He rose from his desk and went to the locked closet where he stored his personal archives. He removed a keyring from his pocket and unlocked three locks with three different keys.
The closet shelves were filled with stacks of loose papers, all arranged in particular order. Leather binders also adorned the shelves, capturing more important documents. But the most important sat in the locked chest on the closet floor. He took a fourth key and unlocked it.
He dropped his pipe from his mouth when he lifted the lid and saw what was inside.
The chest was empty except for a small envelope at the bottom stamped with a wax seal imprinted with a maple leaf. It lay atop a leather binder he had never seen before. He stared at it a moment, and then snatched it, forgetting the fallen pipe. Trembling, he broke the seal and removed a small, folded note which read:
To the leader of Malahkma,
Here are the documents you requested.
~Kristafrost
PS. I’ve taken the liberty of accepting the previous contents of this box as payment.
Underneath the signature was a crudely drawn face with two dots for eyes and a semicircular smile. His eyes shuttled back and forth as he reread the note over and over again, a cold chill descending to his fingers and toes.
He opened the binder. There between the leather folios were the stolen Assassins Guild contracts. He couldn’t decipher their code, but he didn’t need to. The bits that were unencrypted were clear enough. He shook at the implications. He had been thinking to find these and use these as leverage against the Assassins. Now, they might think he was behind the theft.
Kristafrost.
“Karanos’ stones!”
“What in the Abyss am I supposed to do?” Skole asked Pavlin later that evening. Skole had intercepted the man before he visited the elf’s bedchamber.
Pavlin shrugged. “I don’t know. Is this important right now?”
“The elf bitch can wait. You’re supposed to keep the peace.”
“I can’t keep the peace if you steal from the Assassins.”
“I didn’t,” Skole said.
Pavlin seemed unconvinced. “Didn’t you? Your ambitions aren’t exactly secret anymore.”
“I swear on the ghost of the God-King I did not.”
Pavlin raised an eyebrow. “No, I suppose you didn’t. If you had, you wouldn’t have told me. You would have kept and used the documents. The person who left it must be unknown.”
“Kristafrost.”
“The same mystery thief?”
“The same sack of night soil.”
“The last time that name surfaced, the Thieves Guild’s leader paid with his life.”
“The thought hasn’t escaped me,” Skole muttered.
“You had better not let anyone else know,” advised Pavlin.
“Damn you! Don’t you see? This Kristafrost wants the Assassins to think I did it!”
Pavlin’s eyes flashed. “I may be helping you, but you will treat me with respect.”
Skole nodded. “Sorry. I need protection.” He could face an orc in open combat, but the Assassins didn’t play fair like the orcs did. They wouldn’t come at you from the front.
“Protection? Adding Templars to your guards isn’t going to help you. Besides, I can’t have the Templars so visibly take up stations around your guildhall. It will be too obvious, and they won’t do it. As it is now, they only do what I say because they believe we’re working for the greater good.”
Skole folded his hands over his chest. “There’s only one thing I can do,” he said.
Pavlin looked past him and over his shoulder to the hall that led to Eszhira’s room. “What’s that?” he asked absently.
“I must decipher the documents. Once I uncover their membership and contract history, I will have a bargaining chip.”
Pavlin returned his attention to Skole. “That seems reasonable.”
Skole nodded. “Go have your evening, my friend,” he said, suddenly feeling better about the matter. The Thieves Guild worked for him. Surely they would have an expert in cryptology.
A week later, the cryptologist provided by the Thieves Guild still had not successfully cracked the code. He said he was making progress but Skole grew impatient. Things were getting worse. Whoever had stolen his secrets—damn it all, but he should have encoded them—had managed to cut off his supply of Malahkma’s Milk. His reserves dwindled, and he already had to prioritize the supply that kept his whores in line over the supply to the junkies who bought the drug on the street. It was only a matter of time before he would have to let his satellite houses go without resupply.
Then, in the third week of June, it happened. He read a report that someone had attacked one of his guildhalls and set the whores free. Without the supply of Malahkma’s Milk to keep them there, they left. His guards had not been killed. Odd. He crumpled the paper.
He slammed his fists on the desk.
A random move of his head saved his life. A whiff of air brushed past his ear. Instinctively, he thrust his elbow behind him, connecting with someone’s stomach. He heard a grunt of pain and sprang forward away from his silent attacker.
Skole whirled. The man wore a nondescript tan cotton shirt and matching leggings. He held a small dagger, hardly more than a shiv, in his right hand. He had short brown hair, unremarkable brown eyes, and a face of no noticeable features. In every way, he was uncommonly common.
“I don’t know how the hell you got in here,” Skole threatened, “but you won’t be leaving.”
The man said nothing and showed no expression. He just stared at Skole and advanced, knife in hand.
Skole drew his own dagger, much larger than the brown-clothed man’s. He waited for him to advance within range, and then he struck with deadly speed and precision.
The man proved faster. He sidestepped ever so slightly and, with a swift flick of his wrist, struck the back of Skole’s hand with the pommel of his blade. Skole’s hand opened wide from the snapping pain, dropping the dagger to the floor.
