“Are you in here, father?” he heard his elder son ask from an adjacent room. Thren held his anger in check.

“And if I was not?” he asked.

His son Randith entered from the other room. He looked much like his father, having the same sharp features, thin nose, and grim smile. His hair was brown like his mother’s, and that alone endeared him to Thren. They both wore the gray trousers and cloaks of their guild. A long rapier hung from one side of his belt, a dagger from the other. Randith’s blue eyes met his father’s.

“Then I’d kill you,” Randith said, a cocky grin pulling up the left side of his face.

“Where is the mage?” the guildmaster asked. “Connington’s men cut me with a toxin, and its effect is troublesome.”

Troublesome hardly described it, but Thren wouldn’t let his son know that. His flight from the mansion was a blur in his memory. The toxin had numbed his arm and made his entire side sting with pain. His neck muscles had fired off at random, and one of his knees kept locking up during his run. He had felt like a cripple as he fled through the alleyways of Veldaren, but the moon was waning and the streets empty, so none had seen his pathetic stumbling.

“Cregon isn’t here,” Randith said as he leaned toward his father’s exposed shoulder and examined the cut.

“Then go find him,” Thren said. “And where is Senke? He was supposed to bring me word from Gemcroft.”

“Maynard Gemcroft’s men fired arrows from their windows as we approached,” Randith said. He turned his back to his father and opened a few cupboards until he found a small black bottle. He popped the cork, but when he moved to pour it on his father’s cut, Thren yanked the bottle out of his hand.

“Why isn’t Senke here now?” Thren asked.

“I sent him away,” Randith said. “With war brewing, I figured it best he help protect our warehouses.”

Thren grunted as he dripped the brown liquid across the cut. When finished, he accepted some strips of cloth from his son and then tied them tight around the wound.