Trilia sighed. “I grow worried, Qarn,” she stated from the triangle table. The words were directed at the gnome’s back as he stood in his usual spot, looking out over the courtyard through their office window. He did not visibly react or turn to face her as she continued.

“Turin has not responded to our last two queries. We have not heard from Eiyna in weeks, and with Niverna gone, we are blind in Tuath. Our ship servicing the northern ports is over a week late, with its last known tasking being to pick up Eiyna’s messages in Tuath harbor. The Brewer went silent after his supposedly blundered killing of Seulman Tuath. Which we set him to because The Needle failed to accomplish the same mission,” she said.

She rubbed her temples in thought. “We have to assume also that The Brewer was unable to clean up this whole mess between Tuath and Mer as instructed. The letters we forged as if from the Tuath governor apologizing to the governor of Mer for their history of fighting were likely undelivered. I fear we may be at odds with Tuath. Did we perhaps underestimate them and are now being undone in the north? Have we sent Wren and Harpis to their deaths?”

There was no answer to her questions, and Qarn did not seem to notice she had begun or stopped speaking to him. She slapped the table and yelled at the old gnome in frustration. “Qarn!”

Had the gnome snapped back at her and told her to stop being paranoid, she would have been comforted. Instead, Qarn turned slowly and walked over to the table. Sitting in his chair, he reached over and squeezed her hands.

“My dear, I’ve watched the rise and fall of several generations of Tuath leaders. Sadly, I cannot fathom them running an intelligence operation capable of unweaving our presence in their area so completely. Though Eiyna was young, Niverna was one of our most experienced operatives. She never communicated the slightest inkling of anyone being on to them. The Brewer had been a Shadow off and on for decades and, well, we both know what Sirul was.”

Qarn let out a long slow breath before continuing. “I have been giving it thought for some days now. No matter what way I try and come at it, the only way we could have been caught so completely flat-footed is if someone with knowledge of our inner workings and tradecraft was actively helping hunt for Syndicate members in Tuath.”

Trilia squeezed her forehead in frustration. “Who could be that methodical and cruel?”

Qarn crossed his arms and locked eyes with her. “I think you know the answer to that question.”

Trilia cursed under her breath. “If Sirul Amun has turned on The Syndicate, then none of us are safe in the plane of the living.”

The gnome was nodding his agreement when suddenly a horn blared from the lighthouse outside, startling them both. It was followed quickly by two more blasts, signaling an attack on the island.

Qarn uttered several ancient gnomish curses as Trilia put a hand on his shoulder. “Stay here and lock the door behind me, dear gnome.”

She grabbed the sapphire encrusted scepter from beside her chair and made her way into the winding tunnels of their dormant volcano home.

*****

Hearing the horn, the ship’s crew tied to Lodestar Island’s docks looked about frantically until they spotted ten ships minutes from the small harbor. They knew their responsibility was to get away, spread news of the attack, and try and return later.

Urgently, the captain ordered the mooring lines to be cut with hand-axes rather than untied, and they shoved off immediately, but the ships were almost upon them.

The Syndicate vessel barely made it out of the harbor without being run down.

Three of the much larger Tuath flagged ships broke off and followed it around the back of the island. Four others crowded into the tiny harbor and unloaded scores of militiamen via the lone dock while the other three waited further out in the harbor.

The larger, many sailed brigantine ships were gaining on the smaller Syndicate schooner and would soon have it engulfed. The Syndicate crew went from saying final prayers to cheering in victory as a colossal octopus made entirely of seawater climbed itself onto the deck of the lead ship. It ripped the masts off like dead twigs and went about whipping men overboard like rag dolls before making its way onto the second ship. On seeing this, the third vessel turned abruptly and seemed to run away.

Thinking themselves saved, the men on The Syndicate ship turned towards the island cheering at the sight of Trilia Saboghan standing resolute on the rocky slopes, her orange elementalist robe rippling in the wind.

Their joy was short-lived as they came around the island’s far side to the sight of ten more Tuath brigantines. The Tuath naval force did not even bother to board The Syndicate vessel. Their lead ship simply slammed into the broad side of the schooner as it attempted to turn away from them. The collision ripped The Syndicate boat in half, and its men were shot dead in the water by crossbow bolts.