The man smiled.
Skole frowned. He was twice the size of the assassin. He should be able to overpower him as he had the orc. He swung his left fist around, intending to snap the man’s head back.
Again Skole was fast, and again the man was faster. He shifted his weight and lifted Skole’s punch with his open hand away from his head. Skole’s fist flew harmlessly past his assailant.
The man then punched Skole in the ribs, and the larger man fell back a step.
Skole bellowed in rage, unleashing a flurry of blows. The man deflected each one, and then twisted Skole around, bending him over the table. Skole’s face flushed red with anger. The man toyed with him—he held the knife but didn’t use it.
The brown-clad man held the dagger underneath Skole’s ear as he pushed his face into the wooden table.
“Where are our papers?” the man finally asked.
“What papers?” Skole lied.
“This blade is covered with a poison derived from gorgon blood,” the man explained calmly. “You either die quickly, painlessly, or you slowly turn to stone over the course of hours. The choice is yours.”
Skole’s eyes involuntarily flickered to the closet. He realized his mistake and turned his gaze back to his attacker. Then he saw his only opening. The brown man’s gaze also flicked to the closet.
Skole flung his weight and twisted out of the man’s hold, catching the assassin’s wrist. Now that he had him, he was clearly the strongest. The man tried to twist in towards him and spiral away, but this time Skole punched him with his left fist, knocking the breath out of him. At the same time, he twisted the man’s right hand down, hearing a satisfying snap as the arm broke. He plunged the poisoned knife into the assassin’s hip.
The man’s eyes widened in fear, his composure finally breaking. “NO!”
Skole dumped him to the floor, kicking the knife away from him.
The assassin grabbed another knife from his boot. He lifted i
t back and flung it at the leader of Malahkma. Skole ducked just in time as the knife lodged in the wall behind him.
He didn’t know how many more weapons the assassin had, but he knew the assassin would not stop trying to kill his target, even with his own hours numbered. Skole grabbed his desk and lifted it, slamming it down and pinning the man to the floor, eliciting the snapping sound of several ribs.
The man laughed through gurgled blood. “We won’t stop,” he said. “We never—”
His words were cut short as Skole slammed the heel of his boot into his face. He stomped again and again until the man’s skull cracked and blood flowed from his eyes, nose, and ears over the ground.
“Indeed?” Skole panted, addressing the now dead man. “Neither will I. We’ll break your code, and then I’ll be hunting you bastards!”
Skole dragged the body out of his office to the front of the guildhall, causing patrons to gasp at the bloody trail.
“Bring me some rope,” he told his captains. “And a stake.”
He took all three to the center of the road and pounded the stake into the ground. He tied the corpse up and posted a sign on top of it that said, “This is the first.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he signed it, “~Kristafrost.”
Six hours later, the corpse solidified into stone as the gorgon poison worked its magic.
That night, Skole called on the new leader of the Thieves Guild.
“I have a problem that needs to be solved,” he said.
“You already have our best cryptologist,” the thief replied.
“No, not that problem. Another problem. The real problem for both of us.”
“What do you need?”
“I want you to use a third-party agent, one who is not known to associate with either of us, and contact the Assassins Guild.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I want you to hire them. It is said they never stop until a contract is fulfilled.”
“That is true. Who is the victim?”
Everything had become clear. He would fight fire with fire. “Kristafrost must die.”
30 - Elven Magic
Eszhira waited expectantly for Pavlin. She hated that she looked forward to his visits. Her body took his presence as a sign that Malahkma’s Milk would soon be forthcoming, and she experienced a sort of anticipatory pre-rush when she saw him. The milk… that would make the voices go away. And she had come to take perverse pleasure in their encounters despite how much she also loathed them.
At first she hated him for beating her and for using her body for his sweaty, grunting pleasure. All hate was wiped away with the drug after he left, and every morning she awoke feeling guilt and self-loathing, promising herself she would resist him and refuse the drug the next evening. But that never happened. The voices grew too loud, and that was the worst torture of all. Sometimes it seemed as if they would take over her mind completely and she would lose control of her body, maybe even lose her sense of self.
Finally, one day she did hit back. He seemed to enjoy it more, and she found that fighting excited her. He wanted her to hit him.
And then she understood.
He didn’t hate her. He hated himself for how low he had fallen and for what he did to her. She had become his outlet, her body his confessor; and now, he became hers. She fought him and then fucked him to beat away her own sense of shame and to beat away the voices that threatened to overwhelm her. Every act became an act of violence. Her fists gave release to her hate for him and for Skole. When she remembered it was not him she hated but her own weakness, she punished herself by opening her legs, telling herself with a twisted sense of smug satisfaction that she was getting what she deserved.
And the rage kept the voices inside her at bay until the milk arrived.
Jorey’s face showed fear for her the first time Pavlin left her chamber with his own blood on his face. Skole was furious at first, but Pavlin must have calmed him, for no punishment came. This time, Pavlin was allowed to give her the milk, and it was he and not Jorey who wiped the blood from her face. And she wiped the blood from his.
