Music.
Karch sat at his desk, the sounds of Jasper's shuffling march out of his office a distant echo.
The city was a chessboard, and he had just sent a pawn to secure a vital flank.
But a larger problem remained on the board, the empty throne in Craft Tower.
A headless guild was a dangerous, unpredictable beast.
His first instinct, the one Larson would have followed, was to install a puppet,
Find some pliable senior craftsman, flatter him, bribe him, and make him guildmaster in name only.
It was what Orion had tried with Keris, and the result was a dagger in the ribs and a cursed office.
Karch dismissed the thought. A subservient craft guild would be a guild simmering
with resentment, its loyalty a lie waiting for the right moment to turn.
No, a weak but independent craft guild was a far more stable neighbor.
That led him to the next piece on the board, Polo.
The old guildmaster Harvest was the city's center of gravity now.
Should he send an emissary to Harvest House, a gesture of peace,
or would that be seen as a sign of weakness?
Perhaps he should go himself, a meeting of the two most powerful men in Ness,
to decide the city's future.
It was a tempting thought.
Together they could convene a proper guild council with the drunken fool Saxe,
and legitimize a new craft guildmaster with a formal vote.
And what of Saxe? He was unpredictable, but also malleable. he would be well
served to reach out to him immediately, which brought him back to a guild council.
That would calm everything down and present Karch in a position of authority, if not power.
But that was okay.
Power could be attained later. It was the wise path, the correct path.
Still, it was also dangerously unpredictable.
Karch detested leaving his fate in the hands of others.
He realized that entering a guild council with a name in hand was the best path.
No other guilds were as close to the craft guild as the merchants.
Him having a name for a guildmaster would be taken seriously.
He paced back to his desk, mentally listing the handful of senior craftsmen,
who could reasonably be considered for the role. There was Bertram,
Orion's former tower captain, too loyal to the old regime.
There were the heads of the various sub-guilds, the masons and the weavers,
all competent, but all with their own agendas and deep-seated rivalries.
He dismissed them one by one. Each was a predictable problem,
a known quantity of future headaches.
And then an unexpected name surfaced in his mind, a ghost from the old conflict.
Vesper. He was the craft blade, ruthless, efficient, and beholden to no one but his own ambition.
Could a blade be a guildmaster?
The idea was absurd. Vesper would be desperately overmatched.
"'a killer thrust into a den of politicians and merchants.
"'He knew nothing of balancing ledgers or negotiating trade rights.
"'He only knew how to create widows, and that, "'that was precisely what made him so appealing.
"'An overmatched guildmaster was a malleable one.' "'Karch stopped his pacing.
"'For a moment, he allowed himself to entertain the thought.
"'Vesper on the craft guild throne, with Karch's hand on his shoulder,
guiding him, controlling him.
It was a perfect, elegant solution.
But it was too soon, too risky.
He pushed the thought away. A formal meeting of the guildmasters was the proper
move. It was the safe move.
He would reach out to Polo and begin the slow, tedious work of politics.
He would shelve the idea of Vesper. Yet, as he sat behind his desk and began
drafting a message to Harvest House, the idea refused to be dismissed.
It gnawed at him, a whisper of a possibility that was as dangerous as it was brilliant.
The thought of a ruthless killer, a former blade, sitting on a guildmaster's throne.
It was an idea he couldn't seem to let go.
Music.
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