Authors: Vox Day
“What if they’re caught? What if they name names?”
“They’re not going to be caught. I will see to it.”
“But you can’t be certain. How can you be certain?”
“And what if Aetias doesn’t come?”
“He’ll be here. No banker of his magnitude and habits would snub one of his most important clients.”
His only satisfaction in listening to his nominal employer concoct yet another disastrous scenario, this time one in which the two street assassins he’d hired earlier that afternoon turned out to be agents of the present Duc, was knowing that the fat little man’s interminable tongue would soon be stilled forever. It was hard fortune for the man’s wife, he supposed, but any regrets Nicolas might have had about the need to silence the man permanently vanished as Jervais continued to regale him with nonsensical predictions of doom and gloom.
It was strange, Nicolas thought, how often a man worries about everything except the actual threat at hand. We jump at shadows in the distance and somehow manage to miss the beast right at our feet. He ran a finger over the blade hidden in his right sleeve. Swords had been forbidden by the host’s guards, but the three knives he had secreted about his person would be more than sufficient for his purposes tonight.
“There is Quadras Aetias now,” Nicolas said. “You see, it all goes according to plan. When he moves near the window over there, go and greet him. Take off the white scarf, and let the red one show. Don’t make a theatrical production out of it. Our friends will see. They are watching.”
Sweating despite the cool evening breeze that entered through the open windows, Jervais reluctantly complied. Nicolas eyed the two killers to make sure they’d seen the signal that the target was in sight. The woman, wearing the purple dress Jervais had given her earlier that day, appeared to be occupied with fending off the advances of a red-faced innkeeper, but Nicolas could see she was keeping an eye on both Aetias and Jervais.
The other assassin was roaming through the crowd in the white tunic of the slaves holding a plate of pastries on his shoulder; Nicolas had no idea where he’d gotten either the tunic or the pastries, but he guessed Quadras Aetias would find himself short one male slave tomorrow.
Aetias greeted a tall, handsome couple who appeared to be married, called over a slave, and gracefully offered the woman a goblet of wine. Pleasantries were exchanged, and then Aetias continued to circulate, finally approaching the open window on the western side of the room that Nicolas had told the killers would be their escape route.
He’d lied, of course. There would be no escape. Not for them.
“Go,” Nicolas hissed at Jervais, but the merchant was too frightened to hear him. “They are ready. Go, damn you. Do it now!”
Jervais looked at him, his eyes pleading to be relieved of his duty, but Nicolas simply put his hand on Jervais’s plump side, spun him around, and gave him an inobtrusive but firm push in the back. His shoulders slumped with defeat, Jervais approached Quadras Aetias as if he were a convicted criminal walking toward the gallows. Nicolas followed two steps back, as any good bodyguard would.
The banker greeted the shorter merchant with a tolerant, if condescending welcome, and they had barely begun the conventional formalities when Nicolas sensed a sudden movement behind him and whirled around to meet it.
With the woman’s speed slightly handicapped by her dress, she was three steps behind the male killer. Both had their daggers out but were holding them low, where they could not easily be seen, although one woman cried out in alarm as the man pushed past her.
“Ware, my lords—assassins!” Nicolas shouted.
With the precision born of many hours of practice, the sleeve knife slid into his hand as he stepped behind the man rushing past him.
Moving perpendicular to the man’s own movement, he grabbed the man’s chin with his left hand and drew his blade across the exposed throat with his right as he used his weight and momentum to take the man off his feet.
Blood sprayed toward the ceiling in a crimson arc as Nicolas hit the ground and released the convulsing body as it flipped over his side, then rolled to his feet with the bloody knife in his hand.
People were screaming, but Nicolas could hardly hear them as he saw the woman punch her blade into Jervais’s stomach, rip it upward to gut him, then remove it before burying it again in his throat to silence his screams. It was a good kill, fast and sure, and Nicolas thought that she would have easily been able to escape through the window behind Aetias if Nicolas hadn’t known exactly where she was headed.
Aetias stumbled backward and fell. He was screaming in fear as the woman moved toward him with her second blade. But Nicolas had chosen the purple dress she wore specifically for the way in which it shortened her stride, it slowed her down enough to permit him to catch her from behind in what was almost a leisurely manner.
