Darkblade Guardian

by Andy Peloquin

  The woman led him through swinging wooden doors and into what had to be a common room or dining chamber. Long wooden tables and benches filled the room, and children sat at the tables eating the midday meal.

  A stone counter occupied one end of the room, and upon the counter sat two enormous cookpots. Three women stood behind the pots, wielding ladles and scooping a delicious-smelling meat stew into the bowls of the blue-clothed children—all between the ages of four and twelve or thirteen, the Hunter guessed--lined up before them. Two wore the same grey dress, blue apron, and white wimple as the woman guiding him. The third could only be Lady Chasteyn.

  Lady Chasteyn had the pale skin and aquiline features of a Praamian noble, with a prominent nose, a smattering of freckles on her high cheeks, and a sharp jawline and chin. Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled back into a neat braid coiled in the latest style atop her head. Even her clothes were elegant, cut in the latest fashion, in bright hues of blue and purple layered tastefully with contrasting whites and blacks.

  “Here you are!” she said in a high, singsong voice as she ladled stew into one of the children’s bowls. “Eat up, and there’s plenty more where this came from.”

  The woman that had entered with the Hunter slipped around the table and whispered something into Lady Chasteyn’s ear. Lady Chasteyn’s brilliant blue eyes snapped toward the Hunter. She passed the ladle to the grey-dressed woman, removed her blue cloth apron, and glided around the table.

  “Welcome, my lord.” Lady Chasteyn flashed a dazzling smile. “Susain tells me you have come to speak about making a contribution to the needy.”

  “Indeed, my lady.” The Hunter swept up Lady Chasteyn’s hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. Her perfume, an overpowering mixture of amber, cinnamon, musk, and candied flowers, assaulted his nostrils. He forced himself not to grimace, but kept the pleasant smile plastered on his face.

  Lady Chasteyn’s smile broadened and she laid a hand on his arm. “This way, if you please, my lord.” She leaned close to the Hunter as he escorted her out of the common room, down the hall, and into a side room opposite the entrance. By the wooden desk, canvas chair, and book-laden shelves, the Hunter guessed he stood in Lady Chasteyn’s office.

  “As I told Susain,” the Hunter said as he closed the wooden, glass-paneled door behind him, “my grandmother has left me a sizeable inheritance, but on the condition that a percentage is dedicated toward the less fortunate. That percentage comes up to a total of ten thousand imperials.”

  “Blessed Mistress!” Lady Chasteyn’s eyes widened and she pressed a hand to her throat. “May the gods smile on you for your generosity.”

  The Hunter smiled. Humans and their gods. Mention of the gods amused him, in the same way he was amused by watching an incompetent swordsman defending against a vastly superior opponent. What would they do if they ever knew the truth? The few he’d told about the Serenii, Enarium, and the Devourer had struggled to digest the revelation.

  “As I said, the ten thousand imperials are to be given to works like yours that provide aid to those in need.” The Hunter cleared his throat. “But I have not yet decided which of these works to contribute to. Thus, I have come today to see the renowned House of Mercy for myself.”

  “Of course.” Lady Chasteyn’s smile never wavered, but her eyes lost a fraction of their sparkle. “Ask what you will and I will answer gladly.”

  “I must admit that I find it curious that a noblewoman of your esteemed reputation would engage in such activity.” The Hunter had never heard of Lady Chasteyn and had no idea what sort of reputation she had, but flattery always worked wonders with the nobility. People that thought highly of themselves liked to believe others thought the same.

  “You would not be the first to say that, nor the last.” Lady Chasteyn laughed, a high, tinkling sound. “Many of my peers from Praamis and even Voramis have found it odd. But the answer is simple. The House of Mercy was founded by my late father, Lord Vorack Forgolan. Upon his passing, his estate fell to me, but like you, it came with the condition that I keep the House of Mercy open. With a sizeable trust to ensure the smooth operations, of course.”

  “Ah, I understand.” The Hunter smiled. “The shadow of our fathers persists long after they are in the grave.”

  “You are more right than you know, my lord.” Lady Chasteyn nodded. “However, I will admit freely that the House of Mercy is sustained by generous contributions from devout Praamians like you.”

