Cults are weird. Or at least some were. Linar thought this as he broke into the manor. He understood some cults. Those with charismatic leaders manipulating sheep to take from them what they wanted, be it wealth, sex, or power. Heck, he even admired their grift. It wasn’t his particular style, but the most successful business ventures had at their head a strong leader passionate about the work.

  Linar made it his business to find these people and invest in them.

  Maybe I should try investing in a cult, he considered and then began contemplating how that would work.

  Other cults were led by true believers. Fervent men and women who devoted their lives to something other than the pleasures of the world. Much like the worship of the clerics, this concept was difficult for Linar to fully understand, no matter how hard he thought at it. He understood the transactional benefits such relationships between a worshipper and deity offered, but the clerics he knew weren’t doing it for the benefits, and he struggled to understand their motives.

  Cults were simpler for him in this regard. Cults worshipped powerful deities, and in return the deities give them power. While the distinction between church and cult was small, it was an important one for Linar that allowed the latter to fit a little better inside his world view. Except of course for those cults that simply wanted to burn the world to the ground.

  Linar was quite font of the world. Sure, it had a lot of rules, but he simply ignored those and went about his life doing what he saw fit to.

  At that very moment, Linar was busy doing a side job for a cult. This one, he was pretty sure, was a sex cult. What he’d originally thought to be a plain old orgy he’d invited himself too, had turned out to be a ritual to resurrect their leader who’d been murdered—not by Linar, no matter what Syril suspected. He’d then learned his partner in the…. ritual had been the wife of the no longer dead man.

  Linar wasn’t much for the rules of society, but he had his own rules he lived by, one of which was to not break up families—unless that breaking came as the result of financial ruin at his hands. If a family couldn’t weather a little poverty, that was hardly Linar’s fault.

  Anyway, to make a long story short, Linar found the formerly dead husband of the former widow to be quite the reasonable fellow. He offered Linar a job, a series of jobs actually, which he was performing at this very moment.

  After sneaking in through a third story window, Linar found himself in the dressing chamber of the lord of the house. His job was simple, deliver an item to the house, and hide it somewhere no one would find it for a few months. It was a strange request, but it was hardly the first time Linar had planted evidence in someone’s home. Attics were a good place to plant evidence, but even with his skills, walking silently in an attic was a difficult task.

  Wine cellars were good as well. Find the dustiest, most vintage bottles, and tuck your evidence behind those. No one would look there. Unfortunately, cellar’s often lacked windows making them harder to access.

  When speed was a factor, any old closet would do.

  People—the wealthy in particular—had a lot of stuff. So much stuff, they had to buy more stuff to hold their stuff.

  Now, Linar wasn’t far from an ascetic, he enjoyed the finer things in life, but that was the difference. He enjoyed them. He didn’t horde them, secreting them away in vaults or storage to be forgotten.

  Most of his wealth was out there working to generate him more wealth. When he did buy something, he used it or placed it in a place he could appreciate it. His homes were tastefully decorated, filled with only the things he would need or use. Most of those homes were in turn rented out, generating more money so he could buy more homes.

  Linar opened the nearest closet and tisked to himself.

  It was packed to the brim with furs. Furs! In this southern climate! None of them had likely been worn more than a handful of minutes each, and there were so many Linar could hardly part them to get to the rear of the closet.

  Choosing one at random, Linar dropped the small wooden box he’d been given into a pocket and turned to leave, only for Syril’s voice to ring in his head.

  “Use the wand Linar.”

  Linar sighed.

  He didn’t need the wand to find hidden doors. He’d show Syril… though he’d never tell the man about this particular job, even if he thought he might even approve of it. Syril had no love for the nobility, and likely wouldn’t mind Syril setting up one to blackmail the other. The way Linar saw it, he was basically doing the opposite of a crime. Not justice, Linar despised that concept, but…

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  Reverse crime? He thought.

  Unfortunately, he’d told the formerly dead husband he’d keep this work secret, and he would.

  Squeezing back through the closet, he quickly found that the rear panel of the closet was false, and in no time flat had it open.

