The Letter

The letter that destroyed the Westbridge clan had been delivered to the wrong house. Such a simple thing. One street over, one similar name, a tired courier with rain in his eyes. That was all it took.

Morit Creel sniffed the folded parchment, sealed with plain wax—no insignia. Strange. The couriers never made mistakes, not with what Lord Craine paid them. He weighed the letter in his palm and peered out the window at the rain-slick cobbles below. The courier was already a dwindling shadow at the far end of Butcher's Row.

"From Lord Craine," the boy had said before dashing off.

Creel broke the seal. The handwriting inside was tight, controlled, nothing like Lord Craine's drunken scrawl.

Westbridge moves tonight. Twenty men through the south gate. The bribe is paid. Strike before dawn or lose everything.

He read it three times, confusion souring to anger. Lord Craine wasn't just planning to go behind his back—he was planning to wipe Creel's people out entirely. After everything Creel had done for him. After every throat he'd cut to put Craine where he was.

"Gren!" he bellowed.

His second appeared in the doorway, a big man with small eyes. "Chief?"

"Get everyone. We move tonight."

Half a mile away, in a narrow townhouse that leaned against its neighbors like a drunk against his friends, Janis Westbridge stared out at the same rain and wondered where her courier had gone.

"Three hours," she muttered. Behind her, her brother Dav cleaned his fingernails with a knife that had taken more lives than most plagues.

"Maybe Craine changed his mind," Dav said, not looking up.

Janis shook her head. "The gold's paid. Twenty of our best are waiting in that shit-hole tavern by the gate. If Craine's men don't show with the uniforms and the passes, we'll lose everything."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"It would be the last."

Dav finally looked up, his face as expressionless as ever. Only the scar at the corner of his mouth gave him any semblance of emotion—a permanent half-smile carved by a jealous husband years ago. "We could still hit the granary."

"With what? Twenty men in plain clothes against a garrison? Don't be a fool."

"Better fools than corpses."

She turned back to the window. The courier should have returned with Craine's confirmation hours ago. Something had gone wrong.

Lord Edrick Craine was remarkably untroubled for a man whose plans were collapsing around him. He sat in his study, swirling brandy, watching the fire eat away at the logs like time eats at men.

The knock at his door was almost apologetic.

"Enter," he called, not turning.

His steward's voice was tight with controlled panic. "My lord, there are men in the courtyard. Armed men. Not ours."

Craine frowned. "Whose, then?"

"Creel's, my lord."

Now Craine turned, eyebrows lifting toward his receding hairline. "Morit Creel? What in hell's name does that butcher want at this hour?"

The steward licked his lips. "He says you've betrayed him, my lord. He... he has quite a lot of men with him."

Craine set down his glass and rose. "This is absurd. I'll speak to him."

A distant crash echoed up from below, followed by a scream cut suddenly short.

"My lord, perhaps the back—"

"I don't scurry out back doors in my own house, Wilm." Craine straightened his jacket. "Creel is a reasonable man. For a murderer."

Reasonable men don't march twenty killers through rain-dark streets. Reasonable men don't hack down gate guards who ask inconvenient questions. Reasonable men don't carry torches in one hand and steel in the other.

Morit Creel had stopped being reasonable the moment he read that letter.

The grand entrance hall of Craine's house was all polished marble and gilded mirrors. Creel's boots left bloody prints across the floor. Four of Craine's household guards lay cooling on the tiles, their blood running in thin rivulets toward the drains.

"Find Craine," Creel ordered. "Bring him to me. Alive."

Gren nodded and gestured to three men, who peeled off toward the curving staircase.

Then Lord Craine was there, descending the stairs like he was joining a dinner party. "Morit! What is the meaning of this... unpleasantness?"

Creel's laugh was dry as autumn leaves. "That's what you're calling it? Four dead men on your floor is 'unpleasantness'?"

Craine reached the bottom of the stairs, glancing distastefully at the nearest corpse. "A regrettable misunderstanding, I'm sure. One we can resolve without further... mess."

"I have your letter, Craine."

Something flickered across the lord's face. Confusion, perhaps. Or the beginning of fear. "My letter?"

Creel pulled the folded parchment from inside his coat. "Don't play the fool. It doesn't suit a man who thinks himself clever enough to have me killed."

"I've sent you no letter today."

"No?" Creel unfolded the parchment, the rain-damp paper threatening to tear at the creases. "Then what do you call this?"

Craine squinted at it in the torchlight, his face suddenly draining of color. "That's not my handwriting."

"Of course it's not. You'd hardly sign your own name to a plot like this."

"Morit, listen to me. That letter wasn't meant for you. I wrote no letter about Westbridge moving tonight."

A cold feeling began to spread through Creel's gut. "You didn't send this to me?"

"No. And if it speaks of Westbridge, then it was never intended for your eyes."

Creel stared at the letter again. Westbridge moves tonight.

"Whose eyes was it meant for, then?" Creel asked softly.

Craine's mouth worked silently for a moment. "That's... complicated."

