City in the Sky (3 page)

Erik dove out of the way, slamming his left shoulder hard into the wall and knocking the half-dozen sample swords off of their holders. They crashed down around him, and he grabbed the nearest weapon, a cavalry saber, before rolling back up onto his feet to face the assassin, who was circling back in for another attack.

The heavy saber was not the best weapon to face the lethal swiftness of the point-oriented smallsword, but it was what Erik had. He parried Rade's first lunge, and found himself parrying three more attacks in quick succession.

The Draconan was
fast
, and Erik was backed up against a wall. He lunged forward with the saber, trying to buy himself some space, but the assassin only deflected it. The parry turned into a riposte that Erik only barely managed to knock aside with his wrist. Metal scored along his face, but the smallsword had no edge and it was little more than a scratch.

What little space Erik had gained was quickly lost as the assassin pressed in, forcing him to step back to block the attacks. He parried four times, and then lashed out with his foot. He caught Rade in the shin, knocking the Draconan off-balance. He slashed at the assassin, but the Draconan deflected the strike, preventing Erik from hitting him with the blade. As the blade went up, Erik twisted his wrist to slam the hilt of the heavy sword into Rade's face.

Rade reeled backwards, spitting blood from his mouth, and Erik pressed his advantage. The saber was heavy, but he barely felt it as he flicked it out in a series of attacks that drove the assassin, limping from the shin strike, further back.

“Why?” he demanded as they moved into the clear space in the middle of the room.

“No-one can know I'm here,” Rade spat. “Now shut up and
die
!” The assassin's muscles bunched as he lunged forward.

Erik stepped aside, grabbed the edgeless blade with his gloved hand. With a quick jerk, he fatally unbalanced the Draconan, sending him stumbling to the ground. Acting on instinct, Erik brought the saber whistling around in a strike no light smallsword could have blocked, and the half-standing assassin crumpled the rest of the way to the ground as the blade took his head from his shoulders.

Instants later, the saber clattered to the ground as the blood spurted out of the corpse's neck and Erik realized just what had happened. He collapsed to his knees as the door banged open and Byron rushed in, a hand-and-a-half bastard sword raised.

Erik barely even realized his grandfather was there before the headless body gave one last spurt of blood, directly before his eyes, and the young smith was violently sick.

Erik sat in the corner of the shop, ignoring the activity around him, staring at the blade resting on the floor in front of him. He'd cleaned the blood from it, acting as much by rote as by any thought, but he continued to try and clean the blade.

The City Guard had responded to the messenger Byron had sent with commendable speed. Four guardsmen stood around the store, examining the scene of the fight, while a fifth questioned Byron. Erik heard his grandfather explaining about how the Draconan had first come to them, and knew that he should really be helping explain.

It was hard for him to think though. The image of Rade's head exploding away from his shoulders kept replaying before his mind's eye. The only reason he'd stopped being sick was because he'd emptied his stomach entirely. He scrubbed harder at the saber's blade, barely even noticing the pain of his scored face and chest as he tried to wash the image out of his mind.

The shop bell rang again and a new man entered the room. He wore no uniform, just plain grey clothes like those anyone on the street would wear, but the guardsmen immediately snapped to a sharper bearing when they saw him.

The grey-clad man crossed to the corpse and stood above it, looking down. “This is the man?” he asked aloud, looking at Erik.

“Yes,” Byron replied. “It is.”

The man's gaze flickered to Byron, but he nodded. “I want to see what he had made,” he instructed calmly as he knelt by the headless corpse.

“Erik?” Byron asked gently.

“On the counter,” Erik replied dully.

His grandfather nodded and gathered up the package on the counter and offered it to the grey man.

The man held up a hand, refusing it for the moment. He leaned closer to the corpse, examining the head that lay next to it as well. Without changing expression, he drew a knife from his belt and cut the dead man's doublet open.

Erik heard the man hiss, but wasn't sure if anyone else did. The man immediately closed the doublet over the corpse's chest and stood, taking the package from Byron.

