WRONG CHOICE

There's not enough," Suljack complained to Kensidan after the most recent shipment of food had arrived. "Barely half of the last load."

"Two-thirds," Kensidan corrected.

"Ah, we're running low, then?"

"No."

The flat answer hung in the air for a long while. Suljack studied his young friend, but Kensidan didn't blink, didn't smirk, gave no expression at all.

"We're not running low?" Suljack asked.

Kensidan didn't blink and didn't answer.

"Then why two-thirds, if that's what it was?"

"It's all you need," Kensidan replied. "More than you need, judging from the load you dropped at the Red Dragon Inn. I trust that Deudermont paid you well for the effort."

Suljack licked his lips nervously. "It's for the better."

"For whose better? Mine? Yours?"

"Luskan's," said Suljack.

"What does that even mean?" asked Kensidan. "Luskan's? For the betterment of Luskan? What is Luskan? Is it Taerl's Luskan, or Baram's? Kurth's or Rethnor's?"

"It's no time to be thinking of it like that," Suljack insisted. "We're one now, for the sake of all."

"One, behind Deudermont."

"Aye, and it was you that put me behind him that day when he became governor - and you should've been there! Then you'd know. The people ain't caring about which high captain's which, or about which streets're whose. They're needing food, and Deudermont's helping."

"Because you're giving my supplies to Deudermont."

"I'm giving them to Luskan. We've got to stand as one."

"We knew the winter would be difficult when we goaded Deudermont to attack the Hosttower," said Kensidan. "You do remember we did that, yes? You do understand the purpose of it all, yes?"

"Aye, I know it all full well, but things've changed now. The city's desperate."

"We knew it would be."

"But not like this!" Suljack insisted. "Little kids starving dead in their mother's arms...I could sink a ship and watch her crew drown and not think a bit about it - you know it - but I can't be watching that!"

Kensidan shifted in his chair and brought one hand up to cup his chin. "So Deudermont is the savior of Luskan? This is your plan?"

"He's the governor, and through it all, the people are with him."

"With him all the more if he's doling out food to them, I would expect," said Kensidan. "Am I to expect him to be a friend to Ship Rethnor when Baram and Taerl unite against me? Am I to expect those now growing more loyal to Deudermont to turn from him to support my work?"

"He's feeding them."

"So am I!" Kensidan shouted, and all the guards in the room turned sharply, unused to hearing such volatility from the always-composed son of Rethnor. "As suits me, as suits us."

"You want me to stop supplying him."

"Brilliant deduction - you should apply to the Hosttower, if we ever revive it. What I want more is for you to remember who you are, who we are, and the point of all of this trouble and planning."

Suljack couldn't help himself as he slowly shook his head. "Too many fallen," he said quietly, talking to himself more than to Kensidan. "Too high a price. Luskan stands as one, or falls."

He looked up, into the eyes of an obviously unimpressed Crow.

"If you've not the stomach for this," Kensidan began, but Suljack held up his hand to defeat the notion before it could be fully expressed.

"I will give him less," he said.

Kensidan started to respond, sharply, but bit it off. He turned to one of his attendants instead, and said, "Get the other third of Suljack's supplies packed on a wagon."

"Good man!" Suljack congratulated. "Luskan stands as one, and she'll get through this time of pain."

"I'm giving them to you," Kensidan said, his tone biting. "To you. They are yours to do with as you see fit, but remember our purpose in all of this. Remember why we put Deudermont together with Brambleberry, why we let the good captain know of the Hosttower's involvement with the pirates, why we tipped the Silver Marches to the advances of the Arcane Brotherhood. Those events were planned with purpose - you alone among my peers know that. So I give to you your rations, in full, and you are to do with them as you judge best."

Suljack started to respond, but bit it off and stood taking a long measure of Kensidan. But again, of course, the Crow assumed an unreadable posture and expression. With a nod and a smile of gratitude, Suljack left the room.

