Defiant Guardians Anthology

by Jacob Peppers

  “Thank you, May,” Aaron said, grabbing his shirt and putting it on, “I owe you.”

  May rolled her eyes, “Pay me back by staying alive. Oh, and Aaron?”

  He turned to find her staring at him, her expression grim. “The next time you disrespect me in my own club, you’ll have worse things to worry about than Hale or Grinner. Are we clear?”

  He nodded, a cold sliver of fear pricking his heart, “Yes ma’am.”

  He started for the door, and she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, “Your parents did a lot for the people around here, Aaron. I know you think they were fools to throw in with Prince Eladen, but he’s the only one of the Royal Seven that’s done anything for the people since King Marcus died. If it wasn’t for his damned blood thirsty brother Belgarin ….” She waved a hand, dismissing it, “Your parents may have not picked the winning side in the war—it’s still too early to tell—but they did pick the right one. They were good people.”

  “And now they’re dead ones.”

  May sighed, shaking her head, “Good luck, Aaron. And see Celes on your way out. She’ll get you some new clothes. If you’re going to your death, you might as well go properly dressed.”

  Aaron nodded, thoughts of his mother and father too close to the surface for him to trust himself to speak.

  V

  Aaron passed the beggar outside of the Rest and noticed absently that it was a different man than the one who’d been there before. As for the two men that had been following him, there was no sign, only a fresh spot of what looked like blood on the dirty cobbled alley.

  Dressed in the new black tunic and trousers Celes had given him, his wounds seen to, Aaron felt better than he had in a long time and despite what he had to do, he felt his spirits buoyed as he made his way through the Downs.

  He looked up at the sky, noting that it would be daylight in a few hours, and regretted the amount of time he’d spent at the Rest just as he regretted how abrupt he’d been with May. The club owner had done a lot for him since he’d been in Avarest, a lot she didn’t have to, but he didn’t want her involved any more than necessary. The more involved she was, the more likely she would end up in danger because of him, and he wouldn’t have that.

  There weren’t many people out in the streets, but there were a few. Sailors mostly, come to spend a night ashore drinking and carousing in the Downs, one or two men and women that were obviously shopkeepers returning from a late night and, of course, the professionals: whores, pickpockets, muggers. Men, women, and oftentimes children, out to strip the unwary of their coins in the best way they knew how.

  As he drew closer to the Whistle, less and less people shared the street with him until, finally, he was alone. Even in the Downs, some places were safer than others and the roads he traveled now were deep in the heart of Hale’s territory. Residents of the Downs knew to avoid such streets and visitors learned the lesson quickly—if, that was, they were left alive to learn anything at all.

  It didn’t take him long to come to the brothel, a tall, two-storied building. While the other homes and shops on the street were dark, their windows and doors closed and latched against the darkness, the inside of the Whistle was bright, shining in the darkness like a beacon. Or a flame, maybe, and did that make him the moth too stupid to know it was going to get burned?

  He shook off the morbid thought and from the relative safety of the darkened alleyway, he considered his options. Two men stood at the front of the Whistle, swords at their sides. Hired men ready to kill anyone that didn’t belong. Anyone like him.

  He could sneak around the back of the building, maybe, see if there was a way in there, but he knew they wouldn’t have left the back unguarded. Aaron gritted his teeth, feeling time slip away, feeling the necklace get further and further out of his reach with each passing moment. Fuck it. He walked out of the shadows and into the street. These men would be expecting anyone that attacked them to try to take them by surprise. They wouldn’t expect him to walk right up to the door—or so he hoped.

  One of the guards noticed him before he was halfway across the street. He turned and said something Aaron couldn’t hear to his companion, and they both peered into the darkness, their hands on their swords.

  “Who’s that now?” The second man asked.

  “Aaron,” he said as he drew closer, moving to within five feet of the men and standing in the light pouring out from the brothel, his hands held up above his shoulders, “Aaron Envelar. I’ve got a message for your boss.”

  “Aaron—“ the guard paused, shooting a glance at the other one, “but you … you’re supposed to be dead.”

