by Eve Forward
“I dinna know,” said Arcie to Sam, peering over his cards at Blackmail, who delicately held a fan of cards in his huge dark gauntlets. “Are that cheating? It truly are impossible to tell if he’s bluffing or nay.” Arcie glanced over at the assassin, who was still wrapped in his black mask, gray eyes glinting out from the folds. “O’ course, you aren’t much different.”
“Don’t complain, Arcie ...” muttered Sam, his voice muffled. He tossed a silver stellin into the pot. “I’m in.”
“I as well,” replied Valerie from within her hood, adding a small gold spangle. She looked different, Sam noticed ... then realized that the black raven that was so much a part of her costume was missing. A quick glance around located it perched behind the Barigan’s chair, peering over his shoulder with intense interest. Sam smiled to himself in his mask, despite his cold loathing. A very clever trick, that. The ship’s crew had fixed the sails and the ship was heading along at a good clip, while the crew cast confused glances at the strange group playing Bunker’s Aces on the deck, using wineglasses to keep the cards from blowing away in the wind.
Valerie watched Sam try to take a sip of his wine, fumble with the scarf, then set the glass down untasted. “Why don’t you take that thing off, assassin? It’s not like you’re going to be working on board ship,” she asked. Sam stiffened imperceptibly and answered coldly.
“I happen to like it, thank you. It keeps the sun out of my eyes.” Kaylana, who could not begin to fathom the many and varied rules of Bunker’s Aces and instead was amusing herself by peering over the deck and counting porpoises, turned around at this.
“You know, Sam, I suspect something is the matter with your eyes, a touch of cataract perhaps. I noticed it the other day.”
“Aye, the lassie’s right,” agreed Arcie, casually palming a card out of his sleeve. “I noticed it too ... yer eyes look a tad cloudy.” Actually, he thought to himself, they look like they’re made of lead, but no sense worrying the man.
“Nothing wrong with me,” muttered Sam. “I can see just fine.”
“Oh?” asked Kaylana. “Can you tell me what you see over there?” She indicated a general area of water off the forward port side. Sam stood up and looked.
“Of course,” he scoffed. “It’s a fair-sized white boat. Now quit bothering me, Kaylana,” he growled, and sat back down. Kaylana tapped her staff thoughtfully. This was a far change from the assassin of only last week who had been one of the first to pull out of the near-certain intergroup conflict in the Fens. She decided to let it pass for now. Arcie too seemed to notice his friend’s discomfiture and decided to try and bring him out with a bit of conversation. Sam had always liked to give long melancholy monologues about the justification for his profession ... maybe the chance to do so now would cheer him.
He looked around. The sailors for the most part had gone down into the galley for their evening meal, leaving a skeleton crew on deck who were watching wind and weather and not paying attention to the group of card players. Safe enough. Valerie folded with a shrug and sat back as Arcie cleared his throat and addressed the sullen assassin. “Sam, you got us into a bit of trouble back there, with the guards, ye know ... just for mine own curiosity, as your employer, would you mind explaining why you did something so stupid?”
For a moment, Arcie thought the assassin wasn’t going to answer. But then a cold, soft voice spoke up from the shadowy folds of black silk.
“When I was young, five years old or so, I don’t really know how old I was, or even how old I am now. The Guild was never really sure ... but anyway, I lived with my mother in one of the scrappiest firetraps in Bistort. You know, over down in Turglin Street? Near the corner of Tanner’s Alley.”
“But there’s nowt there now,” said Arcie. “It all burned down a long time ago, and the mayor were going to put up lots of new buildings, but was busy with other things for so long that eventually it just sort of were cleared away and added to the open market area.”
