of them, aye."

"Nict's balls," Arlen muttered. "Well. At least it can't be Yddris."

Jesper snorted.

Usk stepped back from the door as a knock sounded, swinging it open from behind. Two hooded figures stood on the threshold, one of average height and the other made shorter by heavy reliance on a walking stick. Arlen tipped his chin up, keeping his own stick close as the two entered.

"Well met," the shorter Unspoken said. He sounded older, though Arlen knew that often meant little when it came to Unspoken. The greeting was echoed by his companion, almost too quiet to hear. The second man's cloak looked strange, oddly bulky at the back, and it might have been a trick of the light, but Arlen could have sworn it was moving.

"Was meeting at the arse-crack of dawn your idea?" Arlen said, fixing the two in his stare. The man with the strange cloak looked away, but the older Unspoken met him face-on.

"No," he said. "And yes, we are very well, thank you."

"You might have gathered already that I couldn't give less of a shit about pleasantries. Let's get this over with."

"I had an idea," the old man said, and promptly took the one remaining seat. His companion stared at each of them in turn, and this time Arlen was absolutely sure the cloak was moving. He met Usk's eye, and the Varthian confirmed his suspicion with raised brows.