  Aaron shrugged, stepping closer. Only a few feet away now. “What can I say? It didn’t take.”

  He was watching for the moment, expecting it, so when both men went for their swords, he used the second it bought him to dart the rest of the way forward, ramming his fist into the throat of the first. Something crunched under his knuckles, and the man made a strangled, choking sound in his throat, stumbling backward. Aaron was already turning to the other man who’d just freed his blade from its scabbard.

  He ducked a clumsy, panicked swipe and stepped into the man’s guard, grabbing his head in both hands. He gave a savage twist, and there was an audible pop as the guard’s neck broke.

  Aaron caught him before he could fall, lowering him gently to the ground. The longer he could keep those inside unaware of what was happening the better. The night’s silence was split with a loud crash, and he snapped his head around in time to see the first man stumbling through the brothel’s doorway. The man fell sprawling in the entrance, hacking and choking, his fingers clawing at his ruined throat.

  So much for stealth. Aaron drew his sword and rushed past the dying man. Inside, at the bar, three men were turning on their bar stools to look at what had caused the sound. They were obviously drunk, slowed by it, and none of them managed to draw their blades before he was on them, cutting them down.

  When he’d finished, he turned to the room at large and was surprised to find it mostly empty save for a table of four men who all seemed to be passed out. Three of them sat reclined in their chairs, their heads lolling, the fourth’s head lay on the table, buried in his arms. Judging by the sharp, acrid smoke filling the air, the fools must have been high on tamarang. He looked at them, shaking his head in disgust. He’d be doing them a favor, really. Those who became addicted to tamarang died slow, painful deaths as the herb ate at their insides. He turned to the only other person in the room, a too-skinny, dark-haired young girl who stood behind the bar. At a guess, he would have put her at no older than sixteen. Her face was pale, and she stared at him with wide, frightened eyes.

  “I’d get down and stay down if I were you,” he said, and she collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, vanishing behind the bar.

  Aaron stared after her for a minute then, satisfied, he stalked to the men at the table. None of them so much as stirred a finger as the blade went in and, when he was finished, he felt a strong urge to wash his hands. Instead, he went back to the girl at the bar, looking over to see her cowering against it, her arms pulled tight around her knees in a protective ball. “I’m looking for a man named Lucius.”

  The girl’s mouth trembled, but she pointed an unsteady hand at the stairs, “S-s-second door. On the right.”

  “Thanks. Stay down here—you’ll be okay.”

  He took the stairs quickly, knowing it was only a matter of time before the rest of Hale’s men—and there would be plenty—finished amusing themselves with the goods on offer and decided to go back out to the common room. So far he’d been relying only on luck and the element of surprise, but finding a bunch of his friends dead would have a way of putting a man on edge.

  He came to the door, put his ear to it. Feigned screams of ecstasy from inside, a woman. A man, too, cursing and grunting and not feigned in the slightest. He tried the door knob and found it locked. He stepped back and glanced down the hallway once mo
re, assuring himself it was still empty. Then he took two steps and kicked at the door where the latch was.

  The wood of the door was cheap, halfway rotten. Probably, he thought, a place like this, they spend their money on beds and sheets, not doors and locks. The latch snapped easily and the door flew open, slamming against the inside wall. He stepped inside, swinging it shut behind him.

  There was a man and a woman’s shout of surprise—both real this time—and he spun toward the sound. A candle burned on the room’s nightstand and by the light of it he could see a plain-faced girl straddling a familiar man with a pinched, weasel face and greasy black hair. They were both naked, their eyes wide with shock. He pointed the sword at them, “Another scream like that, and you’re dead.”

  “W-w-what the fuck?” The naked man said. He threw the girl off him, and she hit the floor with a gasp of pain. The man moved, going for a knife on the nightstand, and Aaron took a step forward, putting the tip of his blade at the man’s throat.

  “Lucius,” he said, “Good to see you.”