Sam nodded. “That’s right. But when we lived there, it was a tottering collection of termite-and-rat-infested timber. The mayor was going to tear it down anyway, and build new houses and shops and things ... we were afraid, because if he did we’d be out on the streets in the cold. He never got around to it, though ... that was old Felspot, of course, not quite like the new folks and all the whitewashing and whatnot.” Sam sighed, and-toyed with his wineglass. He wasn’t sure why he was bothering to tell them all this. Perhaps simply to take his mind away from the driveling stupidity of the card game, or perhaps because it didn’t matter anyway; if things worked out correctly, as they were sure to, every one of those listening here would be dead and floating to the bottom of the sea before dawn tomorrow. He went on.
“My mother was always weak, always sick ... I don’t think she ever recovered from the strain of having me, probably some cold winter when she’d likely been starving for weeks. She wasn’t quite clear in her head sometimes, either. She could never remember who my father was, nor where he’d gone, nor what he looked like. But she loved me, and took care of me as best she could. I had to grow up fast, there, and as soon as I was able to I helped out-scrounging for food in the gutters, begging for coins in the streets... you know the usual sob story.”
Arcie nodded. He’d given more than one thin waif wandering the twilight alleys a couple of coins out of sympathy, a weak spot based in his rather domestic Barigan nature that the other parts of him snickered at. Valerie rolled her eyes and looked away, but Blackmail had set his cards aside and listened in silence. The assassin’s quiet voice seemed to cut through the rush and slap of water against the hull like a cold breeze, a mist from the paths of time, tinged with his new strange bitter coldness and also an older, softer sorrow that had always earned him a reputation for melancholy. The voice and its words seemed to reach back into their own pasts, touching on tragedies long buried in the darkness, long forgotten but still as deep as tears.
“My father, whoever he was, left us penniless. Mother couldn’t get a job; she was too weak for most labor and too ... confused a lot of the time to do any intellectual work. So I brought home the bread, or cheese rinds, or whatever, especially when she took a turn for the worse one winter.” Sam stretched out his long black-clad legs and peered up at the dim blue evening sky.
“I came home one evening and found her and some out-of-town drunk in the back room. He’d beaten her nearly senseless and raped her half dead. The place was a shambles. He was still... slapping her, yelling, naked, and she was bloody all over, bruised, and making the most terrible sound I’d ever heard, like a drowning puppy. It was quite a shock to a five-year-old boy. I suppose the smart thing to do would have been to run away ... but I didn’t feel scared, just cold, standing in the shadows by the doorway. And then... then I felt something, I can’t describe it. No one who’s not an assassin can really understand the feeling of fire in the blood. I moved, I grabbed the leg of a stool that had broken off, all jagged, and then I just sprang. I don’t know how it happened, how a little underfed boy could get the better of a man seven times his age and a dozen times more his weight and skill... but all there was, was cold fire and thrashing and blood and shouting, and we fell down ... he thrashed, and knocked over our one clay lamp, and it hit the floor and burst into flames as we fought. Then he went limp, blood pouring out of this hole the sharp end of the stick had made in his throat. I was shaking, tried to get my mother to get up, to get out of the house, because the flames were leaping up the walls. But she just lay there, making that terrible, despairing noise, that noise that tore into my chest like jagged ice and left huge rips in my heart ... and I heard her sobbing,”Not again, not again ...’ and then she made a choking sound, her eyes not seeing me, glazing over, still...
“The flames were roaring then, burning the tinder-dry wood, and smoke was everywhere. I staggered away, the heat was blistering my skin, the dead man on the floor smelling like a funeral pyre. I tried to lift my mother’s body, thinking in that stu
pid way kids have that I could save her ... but it wasn’t any use, and I finally had to stumble out of the room. I’d just made it to the front hall when the whole building collapsed, burning timbers fall ing all around me, dropping with me two floors down to the street level.”
