Darkblade Guardian

by Andy Peloquin

  After a moment, Tyman tapped his finger on the page and nodded. “As I said, all our stores of Night Petal and Flaming Tansy are accounted for.” He closed the book and lifted his eyes to hers, defiance written there.

  “I never doubted your word, Master Scorpion.” Ilanna met his gaze, cool and unwavering. “I simply had to ask to be certain.”

  “Though I might not appreciate even the hint of an allegation, I can acknowledge its importance.” Tyman shoved the book away. “But rest assured that I will set my Scorpions to hunting down the party responsible. There will be no apothecary, alchemist, or potion brewster’s establishment left unexamined.”

  “Good.” Ilanna nodded. “House Bloodbear is at your disposal, and take as many of them as you need for…encouragement.”

  “They should suffice to loosen tongues.” Tyman nodded. “I expect to have results for you within hours at best, days at worst.”

  “Make it hours,” Ilanna warned. “I have it on good authority that the Crown is displeased that these murders are happening when we’re supposed to be keeping things under control.”

  “I understand.” Tyman nodded.

  “Thank you, Master Scorpion.” Ilanna bowed to the man and turned to leave.

  “Ilanna.” Tyman’s voice echoed behind her, and she turned back to face the man. “Do not let this hunt consume you. Take care of yourself. The Guild cannot see its Master looking haggard and exhausted.”

  “Thank you, Tyman.” Ilanna gave the man a smile. “I will try to follow your orders, as I always have.”

  Tyman snorted. “You were one of my worst patients. I don’t expect you to start listening now, either, but that can’t stop me from trying my best to keep you alive a while longer.”

  “There’s that kindly bedside manner I’ve come to miss.” Ilanna chuckled. “Be well, Master Scorpion.”

  “And you, Guild Master.”

  * * *

  Ilanna wished she could take Master Scorpion’s advice to rest, but the chaos in her mind gave her no peace.

  Acid bubbled in her stomach as she shut the door to her office and strode over to her desk. She sat, stood a moment later, sat again, then flung herself to her feet and began to pace.

  Two murderers. The thought echoed over and over. Two people were killing children in Praamis.

  People died every day in her city; life in Praamis could be hard and cruel, and violence was a way of life. Children starved to death on the streets, drowned in the Stannar River, or even died in collisions with carriages and wagons.

  But this is different. This is straight-up murder.

  Someone—two someones, possibly—were abducting children and poisoning them. One of the two children had had his face burned, that eerie symbol carved into his chest, and his head encased in plaster. What sort of sick freak would do that?

  She drew in a deep breath and strode toward the bookcase that stood behind the Guild Master’s desk. Seven golden figurines adorned the top shelf, one for each of the seven original Houses of the Night Guild—she hadn’t gotten around to getting a phoenix made and added to the collection.

  But it was the figurines on the second shelf that drew her gaze. Five silver hawks with ornately detailed beaks, wings, and feathers. One each for Denber, Prynn, Bert, Werrin, and Willem. A sixth hawk, made of platinum and larger than the others, spread its wings protectively around the smaller birds—this one for Jagar Khat, Master of House Hawk.

  She smiled and ran a finger over the silver scorpion figurine, felt the sharp edge of its tail. She still thought of Ethen now and again, though the memories had begun to fade with the passage of time.

  Her eyes went to the final hawk figurine on the shelf: a rose gold bird for Master Gold. They hadn’t been friends, but she had considered him a mentor of sorts. If nothing else, he’d taught her that she’d only survive in the Night Guild by being harder, stronger, and smarter than everyone else.

  What would you have done in my position?

  Her predecessor had always seemed so poised, controlled, self-assured. She’d rarely seen him worried, only when speaking of the Bloody Hand’s efforts to usurp the Guild’s control in Praamis. Even if he hadn’t known what to do in this situation, he would have pretended it so well no one would have known of his self-doubt.

  She wanted to be like that, but it was harder than she’d expected. So many people were counting on her to find a solution, she didn’t want to imagine what would happen if she let them down.

