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here for the veil anchor,” I told him. “She actually tried to convince me to sit out the battle, but you can see how that turned out. By now she’s probably off to another city.”
    “Good. We have enough problems in Kozalin as it is. What about her supposed brother, Carl? Do you know what happened to him?”
    “I saw him helping Mara at the temple,” I told him. “I guess he must have been an enemy agent, but I never had the chance to learn any details. I was busy trying to stop Mara at the time, and then I had the undead to deal with.”
    It was a busy night,” Steelbinder agreed. “Speaking of which, I’d better see what those fools are up to before they cause another disaster.”

Chapter 4
     
    Brand returned in triumph after a long day of fighting, and the double victory went a long way towards restoring the morale of Kozalin’s citizens. Not that they invited me to the victory celebration, or even the council of war they held the next day. I wouldn’t even have known about it if not for the fact that Captain Rain kept a sergeant posted at the war room most of the day to collect information about the city’s military situation.
    Being a former programmer I was used to being frozen out of the decision making. Management is a political game that I’ve never had much stomach for, and the men who do are relentless about excluding anyone who can’t compete with them in their field. I wasn’t sure if it was worth fighting that battle or not, since I didn’t really have any interest in local politics anyway. If they wanted to ignore me that just gave me time to strengthen my position more.
    The situation did, however, focus my attention on the fact that I needed more reliable sources of information. I couldn’t afford to be caught by surprise if the locals turned on me, and to avoid that I needed to know what was happening in the city. To solve that problem I turned to the people I knew had skills in that direction.
    Gronir had been a poacher before Fimbulwinter fell. Daria had been a thief, and was sneaky enough to steal from her own lord and get away with it. Cerise might seem like a brawler at first glance, but I often noticed her displaying the skills of a professional spy. It wasn’t perfect, but it was what I had to work with.
    I explained what I was looking for after the staff meeting one afternoon, after asking Avilla to make sure all the servants were too busy elsewhere to eavesdrop.
    “I know we’re not going to have spies in the prince’s secret meetings, or anything crazy like that,” I explained. “But we need to know what’s happening in the city. The mood of the people, the morale of the soldiers, that kind of thing. If there’s a major issue that the people are talking about I want to know, so I can decide whether to get involved. If the split between the prince and the Conclave gets worse, or someone starts agitating against us, I need to hear about it before things come to blows.”
    Cerise was grinning and nodding along. “Yes, I get the picture. Just a basic information gathering network, right? I’d already started on that, but I don’t have time to do it all myself.”
    “I suppose this is what you meant when you told me I could be a thief in your service, milord?” Daria said.
    “Agent,” Cerise corrected. “Stealing comes up once in a while, but mostly it’s just talking to people. Or killing them, but being wolfen will give you a big advantage there. Actually, I think we could bring in the whole pack on this. They have better senses than humans, and they aren’t going to get beaten up in a bar fight or knifed in a dark alley.”
    “It’d be good to have something to do, if we’re not going to fight the ape men,” Gronir allowed. “I don’t want the men getting bored. But we don’t rightly know much about spying.”
    Cerise waved off his concern. “All they need to do is go drinking in the right taverns and keep their ears open. I can organize that at first,