by Brent Weeks
“Just making sure I knew where all your soldiers were hidden,” Blint said. He was wearing a killing outfit, Agon realized queasily. A tunic of mottled dark gray cotton, thin but cut for easy movement, pants of the same material, a harness with a score of throwing weapons, some of which the general didn’t even recognize. What he did recognize was that the points of some of those weapons bore more than steel. Poison.
Is he bluffing? Agon hadn’t brought soldiers. Even if his life wasn’t vital to this discussion, he wasn’t going to throw it away. “I keep my word, even to a Sa’kagé thug,” he said.
“The funny thing is, I believe you, Lord General. You’re many things, but I don’t think you’re either dishonorable or stupid enough to betray me. Are you sure you don’t want me to kill the king? You have the army. If you’re smart and lucky, you might be king yourself.”
“No,” Agon said. “I keep my vows.” If only those words didn’t burn as I spoke them.
“I’d give you a discount.” Blint laughed.
“Are you ready to hear the job?” Agon asked.
“It seems we’ve had this conversation before,” Blint said. “My answer remains the same. I only showed up because I miss your smiling face, Lord General. And to show that your—let’s be honest—rather pathetic defenses still can’t keep me out should you choose to try to make my life difficult.”
“You haven’t even heard what the job is. The king respects your talents now. He will pay better than anyone has ever paid you. He wishes you—”
“To protect his life. I know. Hu Gibbet took a contract on him.” Durzo ignored the stricken look on Agon’s face. “Sorry. I won’t take the job. I’d never take a job for that foul sack of wind. Let’s be honest. Aleine Gunder, who ridiculously fashions himself ‘the Ninth’ as if he had any connection to the previous eight kings who bore the name Aleine, is a waste of skin.”
Someone burst out from under the tall statue of Duke Gunder behind Agon. Agon’s heart sank as he recognized the man’s gait.
Aleine Gunder IX threw back his hood. “Guards! Guards!”
Archers and crossbowmen sprang up from every balcony, bush, and shadow in sight. Others came running from the perimeter of the garden.
“My liege. What a surprise,” Blint said, sweeping into a perfect court bow. “Who would have expected to find you hiding in your father’s shadow?”
“You shitting …shitting! …shit!” the king yelled. “What are you doing?” he yelled at the guards. “Surround him!” The guards surrounded Durzo, Agon, and the king in a tight circle. They looked nervous to have the king standing so close to a wetboy, but none of them dared invoke the king’s ire by forcibly separating them.
“Your Majesty,” Agon said, stepping in front of the king before the man tried to hit Durzo Blint. Tried to hit Durzo Blint!
“You will work for me, assassin,” the king said.
“No. I’ve said it before, but maybe you need to hear it yourself. I’m willing to kill you, but I won’t kill for you.”
The guards were less than pleased by this, of course, but Agon held up a hand. With the guards pressed so close, the archers were useless. Brilliant, Your Majesty. If it came to bloodshed, both he and the king would die, and he’d give even odds that Blint wouldn’t.
“Fine, then,” the king said.
“Fine, then.” Blint smiled joylessly.
The king smiled back. “We’ll kill your daughter.”
“My what?”
The king’s smile grew. “Look into it.” He laughed.
A dangerous second stretched out and Agon wondered if he was about to be holding a dead king in his arms. Then there was a blur of motion. Even though he was looking right at him, Durzo Blint moved faster than his eye could follow. He flipped up over the circle of soldiers, caught a statue and changed his trajectory.
A moment later, there was a scuttling sound up the side of the castle wall, akin to a cat’s claws scraping as it climbed a tree.
Startled, one of the soldiers discharged his crossbow—mercifully, it was pointed into the air. Agon shot a look at the man.
The man swallowed. “Sorry, sir.”
The king walked inside, and it was only two minutes later that Agon realized how close Durzo had brought him to speaking treason in front of the king.