The dwarf slowly followed, letting the high captain get long out of earshot before he whispered to Kensidan, "He's to choose Deudermont."

"Wrong choice," Kensidan replied.

The dwarf nodded and continued out behind Suljack.

Amid the cries and the men rushing around, Suljack ran to the window overlooking the dark street, the dwarf close behind.

"Baram or Taerl?" the high captain asked Phillus, one of his most trusted guards, who knelt beside a second window, bow in hand.

"Might be both," the man replied.

"Too many," said another of the guards in the room.

"Both, then," said another.

Suljack rubbed his hands across his face, trying to comprehend the meaning of it all. The second shipment had arrived from Ship Rethnor earlier that same day, but it had come with a warning that High Captains Baram and Taerl were growing increasingly angry with the arrangements.

Suljack had decided to send the excess food to Deudermont anyway.

Directly below him in the street, the fighting had all but ended, with the combatants moving off to the alleyways, Suljack's men in pursuit, and the stripped and shattered wagons lay in ruins.

"Why would they do this?" the high captain asked.

"Might be that they're not liking yerself climbing over them in Deudermont's favor," said the dwarf. "Or might be that both o' them' re still hating Deudermont o' Sea Sprite too much to agree with yer choices."

Suljack waved him to silence. Of course he knew all of that reasoning, but still it shocked him to think that his peers would strike out so boldly at a time of such desperation, even with relief reportedly well on its way.

He came out of his contemplation at the sound of renewed fighting across the street below him, and just down an alleyway. When one man came into view, looking back and down the alley, Phillus put up his bow and took deadly aim.

"Baram, or Taerl?" Suljack asked as Phillus let fly.

The arrow struck true. The man let out a howl and staggered back under cover, just as another man, one of Suljack's, came screaming out of the alley, blood streaming from a dozen wounds.

"That's M'Nack!" Phillus cried, referring to a favored young soldier of the Ship.

"Go! Go! Go!" Suljack yelled to his guards, and they all ran from the room, except for the dwarf and Phillus. "Kill any who come out in pursuit," Suljack instructed his deadly archer, who nodded and held his bow steady.

As the room all but cleared, Suljack went closer to the window, pulling it open and peering out intently. "Baram, Taerl, or both?" he asked quietly, his gaze roving the street, looking for some hint.

Across the way, the man Phillus had pegged stumbled out and away. A second arrow shot off, but missed the staggering thief, though it came close enough to make the man turn and look up at the source.

Suljack's jaw dropped open when he recognized the minor street thug. "Reth - ?" he started to ask when he heard a thump to the side.

He turned to see Phillus lying on the floor, his head split open, a familiar spiked morningstar lying beside him.

He turned farther to see the dwarf, holding Phillus's bow, drawn and set.

"Wh - ?" he started to ask as the dwarf let fly, the arrow driving into Suljack's gut and taking his breath. He staggered and fought to stand as the dwarf calmly reloaded and shot him again.

On the ground and crying, Suljack started to crawl away. He managed to gasp, "Why?"

"Ye forgot who ye were," the dwarf said, and put a third arrow into him, right in the shoulder blade.

Suljack continued to crawl, gasping and crying loudly,

A fourth arrow nicked his spine and stabbed into his kidney.

"Ye're just making it hurt more," the dwarf calmly explained, his voice distant, as if coming from far, far away.

Suljack hardly felt the next arrow, or the one after that, but he somehow knew that he wasn't moving anymore. He tried futilely to cry out, but found one last fleeting hope when he heard the dwarf cry out, "Murder!"

He managed to shift his head far enough to see the dwarf holding Phillus up in the air, and with three short running strides, he launched the already-dead guard crashing through the window to plummet to the hard street below. Phillus's broken bow, the dwarf having snapped it in half, followed in short order.

The last thing Suljack saw before darkness closed was the dwarf sliding down beside him. The last thing he heard was the dwarf crying out, "Murder! He shot the boss! Phillus the dog shot the boss! Oh, murder!"