  The man stared at him in confusion for several seconds then his eyes grew wide with surprise, “A-Aaron?” He said, “you’re supposed to be—“

  “Dead? Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps telling me.”

  “Do you have a-any idea who owns this place?” Lucius said, his breath coming fast now, his beady eyes searching for a way out, “This is Hale’s brothel. He’ll kill you.”

  “And here we were getting along so well,” Aaron said, keeping his sword on Lucius’s throat as he drug the room’s only chair beside the bed and sat down. “Here’s the thing, Lucius. I’ve got a couple of questions for you, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to forego the pleasantries. You see, I don’t think I’ve got more than a minute or two before one of your friends finds the presents I left downstairs or comes to investigate what the shout was about. Which means that you don’t have more than a minute or two. So please don’t waste my time—I won’t ask you twice. Are we clear?”

  Lucius swallowed hard, nodding.

  “Good,” Aaron said, “I’m glad we’ve got that settled. Now, tell me. Where can I find Grinner?”

  The man’s brow creased in confusion. It hadn’t been the question he’d been expecting, “I … that is … I don’t know.”

  “I told you, Lucius,” Aaron said, leaning in so that the sword drew a tiny bead of crimson on the man’s throat, “don’t waste my time.”

  Lucius tried to recoil, but the headboard of the bed left him nowhere to go, and he held up shaky hands, “No p-p-please, man. Honest, Silent, I don’t know where he is. Nobody does. Shit the bastard’s men don’t even know where to find him.”

  “You better give me something better than that, Lucius,” Aaron said, “and quickly. Unless you’re not any good to me. If that’s the case—“

  “No, no, wait. Just wait, man, okay?” Lucius said, stumbling over the words in his haste, “I didn’t say that, okay, did I? Sure, sure, of course I help you. After all, we go way back. Look, what about uh … shit. It’s hard to think with that damned sword at my throat, okay?”

  “Be harder to think with it in your throat, don’t you think?”

  “Alright, man, alright, just relax.” Lucius said, staring down the length of steel, “Okay, hold on. I can’t help you find Grinner himself, man—I just can’t okay? No one can. But I can help you find his man, that fat creepy bastard, the one always wears a suit.”

  “Claude?”

  “Yeah, man. Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Keep talking. Where is he now?”

  “Shit, man, I don’t—“

  Aaron shot a glance at the door. Nobody there. Yet. He leaned forward, moving the sword forward just a bit. “Where?”

  “Easy, easy, with that thing, damnit. He’s probably at home, okay? In bed or doing whatever weird shit he gets up to. Man’s got a house not far from here, okay? Only a few blocks. Down on Marian street, third house on the right past the bridge. Got a fucking red door, okay? You can’t miss it.”

  Marian street. Named after the goddess Mariana, goddess of vengeance and retribution. A good sign or a bad one? “Good. Now, I’m going to leave, but—“ Aaron caught movement out of the corner of his eye and spun in time to see the woman coming forward, lunging forward, a knife held in two white-knuckled hands. He jerked to the side, out of the chair.

  Surprised by his sudden movement, the woman tripped, stumbling, and the knife drove into Lucius’s thigh. The man howled in pain and shock, and Aaron winced. Someone would definitely check that—that was not the scream of a man getting what he paid for in a brothel. What he deserved, maybe, but not what he paid for. The woman was frozen, staring at the blood pumping from the naked man’s thigh in shock. Aaron gave her a shove, and she let out a surprised yell of her own as she went tumbling over the bed.

  “See you around, Lucius.” Then he was out of the room and running. A door opened on the second floor as he made the top of the stairs, but he didn’t turn to see who it was, leaping down the stairs three and four at a time. He was out the door and in the street when the shouts of fear and confusion erupted from inside the brothel. He glanced around the street and hurried toward a nearby alley. A sound, something whistling in the air, and he grunted, stumbling as something tore into his left arm. He barely managed to catch himself on the wall of the alleyway, and he looked down, shocked to find an arrow sticking out of the meat of his arm.