Kylar felt the air stir as someone opened the front door of the safe house. He lifted his eyes from the book in front of him and reached for the short sword unsheathed on the table.
He had a perfect view of the door from his chair, of course. Master Blint wouldn’t set up his workroom any other way. But he would have known it was Master Blint just by the sound: click-CLICK-click. Click-CLICK-click. Click-CLICK-click. Master Blint always locked, unlocked, and then relocked every lock. It was just another of his superstitions.
He didn’t ask his master about the job. Blint never liked to talk about a job right after it. The Night Angels didn’t like it, he said. Kylar interpreted that, Let my memories fade.
The vial of white asp venom was sitting on the table with the rest of Blint’s collection, but to distract himself as much as Blint, Kylar said, “I don’t think it’ll work. I’ve been looking over your books. They haven’t got anything about this.”
“They’ll write a new book,” Blint said. He started putting the poisoned blades in special cases, and wiping off the ones bearing poison that spoiled over time.
“I know animals can eat some poisons and it doesn’t make them sick. And I know their meat will make you sick if you eat it. Our experiments have proved that. But then your deader’s just sick. That’s fine as far as it goes, but this dual poison thing—I don’t get it.”
Blint hung up his weapons harness. “Your deader eats the pork, he feels nothing. Maybe a little tipsy. He eats the quail, he gets dizzy. He eats both, he gets dead. It’s called potentiation. The poisons work together to reach their fullest potential.”
“But you’ve still got to get an entire pig and a flock of quail past the food tester.”
“Big places use multiple tasters. By the time they suspect anything, the deader’s dead,” Blint said.
“But then you poison everyone in the room. You can’t control—”
“I control everything!” Blint shouted. He threw a knife down and walked out, slamming the door so hard it set every weapon on the wall jingling.
Elene stared at the blank page and dipped the drying quill back into the ink pot. Further down the table in the Drakes’ dining room, Mags and Ilena Drake were playing a game of tiles. Mags, the older sister, was concentrating intently, but Ilena kept glancing at Elene.
“Why,” Elene said, “do I always get crushes on unattainable men?” Elene Cromwyll had been friends with Mags and Ilena Drake for years. The gap between a servant and a count’s daughters should have precluded friendship, but the Drakes counted all as equal before the One God. As they’d grown older, the girls had become more aware of how odd their friendship was, so it had become more private, but no less real.
“That groundskeeper Jaen was attainable,” Ilena said, moving a tile. Mags scowled at the move and then at her fifteen-year-old sister.
“That lasted two hours,” Elene said. “Until he opened his fat mouth.”
“You must have had a crush on Pol at some point,” Mags said.
“Not really. He just loved me so much I thought I should love him back,” Elene said.
“At least Pol was real,” Ilena said.
“Ilena, don’t be a brat,” Mags said.
“You’re just mad because you’re losing again.”
“I am not!” Mags said.
“I’ll win in three moves.”
“You will?” Mags looked at the tiles. “You little snot. I, at least, am so glad you turned Pol down, Elene,” Mags said. “But it does leave you without an escort to our party.”
Elene had abandoned the quill and buried her face in her hands. She sighed. “Do you have any idea what I wrote to him last year?” She sta
red at the blank paper in front of her.
“I didn’t know Pol could read,” Ilena said.
“Not Pol. My benefactor.”
“Whatever you wrote, he didn’t stop sending money, did he?” Ilena asked, ignoring her sister’s murderous glance. Ilena Drake was only fifteen, but most of the time, she seemed in pretty good control of Mags, if not her oldest sister Serah.
“He’s never stopped. Not even when I told him that we had more than enough money. But it’s not about the money, Lena,” Elene said. “Last year I told him that I was in love with him.” She couldn’t quite bear to confess that she’d smudged the ink with her own tears. “I told him I was going to call him Kylar, because Kylar’s nice and I never found out my benefactor’s name.”
“And now you do like Kylar …who you’ve also never talked to.”
“I’m totally hopeless. Why do I let you talk to me about boys?” Elene asked.
