An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Justin DePaoli

  There was Vayle and myself, along with a couple girls and a handful of boys. The greenhorns were sitting high in their saddles, knuckles white around the reins. They had huge, wet baubles for eyes. That was the sort of demeanor I should have expected after explaining that we were heading to a place that crawled with the sort of people you don’t welcome even in your nightmares — a place not even the moon cared to grace with its presence when night fell.

  The moon bit was entirely untrue, but it never hurts to keep recruits on their toes — especially since the nightmare part was on point.

  Lightning stabbed across the sky, split into a fork of white fire, and vanished. Then came the thunder that rippled through your entire body. Ahead, the narrow pass spilled into a wide expanse. And somewhere a hundred feet or so beyond, huge black trunks rose into a glittery sky.

  The Black Rot had been reborn, but its numbers were about to be cut down. “Fuck,” I muttered as I rode up beside Vayle. “Ready for a shit show?”

  Her teeth chattered, and her hands shivered. Rain glistened on her face. “So long as I can purchase appropriate attire.”

  “What did you say to me when I advised packing some extra wool instead of all that lemon shit you drink? I think it was, ‘Why, Astul, it’ll be so hot there I’ll sweat my tits off if I dress like a sheep.’”

  She glared at me. “The wind is colder in the gully than I’d recalled. And I much prefer my lemons and tea to comfort.”

  Vayle and her bloody lemons. Since she’d given up her gallon-a-day wine habit, she’d turned to some lemon-infused drink with oddly named tea leaves that requires you to boil water, measure a bunch of ingredients and count to exactly three hundred seconds. If you steep the shit for any more or less than three hundred seconds, apparently ghouls will jump out and murder you — at least, that was the way Vayle reacted the one time I made it for her and lost track of the time. The one and only time I made it for her.

  I reared Pormillia around, halting the recruits. Bursts of lightning illuminated their faces: some pale and draped with wet hair, a couple the texture of smooth caramel.

  “You’ve got yourselves five hundred shiny pieces of gold each,” I said, tossing a purse to each recruit. “If it costs more than that, you’re doing a piss-poor job. But don’t lowball anyone, unless you’re real confident in your swordsmanship. We’ll meet by the entrance in an hour. And remember — you have no affiliation with the Black Rot. Understood?”

  Heads nodded in acknowledgment. One of the recruits, a girl probably no older than eighteen, said “yes” and almost followed it with “sir.” She caught herself just in time.

  With the money doled out, I rode toward the towering black trunks. Even as Pormillia trotted beneath their boughs, I couldn’t see the green of their leaves or their needles. Their branches looked like abstract shadows painted upon a midnight canvas.

  It wasn’t so much a forest as it was brief pasture of trees. Almost as soon as you were in the thick of them, you were out the other side, where a gloomy plot of run-down clay buildings greeted you. It’s not a place many people like to go. If you had any semblance of humanity in you, a visit here would strip you of it all.

  It’s called Burm, and it sits upon a jut of slate. Crude, uneven slabs of broken stone ascend upwards — a path of sorts — to the town gate. Which isn’t really a gate, but rather a series of wooden pikes stabbed into the ground, each of different height.

  Vayle and I led the recruits to the steps, where we had them tie up their horses to the wooden posts anchored into the slate on either side. And then the promising and not-so-promising guys and gals were off, into the guts of Burm.

  I clambered off Pormillia and turned to Vayle. “If anyone wanders over—”

  “I’ll ensure their wandering days are over.” She smiled.

  “Well, I was going to say ‘holler and I’ll come bounding down the steps like your fierce protector.’ But, sure, that’ll work too.”

  She reached into her satchel and palmed a lemon. “I believe you’ve been in greater need of saving than me. Historically speaking.”

  I looped Pormillia’s tie around the wooden pole and made a loose knot. “Don’t forget about Erior.”

  “How could I ever? Enjoy yourself in there, Astul. I know how much you adore visiting Burm.”

  I rolled my eyes, muttered a disgusted “yeah,” and trudged up the stone steps.

