Crossed Blades (8 page)

Jax rolled her eyes. “Oh goody, my last ride on a boat makes getting on another one sound like the best idea ever.”

“Not my first choice either, but if time’s a concern it’s a hell of a lot better than riding. It’s not like we have the resources to pay for the fastest magical transport anymore.”

“Tell me about it. I had to borrow money from my brother to pay my way up here.” She looked up then. “This is my turn. See you tomorrow.”

I tossed her a wave and angled right while she turned left and headed south along the waterfront. When I got to the Kanathean Canal, I hired a boat to take me out to the river and up to Bankside. That took me a long distance out of my way, but a shadow trail can’t be followed on running water, and sitting in the little boat gave me plenty of time to watch for tails.

By the time I hopped the fence and stepped up to the back door of the little house I shared with Faran, I was quite certain I’d lost any potential hangers-on. I hated to be seen entering the place in my working rig, especially during daylight hours when it was harder to fudge the details. But it had been three days and I just couldn’t wait any longer to find out what had happened to Faran.

I pretended to pull a key out of my trick bag and bring it to the keyhole, but Triss did the real work, slipping a portion of himself into the lock and triggering the spell points there to release the mechanism. I kept lock and hinges carefully oiled, so the only sound the door made was the faint scuff of wood on wood as it slid across the threshold. Beyond lay a short hall with a second locked door at the other end, rather than the more typical direct entrance into the kitchen—part of the reason we’d chosen this house.

I took a short step inside then closed the outer door and locked it behind me without going any farther. Concealed now from the outside world, Triss slid up and around me, dressing me in a second skin of cool shadow. As he released his will, I took control, raising my arms and extending yards, long tendrils of shadow from the palms of my hands.

I reached down through the cracks between the floorboards, splitting the tendrils so that I could simultaneously touch the glyphs marking a dozen short steel posts distributed randomly through the space there. This temporarily disarmed the spells on the posts so that I could move forward to the next door without triggering the magical death that lay in wait for any trespasser. Just as with the outer door, the inner answered to the shadows of my familiar instead of a key.

When the lock clicked open, I reached up my finger, now free of shadow, and slipped it into a hole drilled above the frame on the left. It was invisible to anyone shorter than the door itself. Pushing down and twisting, I released the purely manual trigger on the heavy blade waiting to split the skull of anyone who relied on sorcery to get them past our defenses. Only then did I twist the handle and open the door to the kitchen.

Faran was waiting for me, no doubt alerted by the spell glyph carved into the top surface of the outer door. My profound relief at seeing her alive and in one healthy-looking piece lasted the two seconds it took to register the look on her face. Grim and cold, the controlled anger of the professional killer instead of the wild fury of the wronged teenager. Faran was both, and when the teenager lost the argument to the killer things were bad.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Besides you falling into a storm-wracked river and then vanishing utterly for half a week?” She spat the words out one by one, but I recognized it for the play it was.

“Yes, besides that.” I kept my voice perfectly calm because I knew that would annoy her, and being annoyed might put her off stride enough to listen more carefully. “You’re wearing the wrong face for the worried apprentice.”

She snorted and a tiny bit of the grim went away. “I suppose I am, though I’m that as well. I really do care about you, despite all our arguing, and I
was
very worried.”

“So was I.”

Then, without really intending to, I stepped forward and caught her in my arms, squeezing her hard. For a long moment she remained stiff and angry, then she relaxed, dropped her head against my shoulder and squeezed me even harder.

“Terrible old man,” she whispered.

“Dreadful little monster,” I growled back.

We had a strange relationship, Faran and I. Part master and apprentice, part surrogate father and adopted daughter, part opposing duelists. We’d barely known one another at the temple and hadn’t seen each other for five years after its fall. During those years I had diminished, going from being one of the two or three most feared professional killers in the world to a broken down jack who delivered smuggled goods for drinking money. Faran had grown from a terrified and half-trained eight-year-old into a professional thief and spy who killed with far less regret than I’d ever shown.

When I rescued her from a job gone horribly wrong, the adolescent who’d lost every shred of family she’d ever owned had wanted nothing more than to turn over the reins and the hard decisions to a respected authority figure dimly remembered from her past. That child’s desire for security sat very poorly with the professional killer who had taken one look at our respective records over the last few years and found me wanting.