One broad sweep of his arm sent her tumbling as his foot smashed against her ankles.
She grunted hard as her back struck the marble floor, then again a little more softly as he kneeled on her stomach. His knife found her heart as his other hand gripped her throat. She looked nearly as astonished as Jervais had when she’d gutted the little merchant.
As she died, Nicolas whirled around in a crouch, as if he was ready to meet any more attackers, even though he was the only man in the mansion who was certain there were none.
How amusing it would be if there were, he thought, and he nearly laughed out loud before managing to control the violent passions that were rampaging through his body. He didn’t actually enjoy killing, but sometimes the act could prove alarmingly exhilarating in the bloody moment.
He counted to ten, partly to add verisimilitude to his actions and partly to calm himself, before dropping to one knee at Jervais’s side. The merchant was still alive, but barely, and his eyes were wide and frightened like those of a thoughtless animal that couldn’t understand its fate.
The woman’s blade was still in the merchant’s throat, blocking the free flow of blood that would finish him, so Nicolas carefully drew it from its fleshy scabbard. Choking and gurgling, his eyes bulging in unseemly terror, Jervais finally expired with a disgustingly loud release of his bowels.
Nicolas sighed and sat back on his heels, shaking his head as if in sorrow over his failure to protect his charge.
A hand came down upon his shoulder. Nicolas didn’t look up. He could guess to whom it belonged.
“You saved my life,” Quadras Aetias told him. “I don’t know who you are, man, but I cannot tell you how grateful I am.”
“No, I… I failed,” Nicolas muttered, still staring at the slackened face of the recently deceased merchant as if he were in shock. “Master Jervais—he hired me… I tried to stop them, but I was not in time. I was too slow.”
Staggering slightly, he let the other man help him to his feet. Quadras Aetias was a tall, lean man with a bald head and a bony face. Everything about his elegant demeanor suggested the banker, not the whoremaster. But was there really a difference, in the end? The man’s expression was deeply solicitous.
“I am deeply sorry about poor Jervais, but there was nothing you could have done. You say that he hired you—does that mean he had cause to fear for his life? Do you know, I was certain they were after me. The first man you killed was rushing directly toward me when you so bravely intercepted him.”
“I don’t know,” Nicolas replied. “Master Jervais didn’t tell me anything. It all happened so fast. I’ve only been here for two weeks. I was hired through the guild, but Master Jervais never said anything to make me think something like this might happen. He didn’t speak of any enemies. I suppose my impression was that he hired me because he wanted to look important for this affair tonight.”
Aeties nodded as if he had begun to understand. “I see. May I ask your name, good sir? We must acquaint ourselves, I am afraid, because poor Jervais is in no condition to perform any introductions, and because I begin to believe that you have absolutely no idea whose life you just saved!”
Nicolas looked into the sincere face of the wealthy man and stifled a smile. My dear whoremonger, I suspect you would be very surprised if you knew exactly how much I know about you.
• • •
Lodi sat in darkness in the company of the four dwarves he’d purchased from the slaver. He didn’t own them, not under dwarven law. The Law of the Deep forbade one dwarf to hold title to another. But all four of the newly free had readily agreed to follow his lead until he could arrange to get them safely back to Iron Mountain.
Now, however, he was having second thoughts about making use of them to free the elfess. He had an obligation to see them home, and he doubted their fathers would appreciate him putting them at risk this way. Especially since it could be quite reasonably argued that he was putting them in danger on behalf of an elf!
On the other hand, with their aid he would be able to rescue her tonight, instead of in the two weeks he estimated it would take him working alone. After some quiet inquiries gave him sufficient confidence to conclude that the elfess was indeed to be found somewhere inside the Golden Rose, he’d rented a small room on the ground level of a building that was behind and slightly to the west of the upscale brothel. It was expensive, so he’d taken it for only one week, and this had rendered the assistance of the four young dwarves a necessity. And, to be fair to himself, the elf was nothing more the means to an end that every dwarf understood.