  A man with a headful of thick hair held a gold coin toward the moon. He stuffed his hand in his pocket, produced a small oval lens and placed it against his eye. Then he put the coin in his mouth, bit down softly and gave a satisfying nod to who appeared to be a merchant.

  The apparent buyer glared at me with sharp eyes from beneath his gray hood. I quickly disengaged and turned my attention elsewhere. This wasn’t the kind of place where a smart man demonstrates his boldness and masculine pride; doing so often results in the loss of both, along with your life.

  The muddy streets of Burm welcomed me in with tables of stolen weaponry and armor being sold for cheap. There were awls and chisels and punches likely taken from now-dead tanners, only a gold each, or five for an assorted package.

  A merchant pawed at me as I passed his cart. “What’re those scraggly things on your feet? Have a look at these — leather so fine, they’ll not break down for a hundred years.” He had the dead eyes of someone who’d been in the business of killing and stealing, not cobbling.

  I continued on, sidestepping a man who’d just had a “fresh outta the furnace” buckle pushed in his face. He reached across the table, grabbed the merchant by his shirt and pounded his face till his cries were no more. A glance back revealed the merchant’s wares being surrounded by looters now, grimy hands lurching for his assortment of buckles and bracers.

  At least this visit to Burm hadn’t seen anyone’s throat slashed yet. When I’d been here a year ago to restock on the same poison Savant Fillick choked down, I’d had blood sprayed in my face on three separate occasions.

  Since shady merchants come and go here, I couldn’t rely on a familiar face to sell me what I needed. I’d have to ask around, which was exactly what my recruits were doing. In fact, I was looking to procure the very poison I’d sent them after, but I couldn’t count on a bunch of amateurs. Sending them in here was only a test, to see who was skilled at conversation, at bartering, at surviving in unfriendly conditions. It was possible none of them would acquire the poison, or even make it out of Burm alive. So I needed to take matters into my own hands. A very important client needed this poison, after all. And I don’t like to disappoint.

  I stopped off at a lonely bench sitting in an alleyway. Behind the bench sat an affable-looking man, a mop of fading silver hair sprawled across his head.

  “Not eager to join the action out there?” I asked, picking up a dagger from his showcase of weapons.

  He grinned, showing me the couple teeth he still had left. “Been comin’ here goin’ on, oh… thirty years now, and only ’cause I know where to sell me goods and how to keep me life. Fancy that one there? Three coin. Nabbed it from a first mate. Good steel.”

  Or, perhaps, good steal. “I’ll buy this one and that one,” I said, “if you can tell me a secret. I need poison. Where can I find it?”

  The old man hunched over the bench. “That one there’s six gold.”

  Wily old bastard. But it wasn’t as if six gold would break the Rot vault, and I didn’t have much choice in the matter. When you need information, you’ve got to pay up.

  “Price doesn’t matter,” I said. He squirmed at that, a pained look passing over his face upon the realization he could’ve swindled me for so much more.

  “And the poison?” he asked. “Not looking for the cheap kind, I gather?”

  “A rather rare concoction.”

  He rubbed his wrinkly hands together. “She deals in discretion. Got herself a handful of hired swords, too, those big ole lunks. Soon as you reach the watering hole over there” — he pointed at the main
drag from where I’d come — “go inside, up the stairs. One of the rooms up there, you’ll see it, ’less you got no eyes. Them lunks won’t let you in without a convincing plea, though.”

  I dug inside my pocket and pulled some gold out. “Here, ten for the all trouble. Keep the daggers, I don’t need ’em.”

  In most circumstances, a common poison merchant set up on the main drag would do just fine. But this poison had to have particular characteristics, a substance your average merchant rarely has in stock, because it’s too rare… too expensive. The poison I desired couldn’t leave behind the evidence that other toxins do. You know, the black lips, charred throats, mangled guts. Patrick Verdan just had to be a special little snowflake in his request. Oh well. It’d net me ten thousand coins when all was said and done. So long as I departed Burm alive.