My own feelings weren’t any easier to parse. I’d never wanted children. In fact, like many in the order, I’d chosen magical sterilization rather than risk any future potential conflicted loyalties between family and goddess. And yet, there was something about having Faran in my life, in the role that a child of my flesh might have held in a different world, that felt so very right. It didn’t make for an easy relationship.

Time passed and Faran’s death grip on my ribcage eased. I could feel the tension returning to her back and shoulders, so I gave her one last squeeze and then stepped back and away from her. On the wall behind her the dragon and the phoenix watched us as silently as shadows, reminding me that we were a family of four.

“Where the hell have you been, old man?”

“Shipwrecked,” I replied.

“Seriously?”

“It’s a long story,” I replied before giving her the three-minute version.

“We have a major problem,” Ssithra said when I’d finished. “Faran and I found it while you were gone.”

I turned my gaze back to the girl. As I watched, the child faded away and the killer settled back into the place behind her eyes.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I’d rather show you,” replied Faran, “and the sooner the better. I had trouble believing it myself.”

“Lead on.”

7

L
egends
cast the longest shadows. From the day I killed Ashvik onward, I never had any hope of slipping free of the shadow of the Kingslayer. The name carried so much more weight than the one they’d given me as a child, that sometimes I could barely stand the load.

But even so, I wasn’t the most famous of Blades. Mythkiller outweighed Kingslayer, and Deathwalker had eclipsed us both when he was in his prime. Kelos Deathwalker, two-hundred-year-old lord of assassins, a legend and an inspiration before he died with the fall of the temple. He had taught me more about the arts of death than all my other teachers combined. His death had felt almost as impossible as Namara’s. Without hers, it would have seemed completely unbelievable.

That’s why the scene in the room below our hiding place cut straight through my heart. Legends died, they didn’t turn their coats. Yet there was Master Kelos, alive and well and practically bending his knee to a woman whose robes declared her the Lady Signet, Nea Sjensdor, preceptor of the Hand of Heaven. She was tall and slender and she moved like a praying mantis . . . just as she had in the Gryphon’s Head on the day that Jax had walked back into my life, though I hadn’t recognized her then.

I felt a little shiver at the memory. It was Kelos she’d been sitting with then—had to have been—though I hadn’t recognized him at the time either. Not even when he made eye contact and warned me off. I wondered if he’d known it was me despite all the changes to my face. There was no clue in his gaze, and Jax hadn’t, and she and I had been as close as I’d ever been to anyone other than Triss. But somehow I couldn’t make myself believe I’d fooled Kelos.

Fucking legends. I knew exactly how hollow they could look from the inside, and yet I couldn’t make myself stop believing in the Deathwalker’s. Not even now when I saw him playing lackey to one of the people who’d destroyed us. How could I not have recognized him?

The Signet I could understand; I’d never seen her face before. This Signet had been promoted to replace the three layers of officers that had died in the fall of the temple. We’d made the forces of Heaven’s Reach pay a price in blood for destroying us, especially the Hand and the Sword, but it hadn’t been enough. It could never be enough.

Breathe,
Triss whispered into my mind.
Tell me what you see.

Sorry. Give me a moment to get myself back under control.

Faran had brought along both a hearsay and eyespy, so we were able to listen and watch without actually getting in close. I lifted my gaze from the big glass half sphere of the eyespy now to meet Faran’s gaze—the device didn’t work with Shade senses so we both had our faces unshrouded.

“Later,” I whispered, “you’re going to have tell me more about how you found your way here.”

“Not much to tell. Ssithra picked up Malthiss’s shadow trail and we followed it.”

I didn’t ask how they’d recognized who the trail belonged to. There wasn’t a member of the order who hadn’t studied under Kelos and Malthiss. Legends, dammit, and for good reason. Look at our little spy post.

The Hand had set up temporary headquarters in a riverside warehouse just above the Royal Docks. Judging by the seals on the crates where Faran and I had taken up our perch, it was owned by the Crown. That meant the Hand was there with the King’s blessing. Which made me curious about why they had chosen not to set up at the high temple of Shan or one of its satellites. But there could be a dozen or more reasons for keeping their presence unofficial, not least of which was my known presence in the area.

Most of the huge warehouse was simply a giant open room studded here and there with pillars to support the roof. One large section in the corner had been partially cleared of crates in an obviously hasty manner to make space for the Hand to set up their operations. At the far end, where we were, a series of open lofts had been built against the wall, allowing for the segregated storage of goods that couldn’t be stacked very high or that needed to be off the ground.