“Ilena can’t help but talk about Kylar,” Mags said with the air of a big sister about to pull rank. “Because she has a crush on him herself.”
“I do not!” Ilena shrieked.
“Then why’d you say so in your journal?” Mags said. Mags’s voice lilted, mimicking Ilena’s, “‘Why won’t Kylar talk more to me?’ ‘Kylar talked to me today at breakfast. He said I’m sweet. Is that good or does he still just see me as a little girl?’ It’s gross, Ilena. He’s practically our brother.”
“You wytch!” Ilena yelled. She leaped over the table and attacked Mags. Mags screamed, and Elene watched, frozen between horror and laughter.
The girls were screaming, Ilena pulling Mags’s hair and Mags starting to fight back. Elene got to her feet, figuring she’d better stop them before someone got hurt.
The door crashed open, almost blowing off its hinges, and Kylar stood there, sword in hand. The entire atmosphere of the room changed in the blink of an eye. Kylar exuded a palpable aura of danger and power. He was primal masculinity. It washed over Elene like a wave that threatened to yank her from her feet and pull her out to sea. She could hardly breathe.
Kylar flowed into the room in a low stance, the naked sword held in both hands. His eyes took in everything at once, flicked to every exit, to the windows, the shadows, even to the corners of the ceiling. The girls on the floor stopped, a handful of Mags’s hair still clenched in Ilena’s hand, guilt written all over their faces.
His pale, pale blue eyes seemed so familiar. Was it just Elene’s fantasies that put that flicker of recognition in them? Those eyes touched hers and she felt a tingle all the way up her spine. He was looking at her—her, not her scars. Men always looked at her scars. Kylar was seeing Elene. She wanted to speak, but there were no words.
His mouth parted as if he, too, was on the edge of words, but then he turned white as a sheet. His sword flashed back into a sheath and he turned. “Ladies, your pardon,” he said, ducking his head. Then he was gone.
“Good God,” Mags said. “Did you see that?”
“It was scary,” Ilena said, “and …”
“Intoxicating,” Elene said. Her face felt hot. She turned away as the girls stood. She sat and picked up the quill. As if she could write now.
“Elene, what’s going on?” Mags asked.
“When he saw my face, he looked like death warmed over,” Elene said. Why? He’d barely even looked at her scars. That was what scared away most of the boys.
“He’ll come around. You’re an angel. Give him a chance. We’ll ask him to the party for you and everything,” Ilena said.
“No. No, I forbid it. He’s a baronet, Lena.”
“A poor baronet whose lands have been taken by the Lae’knaught.”
“He’s just another unattainable man. I’ll get over it.”
“He doesn’t have to be unattainable. If he joins the faith …In the eyes of the God, all men are created equal.”
“Oh, Lena, don’t dangle that in front of me. I’m a serving girl. A scarred serving girl. It doesn’t matter what the God sees.”
“It doesn’t matter what the God sees?” Mags asked gently.
“You know what I mean.”
“Logan might marry Serah, and that’s as big a gap as there is between a poor baronet and you.”
“A noble marrying a lower noble is frowned on, but a noble marrying a commoner?”
“We’re not saying you should marry him. Just let us ask him to the party.”
“No,” Elene said. “I forbid it.”
“Elene—”
“That’s final.” Elene looked at the girls until each grudgingly gave their assent. “But,” she said, “you could tell me a little more about him.”
“Kylar,” Count Drake called out as Kylar tried to sneak past his office to get up the stairs. “Would you come in for a moment?”
There was nothing for it but to obey, of course. Kylar cursed inwardly. Today was turning into a long day. He’d been hoping to get a few hours of sleep before doing his predawn chores for Master Blint. He had a good idea what this was about, so when he stepped into the count’s office, he had to try not to feel like a boy about to have his father explain sex to him.