  So I won’t. The statement felt empty, yet she clung to the defiance it evinced within her. She might not see the way clear to safety right now, but that hadn’t stopped her from fighting through the impossible before. I will do what I must, no matter what.

  She squared her shoulders and turned away from the shelf, striding toward the door. She’d summon Darreth, see if he had any news from Errik and the Serpents or House Hound. Anything she could use to—

  The door to her chamber burst open. Ilanna tensed and dropped into a fighting crouch, her hand flashing to the dagger at her belt, but the anxiety dimmed when she caught sight of her son.

  Kodyn had grown a great deal in the last few years. At sixteen, he towered a full hand’s width taller than even Ria, his shoulders and back broadened by years spent training with Errik and running the Perch and the Hawk’s Highway. He wore his long, dark hair pulled back into a tight tail, though he still hadn’t managed to control the wisps that framed his face.

  But the sight of his handsome face lined with worry drove a dagger of ice into her gut. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “Mom!” The word burst from his mouth—he only called her Mom when nervous, scared, or angry—“We’ve got a serious problem.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Hunter made no move to draw his sword, but he kept his eyes fixed on the man threatening him. “Let me guess, you’re from the Night Guild. I’ve been looking for one of you.”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “You’ve found only trouble, whoever you are.” He raised his sword and pointed it at the Hunter’s chest. “There’s only one reason for someone like you to be up on this rooftop. But you’ve made a mistake operating in Praamis. The city belongs to the Night Guild, and freelance assassins are not welcome.”

  The Hunter’s lips quirked into a grin. “So you’ve come to kill me, then?” The man had marked him instantly—though the dark cloak and weapons were a dead giveaway—and the way he stood ready for a fight, the way he held his long sword steady without even a hint of waver, screamed assassin. That and his light scale armor and the twin daggers on his belt.

  “If I have to.” The man shrugged, his expression bland. “I’d settle for driving you out of Praamis, with the knowledge that I will hunt you down if you ever step foot in my city again.” He spoke the words calmly, without a trace of bluster. The mark of a confident, competent opponent. Braggarts used volume to compensate for inadequacy and uncertainty.

  “Truth be told, I’m not fond of either option.” The Hunter shook his head. “Is there any chance you’d simply walk away and let me hunt down the murderer I’m searching for?” He doubted the assassin would believe him if he spoke of demons.

  “No.” A single word, quiet, calm. “Praamis is no place for you. Leave or die.”

  The Hunter sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Especially if the Night Guild is killing children.”

  The statement caught the assassin off-guard for an instant, long enough for the Hunter to slap aside his sword, step inside his guard, and drive a punch at the man’s solar plexus—not a killing blow, but powerful enough to dent the man’s light armor and knock the air from his lungs.

  The assassin twisted aside at the last second and the Hunter’s fist met empty air. The Hunter recovered quickly, blocking the lightning knee strike aimed at his groin. He drove an elbow into the man’s ribs, but again the assassin slipped the blow. Not completely, though. The tip of the Hunter’s elbow caught the man in the side with bruising force. The assassin w
inced and stepped backward out of grappling range.

  His eyes fixed the Hunter with a burning glare. “Who are you?”

  “The man who’s giving you a chance to live.” The Hunter stood straight, hands outstretched and well away from the hilt of his sword. “All you have to do is answer a few quest—”

  He leapt to the side, barely avoiding the assassin’s whistling blade, and ripped his own sword free in time to deflect a strike that would have opened his throat. Three more blows followed with lightning speed, aimed low, high, and low again. The Hunter’s long sword turned aside each, then answered with a hard strike at the man’s forearm with the flat of his blade. The assassin grimaced again, passing the sword to his left hand.

  “I’d rather not kill you,” the Hunter said. “Lead me to your Guild Master and you can walk away from this alive.”

  “So that’s why you’re here!” The assassin’s face creased into a snarl. “The Bloody Hand is not truly eradicated, simply lying in wait and gathering their strength for a return. They still want Master Gold dead, so they send you to do their dirty work for them.”