“Master Byron, Sergeant,” he said calmly, “please leave the room. I need to speak to Mr. Tarverro in private.”

The guardsmen didn't even hesitate before leaving with almost unseemly haste. Byron did hesitate, glancing at his grandson. The man must have caught the glance, as he spoke again. “I mean him no harm, Master Byron,” he said gently, “but I must speak to him alone.”

Byron nodded and left, closing the back door behind him.

Almost as soon as the door closed, the man stepped over to Erik and gently removed the sword and cleaning cloth from his hands. Erik looked up at him and found the man offering him a canteen of water.

“Rinse,” he ordered, and then offered Erik a cloth. “Now spit.”

Erik obeyed, cleaning the grunge from his mouth.

“As soon as we're done here, have those wounds seen to,” the man instructed him. “They're not dangerous in themselves, but infection is nothing to play games with.”

“Who are you?” Erik finally asked.

The grey-clad man smiled. “Captain Toris Mehil, Royal Guard,” he offered calmly.

“You don't look like a soldier,” Erik replied.

“Good,” Mehil said. “If I did, that would be a problem.”

“You're a spy.”

“No, I'm an agent,” Mehil corrected. “I do counter-intelligence, try and keep tabs on spies in the city, and every so often deal with the assassins that some idiot inevitably tries to send. In this case, you've done my job for me.”

“What do you mean?” Erik asked.

Mehil stepped back over to the corpse and pulled the sliced doublet open, revealing a tattoo on the man's right breast. “Do you know what this is, Erik Tarverro?” he asked.

The tattoo looked much like the dragons he saw regularly in the Trade Quarter, but it was shaded red. “A dragon.”

“A red dragon, yes,” Mehil replied. “Red dragons, as in the creatures themselves, are thankfully quite extinct. Unfortunately, their worshippers are
not
, and the Dragon Lords find them quite useful.”

At Erik's questioning gaze, the Royal Agent grimaced. “While even among the Draconans the worship of the High Cult of Salshar is punishable by death, the Red Dragon Cult doesn't indulge in such…
vigorous
forms of worship as the High Cult. They
do
, however, train the true devotees of the cult as assassins. These assassins serve the Dragon Lords quite willingly.”

Mehil allowed the doublet to close again. “There is no business a Red Dragon would have in Vidran that we would like, Mr. Tarverro. Worse, I didn't even know he was here. You were very lucky.”

Erik eyed the corpse askance. “I killed him,” he said quietly.

“Exactly,” Mehil said gently. “This man was a professional killer, and clearly a very good one. Other than killing him, there was no way you could have survived.” He paused and continued in a more formal tone. “I assure you that the Crown of Vidran will not level criminal charges in this case.”

Erik sagged with relief. He'd expected to at least have to face a tribunal and prove self-defense. He was starting to suspect, however, that this plainly dressed man had more authority than any legal tribunal in the city.

The agent stood. “The guardsmen will clean this up and deal with the body.” He glanced around the room. “Keep the money he paid you, as you did complete the job. It is possible,” he allowed, “that there may be a reward for your actions.” He clapped Erik on the shoulder.

“Come on, son,” he said gently. “Let's get those scratches of yours seen to.”

Brane Kelsdaver, Captain of the Red Dragons and spy for the great and powerful nation of Dracona, read the report and cursed the half-blood Erik Tarverro for being stupid enough to get in the way. Then he cursed Rade for being Fires-burnt fool enough to try and kill the man. Then he cursed the Hellitian spy who'd been clever enough to realize what had happened.

Once he was done cursing, the dark-haired Draconan looked out the window of his reservoir-side office in the city of Seije and began to weep. Rade had been an agent of his, yes, but he had also been his younger brother.

