Otto Kaenz slapped Rose in the face.

  The red mask she wore did nothing to cushion the blow. Kaenz grinned, revealing a smile of dirty crooked teeth with several gaps and a few teeth made of gold. He could practically feel the look of pain in her face and sense the red-blue bruise upon her cheek that he had given her. However, because of the red mask that she wore, a mask made of red leather which hid her entire face other than her eyes, he could see none of these things.

  A small copper oil lamp dangled on the iron chain hanging from the ceiling. The lamp cast a small circle of light in the otherwise completely pitch-black basement. Rose sat in a chair at the center of this light. Her hands were tied behind her back; her feet were also tied together, and rope knots tied both her hands and feet to the chair. She sat calmly, her back upright and straight but her body still and calm, and she was not struggling. Otto Kaenz was the only other person fully visible in the light, but many other men’s faces could be seen in the dim shadows just beyond the light; their faces showed like oval flesh smears in the shadowy darkness. The air was thick with the smell of pipe-smoke and incense, and the sound of flies buzzing around could be heard. The air also held a faint trace of the smell of death, as if the body of some animal, or some person, had died and been left to rot nearby.

  Kaenz leaned over Rose and shoved his face in front of her face. She did not look away or pull back. “You see, Mersia?” Kaenz said to Rose. “This is what happens when you double-cross the Death Otter.”

  Rose tested the ropes that tied her to the chair, trying to pull her hands apart, seeing how far she could move. But the ropes held firm and tight.

  “You betrayed me, Otto, if you don’t remember.”

  “Yes, yes, I betrayed you. But you betrayed me first.”

  Rose laughed. “We are rogues who work in the criminal underworld, Otto. Everyone betrays everyone. If that were any reason to kill someone, then you, I, and everyone else that you and I know, would all already be dead.”

  Kaenz slapped her again. Her face burned. “Do not contradict me, woman. There is honor among thieves. You have none.”

  Rose laughed again, but it had the sound of forced laughter, with no trace of sincere joy. “There is no honor among us rogues, Otto. Only money, and those too stupid to obtain it. And since when did the Kaenz family develop a sense of honor? Your son had none, if I recall correctly.”

  Kaenz stared at her with his one eye; the other was hidden under a red eyepatch that was held in place by strings tied around his bald, sweaty, tattoo-covered head. The rest of Kaenz’s body was covered in red leather clothes dotted with iron studs for armor.

  “You killed my son. My eldest son. I remember, Mersia. No need for you to brag about it or gloat over it. And, for that, I will torture you, before I kill you. You will scream, and scream, and scream. There will be no escape. You will die alone, in pain. No one will rescue you.” Rose smiled, but Kaenz did not see this beneath her mask. “Your men do not know where you are, Mersia. They will not find you. It will just be you, a knife in my hands, and the Death Otter. And the Death Otter does not fail when he tortures someone to death.” Kaenz’s goons, an assortment of various rogues who stood in a ring around Kaenz and Rose at the center of the small, dark, dimly lit basement, all started laughing at Rose. But Kaenz raised a hand, and the laughter of his men abruptly went silent.

  “Your son and I did a job together, robbing a gnome bank, and then he double-crossed me and tried to take more than his share of the loot that he and I had agreed upon how to divide up,” Rose said. “He broke the rules. I offered you the opportunity to pay a ransom for him, Otto. He was still alive at the time and had all his major body parts intact. You declined. You let your own son die at my hand. Your son did not suffer long; I had no profit to be made from causing him any pain. Unlike you, I do not torture for no reason.”

  Kaenz shrugged. “The price you asked in return for my son was too expensive. He was not worth it. I have other sons. And that is the problem: there is no longer room in Imperia for your gang of rogues and for the growing criminal empire that I and my family are developing. Mersia, it is time for you to go.”

  “I can’t stand listening to your pompous ass ramble on, Otto,” Rose said. “Just kill me and be done with it. It would be no small mercy to spare me from listening to your asinine delusions of grandeur. You’re nothing more than a petty burglar, and you always will be. You will never become a lord of crime like me.”

