There is no weapon so great that confusion cannot act as a shield against it. And the anonymous voice, woven of razor edged threads, faded into the back of my mind.
And, of course, I have more important things on my mind than making sure my clothing matches for polite company, I thought ruefully.
The servants tittered, they pouted. Reds would set off my hair, blues my eyes, they said. At least some splashes of color? I pretended to consider, and made as if to relent, but the rest of the clothing were all made of hardy cloth or leather, dark greens, browns, blues, grays, and charcoal. Like a lord in his castle I gave out my unfashionable orders without mercy. Interchangeable, anonymous cuts of fabric that could blend into a crowd, a chaos, or a shadowy crack. I begged small hidden pockets for secreting tobacco, or keeping purses safe from pickpockets. I needed odd cuts, with extra spaces for hidden flasks and maybe even a dagger for defense on the wild streets of the mean city. I needed soft, pliable boots to gently cup my tender feet.
Clothes are tools, like any other, and these were suits of armor with numerous hidden pockets and straps for weapons I had plans to procure. While I made my odd requests, I soothed their concerns with jovial speech. And thereby found out those things ‘everybody knows’ about the Grand Sage.
The most interesting thing was this: The Grand Sage used to be the seat of power for the O’Riagáin family until about twenty years ago, when the need to be fashionably apart overcame the need to look over the shoulders of tax collectors. The new palace located two days away at Riagáinhead was finished. Sturdier, further away from any potential uprising, and far more comfortable, the royal family lived there, now.
It seemed that all of the finest people in the world were here, excepting King Ryan himself. Some whispered the King had enough to worry about keeping a Kingdom intact which had been divided not fifteen years ago. Others thought the army of female servants he had at the capital were progressively taking up more and more of his time as they sprouted bastard children like lice.
On the other hand, all of the Grand Nobles had planned to be present, save those like Duke Flannghaile (He being busy learning to walk, let alone to taking over his duties from his father). His mother, still grieving the death of her husband beneath the hooves of his herd of horses, had taken place as regent. It was rumored that she was torturing a hastily gathered set from the underworld, searching for whom had killed her husband. Súilleabháin, Grand Duke of Southern Marshes, had the misfortune of consuming a roasted swan spiced with too much nightshade. He died blind and mad, but he was not alone. Dochartaigh was struggling in vain to recover from an axe to the back of his skull.
Yes, dear reader, things were getting ugly. Inside these walls was at least one murderer.
I rose from my seat in the entrance to the princess’ suite. In the near complete and total black, I crossed the ankle-deep carpet with less sound than a stiff breeze. I twisted the knob to her bedroom, carefully measuring its resistance and entering in as piece of coal in a pool of pitch. Stealth is partially luck, a bit is skill, but more than anything else stealth is patience. I took ten minutes to shut the door and cross the chamber, but the noise I made was less than an owl’s flight. Even Leoncur did not stir at my passing.
The light was filtering from the single white candle, spreading across the predatory night to splash across the Grand Duchess. Her soft skin was like one of the legendary elvish queen’s dresses, fit so perfectly that one day’s worth of growth would make it unwearable. I am clear enough of mind to know I am not in love with her. To say I would refuse her bed if she offered would be a lie, but she would never offer, this I knew. The seemingly paltry sum she had paid me could be multiplied a thousand fold by anyone wishing her dead. I could kill her now for having lied to me. These hollow thoughts alone knocked against the back of my eyes, the ghosts of psychotics that filled my skill with the echoes of their screams. But they were not real, like the demons who tormented me on the road. The thoughts were simply a habit, a suit of clothing pulled on against the cold of vulnerability.
Gelia lay in a smaller, handmaiden’s bed, her wrinkled face looking as kind as I had ever seen it. Her sagging, aged breasts rose and fell with her breath, showing the life that stirred within her. Some part of me still pushed me to slay her as well, for she definitely knew more of me than I did. The reason I did not, the reason I was still here, was something flighty and intangible. It was some small seed inside me, woken Gods knew when. From the fear and pain it caused me, I also know it used to be dead.
I had taken a vow to protect something pure, this young woman with the will of a matriarch, and I could not let go of the mission. My emotions, my commitment, terrified me in the deepest levels of my soul. Yet, I knew no one would kill this girl while I lived. If I would continue to live was the point in much contention.
