I Know Not (The Story of Fox Crow) (28 page)

      I heard quick steps on the stairs behind me and the pommel of a knife fell into my hand from up my sleeve. It turned out only to be Theo. I waved him back and made to tell him to go back to his duties, but his voice plowed over mine, “What happens now, will they give up?”

      I eyed the sack slung over his deliberately set shoulders. I still needed him to get close to Conaill so I overlooked his harsh tone and told him the truth while I looked for a way to twist it to my advantage, “No, the assassin’s guild will never give up unless the target or the employer dies.”

      “So Lady Conaill will be forever watching for a knife in the dark, then?”

     
There is the opening
, “I won’t let that happen, Theo. I may need your help, but we can keep the Lady safe.”

      His next words had a definite edge, “And that’s what the gold is for?”

      I acted wounded. I acted offended. I was neither. I was shifting the knife in my hand, “No and how could you say such a thing?”

      “How are you going to stop the next assassin?” And that question had a honed point.

      There was a pressure in my head beginning to build, pushing at my eyes, “I don’t know, Theo!”

      “Because you are always a step ahead of them, an expert on all of their methods and all of their equipment.”

      “Would you rather I have let her die, lieutenant?”

      And though his voice was lowered, the force of his heart pushed the words into my face like fists wrapped in iron, “How many of their knives do you have on you even now? How many vials of poison?

      I felt storm clouds gather over me, and dangerous thunder rumbling in my voice, “Watch your tone, boy.”

      “I am only following orders, sir.” He replied, soft voice dripping with sarcasm, “You told me everyone uses everyone else for their own ends, so who are you using, sir?”

      “I drop a weight of gold in your lap and all I get is veiled accusations in return.”

      “You told me to question everyone, so I ask: The inquisitor mentioned that sword belonging to one of his fellows. Where did you come by it?”

      Involuntarily I backed down one stair, “I don’t remember.”

      And like a hound after a fox, he followed, “You’re different. You look at people different. You act different. You are not the man we met on the road. I think you have remembered.”

      I looked down at his right hand and saw he had a knife concealed there. Feeling my own knife in my own hand, I felt a strange surge of pride in the boy, that he had learned what I had to teach. Now he was finally a man. He was a person, he was real, and I could feel insubstantial hands pushing on me to look out for his wants, for his needs. I shook them off and prepared to murder him as my mouth stalled for time. Since my near death and resurrection I have found I have a talent for saying the worst wrong thing at the precisely wrong time.

      “What do you want of me, Theodemar?”

      Slowly, he removed the canvas sack from over his shoulder and held it out to me. The movement created a miniature musical slide of coin on coin. His face, however was not giving, but stony and distant, “Nothing Crow. I want nothing from you.”

      I took the satchel filled with the pouches I had just given the boys, and my practiced hand counted their number by feel alone.

      Theodemar began retreating up the stairs, still facing me, “My men and I are not for sale.”

     
Your friend is afraid of you
, Simon whispered into my mind.
I would say your first new friend, but there are no others
.

      And then Theo was gone.

     
See how easily you are discarded? See how much you really mean to them?

     
I glanced down at the hidden knife in my hand and suddenly I knew why Crow eschewed the safety of self delusion. I am a liar, the biggest liar. I have fooled nobles and sheriffs, peasants and priests. Given enough rancid self pity, could I nearly believe myself.

      I slipped the knife back into its hiding place and continued downward. I left through the front door, passing the guards without another word.

     
I betrayed him. I betrayed them all
. Those thoughts rolled like the thunder of an angry god, shattering my mental walls like kindling. My insides ached and I stumbled on the street until I could find the safety of an alley where judging eyes could not find me. There I leaned in the shadows and hurt for a very long time.

      I went back to the slums and found my way to a bar. It didn’t matter which bar; they all had Whisperers in them.

      It took her less than an hour to find me. She was a mousy, twitchy woman. Not unattractive, but the angry red pox on her face would ward off all but the most foolish of lovers. She blinked incessantly as she scuttled up to the table, never looking directly at me. She fiddled with her soiled clothing and mumbled fractured nursery rhymes to herself. The barman yelled for her to leave as she sang to me, “Eyes are here, ears are there, Ragman must go and give up his share.”