  Kaenz did not slap her; instead, he punched her in the face. It was a full punch with a closed fist, as fast and as strong as Kaenz could hit someone. Rose spit blood, but, wearing a mask, the blood splattered back onto her lips and chin, leaving her lower face covered in blood. She ran her tongue over her teeth; nothing felt loose.

  “After my men had stolen that shipment of goods from the docks at night, your men disguised themselves as members of the city guard and intercepted them while they were taking the loot to my hideout by horse-drawn carriage,” Kaenz said. “My men thought that the police were inspecting them! And so your men got my loot. That shipment contained authentic faerie gold ornaments and elf-made wares: forks, knives, plates, cups, candleholders, buttons, necklaces, and many other items of fae craft, all made from real elf gold. Impossible for any human to replicate, Mersia. Very expensive. Very clever of you. And a rude and ruthless way to get back at me for the way my rogues betrayed your men during that job at the Fancy District last year. You are not good, but there was almost a sense of cosmic justice and irony about it: I steal what you stole, then you steal what I had stolen. But you were not clever enough, Mersia, or, perhaps, you were too clever. Why did you think you could get away with it, Mersia? It was a simple matter for me to bribe one of your men and learn where you were hiding. Why did you think you could get away with it? Nobody crosses the Death Otter!”

  “But I have gotten away with it, Otto,” Rose said. “You found me, but you do not know where I hid the stolen goods. And you will never know that. Not unless you release me. And agree to split it with me fifty/fifty.”

  Kaenz punched Rose in the stomach. She gasped, and she would have doubled over in pain, except that the ropes binding her held her tightly in place. After the flare of intense pain faded, she did not feel as though any organ or bone in her body was broken. Otto Kaenz is not a young man anymore. He does not punch nearly as hard as he thinks he does, Rose thought. He is the crime boss of yesterday. I am the crime boss of tomorrow.

  “You know, Otto, my spies were never able to locate where you had hidden the loot that I stole that you stole from me,” Rose said. “We thought it would be aboard your smuggling ship, but when I raided it, the loot wasn’t there. Now that you’re about to kill me, can you answer one question for me before I die? Where did you hide it?”

  Kaenz laughed. “That stolen treasure is safely stored away right here, in my secret lair, along with the loot from all my other recent jobs. And the loot will stay here, at least until the police raids have quieted down. Your body, too, will be spending a very long time here, Mersia. My men have dug a hole in the floor of this place, which is where I dump my victims. Very soon you will be joining them.”

  Kaenz took a step back, putting him at the same distance from Rose as the other thugs who formed a ring around her. “For my entertainment, men, you may take turns hitting her. One copper coin for anyone who can make her scream.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir, do you mean one coin for each scream, or just one coin per man, so the first time I make her scream I get a coin, and that’s it, no matter how many times she screams?”

  Kaenz stared at the rogue who had asked the question. Kaenz’s face contorted into an intense look of concentration, with his brow furrowed and his single eye squinted up tightly while sweat dripped down his tattooed cheeks. Kaenz said nothing, and a hesitant, fearful silence overtook the basement. The rogues held their breath.

  “One coin for each scream,” Kaenz said.

  “Very good, Sir,” the rogue said. The other rogues exhaled, and then chuckled.

  The rogues crowded around Rose and took turns slapping and hitting her. In the dim light, she could barely see them, but she felt each punch, each kick, each hit, connect to her thin, lithe woman’s body as though a brick were being slammed into her bones. The men hit her in the head, in the chest, in the stomach, even punched her bound arms and shoulders. One of them kicked her in the shin. While the men were surrounding her, she felt one of them drop something, a small object, into her right hand. Rose had the focus to push it up into the tight cuffed sleeve of her Red wizard’s robes, while her face and body took blow after blow from the rogues. None of the other men noticed that one of them had slipped something to her. Despite the many punches, slaps and kicks, Rose moaned and grunted in pain, but she never screamed.

