It was hardly an effort for the skilled assassins to get over the city wall and past the eyes of weary guardsmen. The battlefield had been pushed back, and though rogue bands like the one the monks had encountered were still about, they were not thought to be much of a threat by the garrison entrenched in the citya garrison strengthened in recent days by a full brigade of Kingsmen from Ursal.
Now Dandelion and Youseff changed back into their brown robes and, with heads humbly bowed, made their solemn way through the streets. They were bothered only once, by a beggar man, and when he would not leave them alone, even going so far as to threaten them if they would not give him a silver coin, Brother Dandelion calmly tossed him against an alley wall.
It was long after vespers and St. Precious was quiet and dark, but the monks took little comfort in that fact, understanding that the men of their Order would prove more vigilant than the slothful city guards. Again, though, the Father Abbot had prepared them properly. On the southern wall of the abbey, where the wall was in fact a part of the main building itself, there were no windows and no visible doors.
In truth, there was a single door, carefully concealed, from which the abbey’s kitchen workers brought out the scraps from the day’s meals. Brother Youseff brought forth the garnet, using it to find the invisible doorway, for the portal, in addition to being magically concealed, was magically sealed against opening from the outside.
The door was also conventionally lockedor should have beenbut before the monks of St.-Mere-Abelle had departed St. Precious, Brother Youseff had gone to the kitchen, ostensibly for supplies, but in truth to destroy the integrity of the portal’s binding. Apparently the Father Abbot had recognized that they might need a quiet way into St. Precious, he pondered now, and was indeed impressed by his master’s foresight.
Using the sunstone, Youseff defeated the meager magical lock and carefully pushed open the door. Only one person was inside, a young woman singing and scrubbing a pot over a sink of steaming water.
Youseff was behind her almost immediately. He paused, listening to her carefree song, taking pleasure in the evil irony of that lively tune.
The woman stopped singing, sensing the presence.
Youseff basked in her fear for just a moment, then grabbed her by the hair and drove her face into the water. She struggled and thrashed, but to no avail against the efficient assassin. Youseff smiled as she slumped to the floor. He was supposed to be a passionless killer, a mechanical tool for the Father Abbot’s will, but in truth the monk found that he enjoyed the killing, enjoyed the victim’s fear, enjoyed the absolute power. Looking down at the dead young woman, he only wished he had been granted more time, that he could have savored the preliminary game, the terror leading up to the death.
Death, by comparison, was such a bland and easy thing.
St. Precious was quiet that night, as if the whole of the place, the abbey itself, was relaxing after the trials of the Father Abbot’s visit. Through the hallways stalked Youseff and Dandelion, the Brothers Justice, with powerful Dandelion carrying the sacked powrie over one shoulder. They saw only one monk, and he didn’t see them, all the way to the door of Abbot Dobrinion’s private quarters.
Youseff went down to one knee before the door, a small knife in hand. Though he could easily pick the meager lock, he scraped and scratched at the wood about it, whittling it down, making it appear as if the door had been forced.
Then they were in, and through another door, this one less sturdy and not locked, to Dobrinion’s bedside.
The abbot awoke with a start. He began to scream out, but fell strangely silent when he considered the pair, when he saw the heavy serrated blade waving tantalizingly inches from his face, its metal gleaming in the soft light of the moon spilling in through the room’s lone window.
“You knew we would come for you,” Youseff teased.
Dobrinion shook his head. “I can speak with the Father Abbot,” he pleaded. “A misunderstanding, that is all.”
Youseff held a finger to pursed lips, smiling wickedly behind it, but Dobrinion pressed on.
“The Chilichunks are criminalsthat is obvious,” the abbot spouted, and he hated the words as he spoke them, hated himself for his cowardice. Abbot Dobrinion fought a great battle then, his conscience vying against his most basic survival instinct.
Youseff and Dandelion watched his torment, not understanding the source of it, but with Youseff surely enjoying it.