After that, his beatings grew softer, taking care to bruise rather than break. She returned his fury blow for blow. They both understood that they needed each other. They fought, and then reveled in the anger of their sex.
He came at his usual time that evening, with a somewhat troubled look on his face. He seemed distant, far away.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing you need concern yourself with, elf,” he said.
She walked up to him and slapped him.
He grinned and threw her against the wall. Her elbows hit solid wood, and pain throbbed through her limbs. He balled up his fist and punched her in the gut, knocking the wind out of her. She doubled over, unable to breathe as he undid the laces on her blouse.
She recovered and elbowed him across the side of his face, and then grabbed his hair, pulling back his head. She took his lower lip in her mouth in something between a bite and a kiss, and then stepped back and kicked him in the chest, slamming him into the floor.
He fell back, and she jumped on top of him, straddling his sides. She pulled off her blouse and bent down to kiss him. His hands reached under her dress and found her hips. He returned her kiss, then threw her off him onto the bed. He proceeded to strike her back with his open palm until her gray skin with indigo whorls started to show green. Each blow felt harder on her back, and she relished the tears that formed in her eyes.
You deserve this, the voices berated her. You are nothing. Pathetic. Unworthy.
He stopped.
She turned to face him on hands and knees, expecting to see him standing over her.
Instead, she saw him lying unconscious on the ground. A little gnome just over three feet in height stood over him, dressed in a formfitting black suit and wearing a patch on one eye. Her arms were crossed angrily over her chest as she glared at the elf.
“This has got to stop,” the gnome said. “Put your clothes on. You’re coming with me.”
Eszhira shivered suddenly. All pretenses at pleasure left her and she felt dirty.
“I—I can’t leave,” she stammered. She looked down at Pavlin. He was breathing.
“What? Why? You can’t tell me you want this.”
“Yes, I… no. No, I mean… but I need… I need my medicine.”
“Ah,” the gnome stated dryly. “I see. What’s your name?”
“Eszhira.”
“Look, Ezzie. I know you think you need this medicine, and I know you think you’ll die without it. But you won’t. I can help you be free of this place and never need Malahkma’s Milk again, but you have to trust me enough to come with me.”
“You don’t understand,” she stammered. “I can’t. It keeps me… me. Please, I need to have it. At least a little more.”
The gnome shook her head. “There’s no time. I need you to trust me.” She held out an open hand.
“No… the voices will take me.”
Tell her the truth, the Fae hissed. You just want to FEEL that again. Nothing is more important. You paid the price with your body, you deserve to feel GOOD again. It’s the ONLY way you can feel good.
“I…” Suddenly, she felt anger at all the Fae ghosts within her. There was one thing she could do to spite them, and that was fight them. “I will go with you.”
The door burst open, and Jorey rushed into the room with his shotgun. He saw Pavlin on the floor and looked around for the attacker. He didn’t look down far enough.
The gnome moved quickly and was suddenly behind him.
“NO!” Eszhira shouted. “Don’t hurt him!”
The gnome jumped and jabbed the back of his neck with her fingers. He dropped the gun and seemed stuck in his stance.
“Why?” the gnome asked.
“He’s the only one who’s shown me kindness. He doesn’t want to be here.”
“But he is here. He chose to be.”
“Like me. Malahkm
a has its claws in him.”
The gnome considered. She jabbed the man again and his body relaxed. “You have five seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t hurt you. A lot.”
The man put his hands up, palms open in surrender. “My wife and daughter,” he said. “Skole threatened to do to them what he did to her.”
The gnome sighed. “If we take them too, will you come with us and help me?”
“Help you what?”
“Take down Skole and those like him,” she answered. “This,” she said, gesturing to Eszhira, and the room, “cannot be allowed to continue.”
“Yes, I’ll help you,” he said. “If you can promise my wife and daughter will be safe.”
“I can’t promise you that. No one knows what will happen. But I can promise that they’ll be safer than they are under Skole’s ownership. Do you think you will be useful to him forever?”
He nodded. “You’re right. Yes, I’ll come with you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jorey.”
“Well, Jorey, get your gun. And if Ezzie here doesn’t agree to come, you’re to carry her over your shoulder, do you understand?”
Eszhira felt his gaze on her bruised shoulders and breasts. “Yes, I understand,” he said.
“And for the love of decency, put your clothes on!” The gnome pointed indignantly at Eszhira’s blouse still lying on the floor.
The seelie did as she was told, covering herself.
Eszhira looked down at Pavlin for a moment, and the gnome must have seen the murder in her eyes.
“Not now, Ezzie,” the gnome said. “I don’t like to kill, and I don’t like my friends to kill. They’ll do that to each other.”
“Okay,” Eszhira acquiesced. “Okay.” Just one more cup of the milk… maybe she could find— “We need to leave before I change my mind.”
The gnomish woman with the eyepatch nodded.
“Give me a second,” she said and left the room.
A few minutes later she returned. “Okay, we can leave now.” She led them out of the guildhall. There was no one to block their exit. Every guard and patron had been put to sleep somehow, unconscious in their chairs or on the floor.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 29