  “Enough. Back away,” Kaenz said. The group of rogues moved back, leaving an empty space surrounding Rose. The light shined upon her red-robed body, bruised and bloodied beneath the robes and mask, while many men peered at her from the darkness beyond the light, their grinning faces half-visible in the hazy light. Kaenz walked forward, a sly and wicked grin bisecting his round, sweaty face, whose pale white skin was flushed pink with anger and exertion, in a sharp contrast to the darker deeper red of the lines tattooed onto his face in a drawing of red snakes slithering around his cheeks and forehead in interlocking circles.

  Kaenz drew a small, barbed, serrated dagger from his vest, and stepped closer. Rose could see, in the dim lamplight, that the blade was coated with a shiny red-brown liquid. The wet blade glistened and gleamed as Kaenz’s approach brought the dagger closer to the lamplight. I think that’s a poisoned blade. Looks like the venom from the devil-snakes of Zokul. That would cause a lot of pain before it kills—if it were to touch me.

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  “Do you have any last words, Mersia?” Kaenz asked. His single eye looked crazy and bloodshot with the desire to kill.

  “Yes,” Rose said. “But you’re not the one who’ll get to hear them.”

  Rose flicked her right hand so that the card up her sleeve fell into her ready fingers. She played the card, casting the Red magic spell contained within it. The object magically stored inside the card popped out. It was a door, a physical wooden door, that popped out and fell to the floor beside Rose’s chair, as though it was a trap door in the floor, opening upwards.

  “What is that?!” Kaenz asked.

  The magic door opened, and Rose’s soldiers began to climb through the door and stream into the room, teleporting from the entry door a far distance away to the exit door that had been in the magical playing card. Otto’s men snarled in anger, and Rose and Otto’s thugs began to fight with each other. Screams, shouts, punches and kicks filled the air. One of Rose’s soldiers used a knife to cut her free, and she stood up, liberated, and smiled. She reached into her red robes and pulled out another card. She played the card, which emitted a glowing orb of red light that spun around from the ceiling. Finally, I can see this rat-snake’s nest without squinting into the darkness. I thought I was going to go blind.

  The room was a basement wine cellar of some Noble Manor House, with a wall of wine bottles against one wall. The crest of a Noble House was painted onto the ceiling, but the paint was so faded and chipped and old that Rose could not identify the crest. The room was long and rectangular, with doors on all four walls, a stone floor and wooden walls. In the corner of the room, many wooden crates were stacked up in a pile. One of the crates had its lid open and appeared to be full of gold coins; Rose’s eyes lit up when she saw it. Some random rogue with a bloody knife in his back was slumped over with his back against one of the crates. His body looked as if he had been freshly stabbed. Flies were buzzing around the corpse.

  The fight between Rose and Kaenz’s men was happening in the center of the basement, which was where the chair holding Rose had been. The number of men that Rose had brought through her magic door was roughly the same as the number of soldiers Kaenz had in his hideout: Rose had brought all thirty of her men, and Kaenz had thirty thugs in his lair. All of the soldiers in the room, those belonging to both Rose and Kaenz, wore red clothes, but they differed: Kaenz’s goons wore a dark wine-red tint the color of freshy bled red blood, while Rose’s thugs wore a much brighter red hue such as might be found on a freshly cut red rose or a perfectly ripe red apple.

  Rose surveyed the scene; in front of her Otto Kaenz was in the thick of the fight, battling side by side with a group of his men surrounded by Rose’s soldiers. Rose turned her head and looked left, then right, then back to Kaenz, and she licked her lips. Rose’s men were getting the better of Otto’s men. A handful of Kaenz’s men broke off and began running for the doors. Rose counted the number of men still fighting and the number of men lying dead on the floor and compared her side to her opponent. Her men had fought tooth and claw, and they now outnumbered Kaenz’s men: twenty-five of her men were still fighting, against only fifteen of Kaenz’s men; the others were either fleeing or lay prone on the ground, unconscious or dead. I think we’re going to win! My plan is going to work! Rose did not notice the pain of the beating Kaenz’s men had given her; she felt only the thrill and the excitement and the joy as she watched her plans unfold.