  The Hunter bowed. “One can only try their best, my lady.”

  “Indeed,” Lady Chasteyn said. “That is all we can do in this life, and hope the Long Keeper judges us fairly in the next.”

  Her words reminded him of the brown-robed priest shouting in the marketplace.

  “Now, if I might be so indelicate as to ask a difficult question, is it true that one of your children was recently discovered…” He glanced around and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “…murdered?”

  Lady Chasteyn’s expression froze, and her eyes went hard, flat. After a moment, she nodded her head. “Sadly, that is the case.” She folded her hands over her lap and dropped her gaze. “The House of Mercy provides the children with food and shelter as best we can, but alas, there are so few of us to care for them that we cannot hope to watch them all. The children are free to go about the city during the day. In fact, we encourage them to find gainful employment wherever possible. Many of them are employed in what the people of Praamis have come to affectionately call the ‘Bluejacket Runners’.”

  This brought a smile to her lips. “My Bluejackets run messages of all sorts around the city, from the palace itself to Old Praamis to The Gardens. We try our best to keep them out of unsavory places, such as outside the Praamian Wall, but every imperial earned is one more that helps to put food in bellies and blankets on beds.”

  The Hunter inclined his head. “Yet, forgive me for returning to the distasteful topic, but have many of your children gone missing in the past? Or ended up in this…unfortunate condition?”

  Lady Chasteyn sighed. “Children go missing all too often, my lord.” Her shoulders drooped. “It is a sad fact to admit, yet there are many wicked people in this world. I do my best to care for those I can. The rest, I entrust to the Watcher’s hands.”

  The Hunter nodded. “It is all you can do.” He’d heard many similar tales in Voramis; fiery hell, in every city he’d visited across Einan. Children could go missing, be hauled into slavery, or imprisoned into far worse fates—there would always be those willing to prey on the weak.

  But the one that had killed this unnamed orphan child hadn’t reckoned on the Hunter. This death, at least, will not go unpunished. Soulhunger would feed well once he found the bastard.

  “If you may permit me a question of my own, my lord?” Lady Chasteyn raised an eyebrow.

  “Nothing as indelicate as those I’ve asked you, I trust.”

  The noblewoman laughed. “Certainly not.”

  “Then ask away, my lady.” The Hunter swept a courtly bow.

  “You are Lord Harrenth Anglion, are you not?”

  “I am he,” the Hunter said. “I did not believe I would be so easily recognized. Truth be told, I wished this donation to remain anonymous.”

  “Your name will never be mentioned if that is your desire,” Lady Chasteyn said. “But I ask out of curiosity at your presence here, for it is well-known that the young Lord Anglion is reclusive to the extreme. Indeed, few in Praamis have seen your face in the last decade.”

  The Hunter nodded. “A question I should have expected, my lady.”

  Which, in truth, he had.

  He’d invested a great deal of time, effort, and gold into crafting his Lord Anglion persona back in his days as the Hunter, assassin of Voramis. He’d purchased a peerage in the Praamian nobility, bribed the scribes to add his fictional lineage to the city’s records, bought a modest mansion in The Gardens and holdings outside of Praamis, even hired staff and workers to care
for his properties–all through intermediaries, of course. Even on this visit, he’d added a few years on the eternally youthful, sharp-angled face of Lord Harrenth Anglion.

  “For the last decade, I have traveled around the continent of Fehl, far to the south of Einan.” A well-rehearsed lie, one that few people would bother to investigate. “The gold and silver mines of the Fehlans have kept me overseas for all this time, not to mention made me a very wealthy man. Yet over the last year, I have found myself longing for the comforts of home and civilized life in Praamis. The passing of my grandmother seemed the ideal opportunity for a return. Or, if nothing else, an extended visit.”

  “Then let me be the first to welcome you home, Lord Anglion.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” The Hunter swept a bow. “I hope that our paths cross again soon.”

  “Indeed.” Lady Chasteyn beamed at him. “I will be certain to make it so.”

  A knock sounded at the office door.

  “Enter!” Lady Chasteyn called.