  The watering hole was named The Drip. It had no door, its windows had been busted out, and most of its chairs and stools were broken. Also, an oily black substance streaked the floor. Rather resembled old blood.

  I pushed between the stoic drunks uneasily. Place had the tension of a gathering among family members who despised one another and went to each other’s funerals only to celebrate and thank the gods. You heard only gulps and belches as you passed through, saw eyes veer deviously and throats flinch.

  And thankfully that was all I saw and heard by the time I set foot on the steps. Up the stairs I went, casually as I could, till I came to a suffocatingly small second floor. There were only two doors, one of which was open and led into an empty room. The other had four men standing guard over it, their arms thicker than my goddamn legs.

  “Boys,” I said, “I don’t want any trouble. Only here to spend my gold.”

  They wore white linen shirts, sleeves hacked away, necks stretched. Two of ’em had maces heaved over their shoulders, and the other two carried what looked like butcher knives in sword form.

  “What’s yer name?” one of them asked, oily-faced and three-chinned.

  “Astul, Shepherd of the Black Rot. If your girl in there has been dealing with assassins long enough, she’ll know one of those three names. I promise.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Why don’t you go in and ask her what she thinks, hmm?”

  Apparently, I used the wrong tone. Because the heads of two studded maces thudded onto the floor, then were hoisted up in a position you might hold as you prepare to scythe away tall stalks of grass. Or the head of an assassin.

  Thankfully, there came a knock from behind the closed door, which seemed to startle the burly fuckers.

  I straightened myself, ready to meet this mistress of poison. But as the door opened, Three-Chins tackled me to the floor. I would’ve protested with a few choice words, but all his weight landed on my back, punching the air right out of my lungs. I opened my mouth to inhale, found that I could not, and simply lay there, hoping this wasn’t how it would all end — not by the hand of a conjurer, or the teeth of a reaper, or the vengefulness of an angry god, but by a fat fucker in Burm making a bed out of me. He wrapped his arm around my face, rendering me blind.

  A meek voice said “Oh” in a startled sort of way, and tepid footsteps padded away, down the steps.

  “A spy?” asked a woman. Her voice sounded familiar.

  “Says he’s a shepherd,” said one of her bodyguards. “Black somethin’ or other.”

  “Let him go! Get off him, now!”

  Three-Chins rolled off me — thankfully without crushing my ribs. His arm uncoiled from around my face, replaced with the soft touch of a feminine hand.

  “You were supposed to be dead,” she said.

  I turned onto my shoulder and snorted in disbelief. “Slenna. You’re the mistress of poison in Burm? Well, fuck me.” She’d been a lovely Rot of mine not even a half a year ago, before Braddock’s hunt for my assassins sent her and and her lover, Wevel, fleeing for safety. She should have found better shelter than Burm.

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. “It’s really you, Shepherd? Come here, inside.”

  She extended a hand and helped me to my feet. I followed her into a cozy candlelit room, the door closing behind me.

  Slenna sat on a rickety stool before a tiny round table. Behind her stood a grungy bookshelf, squat glass bottles resting on bowed and warped pewter-gray shelves. Some of the bottles were full, some half-empty. Others were dusty and foggy. All of them were corked, each containing liquid of varying color, from the red of cherries to the green of bile.

  She ran a hand through her hair, disturbing a single braid dangling near her ear. “I can’t believe it. Everything I’d heard, all the… the stories. How did you… are you the only one left?”

  “Vayle’s outside, watching the horses,” I said, shuffling over to the bookshelf.

  “She is? I’d heard Braddock captured her as well. And the others?”

  I picked up a small bottle filled with what looked like honey. It was runny, though, similar to water. “Kale’s out there still, about six hundred miles away. He’s busy. The others—” I looked at her and shrugged. “They’ve left this world. Where’s Wevel?”

  She threw her arms up onto the table, wrinkled black sleeves concealing her hands. “There was a disagreement.” She looked up, long lashes blinking over her eyes achingly slowly. “He wasn’t quick enough with his blade.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” I said. I picked another bottle off the shelf, gave it a little shake. “What’s with the bottles?”