  Rose reached into the pockets of her red wizard robes and pulled out a red cloth pouch containing three red-painted metal twenty-sided dice. One of Otto’s men noticed her, and charged at her, his fist cocked back and ready to punch. Rose calmly poured the dice out of the pouch into her hand, bent down, and rolled them onto the floor, standing back up as she let the dice go. The man reached Rose, grinned an evil smile, and punched forward, his fist flying at her face.

  As his hand shot forward, about to make contact, Rose’s dice settled and came still, and the numbers 13, 16 and 18 showed on the dice’s uppermost sides. Jackpot! All three dice rolls above 10 on a d20! The man’s head shook and trembled, and he stumbled back, before his fist could punch Rose’s face, as if an invisible force was repeatedly and rapidly punching him in the head. The man fell to the floor, knocked unconscious, his face bleeding and bruised and both eyes black-and-blue. He had been punched in the head seventeen times by the Red magic dice: three times from the 13, which was three above the median 10, six times from the 16, which was six more than 10, and eight times from the 18, which was eight more than 10. Had any of her dice rolls on a d20 been below 10 instead of above 10, Rose herself would have been punched in the head by her own magic dice by that number of times, but she had rolled the dice without fear, as she always did.

  Rose smiled and stepped over him to reach a better position in the basement from which she could observe the carnage. She leaned down, scooped her Red magic dice up from the floor, and looked around.

  Her men were doing well; Otto’s men sensed their defeat and began to turn tail and race for the doors. Rose gazed around and saw the bodies of Otto’s goons lying about the floor. She grinned. Then she saw Otto Kaenz, alone and unprotected, at the other end of the rectangular basement from where she was. Kaenz fought his way to an exit, punching Rose’s men left and right. He was near a back door in the rear wall of the basement.

  “Otto Kaenz is the target!” Rose said. “Get him!”

  Two of Rose’s men came at Otto, one from each side. Rose’s men were tall, muscular and big. Rose smiled. This will be easy. We’ve got you now, Otto! The men came upon Otto and tried to grab him. Otto flicked out with one hand, his arm moving so fast it was a blur, and one of the men fell backwards, screaming in pain; he had been cut by Kaenz’s venom-stained blade. Rose’s other soldier leaped at Otto with his arms held out wide, ready to tackle him and bring him to the ground. Otto brought his knee up and kneed him in the stomach just as the other man was falling upon him, causing the man’s own force to drive him into Otto’s knee. Rose’s soldier gasped and froze, stunned by the pain.

  “No! Get him! Get Kaenz!” Rose cried. Rose’s soldiers struggled to finish off Kaenz’s goons and get past them to reach Kaenz, but the fight was still going on. Kaenz was getting closer and closer to the exit. Rose reached into a pocket of her robes and withdrew another magical playing card. This card would explode into a giant magical spider’s web when she played it. This should catch that bastard like scooping a goldfish out of a bowl of water. But by the time she had pulled the card into her hand, when she looked up, Otto Kaenz was gone.

  Rose stared at the door in the far wall. Her mouth slacked open, her eyes stared forward without purpose, and she absentmindedly sat down on the large, slumped body of one of Otto’s goons, and held her head in her hands. The plan was for me to get captured so that Kaenz would bring me to his secret hideout and then I could bring my men into his hideout and seize control, but I needed to capture Kaenz for the plan to work! And he got away, Rose thought. This whole plan was for nothing.

  “Sir, are you okay? Why aren’t you happy?” Rockport, Rose’s second-in-command, said to her. He was the soldier who had posed as one of Kaenz’s men and slipped her a playing-card while she was bound and tied up in the chair. “You did it! You were able to find a way to locate the Death Otter’s secret hideout! We’re in the basement of the Manor House of House Gareth in the south side of the Fancy District. It’s been abandoned ever since House Gareth left the capital to defend their castle against House Lament. I’ll bet Kaenz never expected that anyone would go looking for rogues in the Fancy District, and no one realized that a gang of rogues was occupying this Manor House. But we outsmarted him! We beat his men, all of them, none are left! And we’ve already started searching, and we found the stash of loot that the Death Otter stole from you last year. We won! Your plan worked!”