  He spun back to look at the brothel. The bar girl stood in the circle of light spilling into the street, holding a crossbow. The weapon looked big and unwieldy in her small hands. Still, unwieldy or not, she was loading another bolt even as he watched, and her aim had proved too damned accurate the first time. What you get for being soft, you damned fool, he cursed himself, and then he was running again, around the corner and disappearing into the night.

  About halfway to the house Lucius had indicated, Aaron stopped in the shadows of an alleyway, his senses alert for sounds of pursuit. He waited several minutes but the street remained empty, so he went over his options, wondered why he hadn’t killed Lucius, why he hadn’t killed the girl. The girl had shot him with a crossbow, could have killed him if not for the night, the darkness. And Lucius … he’d as much as told the man where he was going. How long before he told Hale? He didn’t think that Hale would make a move on the house of Grinner’s second in command—such a thing would cause a war. It was one thing to have the occasional assassination or theft, but an all-out war wouldn’t be beneficial for either. No, Hale probably wouldn’t send his men to attack Claude’s house, but that wouldn’t stop them from waiting in the street nearby and taking Aaron when he left. Or, he thought, if you don’t get your ass in motion, they’ll take you before you even get inside.

  His only hope was that, for the next hour or so, Lucius would be thinking more about the hole in his leg than telling his boss what had happened. Aaron gritted his teeth and pushed the arrow through his arm, strangling a scream that threatened to rise up in the back of his throat.

  He half-leaned, half-collapsed against the alley wall, fighting down the sudden urge to vomit. He took several slow, ragged breaths, rubbed his hand over suddenly blurry eyes. When his vision cleared he tore off a piece of the new shirt Celes had given him—gods, he was going through shirts today—and wrapped the arm, hissing as he pulled the bandage tight. He gave himself another minute to get his breathing under control. Then he stepped out of the alleyway and started down the street. As he walked, he looked back from time to time but, for now at least, the street remained empty.

  It wasn’t long before he made it to the spot Lucius had indicated. The first thing he noticed was the silence. The night was quiet, absent even of the common pleas and moans of the beggars that seemed to lurk on every street corner in the Downs. But it wasn’t just the silence that bothered him—it was the stillness. The houses stood dark, no candles or lanterns burning within. No drunken man shouted at his wife, no unfortunate victim screamed or b
egged for help. There was only the silence and the stillness, only the sound of the wind in his ears, and the steady rhythm of his boots on the cobbled road.

  He knew instinctively that the houses were empty. It was a feel they had, the feel of homes long abandoned, not homes anymore, not really, only the shells of them. It gave him a strange, disconcerting feeling, as if he might be the only man left alive in the world. Then, a realization struck him, and he was relieved to find that strange, disconnected feeling fading. Of course the houses would be empty. If Lucius was correct, Claude’s home was about halfway down the street, a modest dwelling that looked no different than any of the others. Aaron had heard stories of Claude’s depraved forms of entertainment—as all the denizens of the Downs had. It was no surprise, then, that those who’d once lived on the street had moved. Or died, he thought, there’s always that.

  He frowned, studying the distant house. No guards in sight, only the desolate houses, watching him from either end of the street, grim specters in the darkness. But the guards were there, alright. A man like Claude wouldn’t go unprotected. If Aaron’s life had taught him anything it was that, in the world, but even more so in the Downs themselves, things were rarely what they appeared.

  He started down the street again, letting his feet begin to drag, adopting a purposeless shuffle, the way a man might walk if he’d drank one too many mugs of ale. A subtle thing, not overdoing it, letting his head loll from side to side, his upper body sway uncertainly with each step.

  He made his way past Claude’s house, his gaze wandering back and forth in what he hoped appeared to be the aimless, purposeless glances of a man deep in his cups. And there it was. An alleyway opposite the house, a man, dressed in black, his eyes barely visible in the darkness. Aaron stumbled to a halt for long enough to let out a loud belch, noting as he did the curtains of one of the houses beside Claude’s shift subtly. Then he continued past until the house was out of sight. He turned down an alleyway, out of sight of the road, and his steps became purposeful once more.