Power Trio

“The problem,” Rori Stekmai says, in aristocratically stilted English, “is a miscommunication.” The halfling smiles big, leans forward across the deacon’s desk. The deacon himself, a quavery elf who's barely spoken except to introduce Rori as the Subminister for Renumeration, watches the two of them with silent anxiety. “The music is lovely. But the fine deacon here believed the tunes will be… I seek the word… gentler. The crowd gentler also.”

“Did the deacon listen to the recordings we sent?” Anise is chewing her thumbnail. “Did he read the rider?”

Rori Stekmai’s smile does not move. Neither do his bugbears, who are standing in front of the ornate, thickly carved wooden door into the deacon’s office. Everything within is spotless and baroquely detailed and seemingly untouched. It’s difficult to believe the deacon spends much time here. A diamond-grille radio pipes sweet melody into the room, a sharp contrast with the thrumming bass of Legendary’s finale which booms through the stone walls.

“These are sad miscommunications. There is much to regret.” Rori does not look regretful. “But such things the Subminister for Renumeration is here to solve. We will find a fabulous solution.”

“I’m still not clear on the problem,” Anise says.

“Thusly then: the sons and daughters of the Proud Father are disrupted in their practice by the unruly crowd. Unable to perform their assigned tasks.” Rori rests his arm around the deacon and adjusts his silk cravat. “And we can’t expect poor Zarro to pay idlefolk.”

“Hold on.” Anise holds a hand up. “They aren’t even here, your employees.”

“Exactly. Exactly. And it is so sad.” Rori shakes his head. “A humble life and a humble salary the sons and daughters of the Proud Father have. One day’s missed work? Calamity. So!” He claps, clattering his rings together. “We will fix it. Your proceeds cannot match the salaries that have been lost today, but the Proud Father provides. We will take what you have earned and trust in Him to furnish the rest.”

“That’s—no.” Anise stands up. The bugbears take a step into the room and Dee spins around, fixes her eyes on them. They gaze back with dull mercilessness. Deacon Zarro is shivering violently. “That’s not acceptable,” Anise says. “We need to arbitrate this with the administrator.”

“Administrator Stekmai is a busy man,” Rori says. “His Subministerial appointees he chooses from those he trusts already. Close friends. Trusted mentors.” His canines gleam as his lips widen. There’s a tooth gem in one. “Sons.”

Dee’s eyes narrow. “This is a shakedown, isn’t it? The administrator’s dumbass kid playing gangster.”

“Language,” admonishes Rori.

“Fuck you, junior.”

Rori sighs. “Your pack servant does not understand civil society, Mme. Cantator.”

“Big mistake, little man,” Dee growls. One bugbear makes a move. She cracks her knuckles. “Anything of his touches me, it breaks.”

“Nothing will break.” Rori exudes tranquility. “You will return to your music group and be allowed to finish your playing. Then you will turn your money over to our city’s fair peacekeepers. And then you may depart.”

The bugbears all but toss them out of the office. The bigger one shoves Anise’s shoulder as she goes.

Dee stares murder into his beady eyes. “You’re gonna find out real soon what that just bought you.”

He huffs. “Scurry, pack rat.” Then he closes the door in her face.

The high elf’s kitten heels clack clack clack as she storms down the polished cobble hallway back toward the nave. Legendary have finished their encore, and Thekla’s muffled voice warbles an indistinct farewell.

Dee can hear Anise’s heavy breathing. She’s never seen the elf this distressed. Her cliff-hanging boss might be about to go over the edge.

“This isn’t on you,” she tries.

Anise whirls around, her eyes blazing. “Yes, it fucking is, Dee. I’m the manager. Everything is on me. If I hadn’t been fucking off on the drums instead of wiring ahead to Alstorum, I could have seen this fucking coming.”

“No way to know that.” Dee holds up an appeasing hand. “All we got to work with is what’s here.”

Anise’s shoulders hunch and her legs shake. She finds a bench along the wall to collapse onto. Dee cautiously lowers herself to sit next to her boss.