      Her message delivered, she listlessly turned to go. I stared in horror as her colorless form filled with detail. I could feel the disease ravaging her mind and body. I could hear the screaming parts of herself looking for long lost dreams from childhood. Of its own accord, my hand shot out and grasped her wrist. She gasped, and tried to pull away, but suddenly I was standing there, so close she could feel my breath. I could feel every bad decision and every lapsed opportunity weeping out of her dirty pores.

      She struggled weakly, but I held her tightly. Her beautiful gray eyes flew open, radiating fear like two stars. I may never have seen her, or maybe I have seen her a thousand times, but this was the first time I had accepted her as a human being. I leaned close and whispered, “Go to the healers and get them to help you. Then get out of Carolaughan.”

      Her breath was coming in short gasps as she felt a dozen heavy coins quietly slip into a slash in her tunic. There was a spark of something, maybe recognition, maybe understanding, inside of her. Then I let her go with a small fortune hidden in her shirt as I turned to collect my pack.

      Her message had been delivered, however, and I knew my life could very well be coming to a close. The dozen gold coins I had just given away left a hideous hole inside of me, and I felt like a fool, but I had been unable to stop myself. Crow and Simon were both inside me, and unless I could get rid of the unintended result of my broken skull I would surely be dead by midnight. There was no room for Crow in this world.

      Five minutes later I bought a room from the bar man. A half an hour later steaming water was brought up to fill the big wooden bath. A minute after that, I was nude, looking into the face of the water, eyes tracing every stitched together slash and the angry green memories of bruises and breaks.

     
You are a hero, Crow.

     
Gelia’s words ambushed me and shattered all other coherent thoughts. I fell into the tub sending water sloshing in all direction. I opened my mouth to scream and water rushed in, looking to fill my lungs. The vision of the Phantom Angel swam into focus, he was holding out two things to me. I screamed out a silent stream of water as I erupted from the tub. My hands were shaking and the world seemed to erupt into white sparks. I coughed until my throat was raw and then shook hair out of my eyes before I remembered I had shaved it off.

      I glanced around the room, but there was no cloaked apparition, no ghosts of murders past. There was only myself and the clear knowledge that this was not over yet.

16       

The Estuary

of Murder

The lamp in the run down room picked out the blue cat’s–eyes on the Phantom Angel as I hefted, spun, and sent it home in its black sheath. I looked upon the bed where I had spread the captured implements of death. Quietly, I armed myself. Knives and pins and poisons and daggers, caltrops and garrotes and the deadly ring.

      I started to run my fingers through my long, black hair and found nothing but bristle. I stared at my hand for a moment, then forced myself to focus on the matter at hand.

      Next came the rags, subtle variations of muted colors layered over and across the body, turning a man shape in the night into nothing more than a trick of the light. Rags across the face to not just hide, but obliterate the identity, to remove doubt, to become something supernatural in the night.

      I went to the window and smelled the frigid night air, eyes scanning streets and rooftops, bearing death warrants for any errant cloud of breath or misplaced shadow. But no matter how cautious my gaze, it was eventually drawn up past the houses, past the hills, to the great lonely spire of Orphan peak. Ten minutes later I was on the roof, leaping from one, ramshackle collections of tile to another.

      But even at my best, I felt the lead weight of unseen watchers pulling upon me like chains of debts unpaid. The slight movement from an alley, a beggar shifting his head just so, a half-seen face behind a curtain that draws away, these were the hallmarks of the watchers, and now I was their prey. My movements their feast. Each nameless agent a spy for Isahd, the devourer of secrets.

      Ragmen live around us as shadows in the walls. I should know, I’ve been one of them for nearly a decade. Sometimes we were business men, sometimes watchmen, prostitutes, mercenaries, bounty hunters, soldiers, actors, or noble sons who are destined not to inherit. Some, like me, are simply men too small to care how they make their living, and too good at murder to do anything else. We have our meeting places, through they are smaller than you might surmise.

      They call us assassins, but that is only part of who we are. Some sneak into the locked rooms of the world, escaping without trace. Others smash through doors like an avalanche made of hammers. Others put on thousands of different faces, working closely to a bag of coin and slitting its throat at the moment they need us most. I’ve done all three. I’d mastered them.