  It was the Hunter’s turn to be caught off-guard. The Bloody Hand was no more, he’d seen to that four years ago. But the assassin seemed not to believe the criminal organization had been totally wiped out. To be fair, the Hunter would have the same suspicion. He wouldn’t trust that his enemies were truly dead until he saw the bodies—or put the knife in their throats himself.

  “After all this time, will you fools never learn?” The assassin dropped into a low crouch, legs spread in an oddly wide stance, eyes fixed on the Hunter. “Your death will be a message to your masters that Praamis belongs to the Night Guild.”

  He launched into an attack with an agility that surprised the Hunter. The man weaved and bobbed with strange, almost dance-like motions that reminded the Hunter of a bounding gazelle or a drunken monkey. Yet the assassin fought with admirable dexterity. His blows came high and low, striking right then darting left for a follow-up. The Hunter had never encountered the fighting style before and, for a moment, he lost himself in the fascination.

  A sharp pain in his side quickly reminded him that the assassin meant to kill him. The killer danced backward, grinning at the crimson staining the edge of his sword. Yet his face creased into a puzzled frown when the Hunter remained standing. The wound, which punctured the Hunter’s kidney with precision physickers would envy, would have killed any mortal man.

  Horror creased the man’s face as realization dawned. “The Hunter of Voramis!” he breathed. “So the legends about you are true. You really are immortal!”

  “Guilty as charged.” The Hunter gave a mocking flourish of his sword. “Maybe now that you recognize me, we can stop this nonsense and you can take me to your Guild Master.”

  “The Bloody Hand sends you after her?” The assassin’s eyes narrowed, and renewed determination filled his gaze. “Immortal or no, you will not harm Master Gold.”

  Master Gold, a her? Curious, but irrelevant at the moment.

  The Hunter tucked the nugget away and focused on the assassin. “If Master Gold and the Night Guild are innocent of these murders, you have nothing to fear from—”

  The assassin attacked with a new ferocity, his blade whirling through the air with blurring speed. The Hunter gave ground, his sword matching the speed of the man’s attacks with ease. He recognized the shift in attitude. The man had started out trying to warn away or kill a threat he expected to defeat easily, but now he fought not only for his life against a potentially superior opponent, but to protect his city and his Guild Master from harm.

  That put the Hunter in an unfortunate position. The man fought with the skill and speed of an expert. He wouldn’t be disarmed easily, which meant the Hunter would have to kill him at worst, or shatter more than a few bones at best.

  I tried to warn him.

  He slapped aside a quick thrust bare-handed, stepped inside the assassin’s guard, and drove the pommel of his sword into the man’s chest. Air whooshed from the man’s lungs and he staggered backward, but his blade never stopped moving, swiping at the Hunter even as he gave ground. Heat raced along the Hunter’s cheek as the sword’s tip carved a finger’s breadth into flesh.

  But the Hunter had hit the man too hard. The assassin, attempting to regain his balance, took two long steps backward. Horror filled the man’s eyes as his rear foot met only empty air. His arms windmilled once, a strangled gasp burst from his lips, then he plummeted from view.

  The Hunter winced at the wet thump that echoed up from the alleyway below. He strode toward the edge of the roof and peered over. The assassin had fallen four stories, and not even a thick coating of muck could soften the ground enough to save him. His arms and legs lay twisted at gruesome angles, with bones protruding from his left bicep and both thighs. A halo of crimson seeped slowly outward from where his head had shattered against a stone.

  Keeper’s teeth! The Hunter clenched his fist in frustration. What a bloody waste.

  He felt no remorse for the man’s death; another killer dead left the world a little bit better. But he’d intended to take the assassin alive—broken, if necessary, but still breathing and capable of forming coherent sentences. The man had insisted on fighting, so now the Hunter had to find someone else to lead him to the Night Guild’s secret stronghold.