The count hadn’t been touched by the years. He would look forty if he lived to be a hundred. His desk was in the same place, his clothes were the same cut and color, and when he was warming up to a difficult conversation he still rubbed the bridge of his nose where his pince nez sat.
“Have you made love to my daughter?” the count asked.
Kylar’s chin dropped. So much for warming up. The count watched him expressionlessly.
“I haven’t laid a hand on her, sir.”
“I wasn’t asking about your hands.”
Kylar goggled. This was the man who talked about the God as often as most farmers talked about the weather?
“No, don’t worry, son. I believe you. Though I suspect it hasn’t been for any lack of effort on Serah’s part.”
The blood rushing to Kylar’s entire face was answer enough.
“Is she in love with you, Kylar?”
He shook his head, almost relieved to be asked a question he could answer. “I think Serah wants what she thinks she can’t have, sir.”
“Does that include making love to numerous young men, none of whom is Logan?”
Kylar spluttered, “I hardly think it’s right or honorable for me to—”
The count raised a hand, pained. “Which is not the answer you would have given if you thought the charge was false. You’d have said absolutely not, and then that you didn’t think it was right or honorable for me to ask. And you’d have been right.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and blinked. “I’m sorry, Kylar. That wasn’t fair of me. Sometimes I still use the wits the God gave me in dishonorable ways. I’m trying to do what’s right, whether or not that measures up with what men call honorable. There’s a gap between those, you know?”
Kylar shrugged, but no answer was required.
“I’m not interested in condemning my baby girl, Kylar,” the count said. “I’ve done far worse in my life than she’ll ever dream of. But more than her happiness is at stake. Is Logan aware of her …indiscretions?”
“I asked her to tell him, but I don’t believe she has, sir.”
“You know that Logan has asked for my permission to marry Serah?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Should I give him my blessing?”
“You couldn’t hope to gain a better son.”
“For my family, it would be wonderful. Is it right for Logan?”
Kylar hesitated. “I think he loves her,” he said finally.
“He wants to know within two days,” the count said. “When he turns twenty-one he takes possession of the Gyre household and becomes one of the richest and most powerful men in the realm, even given how the king has interfered with his house in the last decade. Sixth in the line of succession. First behind the royals. People will say he’s marrying beneath himself. They’ll say she isn’t worthy of him.” The cou
nt looked away. “I don’t usually give a damn what they think, Kylar, because they think it for all the wrong reasons. This time, I’m afraid they’ll be right.”
Kylar couldn’t say anything.
“I’ve prayed for years that my daughters would find the right men to be their husbands. And I’ve prayed that Logan would marry the right woman. Why doesn’t this feel like the answer?” He shook his head again and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Forgive me, I’ve asked you a dozen questions you can’t possibly answer, and haven’t asked the one you can.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Do you love Serah?”
“No, sir.”
“And that girl? The one you’ve been sending money to for almost a decade?”
Kylar flushed. “I’ve sworn not to love, sir.”
“But do you?”
Kylar walked out the door.
As Kylar stepped into the hall, the count said, “You know, I pray for you, too, Kylar.”
33
The whorehouse had closed hours ago. Upstairs, the girls slept on fouled sheets amid the brothel smells of stale alcohol, stale sweat, old sex, wood smoke, and cheap perfume. The doors were locked. All but two of the plain copper lamps downstairs had been extinguished. Momma K didn’t allow her brothels to waste money.
There were only two people downstairs, both of them at the bar. Around the man’s seat were the remains of a dozen smashed glasses.
He finished the thirteenth beer, lifted the glass, and threw it onto the floor. It shattered.
Momma K poured Durzo another beer from the tap, not even blinking. She didn’t say a word. Durzo would speak when he was ready. Still, she wondered why he’d chosen this brothel. It was a hole. She sent her attractive girls elsewhere. Other brothels she’d bought had been worth fixing, but this one huddled deep in the Warrens, far from main roads in the maze of shacks and hovels. This was where she’d lost her maidenhead. She’d been paid ten silvers, and had counted herself lucky.