Then Dobrinion calmed and stared at Youseff squarely, seeming suddenly unafraid. “Your Markwart is an evil man,” he said. “Never was he truly Father Abbot of the Abellican Church. I call on you now, in the name of the solemn vow of our Orderpiety, dignity, povertyto turn against this evil course, to find again the light”
His sentence ended as a gurgle, as Youseff, too far lost to even hear such conscience-tugging pleas, ripped the serrated edge across the abbot’s throat, opening it wide.
The pair went to the powrie then, dropping it to the floor. Dandelion unwrapped and then picked at its wound, removing all sign of scabbing, while Youseff searched about the abbot’s quarters. He found at last a small knife, used for cutting seals from letters. Its blade was not as broad as the one of his dagger, but the knife fit fairly snugly into the powrie’s mortal wound.
“Take him from the bed,” Youseff instructed Dandelion. As the big man dragged Dobrinion toward the desk, Youseff walked alongside, cutting a series of smaller wounds on Dobrinion’s corpse, making it seem as if the abbot had put up a great struggle.
Then the two killers were gone, silent death, two shadows flowing out from St. Precious into the black night.
*
Word of the abbot’s murder spread throughout the city the very next morning, frantic cries sweeping along the fortified walls, teary-eyed soldiers blaming themselves for allowing a powrie to slip past them. Whispers of doom crossed from tavern to tavern, street corner to street corner, each retelling the rumors, embellishing the tale. By the time Connor Bildeborough, waking in a bed in the infamous brothel, House Battlebrow, heard the story, an army of powries was reputedly on the outskirts of Palmaris, ready to rush in and slaughter all of the people in their time of grief.
Half naked, dressing as he went, Connor exited the house and flagged down a carriage, demanding that the driver take him at once to Chasewind Manor, the home of his uncle.
The gates were closed; a dozen armed soldiers, their weapons drawn, surrounded the carriage as the horse skidded to an abrupt stop, and both Connor and the poor frightened driver felt the eyes of many archers upon them.
Recognizing Connor, the guards relaxed and helped the nobleman down, then ordered the driver away in no uncertain terms.
“My uncle is well?” Connor asked desperately as the guards escorted him through the gate.
“Unnerved, Master Connor,” one man answered. “To think that a powrie could so easily get through our defenses and slay Abbot Dobrinion! And all of this coming right behind the troubles in the abbey! Oh, what dark days are upon us!”
Connor made no move to reply, but he listened carefully to the man’s words, and the unspoken, probably even unrealized, implications behind them. He rushed through the manor house then, down the heavily guarded halls and into his uncle’s audience room.
Fittingly, the soldier standing guard beside Baron Rochefort Bildeborough’s desk was the burly man, face heavily bandaged, whose nose had been smashed under a magical assault by none other than Father Abbot Dalebert Markwart himself.
“My uncle knows of my arrival?” Connor asked the man.
“He will join us presently,” the guard replied, his voice slurred, for his mouth, too, had been battered by the magnetite missile.
Even as he finished speaking, Connor’s uncle entered the room through a side door, his face brightening as he gazed upon his nephew.
“Thank God himself that you are alive and well,” the man said generously. Connor had always been Rochefort Bildeborough’s favorite relative, and since the man had no children, it was a common belief in Palmaris that Connor would inherit the title.
“Should I not be?” Connor asked in his typically casual manner.
“They got in to kill Abbot Dobrinion,” Rochefort replied, taking his seat opposite the desk from Connor.
Connor did not miss the effort his uncle required for the simple action. Rochefort was overweight and suffered from severe pains in the joints. Until the previous summer, the man had ridden his fields every day, rain or shine, but this year he had been out only a couple of times, and never two days in succession. Rochefort’s eyes, too, showed the sudden aging. They had always been gray in hue, but they were dull now, filmed over.
Connor had wanted the title of Baron of Palmaris since he was old enough to understand the prestige and entitlement that came with it, but now, as that moment seemed to be drawing near, he had discovered that he could waitand many years. He would rather that he kept his present position, and that his dear uncle, the man who had been as a father to him, remained alive and well.
“How would the monsters even know to look for me?” Connor replied calmly. “The abbot is a clear target for our enemies, but myself?”
“The abbot and the Baron,” Rochefort reminded.