  He entered the pitch-black secret passage without a light, his seemingly human eyes having no difficulty piercing the darkness. The chamber behind the false wall was necessarily small. To use an extra dimensional space as a secret room wasn’t unheard of—by Linar at least who’d found way more than his fair share of secret rooms, without a magic wand—but they were reserved for the greatest of secrets.

  Before Linar stood an altar to Meliath, the goddess of love, death, and ritual sacrifice.

  Linar wasn’t one to judge—or at least, that’s how he liked to see himself—but even he had to look down on a Meliath worshipper. It was not the first secret shrine he’d ever found while breaking into a house, not even the first to Meliath, but each time he’d found a secret shrine—with only one exception—there was evidence of great evil.

  His party joked that he was evil, but Linar didn’t see himself that way. He did what was best for him, not often concerned for the consequences to others, but not often didn’t mean never.

  For example, he wasn’t going out of his way to sacrifice his life to save someone else, but if he could do it with minimal risk or sufficient reward to mitigate the risk, he’d do it.

  Despite his resistance when it had initially been pointed out, Linar was starting to understand that he did have principles.

  At first, he’d bucked at the idea when his party had suggested it. Principles were shackles for those who made themselves slaves to the law, or at least, that was what he’d thought. But the more he considered it and compared himself the other lawless associates he preferred to work with, the more he warmed to the idea. An internal set of principles wasn’t the arbitrary dictates of some distant noble meant to oppress. It was self-directed code to optimize one’s journey through life.

  Now that he had a word for it, he realized he had many principles. Reliability—or at least the appearance of it— was critical to one’s business reputation. No one wanted to work with a man who couldn’t be trusted to hold up their end of a bargain.

  He didn’t want to see others harmed, he just didn’t always see why it was his problem.

  Linar did make an exception for cults that practiced sacrificial rituals however, for reasons he’d never told a soul. And to his eternal frustration, that seemed to be a large portion of them.

  Now he had a problem. He was here on a job, and had agree to complete it and not tell anyone of what he’d done. While not a rule follower, Linar tried to be a man of his word—when he meant it at least—it was just good business. When he couldn’t keep his word, he was always sure to make it at least appear that he had. Another principal, if one of his more flexible ones.

  He did a quick survey of the house, checking to see who was within. As always, Linar had cased the joint and done his research before starting this job. The lord had no wife or children, they’d all died in a not-so-mysterious-anymore way a few years past. There was a staff that lived on the ground floor, and the rest of the house ought to be empty.

  Once he’d confirmed his knowledge to be accurate, Linar went back upstairs and snuck into the lord’s room. Using a concoction of his own brew, Linar dribbled a small amount into the sleeping lords gaping snoring maw. Almost immediately the breathing slowed as the sleeping concoction took effect. After making sure he wouldn’t wake, Linar quickly looked through the room for any items of value that wouldn’t be missed. He found a few things, but most had the lord’s crest on them, so he elected to leave it all behind. A small amount of gold was not worth taking evidence that would tie him to what he was about to do.

  Linar took a log out of the fire using the tools in front of it and threw it onto the bed, which quickly went up in flame. He ran to the window, got a view of the street below and with a swoosh of his new cloak he was no longer in a burning manor, but on the street outside it.

  Before disappearing into the night as the building blazed behind him, Linar took a handful of stones from the ground, and threw them through the window of the nearest servant’s room. After only a moment he saw the light on and frantic silhouettes busy within. Satisfied he’d likely only killed the noble that night, Linar walked away, practicing the look of bewilderment he planned to use when reporting the job completed only to be confronted by the fact of the manor’s destruction.

  “It was standing when I left,” Linar practiced to himself. “I swear.”

  You could have at least murdered him yourself, a voice that was distinctly not his own spoke into his mind.

  “Don’t you start that again,” Linar said. “Or I’ll donate you to a temple.”

  You wouldn’t donate your piss to a burning child, the voice said, reassuring Linar that while it could speak into his mind, it couldn’t read it.

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