Both of the two young Draconans had been drawn first into the ranks of the Claws by an eager desire to serve their nation. From there, however, Brane had fallen into the path of Red Dragons, and impressed the spies-cum-assassins of Dracona. Impressed them enough that he'd been initiated into the cult, where his lack of height for a Draconan – shared with his brother – made him an asset in their intelligence operations.

Brane had never been prouder than he had been on the day he learned that his younger brother had been initiated into the cult. He'd made no effort to cause it to happen, the Dragons recruited who they willed and were vicious to those who failed to meet their standards after being recruited, but he'd been proud when he learned it had.

Now his pride turned to ashes and hate in his mouth. Their parents were dead, but there was a third brother, the youngest of the three, who had joined the elite Skyborne dragon warriors. It fell to Brane to write and tell him of the fate of their brother.

Before that, however, he had other messages to send. In this instance, both tradition and his personal rage worked together – no one who killed a Red Dragon could be allowed to walk away.

The Royal Guard captain proved true to his word. A week after the incident, a blandly dressed man, introducing himself merely as a member of the Guard, had turned up and handed Erik a bag of coins.

The man hadn't even stayed long enough for Erik to count the hundred gold coins in the bag, but had made swift apologies and left. Partially, Erik was sure, that was due to the press of the King's service, but he'd also seen the man's face when he saw Erik.

Stopping an assassin may have been enough for Captain Mehil to ignore Erik's blood, but it obviously wasn't enough for his man. In a trading city like Vidran, people learned to deal with those of the other Races of Man, but even here half-bloods drew darker gazes. Many regarded the blending of races as obscene. Some would even go so far as to call it blasphemous.

A hundred Hellitian marks was a lot of money, and it made affairs far easier for Erik and his grandfather in the weeks that followed. Combined with their normal income and the payment for the work for Rade, it meant that for once they were well ahead of the game on their finances.

Nonetheless, Erik threw himself into his work. He had never had any trouble finding work, and now he purposefully found almost too much work. He worked his days through, and once exhausted, collapsed to sleep. Sometimes, he was too exhausted to dream. Most nights, however, his mind insisted on replaying the fight with Rade, in all of its horrific glory.

He worked to try and escape the nightmares, but it didn't seem to be doing any real good. Every day, Erik went into the store where he'd killed the Draconan, and it seemed that every night he relived the fight.

Finally, one night, about two weeks after the attack, Byron walked into the forge while Erik was working. Erik heard him entering, but ignored him as he continued to hammer on the blade on the anvil.

For long minutes, neither spoke, until Erik finished the blade and quenched it. As the hot steel sank into the water, Byron finally spoke.

“Still working, grandson?”

“What else would I be doing?” Erik asked.

“Eating,” the older smith replied. “Relaxing. Sleeping. Any of the above, all of which you've not been doing.”

“What of it?” Erik demanded. “It's my own concern, not yours.” He reached for another steel blank, but Byron's hand locked onto his wrist before he touched it.

“Erik,” he said gently, “you're not sleeping and you're barely eating. You're working yourself into a grave, and I didn't spend twenty years raising you to watch you do that.”

Erik tried to free his hand, but Byron held him in a grip like iron. “It's none of your concern,” he repeated.

“Yes, it is,” Byron said calmly. “You are my grandson, the child of my daughter, and dear to me in your own right. Sit,” he ordered, gesturing to the coal boxes against the wall. Pushed by that iron grip, Erik sat.

“You're having nightmares, I know,” he said softly. “You can't sleep for them. It's not a bad thing, either,” Byron added, “I'd not care much for a grandson who'd kill readily and without remorse. It's killing you, though, and that scumbag who came for you isn't worth that.”

He raised a hand as Erik opened his mouth to speak. “Hear me out, grandson. Killing a man isn't an easy thing to live with, no matter the cause. Your father was a soldier. It was his duty to kill for his people. I don't know how he managed it, but I know that those he killed haunted him. There's a fighter in you, grandson, and we both know it,” he said grimly. “But being a fighter is no bad thing, and the difference between a fighter and a killer is remorse over those you killed.”