“And indeed I am glad to see that you have taken all the proper precautions,” Connor said quickly. “You may be a target, but not I. To the knowledge of our enemies, I am nothing more than a common tavern-hunter.”
Rochefort nodded, and seemed relieved by the logic of Connor’s reasoning. Like a protective father, he didn’t fear for himself half as much as he feared for Connor.
Connor, though, was not really convinced by his own words. The powrie slipping into St. Precious at this tension-filled time, so soon after the horrible Father Abbot’s departure, seemed a bit too convenient to him, and he only grew more uneasy as he looked upon the broken face of his uncle’s principal guard.
“I want you to stay at Chasewind Manor,” Rochefort said.
Connor shook his head. “I have business in the city, Uncle,” he replied. “And I have been battling powries for months now. Fear not for me.” As he finished, he patted Defender, comfortably sheathed at his hip.
Rochefort stared long and hard at the confident young man. That was what he liked about Connor, the confidence, the swagger. He had been so much like Connor in his own youth, bouncing from tavern to tavern, from brothel to brothel, living life so fully, taking each moment to the very limits, of life, of danger. How ironic, he thought, that now, growing older, and with less pleasure, less excitement, less life, ahead of him, he should be more protective of his life. Connor, indeed so much like a younger Rochefort, with so much more to lose, thought little of potential danger, felt immortal and invulnerable.
The Baron laughed, and dismissed the thought of ordering Connor to stay at Chasewind Manor, for that, he realized, would steal all that he loved from the spirited young man. “Keep one of my soldiers beside you,” he offered in compromise.
Again Connor resolutely shook his head. “That would only outline me as a potential target,” he reasoned. “I know the city, Uncle. Know where to garner information and where to hide.”
“Go out! Go out!” the Baron cried in defeat, laughing all the while. “But know that you carry more than the responsibility of your own life with you.” He rose with considerably less trouble than he had found in sitting, and rushed about the desk, clapping Connor on the shoulder roughly a couple of times, then letting his big hand rest intimately about his nephew’s neck. “You carry my heart with you, boy,” he said solemnly. “If they find you as they found Dobrinion, then know that I will surely die of a broken heart.”
Connor believed him, every word. He gave the man a hug and a pat, then strode confidently from the room.
“He will soon be your baron,” Rochefort said to the soldier.
The man snapped to attention and nodded, obviously approving of the choice.
“Open it.”
“But Master Bildeborough, I see no reason to disturb the sleep of the dead,” the monk replied. “The coffin has been blessed by Brother Talumus, our highest-ranking”
“Open it,” Connor repeated, locking the young man in his unrelenting glare.
Still the young monk hesitated.
“Should I bring my uncle?”
The monk bit at his lip, but surrendered to the threat, bending low to grasp the wooden lid. With a look back to the resolute Connor, he slid the cover aside. There lay the woman, her complexion chalky blue in death.
To the monk’s horror, Connor reached in and grabbed her by the shoulder, lifting and turning the corpse, his face low, impervious to the stench as he studied her intently. “Wounds?” he asked.
“Just the drowning,” the monk replied. “In the sink. Hot water, too. Her face was all red at first, but now the blood, and all the life, is gone from it.”
Connor gently shifted the body back into place and stood back, motioning to the monk that he could close the coffin. He put his hand to his mouth, running his thumbnail between his teeth, trying to make sense of it all. The monks of St. Precious had been very accommodating when he showed up at their gate. They were frightened and confused, he knew, and the presence of so important a representative of Baron Bildeborough had helped to settle them.
In Abbot Dobrinion’s room Connor had found little in the way of clues. Both bodies were still there, the abbot’s cleaned and carefully placed in state on his bed, and the powrie’s right where the monks had found it. The blood of both corpses was liberal about the room, despite all efforts to clean the place. When Connor protested the changes in the room, the monks took great pains to describe the struggle, as they had interpreted it, in great detail: the abbot had been wounded first, and several times, probably taken by surprise while he lay asleep on his bed. One of the wounds was mortal, a slash across the throat, but still the brave Dobrinion had managed to struggle across the room to retrieve the small knife.