      I leapt silently from upper stories to lower, and then from low roofs to the street. I approached the public fountain cautiously, feeling dozens of eyes upon me even as I failed to pick out their hiding places. They had to be more Whisperers. Still, they hid from me as I went to the fountain and circled around to the alley behind. It took only a second to locate the concealed catch, less to pull the secret door open and disappear inside. I closed it behind me, plunging myself into blackness as my boots found slippery purchase on the age eroded stairs on either side of the main flow.

      I walked blind for many minutes, the unrelieved darkness pressing in like a shroud as I continued to climb the slight slope. The incline became more pronounced and the flow more determined. I had to go to hold onto the walls with stubborn hands, progress upwards slowed to a crawl as the water-cooled passage throbbed with numbing cold.

      It is supposed that soon after its founding, just after the population boom, the nobles discovered there was not enough water in the wells for the people of Carolaughan. They had an aqueduct built to bring in fresh water from Orphan peak. These pipes, dating back to before the Kingdom split, funneled the water to the cities many fountains where any may stop and fetch water whenever it pleased them. The pillars and archways that held the massive structure aloft may have been a vulnerability of the city, if the barbarians could build a war engine able to scratch them.

      Then I saw the light. It grew larger and larger, and then enveloped me as the path leveled out. Once past the city walls, the builders had given up roofing the massive aqueduct, and the night air seized on the dampness in my clothes to jab at me with needles of cold. Behind me the waterways spread like the veins a dark and forbidding god, but the water sent across the city came from one location where it was collected from the mountain and distributed; the grand cistern.

      Built into the rock face of Orphan Peak, the system worked on the simple principles of gravity and needed little to no upkeep whatsoever. Any problems that arose were resolved by the Ragmen with the idea that no one ever bothered to check on a system that was functioning. The Cistern has been the meeting place for the Ragmen of Carolaughan for as long as I had been here and probably much, much longer.

      Nobles and fools suppose an assassin behind every tree and curtain, in reality there were only five for all of Carolaughan. Two were now dead, I used to be the third.
Used to be?
Thoughts like that one would see me killed. I stood foolishly, silhouetted against the sky. I felt empty and directionless, but I was sure that this would be the last time I would see the cistern alive. As I approached the small, man–made cavern, the smells of food reached me and I knew that Finnegan, the Master, was here. He always was.

      Finnegan was surrounded by braziers, all but one burning a foul, too–sweet incense that clawed at the eyes and lungs. I always caught hints of rot underneath the sickening smoke, but figured it came from the expensive meat on the last bowl full of coals.

      I pulled myself up onto the aged, virdigrised grate that acted as a floor above the water rushing from mountain to city. It groaned under my weight as I closed the distance between us, passing bas–reliefs of naked women pouring water from ever–full jugs.

      The Master of the Assassins Guild was cleaning the meat from a turkey leg. His doublet strained at his waistline and his jowls rested firmly on his chest, swallowing his neck completely. But do not think him simply fat, Finnegan was immense. He was easily a head taller than myself, as wide as two cart horses. Calling him fat was as much an embarrassing understatement as calling him a small mountain range perhaps a slight exaggeration. He wiped plump, nearly spherical palms against velvet pantaloons that were stretched nearly full. Wide, useless feet wiggled in satisfaction as nameless Whisperers toiled at the braziers to prepare a never ending march of food. He flopped back a mop of greasy, stringy hair and shoved some fried potatoes into his face.

      Four of the five Whisperers, their flesh drained of color and their limbs devoid of fat or muscle, moved around him on his wooden throne to adjust a pillow here, a blanket there. The last of the zombie crew was providing the constant stream of food and drink. If he ever left, if he had a home, or another life, I didn’t know of it. I have never seen him otherwise than he was right now, being fed and pampered by his slaves. Of course if he ever left, there would always be the question of how he would ever get back up here.

      Between the platters a large, leather bound and iron shod book sat like a tombstone in a feasting hall. The spider web of thin iron plates created a twisting impression of worms bearing an all seeing, lidless eye. I had never seen inside that book, had never even cared to. I had always believed it carried the records of every assassination committed by Ragmen in Carolaughan. I knew I was about to find out.

