I marched to the second floor. Grendel decided to accompany me. Five people waited in the small reception hallway by the third conference room, guarded by a female shapeshifter. One of them was Mark, the late Solomon Red’s self-appointed successor, and the other four were Bob Carver, Ivera Nielsen, Ken, and Juke, collectively known as the Four Horsemen. Most mercs were loners. Sometimes, when the job demanded it, they paired up the way Jim and I did, but groups of more than two were rare. The Four Horsemen were the exception to the rule. They made a cohesive, strong team. They took rough jobs and finished them efficiently and mostly aboveboard, and they were respected by the rest of the mercs.

The two parties stopped glowering at each other long enough to contemplate my dog.

“What the hell is that?” Bob asked.

“It’s my attack poodle. Did you agree to come here at the same time?”

“Hell no,” Juke said, shaking her head with spiked black hair. “We were here first. He just showed up.”

“I made an appointment,” Mark said. “Once again, you’re bringing your bully tactics to the table.”

“You’re an asshole,” Ken told him.

“And you’re a thug.”

Why me?

This was the first time I’d heard about an appointment. I made a mental note to ask Jim about that and pulled a quarter from my pocket. “Heads.” I pointed to the Four Horsemen. “Mark, you’re tails.”

I flipped the coin into the air and slapped it onto the back of my wrist.

“Tails.” I nodded at Mark. “Let’s go.”

We stepped into the conference room, I shut the door, and we sat at a large table of knotted wood.

“What can I do for you?”

Mark leaned forward. He wore a crisp business suit and a conservative burgundy tie. His dark brown hair was cut in that executive/politician style: not too long, not too short, conservative, neat. His nails were clean and manicured, his chin showed no stubble, and he smelled of masculine cologne. Not overpowering, but definitely detectable.

“I’d like to talk to you about the Guild arbitration,” he said.

And here I thought he’d made the trip to chat about the weather. “I’m listening.”

Mark looked at the dog. Grendel gave him an evil eye.

“I’ll cut to the chase: I’d like to take over the Guild.”

Ambitious, aren’t we? “I kind of gathered that.”

“I’m not popular. I don’t wear leather and I don’t carry guns.” He braided the fingers of his hands into a single fist and rested it on the table. “But I make the Guild run. I make sure the customers are happy, the profits are made, and everyone gets paid on time. Without me the whole thing would collapse.”

I had no doubt it would. “I’m waiting for my part in this.”

“Your vote will be the tiebreaker,” he said. “I’d like us to come to some sort of arrangement.”

He’d just dug a lovely hole for himself. I waited to see if he would jump into it.

“Of course, I understand that sufficient compensation is in order and our arrangement would have to be equitable and mutually beneficial.”

And he had. I sighed. “Mark, the problem isn’t that you can’t run the Guild. The problem is that you think ‘white collar’ is a noble title.”

He blinked, obviously taken aback.

“In your world, everyone has a price,” I said. “You don’t know what mine is, but you think you can afford it. It doesn’t work like that. You could’ve gone many ways with this. You could’ve argued that with the leadership of the Guild in limbo, nobody is getting paid. You could’ve pointed out that the longer this goes on, the more talent the Guild will lose, as experienced mercs move on to new jobs to feed their families. Offering to bribe me was the worst argument you could’ve made. My opinion isn’t for sale.”

“I meant no offense,” he said.

“But you did offend, and you’ve demonstrated that you have no idea how to relate to me. A lot of guys are like me, Mark. Yes, you make the Guild run, but you lack the elemental understanding of what makes mercs tick, probably because you never were one. If I wanted to endorse you, which I don’t, I’d have to defend my position before the Guild, which I find difficult under the circumstances.”

He chewed on that for a long minute. “Fair enough. So you’ll vote for the Horsemen then?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Thank you for seeing me.” Mark got up and left.

The door had barely had a chance to swing open before Bob shouldered his way in and dropped into one of the chairs around the table. Ivera followed, uneasy, watching me.

Bob was the leader of the Horsemen. If our world had spawned any veteran gladiators, he would be one of them. He was on the other side of forty and built with that mature strength and endurance that would make him a tough opponent even for people half his age. He might not be as fast as he used to be, but he had plenty of experience and he used it. Ivera was a tall, large Hispanic woman. She was nasty in a fight and a firebug—fire mage—on top of it.

The other two members of the Horsemen remained outside. Ken, a Hungarian mage, measured out words like they were gold and Juke, well, Juke was barely twenty and made up for her lack of experience in natural viciousness and a hot temper. She was fast and she liked to talk trash. I understood the urge. I liked to talk trash too, but twenty-year-old me would’ve chewed Juke up and spat her out.

I looked at the two veterans. “What can I do for you?”

Bob leaned forward. The chair creaked and I almost winced. He was a big guy and the chair was none too sturdy.

“I’ll come right to the point,” he said. “Solomon was one of us. A merc. A working stiff.”

“Actually, Solomon only worked as a merc for the first three years after forming the Guild, and given that he’s been underground for a few months, we can drop ‘working’ from his description.”

Bob plowed ahead. “All the same, he knew what it’s like to be out in the field. He knew how to take care of the guys. The man had a heart, unlike that prick. He’ll bleed us dry if we let him.”

“By ‘that prick’ you mean Mark?”

“Who else?”

I nodded. “Just checking.”

Bob knocked on my desk with his scarred knuckles, making a point. “That pencil neck wants to run the Guild. Between the four of us, we’ll do better. Someone’s got to look out for the guys.”

I spread my arms. “More power to you. What do you want from me?”

Bob scooted forward. The chair groaned. “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 the 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 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 do seven years 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 was 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 do we get from them? The Guild has a deal with Avalon Construction to clear the magic hazmat at their 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.”