Our perch was on the second loft from the top in the corner farthest from the Hand. The crates there climbed to within a few inches of the bottom of the level above us except for one small gap. The angled supports coming off one of the pillars holding up the lofts had forced them to leave an opening, and that’s where we were.

Someone—almost certainly Kelos—had cut a trapdoor from the much more sparsely packed level above to allow access to the niche, hiding it under a couple of crates. The route into the building was equally clever.

It involved a really challenging roof-run, a brutal spider walk, and a barred clerestory window that had been invisibly converted to a pass-through, among other things. None of it would have been impossible for a mage with the right skills, but all together it would be damned hard for anyone but a Blade to manage. Even most Blades would never have stumbled on it by accident.

That was why I wanted to talk to Faran about how she’d done so. It didn’t
feel
like a trap, but the good ones never do. I’d have been more worried about the possibility, if whoever set up the spy hole hadn’t also put together a damned fine emergency exit. That involved a series of shadow-triggered destructive spells that would open a half dozen bolt holes. I couldn’t really test it without giving us all away, but I had very little doubt it would work as I expected it to.

Aral!

Sorry. On it.

I looked down into the eyespy again, and began to describe the scene below to Triss. The cleared space was divided into three unroofed rooms by walls of crates. The main living area held a couple of couches and tables where three of the Hand were studiously ignoring the score of Swords taking up most of the space. A sort of bunkroom with a bunch of pallets held about another dozen Swords and one Hand, all asleep—probably the night shift.

A smaller office and sleeping area stood off to one side, separated from the living area by a heavy velvet curtain. The room contained a platform with a proper mattress on it, several chairs, a cabinet for papers, and a desk with an intense magelight of the sort favored by those who dealt with large amounts of correspondence. A loose ball of white fluff, like an afternoon cloud fallen to earth, lay curled on the mattress, the Signet’s Storm familiar. I couldn’t be sure, because it was mostly hidden under one wing, but the Storm’s head looked to be the blade of a scythe.

The Signet sat behind the desk, glaring up at Kelos, who had perched himself on the open side panel of a high crate. He was squatting on his heels, a pose that would allow him to move in any direction on an instant’s notice, and one that I knew he could hold for hours if he chose.

Kelos had ditched the bushy black beard for an equally false red goatee, and swapped his glass eye for the leather patch he used to wear back at the temple. His arms were bare, showing off the deep black scaled tattoos that slithered around his arms and torso like a great snake endlessly curling back on itself. There was no obvious sign of Malthiss, which meant the Shade had chosen to add a few extra loops to the tattoo as he so often had in my memories. The sudden appearance of the Shade’s head rising into a striking position from amongst the inky coils that beautifully camouflaged his presence had given more than one apprentice Blade nightmares.

“I still don’t see why you insist on perching above me like some great vulture,” said the Signet.

“I like the light here,” Kelos replied in that deep bass growl I remembered so well from my youth—his training voice. He’d used a lighter, sweeter tone with those he considered his peers.

“Clever,” said Faran, and I had to agree, though I didn’t like the implications.

Kelos had chosen a perch where both the dying light from the windows and the bright lamp on the desk would only paint his shadow across the boards beneath his feet or into the mouth of the open crate behind him. At a guess, that opening led to some sort of passage that would allow him to come and go from the Signet’s office without casting any stray shadows where another Shade might taste them.

That meant he was concerned about the possibility of other Blades finding out he’d been there. But who was he worrying about? Me? Jax? Someone else? He’d been careful at the Gryphon’s Head, too, or Triss would have tasted Malthiss’s shadow there. Was that because I was known to spend time there? Or because he’d seen Jax and followed her there? Or just on general principle since he was supposed to be dead? With Kelos it could have been any of those, or all of them, or something everyone else had missed entirely.

“It’s disrespectful,” snapped the Signet.

“How so?” Kelos grinned, exposing big white teeth. “You command the Hand of Heaven, I lead Heaven’s Shadow. I’m pretty sure that makes us coequal in rank.”

“I am the Son’s chosen successor and you should treat me with the deference my eventual ascension demands.”

“The Son looks mighty healthy to me, and you have a dangerous job. I wouldn’t bet any money on you outliving him.”

“Is that a threat, Deathwalker? Because you don’t scare me.”