Trilia was enraged at the sight of the ship sinking and the growing sense of inevitability she felt about the fate of her beloved Syndicate. She turned from the sea back to the harbor of the island. Drawing the jewel-encrusted cynosure scepter from her belt, she made a broad sweeping motion from the open sea towards the docks while melding her mind entirely to the water.

As the sweeping of her hand approached the offloading militiamen, a monstrous fifty-foot wave appeared, following her command and motion. It went crashing over the seven ships now trapped in the harbor. The swell ripped most of the men from their vessels, throwing five of the seven ships onto the rocky volcanic beach.

She focused almost all her thoughts and whispered this time to the sea. Her giant, octopus-shaped water elemental crawled out of the ocean behind her and made its way towards the wreckage to finish off the survivors. She grinned thinly and held her scepter out to the sea again.

She began another sweep of her hand, and the sea followed. A hammering on her back, neck, and head abruptly broke her concentration, and the sea subsided. The cool metal tips of crossbow bolts punctured her warm flesh in cold explosions of pain.

Try as she might, her lungs would not pull air, and her hand would no longer follow her command.

If she could have breathed around the dozen crossbow bolts buried in her back and neck, she would have screamed as her mind splintered into madness as she lost control over the enchantment. The elemental octopus dissolved into a mist just as her sanity had.

The threat from the mage dealt with some twelve-hundred surviving Tuath militiamen offloaded for an hour, their ships taking turns at the small docks.

On strict instructions from Myrlman, the Tuath militiamen climbed the face of the volcanic crater from every direction, taking with them rigging from the ships. Fifty at a time, they rappelled into the crater, all under the protective fire of crossbows which hummed down into the courtyard like a rain of angry wasps.

*****

Arken Hester and Braffen Frothbrew had taken up positions at the top of the curving stairway to the Navigator’s office, hoping to give Qarn as much time as possible to destroy their secrets.

A train of corpses going up the stairwell made it difficult for the Tuath militiamen to get up to them, and the curves of the stairs nullified the usefulness of the crossbows they carried with them.

It was a beautiful dance of death the two wove. The militiamen could only take the stairs one at a time, and as soon as they got to the top, Braffen would deftly twist and turn them, exposing a throat, or armpit, or face to Arken. Across the opening from Braffen, the man was surgical with his rapier, taking only the blink of an eye to open a throat, pierce a heart or scramble the brain of an enemy.

The man and dwarf grew slick with sweat, and the hallway and stairway became slippery with blood. Militiamen came until the top of the stairwell was so clogged with bodies that they had to pull corpses out of the way so more could attack.

The stench of death in that stairwell was enough to make many militiamen grow pale and vomit. So it was that after an hour of dying, the Tuath militiamen started refusing to go up.

Arken and Braffen stood, bent at the waist, with their hands on their knees, heaving with the effort of sucking air into their lungs. Dying men were stacked higher than Braffen was tall, the topmost corpse that of a crossbowman who had tried crawling over the other carcasses to get a shot at them.

“I am thinking they are getting a bit smarter, Master Arken. I don’t know how much more of this fun we will get to have,” Braffen said when he finally caught his breath.

Both were covered head to toe in the blood of their enemies. They heard bookcases in the Navigator’s room behind them toppling to the ground and the loud curses of Qarn within it as he burned the histories of The Syndicate.

If their efforts and operatives on Quaj had any hopes of surviving, Qarn needed to destroy everything they had documented.

The door to the Navigator’s quarters flung open, and the roaring flames behind Qarn made Braffen and Arken flinch.

“It’s done. Daybreak forgive us and preserve these confounded idiots we’ve tried to steer towards the right over the years.” The gnome said, smacking the head of his small iron mace into his palm.

“I am guessing that these particular idiots, the gods take them, aren’t taking to our efforts these past decades,” Braffen said.

“One last chance to educate a few then?” Arken said, wiping blood from his rapier. The gnome and dwarf nodded at him in agreement.

A commotion from the bottom of the stairwell drew their attention. Corpses were being hauled down the stone spiral under cover of dozens of crossbow bolts sent ricocheting upwards. When the assailants finally cleared the stairwell, a stream of men came surging up.

