The Assassin's Résumé
L
aughter filled the tavern immediately.
“No way,” a grizzled mercenary said. “A little pipsqueak like you couldn't have killed nearly a hundred people.”
“I didn't do it with a blade,” Wick said. “They had to look like accidents. That's what I specialize in. Trip wires on stairs. Snakes in beds. Death by horseâ”
“Death by horse?” a man asked. “You hire the horse?”
“No,” Wick said, finding himself curiously drawn to his stories, which were lifted from various compendiums on assassinations he'd read. Grandmagister Frollo hadn't exactly been thrilled about finding those on Wick's personal reading list, either. Grandmagister Frollo wasn't of the opinion that all knowledge should be saved. “You can put a burr under a horse's saddle. Or poison it so it temporarily goes mad. Then you can just talk them into killing their riders.”
“Talk to horses?”
Too late, Wick realized that he'd selected a means that didn't come readily to anyone other than elven warders. “I was taught the trick by an elven assassin.”
“An elven assassin?” The doubt was evident in the sailor's voice. “Elves don't take easily to that trade.”
“Not easily,” Wick agreed. “But sometimes the best solution to a problem is one corpse taken quietly so that ten others don't need to be taken.” He paused. “Of course, the best tool of the trade is poison. I know how to make hundreds of poisons.”
“Poisons,” Krok repeated.
“Yes.” Wick tried to act nonchalant. “I once walked into a
banquet room with an incense shaker and spread invisible poisonous dust over the meals of eight men whose deaths I'd been paid for. The first one was dying as I walked out of the room.” He shook his head. “Still, it was a near thing. The poison had acted much more quickly than I'd wagered.”
Silence filled the tavern, and most of the patrons pushed their unfinished plates away.
“Is this true?” Krok asked.
“Of course it's true,” Wick replied, warming to the hope that he could emerge with a whole skin. He tried to act calm and detached.
In the corner, a quiet smile flirted with Quarrel's lips. It appeared that the young man didn't quite believe Wick's tales. Thankfully, it seemed he was the only one who didn't.
“Mayhap the halfer's telling the truth,” someone suggested.
“We'd have heard of him here,” one of the men said. “We get to know everyone in that line of trade who come through here.”
“This is my first time here,” Wick said. “I didn't want to be known to so many.” He paused. “I wasn't exactly given a choice here today.”
“How did you keep us from hearing about you?”
Wick thought quickly and snatched at the first idea he thought was believable. “I'm really good at, uh, thievery and assassinations.”
Silence hung in the tavern for a moment, then the thieves, murderers, assassins, thieves, etc. started laughing. They slapped their legs and thumped on the table.
“
Nobody
is
that
good,” a slim man in black and purple clothing stated. He stood and touched his chest, filled with pompous pride. “I'm Dawarn the Nimble. Perhaps you've heard of me.”
“You're a burglar,” Wick replied instantly. “There's a price on your head up in Kelloch's Harbor, a job waiting for you in Hanged Elf's Point if you decide you want it, and merchants in Drakemoor, Talloch, and Cardin's Deep want you dead. Well, maybe not Merchant Olligar in Cardin's Deep because he doesn't think the warehouse fire was truly your fault, and it worked out for him. Oh, and the captain of
Wavecutter
still wants you to pay off on the percentage he was supposed to get for helping you in Bardek's Cove.”
An instant hubbub of conversations started around the room.
Then, “You never paid off on that percentage to Cap'n Huljar?” someone demanded.
Dawarn instantly lost some of his pompousness, throwing up his hands to the crowd that suddenly bristled against him. “Hey! Hey! Stop snarling and snapping like a pack of wolves! I was going to pay him! I still am!” He frowned. “Things in Bardek's Cove just got â¦
complicated
.”
“So complicated you stiffed Huljar?” someone said. “You don't stiff Huljar. You're lucky you're still walking around breathing through your nose instead of your neck.”
“I'm not the one under suspicion here,” Dawarn pointed out, taking his seat again, no longer wanting attention. “It's him!” He threw a finger toward Wick.
“Okay,” Krok snarled, turning back to Wick, “so you know Dawarn, and you
even know some of the work he's done. Including stiffing friends.” He threw a sidelong glare at the offending burglar. “That doesn't mean you're who you say you are.”
Wick gave the accusation consideration but didn't see an immediate answer.
“Test him,” someone said.
Heads turned, all of them focusing on Quarrel. The young man sat at a table by himself. He'd unwrapped his face, revealing smooth-shaven, youthful features.
“He came in with you, Quarrel,” Krok said.
“No,” Quarrel replied. “He's not with me.” He paused. “
You
let him in, Krok. If you want to make anyone responsible for his presence here, you have to take it. You could easily have left him outside.”
Krok scowled. “Anybody else here want to get identified?”
No one volunteered.
“Just because he knows faces and names,” Quarrel said, “doesn't mean that he's a clever thief or an assassin.” He regarded Wick. “You should test him.”
I hope you're caught in whatever your next endeavor is
, Wick thought. Anxiety thrummed through him.
“All right then,” Krok said. “A test. What kind of test?”
Wick thought he saw a way clear. He crossed his arms and looked as defiantly as he could out at the crowd. He was glad he was in baggy pants and not standing, because he didn't know if he'd be able to stand on his shaking knees.