Sam paused, and sighed. “Obviously, I survived. I was half-buried under burning rubble, blinded, choked with smoke. I’d probably have died in the rest of the blaze ex cept for the fact that Miner and Fradagar happened to be heading back to the Guild and, seeing the flames, went to watch. They saw me fall out of the building and pulled me out of the burning logs. They took me back to the Guild, dressed my wounds, fed me, and then trained me as one of their own. They said later they saw in me the potential and the cold fire that makes us what we are and felt they could do no less. They felt it unsafe to let someone with the mak ings of an assassin walk the streets without the training and discipline of the trade.” Sam clicked his tongue in idle thought. “So, that’s the basis of the reason... ever since, when I think of that night, and of that sound my mother made as she lay there dying ... When the circumstances occur, I allow myself one kill without a client, without payment... an assassin is quick and sure, and the most merciful death there is when he chooses. But no one, and no lady in particular, should have to suffer as my mother did that night.”
There was silence a long moment. Sam felt mildly conspicuous.
He decided to change the subject.
“That white boat’s closer,” he commented, looking over the rail at it. “But it’s not moving. Is it anchored?”
“It is certainly still,” agreed Kaylana, watching it.
“But this is very deep water here, in almost the center of the channel... They would need to have an extremely long chain to anchor here.”
“Puzzling,” said Valerie. “Perhaps one of the crew knows of it.” The sorceress stood up and beckoned over the first mate, who had come up on deck for his shift. He walked over politely.
“Yes’m?” he inquired, Valerie resisted the urge to smile at him. Dinner had been nothing more appetizing than salted meats, bread, cheese, and fish. She found herself wondering if men of the sea would have that same tang of salt about their flesh, but quickly pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind.
“Yonder white ship,” she began, waving one graceful black-clawed hand in the craft’s general direction. “Do you know of it?”
The first mate nodded respectfully. “Aye, m’m, ‘tis the craft of a fine wizard. His peaceful retreat, I have heard it rumored. ‘Tis by his magic that she stays in place despite the deep water and the pull of the tides.”
“Wizard?” Sam’s black-wrapped head snapped up. “It belongs to a wizard?”
“Aye, sir,” confirmed the fellow. “A most ancient and noble mage, with hair of silver white, robes the same, and a staff of great power, set with a shining gemstone.” He shuffled his feet a moment, then added, “Or so I have heard it said ... I myself have not laid eyes upon this mage. He is most secretive.” Sam was very still for a moment. Then he nodded, and got up, stretched, and walked to the hold. The first mate noticed a rope flapping loose, and went to tie it as the companions looked at each other.
“Do ye think he’s going to ...” began Arcie. Valerie shook her head.
“Of course not. It’s hundreds of yards away through choppy, cold, shark-infested waters. Besides which, it probably isn’t even Mizzamir, and Sam no doubt realizes this. It would be folly to try to swim to that craft, and if it is Mizzamir, Sam will be so worn out from the swim he’d likely be killed.”
“Yes, I do not think he will do anything,” agreed Kaylana. “The assassin is not stupid.”
“I suppose ...” said Arcie doubtfully, looking the way Sam had gone. “But he are persistent.” He got up and padded out the way Sam had gone, down into the hold, arriving just in time to see the assassin come out of his cabin, walk down the gangway a short step, and duck into another door, closing it behind him. Arcie followed, puzzled. Where was Sam going? Arcie had inspected the ship quite thoroughly earlier, and if memory served him right, that door wasn’t anything more than ... He hurried forward and opened it.
Within was a small storage closet, with shelves stacked with sailcloth, ropes hung on hooks, buckets, brooms and belaying pins. The light from the corridor lanterns illuminated the closet clearly. It was very small, and tightly packed ... but otherwise, empty.
Arcie’s mouth hung open in surprise a long moment, his bright blue eyes wide. Then he slammed the closet door and scampered back to the others as fast as his feet would carry him.
Sam had been quite curious to see what the lake looked like in Shadowrealm, as well as nearly desperate to get away from the glaring outlines and colors of Outside. He Shadowslipped through the darkness of the supply closet with a sigh of relief, the Darkportal amulet cool and tingling on the skin of his chest. As comforting grayness surrounded him and soothed his aching eyes, he looked about. A collection of shadows around him marked the Roslilia, the large block of darkness he’d stepped out of was the closet. Below his feet were the shadows of the cargo hold, and, farther down, a great mass of blackness that was the darkness at the depths of the lake. Looking out, he could just make out a collection of dark scraps on an otherwise empty gray plain. That would be the mage’s ship. He broke into a run, long legs covering the distance across the invisible, intangible water as easily as flying.