  The man who opened the door looked to be in his seventies, with plain features to match his greying hair, dull brown servants’ garb, and his lean form. He didn’t enter, but spoke from the doorway.

  “My lady, we must be goin’ if you’re to be home in time for tonight’s gala.” He spoke in the thick accent of a Praamian from the slums outside the wall.

  The Hunter didn’t catch the man’s scent, his nostrils overpowered by Lady Chasteyn’s perfume as she moved toward him.

  “Of course, Holtan.” The noblewoman swept a curtsy to the Hunter. “I would be honored if you attended our fete tonight. Nothing too lavish, mind you. A small affair to celebrate the anniversary of my husband’s return from his pilgrimage to Shalandra.”

  The Hunter had heard of Shalandra, a city at the southernmost extreme of the continent of Einan. He’d even visited it once, years earlier, to hunt down a nobleman that fled Voramis to escape his wrath.

  The Hunter bowed. “I truly hope to attend, my lady, provided my business in Praamis does not otherwise occupy me. However, I will strive my utmost to be present.”

  “That is all a lady can ask for.” Her dazzling smile returned. “Until tonight, my lord.”

  “Mistress willing, my lady.”

  The Hunter’s eyes followed Lady Chasteyn as she swept from the room in a swirl of bright-colored fabric and golden hair. Her manservant, Holtan, shot the Hunter a curious look before closing the door behind Lady Chasteyn.

  Well, that could have gone worse.

  The Hunter hadn’t learned much about what could have gotten the child killed, but Lady Chasteyn’s mention of the Bluejacket Runners intrigued him. He reached into his pocket and drew out the parchment he’d found clutched in the boy’s hand.

  “Young Lady Riandra’s blood is on your hands, Baronet Wyvern,” it read. “What is it worth to keep her death a secret?”

  A blackmail note? Intriguing, but not surprising considering its recipient. The nobility tended to have the most sordid appetites—and plenty of money to cover up any transgressions.

  The Hunter tapped his lip in thought. Lady Chasteyn had explained how the boy came to have such a message. But who would kill the messenger: the one who hired him, or the intended recipient?

  It seemed unlikely that either would have murdered the boy, but he couldn’t rule out either party.

  He strode from Lady Chasteyn’s office and scanned the House of Mercy. He stopped one of the caretakers heading past.

  “A moment of your time, fair lady,” he said, still in the Lord Anglion persona.

  She was young and pretty, even in her plain clothing, and colored beneath his compliment. “Of course, my lord.”

  “If I was to have one of your delightful children deliver a message for me, would there be a record of its provenance?”

  Her face twisted in confusion. “Sir?”

  The Hunter tried again. “Would there be any way to know that the message came from me? For the purpose of ensuring its safe delivery, of course.”

  “Sorry, my lord.” The caretaker shook her head. “Lady Chasteyn said no records were to be kept.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Some of the messages that get sent are of a sensitive nature, if you get my meaning.”

  “I certainly do.” The Hunter winked at her. “Thank you, fair lady, you have been most helpful.”

  “Of course, my lord.” The young women curtsied. “Is it true what I hear? That you intend to contribute to keeping the House of Mercy running?”

  The Hunter inclined his head. “Perhaps.”

  “Mistress smile on you then, sir.” She beamed up at him. “There are always more children in need, though there seem to be far fewer of them about these days. And now with the child found in the marketplace…” She shook her head. “A true shame, sir.”

  “Indeed.” With a nod, the Hunter took his leave. He tapped his gilded cane on the cobblestones as he strode from the orphanage and, with a nod to Rayf, climbed into the carriage without a word. The coachmen knew where he needed to go—he’d received instructions on how to reach Lord Anglion’s mansion in The Gardens before departing Voramis.

  The Hunter leaned back in the cloth-stuffed, leather-covered carriage seat and pulled out the note again. “Young Lady Riandra’s blood is on your hands, Baronet Wyvern,” it read. “What is it worth to keep her death a secret?”

  He couldn’t find the one who’d sent the note, but he knew its intended recipient. That, at least, was a place to start his search.

  Time to pay this Baronet Wyvern a visit. The question was: should he go as Lord Harrenth Anglion the haughty nobleman, or as the Hunter of Voramis?

