Page 22 of Tusks And Conditions

Korvan's tongue flickers rapidly. "You're bluffing."

"I don't bluff. I break things. That's my whole personality." I pause. "But the person who built the case? She doesn't bluff either. She double-checks her work. She cross-references. She uses colored tabs."

Korvan’s eyes narrow to a new expression. Not fear, exactly. Nagas don't process fear the way mammals do. But calculation. The cold, reptilian arithmetic of cost and benefit, and I can see him running the numbers, and I can see the moment the numbers stop adding up in his favor.

"The warrant stays," he says softly. "And your little accountant... perhaps she needs a visit from someone less polite than a courier."

My body runes erupt.

Every single one. From my skull to my knuckles to the ancient glyphs spiraling down my ribs. They blaze gold-white, so bright that the shadows in the warehouse leap and twist, and the fluorescent light above Korvan's desk pops and shatters in a shower of sparks, plunging the warehouse into a darkness lit only by me. The war-magic surges up through my blood like lava through a fissure, and I feel it in my teeth, in my bones, in the silver piercing in my left tusk that vibrates with a frequency that makes the air itself hum.

I don't draw a weapon. I don't take a step. I just stand there, incandescent with the oldest magic my people possess, and I let Korvan Blacktide see exactly what he is threatening. Not me. Not the bounty hunter. Not the Orc with the blade and the reputation and the body count. He is threatening the thing I want to go home to. The spreadsheets and the oatmeal and the woman who told me I don't have to be dangerous in every room.

But I can be. If he makes me.

"Retract the warrant. Leave her name out of your mouth. And pray that the colorful tabs are the worst thing that finds you."

The warehouse is very quiet. The rain drums on the roof. The Drow has drawn her daggers but makes no move to close the distance. Korvan's coils have tightened beneath the desk until the scales creak against each other, and his ringed fingers grip the armrests of his chair, the enchantments on his jewelry flickering weak and pale against the inferno of my runes.

His tongue flickers once. Twice.

"Pull the warrant," he says to the Drow, without looking at her.

The runes dim. Not all the way. But enough. I pull the magic back like reeling in a line, coiling it down into the deep place where it lives, and the warehouse settles back into its mundane darkness, lit only by the faint glow from the open loading bay door behind me.

I turn my back on all of them and walk out.

I'm halfway across the parking lot when I hear the whisper of the bolt.

The hexfire round punches into the asphalt six inches from my left boot and detonates on impact, blossoming into a fist-sized flower of orange flame that scorches the leather and sends a wave of heat rolling up my calf. I pivot, already dropping into a defensive crouch, and see the rooftop Orc silhouetted against the rain-grey sky. She didn't leave. She circled back, or someone else took her position, because the build is wrong, too broad in the shoulders, and the hexfire crossbow is already racking a second bolt with the mechanical chunk of someone who's done this a thousand times.

The loading bay door explodes outward behind me.

The Troll hits me from behind like a freight train made of meat, both arms wrapping around my torso and lifting me clean off the ground with a force that drives the air from my lungs in a single brutal compression. My ribs creak. My boots leave the wet asphalt. He's enormous, easily a head taller than me and twice my width, and his skin has that rocky, calcite texture that Trolls develop when they've been juicing on mineral enhancement hexes, which means hitting him is going to be like punching a cliff face. He slams me down onto the hood of a rusted delivery van parked against the warehouse wall, and the metal buckles under our combined weight, the windshield spiderwebbing from the impact as my spine connects with the engine block through two inches of corroded steel.

I should have known. Korvan is Naga. Cold-blooded in every sense. He told the Drow to pull the warrant to my face, and the moment my back was turned, he gave the real order. The calculation was always going to come out this way, because a Naga doesn't process the threat of future consequences when there's a simpler, bloodier solution available in the present.

The Troll leans his full weight onto me. I feel something in my left side crack, a rib or maybe just cartilage, the pain bright and specific against the duller pressure of his mass. His face is inches from mine, flat-nosed and granite-jawed, and his breath smells like raw quartz and the chemical tang of hex supplements. He grins. His teeth are filed to points.

"Boss says goodbye, Ironjaw."

I headbutt him.

My skull connects with the bridge of his nose and the calcite-hardened skin splits with a sound like cracking pottery, which is satisfying, but costs me a spike of pain through my forehead that briefly whites out my vision. The Troll reels back just enough for me to get my arms free. I hammer my right fist into his exposed throat, driving the war-runes on my knuckles into the softer tissue above his collarbone where the mineral hardening hasn't fully calcified, and the magic discharges on impact with a flash of gold light that sends him staggering sideways off the van. I roll off the crumpled hood, boots hitting the ground, and my left side screams at me as the cracked rib shifts.

Second hexfire bolt. This one sails past my ear close enough that I feel the heat signature singes the tip of my earlobe, and it detonates against the van behind me, turning the engine compartment into an inferno that throws jagged shadows across the entire parking lot. I'm backlit now, perfectly visible, and I hear the crossbow racking its third bolt with that same efficient chunk.

I grab the Troll's ankle before he can recover and swing him into the nearest stack of rotting pallets. The wood detonates into splinters. He goes through it, into the chain-link fence behind it, and the fence bows outward under his weight but holds. He'll be up in seconds. Trolls always are.

The Drow comes out of the loading bay door like a ghost, silent and low, her poisoned daggers leading. She's fast. Drow always are. She closes the distance between us in the time it takes me to pull the collapsible war-hammer from my back holster and extend it to full length, the enchanted steel segments locking into place with a series of sharp clicks that I feel more than hear. Her first slash opens a line across my left forearm, and the poison enchantment hits my blood like ice water, a numbing cold that races up toward my elbow before my runes catch it and burn it out with a flare of angry heat. But it costs me. The runes are drawing on my reserves now, running dual duty between combat enhancement and toxin neutralization, and I can feel the war-magic guttering at the edges like a candle flame in a draft.

I catch her second slash on the hammer's shaft, steel ringing against enchanted steel, and shove her backward with a lateral sweep that sends her skidding across the wet asphalt. She recovers instantly, dropping into a low combat stance, blades crossed in front of her face, white hair plastered to her skull by the rain. She's young, early twenties maybe, and her movements have the fluid, drilled precision of formal assassin training. Hollowbridge Shadow Academy, if I had to guess. Expensive. Korvan invested in quality.

The two Goblins emerge from the warehouse flanking wide, one left, one right, and they've ditched the shock-staves in favor of weighted chains that whistle through the air as they spin them up to speed. The chains are barbed. Enchanted. I can see the faint blue glow of binding hexes woven into the links, designed to constrict on contact and lock the target in place while the poison and the crossbow bolts do the real work.

Four against one. Troll recovering behind me. Sniper on the roof. Drow in front. Goblins flanking. A textbook kill box, and Korvan probably planned it the moment I walked in the front door like an idiot who thought he could resolve a death warrant with a speech about tax fraud and color-coded tabs.

Sabine would be disappointed in me. Not for the violence. For the poor tactical planning.