The cold in Creel's gut solidified into ice. "You've been dealing with the Westbridges behind my back."

"Dealing is such a—"

"After I cut down half the old families to put you in power. After I made you lord of this cesspit. You were going to let them in through the south gate."

Craine spread his hands. "Business, Morit. Just business. The Westbridges control the river traffic now. We needed—"

"We?" Creel's voice was barely a whisper. "There is no 'we,' Craine. There never was."

The south gate of the city was a squat, ugly thing. Two towers of crumbling stone flanked iron-banded doors that hadn't been properly closed in thirty years. Trade was the lifeblood of the city, and even at night, wagons came and went.

Twenty men in plain clothes huddled in the taproom of the Wayward Dog, a tavern whose only virtue was its proximity to those gates. They nursed watered ale and watched the door, waiting for Craine's men with the guard uniforms that would get them inside the walls of the inner city.

Janis Westbridge paced the private room upstairs. Something had gone very wrong. The courier should have returned. Craine's men should have been here by now.

"We're leaving," she announced abruptly.

Dav looked up from his corner. "The men won't like that."

"The men will like getting gutted by the city guard even less."

Dav's half-smile twisted. "What about our stake in the granary?"

"There won't be any stake if we're dead." She strapped on her sword belt. "Get the men moving. Now."

The city was burning.

Not all of it, not yet. But Craine's mansion was a roaring torch against the night sky, and the flames had leapt to neighboring roofs. Fire in a city of timber and pitch spreads faster than rumors, and with nearly the same appetite for destruction.

Gren found Creel standing in the garden behind the burning house, watching the flames with an expression that might have been regret if you didn't know him better.

"We found this in his study," Gren said, holding out a sheaf of papers. "Looks like plans. Maps of the granary district. Guard rotations."

Creel didn't look away from the fire. "Craine was going to let the Westbridges take the granaries. Right under our noses."

"What Westbridges?" Gren asked. "They're nothing. Street rats."

"Not anymore, it seems." Creel finally turned to face his second. "Where's Craine?"

"Inside. Got caught when the ceiling came down in the study."

"Pity."

"What now, chief?"

Creel looked up at the flames beginning to spread across the wealthy quarter of the city. Men were running in the streets now. Some to fight the fire, others to take advantage of the chaos. Opportunity comes in many forms.

"Now we find the Westbridges," he said quietly. "Before they realize their plan is ash."

The problem with running from a catastrophe is that sometimes you run straight into one.

Janis led her twenty men out of the Wayward Dog into the rain-soaked night, only to find the street blocked by armed figures. For a heartbeat, she thought it might be Craine's men, late but arrived.

Then she saw Morit Creel's distinctive silhouette, and her heart sank like a stone.

"Westbridge," Creel said, almost gently. "What a surprise."

Janis's hand went to her sword. "Creel. We're just passing through."

"Through my territory? With twenty armed men? I don't think so." Creel stepped forward into the light spilling from the tavern's windows. "I think you were waiting for something. Or someone."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Dav said from beside her.

"No?" Creel smiled thinly. "Let me remind you, then. The south gate. A bribe. Twenty men."

Janis felt a cold certainty settle in her bones. "How do you—"

"I got your letter." Creel's smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Or rather, I got the letter meant for you. Seems our mutual friend Craine wasn't as loyal as either of us thought."

Realization dawned on Janis like the cold light of a winter morning. "The courier delivered it to you."

"And now Craine is dead, his house is burning, and half the city will be ash by morning." Creel's eyes reflected the distant flames. "All because some fool boy couldn't tell one street from another."

"We can explain," Janis began, but Creel cut her off with a laugh.

"Explain what? That you were going to steal half the city's grain? That you bought Craine with river gold while I wasn't looking?" He shook his head. "No explanations needed. I understand business."

Dav tensed beside her. "Then let us pass. No harm done."

"No harm?" Creel's voice hardened. "Craine is dead. My arrangement with him, complicated as it was, is ash. And you expect to walk away?"

"What do you want, Creel?" Janis asked flatly.

"The same thing you came for. A new arrangement." He gestured to the burning city behind him. "By morning, there will be a void. The question is: who fills it?"

Four days later, the ashes were still warm in what had been the wealthy quarter. Seven blocks burned to the ground, thirty-six dead, including Lord Edrick Craine. The city guard found his bones among the charred timbers of his study, alongside the remains of his steward and three household guards.

They never found the strongbox that had contained the city's tax collections for the month.

They never questioned why the granaries, which had been so poorly guarded for so long, suddenly had a private force watching over them night and day.

And if anyone noticed that Morit Creel and Janis Westbridge were suddenly doing business together, they were wise enough to keep it to themselves.

In the Wayward Dog, the courier who had delivered the letter to the wrong address drained his third ale and contemplated the small pouch of silver coins Creel had pressed into his hand.

"For your mistake," Creel had said, with that terrible smile. "Best one anyone ever made."

The courier didn't know if it had been a reward or a warning. He only knew he would be leaving the city tomorrow, and never delivering another letter as long as he lived.

Some mixups can never be unmixed.