“Pick someone for me to poison,” Wick said, feeling certain that no one would be brought forth. Even if someone was, he could concoct something that would put a victim into a coma for several days. Provided the victim wasn't buried or thrown out into the harbor, he would recover. By then, with luck, Wick would be long gone from Wharf Rat's Warren.
“He doesn't just claim to be an assassin,” Quarrel reminded. “He also says he's a thief. Let's see if he's as good a thief as he claims to be an assassin.”
I really don't care for you
, Wick thought.
“That's right! See if he's truly a thief,” a man with a peg leg suggested. “Have him pick Utald's safe.”
“A safe!” Wick cried, feeling instant relief. At the Vault of All Known Knowledge he was in the habit of tripping mousetraps so none of them would get hurt. He also kept the cats fed when no one was looking. “That's easy enough!” After all, he'd read several books on the manufacture of safes and lock-picking, which went surprisingly hand in hand in a lot of areas.
Surely they can't come up with anything I'm not familiar with.
His enthusiasm, however, seemed ill placed. Evidently no one had expected quite that reaction. Everyone stared at him with increased suspicion.
Wick quickly realized that none of Deodarb's characters would have reacted in quite the same manner. He deepened his voice. “I mean, bring it on, you muttonheads.”
There. That's tough enough, isn't it?
“âMuttonheads,' is it?” Krok slapped his big hands on the counter on either side of Wick, emphasizing the fact that he could crush him if he wanted to.
“I was talking to the muttonheads,” Wick said weakly.
Was that too tough? It had to have been too tough.
“Not to you. You're not a muttonhead. I wouldn't ever
call you a muttonhead.”
Maybe a cold-blooded killer. Maybe stinky, but never to your face. Maybe
â
“Utald,” Krok roared. “The safe.” He fisted Wick's cloak and blouse in his big hand again and lifted him from the counter.
The barkeep, who until this point had been a silent spectator to the action, walked to the wall of bottles behind the counter and slapped a big hand on the wall. Tall and overweight with sloping shoulders and long gray hair, the barkeep looked like a mercenary who'd gone to seed.
At the end of the series of slaps, a section of the wall popped open. The barkeep grabbed the hidden door and swung it wide.
“My safe,” the barkeep said. “Nobody gets into
my
safe.”
It was impressive looking, Wick thought. The safe was a contraption of hammered metal plates, springs, gears, wheels, and levers. None of the safes Wick had ever seen had looked quite the equal of this one. When it came to safes, this one was a dreadnaught.
“There she is.” Utald slapped the safe's side with obvious affection. “I call her Lusylle. She's the best of the best.”
“No one's ever beaten Lusylle,” Krok said. “There's a lot of thieves who have tried.”
“They all call her âheartbreaker,'” Utald said.
“Well,” Wick said grimly. “We'll see about that.” (He said that with much more confidence than he felt.) “If you'll put me down.”
Krok looked at Wick dangling from the end of his arm. “Oh. Okay.” He opened his fingers.
Unceremoniously, Wick plopped to the ground and landed on his posterior. After all the slips and falls with the donkey, that region was already overly sensitive. He pushed himself back up. His lock-pick kit fell to the floor and scattered.
“Say,” one of the men said, peering over the counter, “isn't that a Gladarn's Lock-picking Kit Number Six?”
“It's a Number Nine,” Wick said. “It's acid-proof.”
An appreciative
ooooohh
came from the thieves in the audience. At least, the ones that were above the regular cut-and-slash or thump-and-run caliber.
“Acid-proof,” one old man said. “Now I could have used some of those when I went up against Thomobor's Forbidden Chest. Took me three days to get inside his fortress and two shakes of a lamb's tail for me to lose my lock-picks.” He shook his head. “I never got that close again.”
Wick set himself before the lock. As he considered the problem before him, all his fear seemed to drain away. The only thing that seemed to exist in his world was the conundrum of the safe.
“Little halfer's got his work cut out for him,” someone murmured.
“Where did Utald get that safe?”
“Don't know. He's always had it here.”
“Ever seen it open?”
“Nope.”
Spinning the dials, Wick worked the springs and plates, pushing and shoving
as he tried to find the rhythm of the safe. The safe was like a living, breathing organism, and everything had to be in perfect balance.
Snikk!
“That was the first lock,” a man whispered.
“Has anyone ever popped the first lock?”
“Langres,” Krok said. “But that's been two years or more.”
“Four years.”
“I said âor more,' didn't I?” Krok asked irritably. “Four's more than two.”
Ignoring them, captivated by the challenge of the safe, Wick kept searching for hidden pins to the second lock. After reading the books on lock-picking, he'd practiced on locks around the Vault of All Known Knowledge, until he'd locked himself into a closet and couldn't get to the lock. He hadn't noticed that fact until he was standing in the dark. Grandmagister Frollo had found him still standing in the dark a few hours later, looking for a monograph Wick was supposed to complete on sail design of the Silver Sea merchant ships. After that, Grandmagister Frollo had taken away Wick's lock-picks and forbidden him to lock himself in anything again.
Claaa-aaack!
The second lock popped.
“He's got a
second
lock!”
“How many more to go?”
“Three, I think. Hey, Utald, how many more locks?”
Wick glanced up at the barkeep, who continued to stand there impassively, arms crossed over his chest.
Utald shook his head. “Let the halfer find out.”
The third lock wouldn't surrender its secrets. Wick used thin silver wire to snake out the confines of the mechanism, but had trouble picturing the device in his mind. Every time he almost had the pins in place, they dropped back into locking position.