Assassin's End

by D. K. Holmberg

  “You wouldn’t understand, Galen of Eban,” she said.

  I almost smiled, attempting to fortify the barriers in my mind even more. That was the first time anyone had ever called me that before, and it reminded me in some ways of Carth. Maybe it was the fact that Carth was gone, but losing her left an absence that I feared how it would be filled. If men like Moldan and Rond filled it, forcing Talia into the shadows of Asador, then Carth’s absence was even more starkly felt than I had realized.

  “Try me.” I feared to wait here much longer. A woman like this would have others who would be with her, other men with weapons. I made a circuit around the room and plucked my darts from the fallen men. The coxberry would last about an hour, maybe more. When I reached Moldan, I pulled the knife out of his chest and wiped it clean on his jacket. Talia deserved to know that I’d taken care of him, even after she had betrayed me the way that she had.

  “You might have been exiled, Galen, but you are not truly Forgotten.”

  “Who were you looking for if not for me?”

  I made a move as if to throw my dart, but pulled back. She Slid, the effect much like it was with Lorst. There was a surge of color and then she flickered to a new place. The surge always preceded the Slide, giving me enough of a warning that I thought that I could hit her if I were quick enough.

  The only question was whether I attempted to sedate her or kill her.

  I didn’t know what she was after, but it seemed clear that it was tied to the Forgotten. And somehow, not Forgotten as I’d always considered myself, but in a different sense, like that which Lorst feared.

  “We have kept our eyes open for others like us,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  She turned and offered me a sharp smile. “Elvraeth.”

  I forced my barriers even more into mind. I didn’t know what she might attempt, but I didn’t like the idea that she might be able to Read me… or that she might know about Cael.

  And if she did? What would I be able to do?

  Tension pulled at the corners of her eyes and the tiny muscles in her jaw clenched slightly.

  She stalled me.

  Damn.

  Was she playing me for something? For someone?

  If she was, I needed a way to even the odds and give me a chance to ensure both my safety and Cael’s. I could think of only one way to do it.

  I fingered the darts, rolling them between the pads of my thumb and index finger.

  Her eyes flickered past me and colors started to stream around her.

  This was the only chance that I might get.

  Using a coxberry-tipped dart, I flicked a pair of them in quick succession. One where she was and another where I thought she might appear.

  She Slid.

  And then crumpled.

  Movement came from behind me. I spun and nearly had my head taken off with a long sword. Ducking and rolling, I sent a terad-tipped dart, realizing that this was Rond attacking. I’d forgotten that I’d only incapacitated him with a sharp blow, nothing enough to keep him down for long. And now he wouldn’t get up again.

  But the woman. I had to find a way to secure her. And then I had to find a way to reach someplace where I could question her, but where?

  Using the ropes that had confined me, I bound her arm, and then her legs. I readied another pair of coxberry darts in case she started moving again. I wouldn’t risk her Sliding again, not while I had her restrained.

  But I needed a way to limit her if I intended to ask questions. If I didn’t, as soon as she awoke, she would be able to Slide away. No, that wouldn’t do at all, but thankfully there was a serum that Isander had taught me, one that took away access to abilities but didn’t remove the ability to speak.

  I would need access to more than what I had here. Which meant I had to get out of the estate, with this woman, while there were half a dozen or more men on the other side of the door who might attempt to stop me. Two of them were Neelish sellswords, men I feared more than the other hired help I’d seen.

  Counting my darts, I decided they might not be enough for this. That meant bloodshed, the kind of attack that I never really enjoyed. Sometimes there was a place for stealth; others required strength and force. This would be the latter.

  8

  The outside of the estate caught the light of the early morning. Shadows from the angle of the sun as it crept higher in the sky streaked through the grounds. I paused at the door, studying the shadows, searching for anything that seemed like it might be out of place.

  The woman lay just inside the door. I would grab her as soon as I figured out my course of attack. For now, I could leave her lying on the ground, where she was harmless.

  Two men moved at opposite sides of the garden.

  Holding a pair of crossbows confiscated from her downed guards, I aimed and fired. I had about as much practice with crossbows as I did with knives. Both were plenty to make me deadly, but not the same as the time that I’d spent using darts. Darts allowed control and the ability to decide whether someone lived or died. Darts fit with how I viewed my job. Knives and crossbows were only for killing. Even the best-aimed knife could strike an artery and leave a man bleeding out whether intended or not.

  The bolts flew true, hitting one man in the chest and the other in the throat. The second was a bloodier injury, and I forced my gaze away as I waited, searching for others who might linger in the garden. I saw none.

  Grabbing the woman, I flipped her onto my shoulder and carried her onto the grounds outside her estate. She made no sound, nothing that would indicate that she might be waking soon. The effects of coxberry could be unpredictable. In some, it wore off in thirty minutes while others would be out for over two hours. If it were the shorter end with her, I needed to be ready to throw her down and jab her with another dose.

  We were about halfway across the grounds when I caught little more than the flicker of movement at the edge of my vision.