This time, Kelos laughed. “Tell it to someone who gives a damn, Signet. I don’t care whether you’re too brave to be scared of me, or if anybody else is for that matter, haven’t in more than a century. What’s in your head is your problem, and threats are for villains in children’s stories. I don’t bother. Why deliver a warning, when it’s just as easy to deliver a foot of steel?”

The Signet leaped up from behind her desk, but the curtain snapped open before she could say anything. A short man wearing the livery of the king barged in. Looking beyond him, I could see that the Swords on duty at the entrance to the warehouse were not happy. I didn’t blame them. If the king’s envoy pissed the Signet off, she was likely to take a piece out of their hides for it. But short of starting a war with their hosts in Tien, there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about a king’s envoy playing things hard.

I didn’t recognize the man, but I recognized the type, a glorified message runner with delusions of grandeur. Every court has a few—officials of sufficient rank to be taken seriously when you send them to run an errand, but limited enough ability that a king can afford to leave them sitting around and waiting for orders most of the time. Lesser nobles of dubious intelligence were ideal for the purpose.

“The more the king learns about that mess you created at the royal cemetery the less happy he becomes,” the envoy snapped without prelude. “What were you playing at there?”

“Playing?” growled the Signet. “Is that what you think this is? A game? Because this is a deadly serious business. I lost two officers of the Hand the other night, if you hadn’t noticed. We’re trying to bring down the Kingslayer and—”

“Doing a terrible job of it,” said the envoy. “When His Majesty agreed to your presence here, he assumed you knew what you were doing. Since that’s clearly not the”—the envoy glanced up at Kelos, apparently noticing him for the first time. “What’s this, have you acquired a pet monkey?”

“Ook,” said Kelos, his voice deceptively mild as he made a show of scratching under one armpit.

“Insolent,” said the envoy. “And you’re not wearing the Son of Heaven’s badge, monkey. Does that make you some local creature that the Lady Signet has picked up for some reason? Or what? Come down here where I can take a better look at you.”

“I think I’ll stay where I am,” said Kelos.

“That wasn’t a request, monkey, it was an order.”

I saw the Signet’s back tense at that, but Kelos just shrugged and silently held his place.

“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” The envoy stomped closer to the crates as he spoke, pointing from Kelos to the floor imperiously. “I’m Heela Sharzdor, personal representative of King Thauvik the . . .” His words trailed off and he froze for a moment before making a little squeaking sort of noise.

“Sorry about the mess,” Kelos said to the Signet.

It took me a moment to figure out that the envoy had stepped between the magelight and Kelos, so that his shadow now fell across the old assassin and the crate, making it quite obvious that Kelos cast no shadow of his own. At that very moment, Kelos’s neck seemed to lift and broaden as Malthiss’s cobralike head slid out from under his bond-mate’s collar and rose into the air above Kelos. Before the envoy could do much more than let out another squeak, Malthiss opened his wide mouth and spat.

A thin amber stream of venom struck the envoy in the face and eyes. Sharzdor let out the faintest of whimpers, went completely rigid and toppled over on his side. He landed with an audible clunk, still in the exact position he was in when the venom struck, falling more like a statue than a man. The illusion grew stronger as his skin took on a distinct stony gray cast within a matter of seconds. Malthiss dropped back onto Kelos’s neck, sliding down to vanish among the tattooed coils.

The Signet sighed and looked up at Kelos. “Now, what am I going to tell the king when he asks about what happened to his envoy?” She sounded more annoyed than angry.

“Tell him the Kingslayer did it.”

“The Kingslayer? Really? How could he possibly get in here without us catching him?”

Kelos let out a low chuckle. “Aral’s a damned resourceful Blade. You’d be surprised where he could get without you ever knowing he was there.”

He knows we’re here,
Triss whispered into my mind.
And he’s playing the Signet.

How could he know about us?
But I couldn’t help but think Triss was right, about both things. Malthiss could have moved much faster had he chosen to, I’d seen him do it.

The Signet just shook her head. “
Of course
he could. Or at least that’s what I’m going to have to sell the king now. That and that the Kingslayer poisoned the envoy? Do you think he’ll really believe poison? That seems a bit out of character.”

“More than a bit, but that’s not what you’re going to tell Thauvik. You’ll say that Sharzdor here was beheaded, the way Aral ghosted your priest in the cemetery the other night.”

The Signet stiffened briefly, then shrugged and visibly forced herself to relax. “What makes you so sure that killing was the Kingslayer and the other wasn’t?”