“We’re sunk. Without this take, we are in scarcity mode. I’m gonna need to cut staff. I’m gonna need to cut dates. I’m gonna need to wire Warcry.” Anise’s head is in her hands, palm tight across her forehead to hide her eyes. “This is all I’m good for. And I’m not even good at it.” Her voice breaks. “I turned out such a fucking dud.”

Dee sees a tear drift down the elf’s cheek and bead on her chin. Something snaps taut inside the packmistress. She will not allow them to do this to Anise Cantator.

She stands up and lays her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “I’m fixing this.”

Anise wipes her hand down her face and peers over it with reddened eyes. “How?”

“Don’t ask me that. Don’t expose yourself to it. Just trust me. Will you trust me?”

Brief panic on Anise’s face as she comprehends Dee’s intent. Then a barely perceptible nod.

Dee lifts Anise to her feet. “What you’re gonna do is take point on load-out. As quick as safety allows. I’m taking Nick, Graila, Warrin, and Parag. Rest of the pack is yours. Don’t answer questions. Tell them I’m out on task and you’re in charge.” She unslings her gun belt and hitches it around Anise. “You have my steel. They’ll know you have my voice. You’re gonna break down, load out, and leave. Do not wait for us, do you understand?”

“I understand,” Anise says. Dee needs to cinch her belt to its tightest notch in order to get it around the elf’s ballerina waist.

“Lean on Rarek,” she says. “He knows how to task my people, and he knows the next camp spot. I’ll meet you there.”

She has that urge again to ruffle the elf’s hair, and this time she doesn’t resist it. Anise’s eyes scrunch closed, and she leans into the touch like a cat getting its head scratched. Dee coughs out a little laugh despite the adrenaline and tangr’ak rising through her, thinks fuck it, and pulls Anise into an embrace.

“You are not a dud.” Her voice rumbles into the elf’s pointed ear. “You did see this coming. This is exactly why you hired a pack of big, mean orcs. This twerp thinks he’s bad? I’m worse. And I’m gonna look after you, honey.”

She meant to say Ani. It just slipped out like that instead.

Anise’s face burrows into the crook of Dee’s elbow, and when she opens her mouth Dee feels the movement of her verdant, cupid’s-bow lips and thinks for an absurd second that the elf is going to plant a kiss on her bicep. “Thank you,” she whispers instead.

Dee rubs Anise’s back. She shouldn’t be surprised at how strong a reaction she had to seeing this soft, petite elf cry. Her protective instinct has kicked in hard. She wants to see Anise relaxed and happy. Her palm strays south, grazing Anise’s shoulder blades and trailing down her spine. It pauses where the elf’s body curves in, halfway to her butt. Her pert, round, honey-golden butt.

Okay, so Dee’s tangr’ak is decidedly kindled. Good. But there’s a proper place to be pointing it, and it’s not at her boss’s ass. She gives Anise a gentle shove. “Go.”

Anise hurries away down the stonework hall to coordinate their withdrawal. A dark part of the packmistress is leering with satisfied anticipation. Anise is so often harried by problems Dee doesn’t know how to fix. But she can sure as shit fix this one.

Graila’s on security near the backstage entrance. Dee wraps an arm around her shoulder in an outward show of chumminess. In quiet packtongue, she says, “The city betrays us. They’re stealing our take.”

Graila’s eyes narrow. “Command me.”

“Monitor the merch stand. When they take the strongbox, follow them unseen. Find where it’s kept. Report to me.”

Graila slaps Dee’s shoulder. “Aye.”

Dee finds Nick up on the lighting rig, disassembling the kinetics. She whistles. “C’mon down from there, Nicky Voraag. I’ll sub someone in.”

“One sheckond,” Nick replies around a pen light he clutches between his teeth. His power drill whines as he unscrews the clamp on his spotlight. He scurries down the rigging one-handed and stows it in its case. “Yes, boss?”

“On Earth, you were a thief, right?”