  I spun, flicking a knife as I did. It caught another man in the chest, and he fell.

  Shadows shifted, and I knew enough to duck. This time, I brought the crossbow up, firing in a single motion. A man atop the wall fell inside.

  Damn. If they knew enough to climb the wall, that meant that I would be in danger of—

  The whistling of a sword forced me down and to my knees.

  I rolled, bringing a knife up to block. It was all that I had.

  One of the sellswords swung again.

  If the blade even touched my skin, I’d be poisoned. I’d seen Neelish poison work. It happened quickly, almost too quickly to counter. I might have access to some narcass to counter it, but I wondered if I had enough.

  He struck again, hacking at me.

  I managed to roll away from part of the attack and blocked another with the knife.

  Reaching for my darts, I flipped two terad-tipped darts at him.

  One of the darts sailed wide, into the garden. Thankfully, the other struck his hand.

  He went down and then lunged. Another dart caught him in the cheek, and he crumpled.

  I grabbed his sword. At times like these, I couldn’t be picky with my weapons. Then I stabbed the sword into his chest. I couldn’t take the chance that he might have immunity to terad. Not many men had immunity to a sword in their heart.

  Looking back for the woman, I found her gone.

  A streak of reflected light told me the direction of the person who had her.

  Racing into the grounds, I found the other Neelish sellsword with her slung over his shoulder. He spun toward me, sweeping his sword in a wide arc, as I approached.

  “Leave the woman, and you’ll live,” I said.

  “That wasn’t the job.”

  “Yeah. I know. I was the job. But take it from one professional to another. Leave her and I’ll leave you.”

  I knew he wouldn’t. Men like him—well, like me, too—had reputations we had to uphold. We needed the threat of what we might do and the fact that we would com
plete our tasks. If he left her, and if it got out—which it would; things like that always did—then he wouldn’t have any other jobs.

  None of that was my problem. I offered, and he could decide whether he wanted to take it.

  He leaped toward me, swinging his sword while somehow still holding onto the woman.

  I had to admit that I was impressed.

  Almost even more impressive was the way that he used her as something of a shield, almost as if he knew that I wouldn’t risk hitting her with one of my terad-tipped darts. I also couldn’t risk hitting her with the Neelish blade, not poisoned as it almost certainly was. That left fighting him one on one. Even holding the woman as he did, he had me outclassed, and he knew it.

  But I didn’t need to fight him. I only needed him to drop the woman.

  Try as he might to use her to block my darts, there were limits to how much of her body he could place between us. And it mattered little to me if I accidentally hit her with another coxberry dart.

  I threw three at once, increasing the chance that at least one would hit where I intended.

  Two sunk into the woman. One hit her arm, and the other went into her chest. Both would sting when she awoke. The third hit the sellsword, sinking into his sword arm, biting into his wrist.

  He didn’t fall.

  That meant immunity to coxberry.

  Some men developed it. The Great Watcher knew that I had developed it after enough time using it, but immunity to coxberry wasn’t like with other poisons. He might not drop from the effects like everyone else, but it still slowed him, enough to make a swordfight with him more evenly matched.

  And still I struggled.

  A lucky strike caught his arm, and he dropped the Elvraeth woman.

  I spun, he blocked. I spun again, and this time, I caught him across the throat, the Neelish sword cutting deeply.

  Stepping back, his eyes had gone wide. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  And I was. Killing might be my job, but there was nothing about it that I enjoyed.

  I turned and grabbed the woman. With three coxberry darts sunk into her, she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Throwing her onto my shoulders, I ran through the estate grounds. When I reached the wall, I almost didn’t notice the other man standing there until I caught the reflection of the crossbow bolt as it flew through the air.

  I jerked to the side just in time.

  Grabbing a dart, I flipped it at the man, and he collapsed.

  I readied for what I might find on the other side of the gate, but there was nothing. Even the street was empty as if people had heard the commotion and avoided it.

  I ran, wanting to get away from the estate and those who might recognize what I’d done and didn’t slow until I reached a busier street with shops lining the street.

  Where would I go?

  For answers, there was only one place I could go.

  Taking a moment to gather my sense of direction, I hurried toward Talia’s shop.

  When I reached the street where her shop would be found, I paused.

  Flames leaped into the sky, climbing high into the air and filling it with the stink of smoke. Ash fell from the sky, coming down thick as snow. I paused long enough to see which shop burned and wasn’t surprised to determine that it was Talia’s.

  Shifting the woman on my shoulder, I hurried forward. People filled the street as we went. Some to gawk, while others tried to help, carrying buckets of water toward the fire. But they wouldn’t be fast enough. They couldn’t be fast enough, not with flames leaping as they were, hot enough to press me back.

  For the first time, I wished I hadn’t knocked the woman out with my dart. With her ability to Slide, she might be able to reach the inside of Talia’s shop and make sure that everyone made it out safely. But there was only one person I cared about making it out alive.

