"Well that was anticlimactic." Said Teague with a frown. "I was expecting this to be some huge ruckus, but SOMEONE." He glared at Abel. "Wasn't leaving any enemies for the rest of us."

My mentor snickered, but the rest of us just rolled our eyes. None of us were surprised by that observation. Abel was a Master Candidate. If they had someone below F-rank that could take him out they wouldn't be hired assassins, they would be their own faction and probably IN the tournament. The more pertinent information was that Teague and the others were willing to throw in with us without blinking, which was pretty cool of them.

Callie cleared her throat. "As unfair as the rest of us find Apollyon, we still have to thank you. This would have been harder on our own, though the most credit has to go to the four." She looked at the black robed quadruplets. "I realize that looked easy to the rest of us, but I also know as someone who fights with a partner how difficult it is to execute a four person stealth attack like that. If any of you had been even a split second off you'd have alerted the enemy and one or two might have gotten away. Thank you."

The four nodded. They rarely spoke in front of other people, so that was probably the best she would get. Some kind of edgy assassin mystique thing probably. I looked down at Miles, who was moaning weakly on the ground. We'd taken him apart without much trouble, I'd expected him to be strong, but Callie and I together could take down a new F-ranker, which put us in the odd position of being much too strong as a duo for most G-rankers, but not good enough to fight up ranks on our own.

I walked over to the burned but already healing mercenary and kicked him in the most damaged spot I could find. He whined and jerked, eyes opening blearily as he glared up at me. I grinned at him, not that he could see it behind my mask, but I'm sure my voice conveyed my amusement. "Aww, don't look so mad. I stopped you from bleeding too much, you should be thanking me."

He practically snarled as he gingerly climbed to his hands and knees. "You CAUTERIZED them. With POISON. And your stab happy harlot was the one who-" I swung my cane down sharply, smashing it into the ground close enough to his head to send chunks of rock at his face. He squealed and backpedaled, looking up at me in fear.

"You." I said calmly. "Should watch your mouth when you talk about my partner. We might need information from you, but we can always hire a necromancer to get it out of your corpse." That was a bluff. I wouldn't kill someone for bad mouthing my girlfriend. I WOULD kick the living shit out of him if he didn't watch his tone though, and putting the fear of me in him might make this whole thing go faster.

He seemed almost...offended. "Fine. I'll be polite then. Honestly, no one has any etiquette anymore. Can't even let a man bemoan his own capture." He snorted, waving me off. "Well, go ahead. Ask what you want. Not that it'll do you much good, I'm on contract, and my NDA is nearly iron clad. Unless you have an Oathbreaker on staff you're out of luck."

I looked at Callie, sending my impressions through the bond so she knew what I wanted. She nodded, trusting me to take the lead. Good. I had ways of handling this. I turned back to the man. "See, I believe you. I believe that you can't tell me a single thing about your client. Anyone with common sense would have made damn sure of that. I ALSO believe that you would have known that going in, and that you wouldn't be so naive as to trust your client completely."

The smug amusement that had been bubbling up after he deflected me with the NDA comment was replaced with wariness. "I don't know what you're talking about." He said flatly.

"Sure you do." I responded cheerfully. "I'm talking about insurance. You're a local boy, I can tell, and you might work with local forces on their own credibility. But this mess is ass deep in tournament politics, which means some of the parties involved are decidedly NOT local. A smart guy such as yourself wouldn't trust strangers as far as he could throw them. Maybe not even that far."

I crouched down next to him, chucking him under the chin with a finger. "See, I know a thing or two about contracts, and one of the biggest flaws in a contract is that it only covers as much as the author can think to add. That's what loopholes are, things people forget to mention. That NDA for instance, would prevent you from talking about your client, but if, say, you were a very paranoid person and followed that client and happened to see who they might be meeting with, THAT person wouldn't be covered under contractual confidentiality, since the client would have no reason to add them."

Despite our involvement in political messes I had no desire to expand my political toolbox, politics annoyed me. But dealing with sneaky shit like this was becoming second nature to me. Spending so much time in the WCP was helping me expand my worldview, and combined with my contracts skill I was figuring out all sorts of new ways to deal with people.

Miles's face had paled noticeably, which meant I had hit the nail on the head. "If." He said quietly. "And I do mean if. I had done such a thing. That information would simply be insurance in case of difficulties with the client. It wouldn't be for sale. If it got out that I was collecting and passing information on clients the mercenary union would have my head."