The first among them was holding in front of him a piece of one of the tables from the kitchens, and he simply let the men behind him push him right into and on top of Braffen as they turned right at the top of the stairs, the next five men all had crossbows and sent them firing into Arken’s chest.

Despite the hail of missiles, the spy master’s rapier took three more to The Sleeper with him.

Pinned under the wood table and the weight of three men, Braffen Frothbrew snapped the bottom man’s neck and relieved the next man of one of his eyes before darkness closed around him.

The last to die on the island, Qarn crushed the kneecap and face of a man who fired upon Arken before being killed himself.

*****

The admiral ordered that the crews take the bodies of their fellow Tuathian sailors and militiamen onboard the thirteen surviving ships for burial at sea. He also ordered them to gather the island’s dead and pile them in the crater to burn in a single pyre. He might well suffer consequences for ignoring Myrlman’s order to let them rot, but he would not let the young governor change his views on the etiquette of warfare.

Once the bodies of The Syndicate members were piled and lit ablaze, the admiral shook his head sadly. He had planned on letting the women surrender, but the stubborn islanders would have none of it. One of his officers informed him that the womenfolk had taken at least twice their number with them in the sacking of the small island fortress.

One of the ship’s captains walked up behind him as the funeral pyre burned. “I’ll be damned, a Mer spy outpost off the southern coast of Kalt just as Myrlman had said, though as to why there was Quaji folk, a dwarf and gnome amongst them, I’ve no idea.”

The admiral turned to the captain. “How many?”

The officer cleared his throat uncomfortably. “One hundred and forty-seven lost at sea, two ships sunk. One hundred and twelve lost at the harbor with five ships scuttled on the rocks, sir.”

The admiral went from looking at the officer to staring at the pyre burning in front of him. “And how many of our fine men did these brave folks take with them?”

The captain hung his head after reading the number on the parchment in his hand. “One hundred and eight in the tunnels, another thirty-two in the stairwell, sir.”

The admiral spat at the ground in disgust. “Well, it’s done. Nearly four hundred of our city’s men lost for the effort. Never have I seen such slaying. Burn the scuttled ships, tell the men we depart at once. Let us hope this whole plan falls together for Myrlman, and our people will be better off for this sacrifice as he says they will be.”

*****

Making their approach from the western side of Quaj was Turin Deadeye and his three-person crew. They sailed on the sleek and narrow schooner Open Ocean and could see the smoke coming from Lodestar Island as soon as it came into view over the horizon.

“I fear for our compatriots,” Turin said from the bow of the ship.

His heart sinking into his stomach, he turned to his crew. “Prepare to make a run. We may be sailing into a trap.”

The Open Ocean sailed a sweeping curve around to the island’s far side, hoping to stay far from any threat. If an enemy vessel still at the island spotted them, they could outrun it easily, already having some distance between them.

Turin still stood on the ship’s bow with a spyglass held to his eye. He closed it and stepped down to the main deck. “Take us in. There are no threats I can see from here.”

Tears rolled down the elf’s weathered face. “I think we will be the only ones alive on the island.”

The Open Ocean tied off to the remains of the dock, and Turin bid the crew stay prepared to flee at once.

The scuttled ships had been burning for hours and would burn for a day yet. Tatters of Tuath standards and uniforms littered the lava rocks around him as he made his way to and through the lighthouse and into the courtyard.

Turin Deadeye had seen the deaths of hundreds of friends and enemies over his centuries-long career, but he could not help but weep like a babe when he made the courtyard and saw the smoldering pyre at the center. He wanted to run away and turn his back on the people he felt he had personally doomed to die.

He could not help but think if he had just planned better, designed their system better, that his Syndicate family would be here now to warmly greet him instead of the dreadful nightmare before him.

Tears continued to stream down his cheeks as he made his way into the stone hall at the far end and up to the Navigator’s office.

He could not believe the amount of blood in the stairwell and the tunnel leading to it. The ancient elf, a veteran of countless battles, was visibly shaking with grief as he walked through the ankle-high lake of blood.

Despite the carnage before and behind him, there was small comfort that the contents of the Navigator’s office lay completely burned in ruin. The courageous acts of those who lived and died on the island had saved their fellow operatives on Quaj.