  I shifted the woman so that she wasn’t sitting so high on my shoulder. Leaving her like that only drew attention to me, and with the fire, I didn’t want anything that would draw any more attention to me than I already had. Lowering her toward the ground, I held her in such a way that she appeared to lean on me. With as much coxberry as she’d been dosed with, there was no way that she would wake up anytime soon.

  Following the trail of people, I made a point of staying toward the back of the street, away from most of the commotion but close enough that I could see what was taking place. More than that, I wanted to see the response. Who moved through here as they responded to the fire?

  So far, I hadn’t seen anything that would seem to be an official response. Mostly other shop owners trying to help with the fire, but it raged so hot and high that there was no way that they would manage to tamp the flames down quickly enough. How many other shops would burn today?

  A part of me actually felt bad for the other shop owners. If the fire was in retaliation for the fact that Talia had found me, then it was more my fault than anyone else’s.

  I reached the bottom of the street, and still, nothing moved within the flames. Either the shop had been emptied before the fire took hold or no one had made it out.

  What of Cael?

  A hand touched my arm, and I spun.

  Talia stood opposite me, eyes darting to the woman I carried and then back to me. “You got away. Good. Now come with me if you want to see your woman again.”

  I looked at the fire one more moment before finally turning away and following Talia.

  9

  The woman began to wake before I finished making the serum. It bubbled over the fire, a steady and bitter stink and not something that most would take willingly. Probably why it worked so well. “Don’t let her awaken,” I said to Cael.

  She leaned over the woman, almost touching her but holding her hands back and away, almost as if afraid. “I’ve already dosed her again, Galen,” she said softly.

  The widening of her eyes when I’d brought the woman into the back room of the tavern had told me that Cael recognized her. There would be questions for later, but for now, I had to ensure that she couldn’t escape and that we would have the chance to question her.

  “Good. This won’t be much longer.” I added a few of the remaining ingredients, both of which had been found at different apothecaries. Asador was nothing if not well-equipped for supplying me with the necessary concoctions I could make. This was not one that Della ever taught. The making of slithca syrup was an older recipe and one that I had learned from Isander.

  There might come a time when you need to incapacitate others of your kind, Galen, he had told me. Not much else will do that other than slithca. There’s a certain potency to it that I’m not sure I can explain, but know that it works.

  And to prove it, Isander had me test it. My Sight had faded, leaving me with nothing but shadows and darkness. The effect had lasted hours, and in that time I had begun to wonder if it would ever return, and what I might do if it didn’t. I had become so reliant on my Sight that I had neglected some of the other skills that Isander thought to teach. That might be the reason that he wanted to demonstrate slithca to me.

  When the serum was complete, I cooled it and added it to one of my darts. With this readied, I tapped it into the skin of her shoulder, deep enough into muscle to contain the serum long enough for it to take hold. The location mattered with slithca. Too little muscle and the body would simply squeeze it out. Too much fat and it wouldn’t work. But larger muscle seemed to hold it. The shoulder or buttocks were best. I figured Cael would object less with me injecting this woman’s shoulder.

  “What does this do?” she asked.

  “When coxberry wears off, this will keep her from Sliding.”

  And it should keep her from trying to Read us as well. That was the other advantage, and maybe nearly as valuable as containing her Sliding.

  Cael looked at the dart in my hand with something that bordered on interest before she turned back to stare at the woman.

  While I waited, I loaded up three darts with slith
ca syrup and then poured the rest into a ceramic vial that I sealed with wax. The serum would store for days and, given what I’d faced already, there was a chance that I might need more of this. I might be forced to work with Lorst now, but a dose of slithca would change the dynamics of what he had me do.

  “Who is she?” I asked Cael when I had finished.

  “She’s… she’s one of my family.”

  I sniffed. “Kind of gathered that from the way she tried Reading me. And then she Slid.”

  “She could Slide?”

  I nodded. The ability was rare enough that I’d never encountered it in Elaeavn before I’d been exiled. Once outside, though, there were enough from Elaeavn with the ability that word of it spread. Lorst wasn’t the first, but he was the first to make a name for himself as an assassin, even if he claimed he was not.

  “I didn’t know that anyone else had that ability.”

  I shrugged. “You see things when you get outside the city.”

  Silence fell between us for a moment, nothing but the crackling hearth behind me.

  “Who is she?” Cael asked.

  I didn’t need to be a Reader to know that she wanted to know about Talia. She might be able to Read me, but that wasn’t the same as simply asking, and both of us knew it. “She was someone I thought I might be able to have a future with once.”

  “Why did it end?”

  I shook my head and went over to take Cael’s hands. “It never had the chance to begin. I was still an assassin. And she worked for someone with more power and influence than either of us wanted to risk. So she ended up being a friend. Had she been anything else, I don’t know that I would have been there for you.”

  “Are you two about finished?”

  I turned to see Talia standing in the doorway to the small room where she’d led me. Not just me. Talia had protected Cael. Moldan and his men had something on her, though I still didn’t know what that had been, but she had made a point of making sure that Cael was safe. I still didn’t know if she had known that I would be safe, but then, Talia knew what kind of person I was and what abilities I possessed.