  “Toxins,” Slenna said.

  “I’m aware. Since when you do you deal in them?”

  She swiveled around, facing me. “Since I assumed Braddock had destroyed the Black Rot. Wevel and I began this operation, and now it’s just me. You won’t believe how fast you can rise in Burm if you have the cheapest or the best.”

  “From what I hear, you deal in the latter. And given the big boys outside here probably aren’t cheap to hire, I’d guess you’re fairly successful.”

  “I sell to the rich, and the rich come to me, because of my discretion. It helps, I suppose, to have in stock every poison anyone could ever want, if killing is your business. Is that why you’re here, Shepherd?”

  I set the bottle back on the shelf. “I need something strong, but it needs to pass through unseen. No burnt lips, no swollen throat. And better yet, it needs to be delayed. Something that, if you added it to the chalice of a lord, he’d sip it unknowingly for a while, lie down at night and then never wake in the morning. Got anything like that?”

  “You’re picky, Shepherd,” Slenna said. She got herself off the stool and pinched her lips as she had a look at her shelf of poisons. Her finger trailed from shelf to shelf, till she came to a bottle clear as an unpolluted river. It appeared empty, but upon closer inspection, as she laid it in the palm of my hand, a crystalline liquid lapped against the inserted cork.

  “Slenna,” I said, “you’re not by chance giving me water, are you?”

  She smiled, hooked the single braid of hair behind her ear. “It’s venom blended with liquefied seeds of vossifos. The interaction between the two causes slow death of the heart. Only a drop is necessary. It may take days, but all the better if it’s secrecy you want. It’s how the deadliest afflictions take you, no?”

  I turned the bottle upside down, watched the syrupy liquid fill in the small gap of air. “Any catch?”

  “Only its price. Most cannot afford it.”

  I withdrew a small leather purse from my pocket.

  “I’ll not take your gold,” Slenna said. “I’ve made more than enough to cover for a lost bottle.”

  I placed the bottle deep in my pocket. “You know, we’re rebuilding the Black Rot. If you’d like…”

  Slenna shied away, eyes swinging to her poisons. “I don’t think so, Shepherd. Thanks all the same.”

  “The offer’s always there. Once a Rot…”

  “Always a Rot,” Slenna concluded, smiling.

  “I’d better haul my ass o
ut of here,” I said. “You visit Burm too long, and you might not leave.”

  Slenna straightened up the bottles on the shelves. “For one reason or another. Stay safe out there, Shepherd. Nice to see you’re alive. And send Vayle my regards.”

  “By the way, you might encounter a few more visitors to your shop. I’ve recruits hunting for this poison as well. Part of their training. Give them a hard time for me, will you?”

  “I’ll make them squirm.”

  I winked at her, then went to leave.

  “Wait,” she said. She knocked on the door, a quick one-two pattern three times over. “It’s so the guards outside blindfold anyone waiting; it’s not good for business if just anyone identifies my buyers.”

  I raised a brow. “They didn’t blindfold me.”

  “You probably said something stupid to them.” She grinned.

  She knew me well. With her go-ahead, I opened the door, walked past Three-Chins and his merry band of brutes, then scurried through the downstairs tavern like a mouse bolting from a hungry feline.

  Oil vapors burned into the midnight sky from tall torches placed throughout Burm. I’d once seen a torch hacked in half here and wielded as a fiery weapon of doom against a mob of misfits preying on lone travelers. That particular mob was soon talked about in the past tense, because not all lone travelers are easy targets.

  I met up with Vayle outside. She was holding a copper chalice over a brazier.

  “Really?” I said.

  “What?” she said innocently. “It makes for a proper boil.”

  She had some sliced lemons in her other hand, along with a small pouch which contained her tea.

  I casually mentioned that the renowned poison dealer of Burm was none other than our precious little Slenna. After answering what questions I could about our brief visit, Vayle asked me what exactly I’d told Slenna about the past four months.

  “Nothing involving our tiff with a god,” I said, “if that’s what you’re wondering.”