He noticed, as he left the “boundaries” of the Roslilia, that the collection of shadows moved away from him at a steady pace in another direction. But he could easily catch her up later. He would return and kill those who sought to betray him and steal his amulet, safe in the darkness.
At last he reached the shadow markings of the unseen white ship. With an effortless thrust of his will he jumped to deck level and investigated the available shadows.
Most were useless for passage-too faded or too small.
But at last he found a splotch of blackness large enough and deep enough to admit him, and he Shadowslipped through, the cool fire of the hunt flashing in his blood.
He emerged in the corner of a darkened room, apparently the mage’s study. Books, candles, herbs, and much glassware covered the available space. He took a few interesting objects, out of curiosity, securing them in his pockets as he went to a door and listened. A rod set in a sconce in one wall glowed faintly, and, as there seemed to be no way to extinguish it, he pocketed it to blot out its light. The soft sounds of slumber drifted to his keen ears.
A silent oiling of the hinges, a trip of the latch, and he eased open the door.
Sam peered in and saw a richly furnished bedroom, dominated by a magnificent four-poster, with tapestries and paintings hung about the walls and magnificent carpets on the floor. In the center of the bed was a figure in eiderdown comforters and rich silken sheets. The figure breathed the deep sleep of the good, and Sam caught sight of long, silver-white hair spread across the pillow, glinting in the moonlight that came through the round cabin window. Sam raised his blowgun, aimed, and fired. -Thap* The needle struck through the hair, sinking into the skin at the base of the skull. The sounds of breathing deepened, slowing abruptly as the sleep/paralysis toxin took effect. All that remained to collect the rest of the thousand gold was to carry out Arcie’s orders ... and those orders were to bring him the mage’s head. Then, of course, thought Sam, as he reached into his back scab bard for his largest blade, a small black-hilted shortsword, Then I’ll kill that Barigan too, and take all his money. Sam drew the long, sharp blade, raising it above his head with single-minded determination, the cold fire guiding his hand for one powerful, deadly blow ...
Sam froze. Something was wrong.
He didn’t know why he did it, but his other hand reached out and took hold of the coverlet, pulling it aside from the sleeping figure’s face. A lined, aged face, with patchy human skin, a large blobby sort of nose, reddened by good drink and garnished with a long silver beard, stained here and there by tobacco and wine
.
Sam stood for a long moment. Then he gently replaced the covers around the sleeping form, sheathing his sword.
The training he’d had in the Assassin’s Guild, awakened by the fire of a hunt, had brought him for the moment out of the blackness that Valerie’s amulet pulled him into. To kill the wrong person ... that was a shame greater than failure. The blowgun toxin would wear off in a few hours. Sam carefully pulled his needle free of the man’s skin and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. His gut was in turmoil with his near-escape from a shameful accident, fear of Mizzamir still being at large, and sudden doubt about the feasibility of killing his companions. Lost in thought, he returned to the dark study, and Shadowslipped.
As he unknowingly drew upon the amulet’s power to make the passage, the darkness flooded up again inside him, filling him with new resolve. Best to get back to the Roslilia right away and kill the others before they could do anything. In the dim Shadowrealm things were simpler.
He would kill the others, in case they had learned of his ability, and then he would return to Shadow forever.
Mizzamir could never find him there, but if Sam ever found the Arch-Mage’s shadow, victory would go to the assassin. It was a good plan. He jumped away from the shadows of the white ship and ran on silent feet toward the retreating collection of shadows that marked the place of the other ship, dark magic lending speed to his strides.
He leaped to be within the boundaries of the craft and was carried along as she sailed while his eyes scanned the shadows. The dark closet he had come through before was now too faded. Someone must have opened it. He looked around some more. At last a convenient patch was discovered, in what he reckoned to be one of the cabins.