  Rose shook her head. “No, it didn’t. I was counting on capturing or killing Kaenz. The plan that I crafted was audacious and ambitious, but it was also crazy and stupid, because I violated some of the rules that govern the gangs of rogues who comprise the criminal underworld of Imperia. It is against the rules to use magic to invade the secret lair of another gang, as I did. I needed to capture Kaenz for the plan to work because I would have forced him to waive his rights under the rules of the criminal underworld in return for his release. I took a big risk, and it failed. Kaenz, if he is smart or clever, and he is stupid as a brick, but he is clever in a certain evil way, will go to all the other gangs of rogues and put a contract on my head. Every crime syndicate will be obligated to honor his contract on my life, because I broke the rules. You all, my men, won’t be targeted. But I will be a sitting duck for every rogue in this Kingdom to shoot arrows at me to collect on the contract on my life. I’ll have to go into hiding for a period, work my connections, see what I can do, try to find a way to get enough gold coins to buy off Otto’s contract and terminate his deals with the other criminal organizations. If I don’t, I will be assassinated, because of what we have done tonight. My death would be inevitable.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Sir,” Rockport said. “I don’t know all the fancy rules and regulations that the crime bosses know. That’s the job of the crime bosses to manage that stuff. I’m just here to steal stuff and beat people up. Don’t you think that maybe we found enough gold here in Kaenz’s lair that might be enough to buy off this contract you mentioned?”

  Rose laughed, although her mask muffled the sound. “No, not nearly enough. I would need a ton of gold coins to buy off the entire rogue criminal underworld. I would need more gold coins than Kaenz ever had. Yes, I know it’s not your job to know how the crime bosses operate. I’ll loan you, and my other men, to one of the other crime bosses, at rent of course, while I’m away and hiding underground. You’ll be well taken care of. It’s more for myself that I’m worried about. I can’t explain this to you, because you won’t understand, but, per the rules of the crime bosses, I am in real trouble now. But I do not regret it: sometimes, when you roll the dice, unlucky numbers come up. That is just part of the chaos of being Red.”

  Rockport patted her on the shoulder, then went to join the other men as they ransacked and looted Kaenz’s hideout.

  I don’t need to tell Rockport that I will have to change my identity to hide from getting killed, so that even he and my men won’t know who I am or where I am, Rose thought. He doesn’t need to know that. He also does not need to know that I will loot the coffers of my own gang on my way into hiding. Rose reached up and pulled the hood of her red cloak over her head, pulling it around her face. I know what I will do: I will go into the countryside, into some rural backwater woods, some absolute dead nowhere that the rogues of Imperia will not know the name of the town I am in much less know to look for me there. No one knows what my face looks like under my mask. I’ll swap my old mask for a completely new mask!

  Rose absentmindedly tapped her chin with the forefinger of her right hand while she was thinking. I’ll need a new name; my old alias, Mersia, is something Kaenz knows. Maybe I’ll use the name my birth family gave me. Ugh, that idea reminds me of my birth family. Rose trembled and shuddered. She pulled the red hood tighter against the cheeks of her mask. I never used that name after I ran away from home and became a rogue when I was a teenager and my father tried to force me to marry one of his friends.

  Rose smiled. She tapped her chin with her finger, much faster now, tap tap tap tap tap, deep in thought. Yes, it might work! I have used many names on many jobs, but never my real name, so none of the rogues know it. I’ll go back to my birth name. Her smile faded, and her eyes narrowed to a look of businesslike efficiency. While I’m on the run and trying to steal a huge sum of gold coins to pay off Otto’s contract on my life, I’ll call myself Rose Dashwood. It will work. No one will expect it. Rose’s brown eyes twinkled like mischievous impish stars within the eye slits cut into her red leather mask. No sane and rational human being could ever think that some random petty wizard, a Red no less, could ever possibly have come from the oldest, richest, upper-crustiest, most noble, most honorable, most arrogant Noble House in all the Imperium: House Dashwood!