      His black, pig–like eyes alit on me, finally torn from the silver plates laden with many steaming feasts. He spoke from around a mouth full half masticated meat but it would not have mattered, his mouth always sounded full. “Simon! I was about to send some more Whisperers to fetch you. I have heard some rather disturbing rumors from The Grand Sage. I thought you might be able to shed some light upon them. Please eat something.”

      I towered over him, his over-wide and bloated body laid out as a perfect target, but he pulled out a large, leather pouch and laid it on the table just past the iron shod tome. The dull glassy clink spoke volumes of its hidden charge. It was a sack of gems. Small shadows within began to reach for me and clench my gut with the hunger for it.

      The lump of flesh before me waved off his servitors and leaned forward, his huge belly straining his clothing at odd angles, pulling at his white under tunic as his fat giggled grotesquely. His sausage–like fingers opened the pouch with astonishing dexterity, spilling precious stones into my sight.

      With enough gold, no man holds sway over any other, no drought, no blight, no sickness cannot be bought away with it. Sweat sprang from my brow as a dull throb started between my shoulder blades.

      “I have a most dangerous mission that has met with some… difficulty.” He swallowed a mouth full of beef, but it didn’t help the words escaping his mouth, “There are rumors that the difficulty is you, Simon.”

      But still I stared at the pouch. Gold was the master of men’s lives, mine as well.

      He paused for a moment.”I do not put too much stock in the tales of Whisperers, informants can be so undependable, you see.”

      I managed to shake my head as my breathing quickened with the anticipation of wealth. I barely caught Finnegan stroking the dark book on his table.

      He leaned back, as if relinquishing the treasure to me, and folded his massive hands on his massive lumpy chest. “Perhaps, given time, I could forget the rumors that seek to rust your reputation of cold steel, but I have a contract that needs doing and it must be done tonight. A noble lady needs to meet you, my friend. There is no time for your usual game of infiltrate and betray.”

      He produced another pouch of gems and discarded it next to the first. They lay like a pile of rings pried from a thousand corpses. My need for them was a physical pain.

      Finnegan continued, “And we have no inside man. We have no time to plan. No time to scout. But you are the best we have, perhaps the best there ever has been, and I have these sacks here that says you will reach her.”

      He produced another pouch and dropped it next to the other two. My world had spiraled down upon the gems flowing from the purses. The wealth alone was a shining castle, a warm hearth, protection from the long and bitter trek from my broken and burnt home…

      A crystal scream, pure and resonant, called out. It slammed into me, bringing back the faces of all those I had ever betrayed, all those I had ever abandoned, all those I had ever murdered. I saw the face of Aelia so clearly it obliterated the world on every side. My back exploded into the familiar field of dagger tips and barbed claws. I collapsed to the grate.

      The scream continued, undulated, resolved out of a thousand echoes into a raven’s cry. But Finnegan was now yelling shrilly, his voice ragged and fearful, “Where is it? Kill it! Kill it!”

      The echoes faded into silence, but I did not waste the respite. I dug frantically into my belt pouch as I struggled to my knees. But Finnegan was there, speaking in a voice both soft and brittle to me, “Come now, Simon. Eat something, you look very pale. Just take the purse, drink some wine, and I will let you know the name of her.”

      My life was a graveyard filled with the corpses of other people’s families. My road had been washed with blood and paved with skulls. I was a pit. A pit with a mouth wide enough to swallow anyone worth coin. I tried to talk, but the pain was enormous, and it swatted the air from my lungs. Finnegan’s brow gathered promised retribution, his lips pursed as his voice became firm, “Sit down, Simon. You have work to do.”

      The invisible knives still ravaging my back I stood straight, defying the pain, defying Finnegan. I could hear the fat man clench his jaw, further hobbling words that sounded strangled past a tongue swollen from foul poison, “I don’t know what you think you are accomplishing, Simon. You cannot ignore your bondage.”

      I heard the ghosts of words hidden in the echoes of the cistern,
You are a Hero, Fox Crow. You always have been, and you always will be.
The pain becomes a blinding torrent of broken glass showering me from head to feet. Still my hands fumble blindly with my belt pouch. My eyes saw nothing but the intertwining lights that blotted out the entire world.