  He was about to turn away when something caught his attention a few hundred paces up the alley, a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. In the fading evening light, he couldn’t make out any details, but there was no mistaking it: those were figures moving through the alley.

  With effort, he ignored the pain of his still-healing wound and set off at a sprint across the rooftop. He had to tear his eyes away for a brief moment as he leapt across a broad gap between two buildings. When he looked back, the figures had gone and the alleyway was silent and still.

  Damn! They could have been random passersby traversing the alley, but there was always a chance he’d get lucky and find someone from the Night Guild. Thieves, killers, and criminals tended to prefer traveling the back ways, far from the watchful eyes of the law.

  He dropped onto a balcony, leapt across to a lower rooftop, then jumped the remaining two floors to the alleyway. His boots squelched in muck as he landed and only his quick reflexes, honed over years of training and fighting, kept him from falling. As soon as he regained his balance, he raced on down the narrow lane in the direction he’d seen the movement.

  The shadows had begun to deepen as the sun disappeared behind the clouds, thicker here with two high walls to block out the light. In the gloom, the Hunter could see no sign of movement. Nothing but debris, refuse, and more mud—disgusting, reeking, squelching mud that seeped over the tops of his boots—met his gaze.

  He was about to swear again when his eyes fell on a strange-shaped object discarded behind a pile of refuse. Had he been coming from the other direction, he never would have seen it, and only the pale white color of the object was visible in the fading daylight.

  One step closer, and the smell hit him. Death. Poison. The same smells that had hung thick around the body of the child in Old Town Market earlier that day.

  His gut twisted in knots as he strode toward the strange-shaped object. It was covered with a thick canvas, but one corner of the canvas had fallen away. The smell of fresh-dried plaster hung around the pale, white, perfectly smooth object on the pile.

  He hesitated a single moment before twitching aside the canvas. What he saw there brought acid surging into his throat.

  A child, a young girl this time, lay on the rubbish heap, her entire head encased in a featureless mask of plaster, with that Serenii symbol carved into the flesh of her chest.

  Sorrow squeezed the Hunter’s heart in an iron fist. He had a memory of another young girl, her throat torn open, her body tossed like discarded refuse onto the lip of the Midden. He’d destroyed the Bloody Hand in vengeance for Farida’s death.

  Anger pushed t
he sorrow back and burned like a raging fire in the Hunter’s chest. When I find who did this, their fate will be a mercy by comparison.

  He quickly scanned the ground for any indication of who’d left the body, but found nothing—no drag marks, not so much as a bootprint. Damn it!

  A sound from behind caught the Hunter’s attention. He heard the clanking of steel, saw the glimmer of a lantern. A glance over his should revealed a pair of Praamian Guards clad in their drab olive-colored uniforms standing at the mouth of the alley, not twenty paces behind him. The beam of their oil lantern spilled down the muddy lane and reached shining fingers toward him.

  He was up and racing away from the Praamian Guards in an instant. He had no desire to kill them, but he’d be forced to defend himself if they found him crouching over a child’s body in an alleyway.

  And every step that led him farther from the guards brought him closer to whoever had dumped the body here. It couldn’t be simple coincidence that he’d seen movement right beside the corpse. If he hurried, he had a chance of catching up to the killer.

  The Hunter drew Soulhunger and gripped the dagger’s hilt in white knuckles. Keeper have mercy on them when I do.

  Chapter Eleven

  “What’s wrong?” Ilanna demanded.

  Kodyn’s handsome, angular face was paler than usual, his eyes clouded. “It’s Journeyman Kindan, Mom…er, Guild Master.” Even in his agitated state, he remembered to address her by her title, as she’d insisted when in public. “He’s dead. Killed.”

  Ilanna’s jaw dropped. “What?” She reached up and gripped Kodyn’s shoulders. “What do you mean, killed? Who the bloody hell could kill a Keeper-damned Serpent?”

  Kodyn shook his head. “I don’t know. But whoever it was, he was faster than anyone I’d ever seen. Faster than Errik and Ria, even!”