Nick’s eyes dart downward. “I’m not that guy anymore.”

“I need that guy,” Dee says. “Junior gangster just strong-armed us into giving up the entire concert take. He doesn’t pull this shit on Pack Voraag. We wait until evening when everyone else lights out. Then we take our fucking money back and skip town. You’re on the crew.”

Nick’s cheek pushes out as he plants his tongue into it. Dee prepares some convincing words to get through his resistance, and an order if she needs it.

“By your command, chief.” His packtongue still carries its accent, but it’s smoother every day. “I need a travel amp, a pair of earbuds, and a closed-frame generator. Smallest and quietest we can find.”

Dee lays a fist on his chest. A surge of gratitude rises through her, that fate dropped such a loyal, determined packmate into her lap. “You’ll have them. Keep working and I’ll pick you up when it’s time.”

She spins on her heel to find the rest of her squad, then spins back. “Nick,” she says.

“Yes, boss?”

She grabs the back of his neck and presses her forehead to his. Her fire sparks and leaps. “Strength and Victory, beautiful.”

“Victory and Strength,” Nick says. “What did that last word mean?”

She just grins over her shoulder as she walks away.

* * *

The merch girl, a trembly little Earthling gnome, gives up the take to a burly spriggan whose limbs creak ominously as he adds its contents to a strappy leather duffel. This he passes to the bugbear boys, Ugly and Uglier, who gather a troop of irregulars in ill-fitting maroon uniforms and swagger from the basilica.

Hawk-eyed Graila follows.

They take the loot beyond the wall, into the lumber districts. They move down a raucous street hung with violet-and-green paper lanterns, the light casting sickly tints across their faces. They enter one of Alstorum’s few well-maintained edifices, shoulder their way through the crowded taproom on its first floor, and mount the dingy stairs to its stone-and-spackle second floor.

The crescent Mother moon rises, a bare sliver of the Daughter peeking out from her light side. Diak’zinae of the Voraag River Pack goes to work.

Four orcs in tactical harness, with zipties, duct tape, hatchets, and knives. One half orc with a guitar and a campground generator. They stack up on the taphouse’s alley-side wall, among the crumpled cans and animal dung.

The O-dub proto-punk music coming from inside is more than loud enough to cover them down here, but upstairs is another story. Nick tugs the starting cable on the generator, sits cross-legged next to it, and flicks the travel amp on.

“This isn’t great conditions.” He plays an experimental strum; it’s barely audible over the ambience. “Best if we go with a single infiltrator. Otherwise, the power draw might hit the taphouse.”

Dee takes a spool of nylon rope from Warrin’s harness. “Use me.”

They gather around him in a huddle as a turned-faucet flow of fingerpicked tones drip from his guitar. He must be an old hand at this spell; it only takes a minute of music and a rising hum out of his throat for her to feel the shift in the air.

Nick focuses on her. Her vision goes tight as he draws her eyes into his own. “Be silent,” he intones.

The world muffles like a blanket was put over it. The generator sputters. Nick keeps playing, his guitar reduced to tinny acoustic plucks until his amp returns to life. “Is it working?” Graila murmurs.

Something’s happening for sure, Dee says, and feels her lips and her vocal cords move. But no sound comes out. Her eyebrows raise.

She claps her hands, hard. Nothing. This is so fuckin’ weird, she says and doesn’t say. She flashes everyone the thumbs-up, then sticks the nylon rope between her teeth.

Not a sound as she scales the building. No scrapes from her boots, no scratches of her fingers for purchase, no impact of her body against the wall. She tests the padlock on its cage and as it clatters against its latch, it is totally silent. She chuckles.

This lock is cheap crap. Don’t need Nicky for this one. She threads her forearm through the gap in the bars, braces herself on the outside wall as she pulls out her rake pick, and a scant thirty seconds later, she drops the lock into Warrin’s outstretched palm. The cage swings out.

Dee’s two steps into the hallway when Ugly the bugbear strolls round a corner.