I spread my arms. "Full power to you. What do you want from me?"
Bob scooted forward. The chair groaned. "For a while Solomon, you, and Mark are the only people with any sort of official designation other than Guild member, except for the clerk and the payroll ladies. You were the first of us to make it into the Order and you did good work as a liaison. People remember that. And now you're Beast Lord's..." He groped for a word.
"Mate," Ivera told him.
"Yes, that. You have street cred. The mercs will never follow Mark. You know it, I know it, Ivera knows it."
I glanced at Ivera. "What do you think?"
"What he said," she said grimly.
I leaned back. They wouldn't like it, but it had to be said. "Three mercs go on a gig. One bails midway through the fight, the second dies, the third loses a hand. Are they eligible for the Guild disability pay?"
Bob thought about it. "The guy that ran off gets nothing, that's abandonment in progress. The dead guy's next of kin gets thirty percent. The guy without a hand gets disability."
I sighed. "The first question to ask is how long any of them have been in the Guild. You have to hit the five year mark to qualify for disability and seven year to qualify for the death benefit. Until then, you die, your family gets a flat ten grand from your standard life insurance. The next question is, when did the first guy take off? If he did it once the fight started and the danger was evident, the Guild is entitled to garnish his wages, because his abandonment in progress becomes abandonment in imminent danger. How much do we garnish, Bob?"
Muscles played on his jaw. "I don't know."
"Then we move on to disability. How much do we pay? What's a hand worth? Does it matter if he was right or left handed?"
"I don't know," Bob said again. His eyes told me he didn't like where I headed.
"Neither do I. But you know who does? Mark. I can call Mark right now and he'll rattle it off the top of his head. Let's talk contracts. Who provides the ammo for the Guild supply room? How much of a discount we get from them? The Guild has a deal with Avalon Construction to clear the magic hazmat at the prospective construction sites. It's a sweet contract, so you know there were perks. Bribes. Gifts. How much and to whom?"
Bob growled a bit. "All this stuff can be learned."
I nodded. "Sure. But how long will it take you? The Guild has been without a leader for what, six months now, and you still haven't learned any of it. Would it even matter by the time you finished learning?"
Bob crossed his arms. "You could do it."
"No, I can't. First, it's not my job. I've got my hands full with the shapeshifters and my own business. Second, what little I know I've learned only because it came up during my tenure as a liaison. It would take me ages to find it in the Guild's Manual. For better or worse, Solomon made Mark the sole brain behind this operation and Mark has years of experience. You don't have the knack for wheeling and dealing, Bob. You're a good solid tactician. You know what the gig needs and you're good at picking the right people and getting it done. The mercs look up to you. But bargaining isn't your thing."
Bob's eyebrows crept closer together. "You'll be backing Mark then?"
"I will tell you what I told him. I don't know yet."
Bob nodded and handed me a piece of paper. I scanned it. Formal summons with my name on it. Top left corner boasted code X in bold. Priority ten. Either I made this meeting, or the Guild would suspend me.
"Not that it would matter," Bob said. "But we did all manage to agree that you need to pick somebody by Monday."
Ivera got up and put her hand on Bob's shoulder. "We should go."
He started to say something and changed his mind. I watched him get to his feet. He nodded to me. "Later."
*** *** ***
I dragged myself upstairs to the infirmary. Roderick was playing checkers with a shapeshifter boy. The collar on his neck had gone from orange to canary yellow.
I climbed the million stairs to our quarters, asked the guards to order some food from the kitchen, and took a shower. When I came out, Curran sprawled on our giant couch, his eyes closed.
I flopped next to him. "Help."
The blond eyebrows rose a quarter inch. "Mmm?"
"The mercs aren't going to reach a consensus." I lay next to him on my side, propping my head up with my hand. "No matter who I pick tomorrow, they won't like it. Marc can run the Guild, but the mercs despise him. The mercs can do the jobs, but the admin stuff leaves them clueless."
"Make them work together," Curran said.
"Not going to happen. They hate each other."
"If fourteen alphas can meet in the same room every week without killing each other, so can Mark and the mercs. The Guild has been without leadership for months. The people are tired and they want a strong leader. Not a tyrant, but a leader who inspires confidence. You need to walk in there and roar until they cringe. Demonstrate that you are strong enough to be take away their freedom to choose, make sure it sinks in, and then give some of the choice back to them on your terms."
Hmm.
"Tie it back to Solomon Red, too," Curran said. "It's basic psychology: under Solomon things ran, when he died, they broke. The more time passes, the more rosy times of Solomon look to an average merc. So if you attack them from 'Let's go back to the good old days' angle, they will fold. Make them think that following you is what they want to do."
"You scare me sometimes," I told him.
He yawned. "I'm totally harmless."
Someone knocked on the door. A bit early for food.
"Yes?" Curran called.
Mercedes, one of the guards, entered. "There is a man outside, my lord. He is big, he's wearing a cape, and he's got a giant axe. We're also pretty sure he's drunk."
Dagfinn.
"What does he want?" Curran asked.
"He says he wants to fight the Beast Lord."
Chapter Seven
Curran and I stood in the arched entrance to the Keep's courtyard. Dagfinn stood in the clearing outside. He was six feet eight inches tall, and he weighed a shade above three hundred pounds. None of it was fat. Dagfinn looked hard. His broad shoulders strained his tunic, his biceps had trouble fitting into the sleeves, and his legs in worn out jeans carried enough muscle to make you wince at the thought of him kicking you. His curly hair fell over his shoulders in dense reddish wave. He'd trimmed his beard, but his red eyebrows overshadowed his eyes.
He stood brandishing a battle axe etched with runes that matched tattoos on his arms. The blade of the axe flared at the toe and heel, its razor-sharp edge spanning full twelve inches. Combined with the four foot haft for extra power, the axe sheared flesh and bone like an oversized meat cleaver.