I paused. "Mercenary union?"

Abel piped up from off to one side. "Mercs traditionally don't manage to get to E-rank and when they do they tend to join a faction because of the offered terms. A few decades ago though a particularly dangerous mercenary who called himself Rattling Bones established an organization for mercenaries in the city, topside and bottom. Over the years six more E-rankers have joined the union. It's nowhere near enough to be on the same level as the major factions, but very few of the subfactions have the muscle to make trouble with the union."

Which meant Melinda and Alexander didn't. I hadn't expected that, but it wasn't like I didn't have an answer for it. "The same logic applies. The information isn't covered in the contract, and the insurance was only necessary because you were misinformed of our capabilities. Your client screwed you, simple as that. Did they tell you that one of your targets was directly representing the Wish Curse Palace as a candidate?"

Telling him that was a calculated risk. Now that we were working with Frostbite word would spread up here soon enough anyway, might as well get something out of it. His face paled even further at the words, so clearly they hadn't mentioned that. Hell, I wasn't even sure whoever hired him had known, but it was enough of an excuse that he could tell us without compromising his reputation.

"You'll let me go if I tell you?" His voice wasn't confident or even resigned anymore. He sounded scared. Like someone who had just found out the pool they were swimming in connected to the ocean, and there were sharks in the water.

I looked to Callie, and she nodded. She didn't want to kill some random mercenary either. This guy had come at us to injure, even if he'd been a dick about it. I genuinely believed that he wasn't trying to kill us. "Yes." I said reassuringly. "We'll let you go if you tell us." He started to relax but I cut in sharply. "Assuming you have actual information. If you're stringing us along we'll hand you over to the Unity and let them deal with you."

That was the furthest I was willing to take the threat, and it seemed like it was enough. "I was approached by...a certain party." He said carefully. "A few days ago. The job was quick and easy, but I knew that a lot of other mercs in the city had been contacted. Outsiders showing up and then a massive operation going down? That stank of trouble. So I did what I do. I reached out to an associate of mine and arranged to have my client followed discretely. I didn't TELL him what he was doing, obviously, that would have violated the NDA, but we've worked together on jobs like this before."

He groaned in pain as he sat up, but settled down after a second. Callie gestured to Jessie and she stepped forward, Benny at her side, to start patching him up a bit, since he was helping. "They were paranoid, of course." He continued after he got a bit of relief. "Most people I work with are. But the big trap about paranoia is that it's self congratulating. If someone thinks they're being follow and takes precautions, once that's done their own bias tells them they must be safe. We've been at this a while. My guy stuck to them, and eventually they led us to who we needed."

I groaned. "What are you, hourly? This glimpse into the inner workings of the life of a mercenary is fascinating, but I don't need all the set up. Get to the point."

He chuckled. "Sorry. Right. Anyway I put my guy on their trail and he followed them for a bit, and he eventually ended up following the target back to a meeting at the Academy. He met with one of the students and exchanged an envelope, then chatted for a while and left. My guy couldn't hear what they said, they used Stealth Skills, but the client didn't go anywhere else until our next meeting."

"Ok." I said slowly. "That helps a bit, but there are a million students at the academy. Plus we know that the faction behind this is most likely one of the five, since any smaller group would be insane to try to bully a bunch of representatives from the largest forces in the universe. Must be someone else." I sighed. "It's fine though, you gave us what you had. You can go."

He shook his head. "No. That's just it. The person my client met with wasn't a member of the Unity at all. They were a student at the academy, but they were there on some kind of diplomatic mission or something."

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as he said that, and desperately hoped his answer to my next question, wasn't what I was pretty sure it would be. My voice was rough with shock as I forced myself to ask. "Did...did he give you a description of this contact by any chance? Maybe some distinguishing features that could be used to identify them if we run into them later?"

"Oh sure." He said casually, unaware he was throwing a lit stick of dynamite into the morale of my entire team. "He was actually pretty excited about it. There aren't many of her kind around Callus after all, and definitely almost none at the Academy. Like I said diplomatic mission or something. Guess you don't forget the first time you see an elf."

We all turned to look at Benny, and even with his mask I could see my friend's face paling. We only knew one elf at the academy, and she was indeed on a diplomatic mission. So the question was, why had Celine just arranged to have us attacked by mercenaries?