Chapter 181: Threats of the End
Ealdhere was starting to become uncomfortably used to threats.
Abhalón was more feathered about it, disguised beneath kinder words and layered entendre, where one would come to their own conclusions about the befoulments they would soon be drowning in. More entertaining, almost, as he got to piece together what exactly would be done to his reputation or what trade deal would fall through. The Darlingtons were no strangers to threats, against their house or its members, and Ealdhere had grown familiar with the doublespeak there.
Not in Calarata. Here, Lluc promised to rip out his entrails through a rat-hole in his stomach, and Ealdhere just had to listen to that. If he wasn't terrified, he'd bemoan the lack of creativity.
"Silvers only," Lluc repeated, as though he hadn't just beamed that damnable fact into Ealdhere's skull for the past twenty minutes. "If you allow a single Gold into my dungeon, you will wish you had died there."
Ealdhere nodded again. Sometimes he already did.
"I will only be gone for a week." Lluc adjusted his wolf-brim hat, the sweep of his elegant robes—more polished than his preferred appearance, though worried and wearied with grime from general existence. "Take more corpses than normal. Give out nothing. Obey the Dread Crew."
The Guild had been open for long enough to cement itself into Calarata like a parasite, and Lluc had been there every day since its inception. But it didn't sound like an excursion, not with how Lluc's face was split in a snarl, tension ground between his brows.
It sounded like a mission, almost. Something to pull him away for a week that he would rather wish he didn't have to do. But what would summon the Guildmaster away from his position?
"I don't like it," Lluc muttered, as though Ealdhere was a particularly uninteresting wall he didn't care about hearing his secrets. "Varcís out, the Silent Market struggling—there's too much happening."