  Chapter Five

  Ilanna almost felt ashamed at the relief that flooded her when she saw the corpse lying on the steel table in Journeyman Rilmine’s charnel room. The apprentice was one of hers, a small lad who wore the muted “streets” of the Night Guild.

  But it wasn’t Kodyn.

  She could finally breathe now that she knew her son hadn’t been the one murdered. Try as she might to shut off her mother’s instincts, she couldn’t help worrying about Kodyn. After everything that had happened—the horror that had led to his conception, the secrecy of his birth and infancy, the terror of watching her house consumed by alchemical fire, the joy of finding him once more—she could allow herself a moment of bliss to know her son was alive.

  Or, at least, not the corpse on Journeyman Rilmine’s table.

  “Who is he?” Ilanna asked.

  “Name’s Arashi,” Eden, Master Fox, said with a sad shake of her head. “A Red Fox, in his fourth year of apprenticeship.”

  Ilanna’s gut twisted again. Fourth year. That would make him barely eleven or twelve. Too young to have died, even worse to end up like this.

  The stink of embalming chemicals and the metallic tang of old, dried blood only added to her nausea. She forced herself not to think about where Journeyman Rilmine had obtained the organs that sat in the liquid-filled jars occupying the shelves around the room’s periphery.

  Her eyes traced the smooth, featureless outline of the plaster that engulfed his head and neck. The mask gave him the appearance of a milliner’s head dummy, more of a porcelain doll than a real, living child. Or a child that had been living until yesterday.

  Blood stained the boy’s emaciated, filthy chest, forming a grisly halo around the strange symbol etched into his skin. The sight of it struck Ilanna a blow to the gut—until now, it had been nothing more than lines on King Ohilmos’ parchment. She felt a nauseating rage, a desire to carve whoever had done this to bloody pieces, just as she had the Bloodbear that had tormented her throughout her apprenticeship.

  “Guild Massster.” Journeyman Rilmine’s strange voice drifted in from the doorway. “I did not expect you ssso sssoon.”

  Journeyman Rilmine was unique even among the odd characters that made up House Scorpion. A strange disease had taken every hair from his head, eyebrows, face, and body. He stood nearly
a head taller than Ilanna, yet his shoulders had grown stooped from too many hours hunched over corpses. Too many hours spent in the Guild tunnels had turned his skin parchment-thin and eerily pale. Years ago, he’d suffered a stroke that deadened the right half of his face. When he spoke, he slurred his words and hissed on all the hard “s” sounds.

  “I got here as soon as I received the news,” Ilanna said.

  Journeyman Tyman, now Master of House Scorpion, had once been the Night Guild’s foremost healers. He had even begun training others of his House in the healing arts. But where Tyman ministered to the living, Rilmine cared for the dead. He dissected human bodies to study their innards—not only to further Tyman’s medical studies, but simply out of a fascination to see death in every form. Just being around the Journeyman sent a shiver of disgust down Ilanna’s spine.

  “I have not yet had time to ssstudy the body.” Rilmine placed a leather bundle on the steel table beside the corpse and unrolled it, revealing an assortment of scalpels, clamps, pincers, and other physicker’s tools. “You mussst return when I am done.”

  “Can you tell me anything at all about what killed him?” Ilanna asked. “Was it the plaster mask, those marks carved into his flesh?”

  “I cannot sssay yet.” Journeyman Rilmine shook one long finger in her face. “Give me time.”

  “You have three hours,” Ilanna said.

  Rilmine bowed. “Asss you sssay, Massster Gold.”

  Ilanna departed without a backward glance, glad to be free of the overpowering stink of the alchemical embalming chemicals Rilmine used to preserve his corpses. Eden followed at her side, her long legs easily matching Ilanna’s stride.

  “Where did they find him?” Ilanna asked.

  “The sewers, not far from Old Town Market.” Eden’s face creased into a scowl. “Discarded like shite.”

  Ilanna’s gut clenched. “Have your Foxes scour the sewers for anything that could point us at his killer.”

  “Already doing so,” Master Fox replied.