A shape emerged from the floor next to him. It was Gulfin’s head, his cap covered by dirt, cobwebs, and small bits of wood. He handed over a large bucket of dirt, which Lodi added to the big pile growing in the corner.
“We’re deep enough. You wanted twenty fores, and you’ve got them. Do you want us to start with the horizontal tunnel yet?”
“Not yet. They keep late hours in these parts, and we don’t want to wake anyone overhead. Does the ladder extend all the way down?”
“We’ve just been boosting each other up to reach it. It’s only about five fores, so we can lash whoever comes last to the dwarf before him.”
“No, make sure it reaches the bottom. We may be in a hurry, and if someone is injured, not having it will slow us down even more.”
“What if we put in a pulley system too, just in case? That way, if we have more than one or two who need help climbing out, we can get them up quickly. It shouldn’t take long.”
Lodi nodded, impressed by the young dwarf. “Yes, do that. We have time. You have a good head on your shoulders, Gulfin. How did you ever manage to get yourself captured by orcs?”
Gulfin grinned ruefully. “Listening to Thorald. He never worries about anything, that one, not even when he should. A pair of human hunters told us there were mountain orcs raiding about, but he didn’t believe them.” He looked over his shoulder. “You know, he’s convinced we’ll dig right in there, grab the girl, and stroll out without any trouble.”
“I hope he’s right,” Lodi said. But he had made preparations operating under the assumption that Thorald wouldn’t be. He didn’t have the coin for properly equipping all five of them for an armed raid, but he’d pawned his battleaxe and used the money to buy four sturdy leather jerkins, three hand-axes, and a pair of small wooden shields.
He’d borrowed the two pickaxes and the shovel they were using for digging from a dwarf at the Pick and Axe. In the hands of a dwarf, a pickaxe could be a fearsome weapon, although a little awkward for indoor use. The shovel might actually be the most useful tool since Lodi didn’t intend to kill anyone if he could help it. It was considerably easier to recover from a crack over the head with a shovel than from a pick driven squarely through the chest.
It occurred to him that regardless of how well it went tonight, he’d probably need to arrange for someone else to procure his battleaxe from the pawnbroker. It seemed likely that he would henceforth be
nana non grata
in Malkan.
As Arbhadis, the second moon, came into view, Lodi decided it was time to start digging again. The picks gouged out chunks of the clay-heavy earth, the shovel filled the buckets, the buckets flew up and down the hastily rigged pulley system, and Lodi was satisfied with the rapid progress they made underneath the stone foundation of the building next door.
The tunnel was shored up every few fores with a thick wooden beam. It wasn’t an approach Lodi would trust in a mine, but it would serve for tonight’s purpose. Soon they reached the point that Lodi calculated had them directly beneath the whorehouse.
It took nearly as long to work their way through the bricks and mortar of the building’s foundation as it did to dig the tunnel since they didn’t dare use their picks. Instead, they picked carefully away at the mortar then pulled out the bricks one by one. Some sort of granite or marble lay over the hole they’d created, but a single hard thrust with the flat top of the pick cracked it, and they were inside.
It was dark, but not pitch black, as a faint light came from the top of the stairs. It was more than enough for their dwarven eyes, accustomed as they were to the darkness of the tunnels that were often dug a league or more beneath the roots of the mountains. They appeared to be in some sort of storage room, as there were kegs and small barrels of what looked like wine and spirits, plus a number of mismatched chairs, tables, and a red velvet couch that looked as if it had seen some abuse.
“Remember, we just want to grab the girl. She’ll be easy to spot—she’s the only elf here. We go in, we grab her, and we get out.”
“An elf?” His companions looked at each other in confusion. Thorald was the first to object. “I thought we were rescuing one of ours! Why should we risk ourselves for an elf?”
“The long-ears left us to die in the siege! Why shouldn’t we leave this one to the tall ones?”
“How much do you think your fathers are paying for each of your worthless hides?” Lodi growled. “I can get ten times that for the elf—fifty, if she’s highborn. Do you think that slaver gave you to me because he liked my beard? But never mind, I don’t need any of you for the next part. You did enough with the digging. If you’re not going inside with me, then you can go back and wait at the other end until we come out.”