My eyes swept the ceiling, the thin windows, and every stone in every wall. Secret doors, hidden panels, odd shadows, sounds, even my nostrils flared to catch any vagabond smells. After thoroughly interrogating the room, I carefully left, locking the door behind me. I crept back into the entrance foyer and sat on an upholstered couch, sinking into the padding. Even if my duty denied it, sleep would have been held at bay by the constant threat of raven filled dreams. My mind began to go over all the information I had stripped from my surroundings. Of course now-
-The sound of metal grinding on stone shuffled softly to my ears, banishing even the memory of sleep.
Finally.
The front door to the chambers came just ajar, and stopped. It began again, a slight push grinding hinges against the fine sand I had installed in the expertly made hinges. I rolled off the couch into a crouch, picking The Phantom from where it lay on the carpet. I hefted it, relishing its lethal weight in my hands. I was fully prepared by the time I heard a cork, and a thick liquid-oil?- being poured on the hinges through the crack between door and jam. It helped muffle the grind as a cautious hand continued its business. It was too bad, really, he had picked the lock so quietly I never would have heard him otherwise.
I felt the Animal stir, begin to buck, to roar. Containing the rage inside a quiet shell made a sweat bloom on my brow. I slowed my breath as much as I dared, fearing my thudding heart would cause stars to spring before my eyes as it hungered for air. I squinted my eyes to hide the whites. I took comfort at the dark cloths wrapped around my head like a hood and mask. Then I froze, for patience is the most deadly weapon.
A stain of a slightly deeper hue poked from around the door, barely silhouetted by the candlelight outside. He paused, surveying the room, then he slipped in and shut the door. I lost him in the darkness until he moved again. Like me, he had come into a darkened room, dressed and hooded in dark colors. Like me, he had sat in the night, taking miniscule motions to cross open fields and sticking to cover. His foil, however was luxury itself.
The Grand Sage, was a inn so resplendent and costly that all night candles burned in glass flasks down every hallway. It was just a little light, enough that a noble sneaking back from one apartment to another would not have to face the horror of a royal stubbed toe. It was just enough to dull the edge of the intruder’s night sight. Worse yet for him, as the invader he had to move. Movement in deep shadow attracts much more attention from than a stationary blotch. To him I was just a shadow caught between couch and table. To me, he might as well have been walking down a brightly lit street, whistling off key, and wondering out loud what to do with a certain bag full of coin.
If you know anything about me by now, dear reader, you know how fair and honorable a man I am. So it will come as no surprise that I waited until the lumpy shadow got just past me, and then I struck. The phantom carved deeply, snapping bone and shearing muscle with equal abandon. The force of the blow caused me to stumble on the table however, and I careened head first into a bookshelf. It ground to a halt having blazed a path from shoulder to navel. The assassin’s knife-arm jerked spasmodically in death, the weapon flying from his grasp and sticking
into the door to Aelia’s room with a deep woody thunk. His only other sounds were a quick, strangled cry of pain and surprise and the burbling noise of breath exiting a ravaged lung through a bloody wound, but it was enough. Moments later the armed boy- armed men crashed into the room.
I had dizzily discarded my hood and stole to the corner so that anyone could see me and recognize me before killing me. Thankfully no one tried. There are some accidents that just won’t be fixed with an apology. Aelia and Gelia also emerged from their room-again against my orders. As both of them looked at the dagger stuck in the door with wide eyes, I wondered if they would ever learn to obey me and stifle their curiosity until I was sure it was safe.
Despite my objections, Aelia insisted on calling in the guards of the Grand Sage. I watched, partially annoyed and somewhat bemused as they came in, tromped over everything with big boots, and poked the body to make sure it was dead. After that, they simply stood around and shrugged at each other, their job apparently done. Finally one asked if we wanted them to take the body away. With some smoldering words, Aelia send the guards off and made a motion to me that I took to mean ‘Do what you want, Crow’ as she stalked off to her room with priestess in tow.
Truth be told, I would have taken any sign, no sign, or her just leaving to mean ‘Do what you want, Crow.’
So I stationed Theo and Jon outside the door, gave stern warnings to the other two to get some sleep, and motioned for Theo to help me move the corpse before he went to his station. By the time I started, most of the blood was already on the floor, but I spread out horse blankets on the table to sop up the worst of the leavings.
‘He’ turned out to have been a she, not that it would have made me hesitate to strike had I known. I pulled of the hood, with its thin canvas mesh covering the eyes, to expose a woman’s bitter, ox-like face beneath. Amongst her possessions I found knives, vials of poison and oil, garrotes, and three emerald-tipped hairpins…all tools used to sculpt murder. If any doubt was left, the mangled remains of some kind of a guild tattoo on her back- even cleft and ripped by the Angel and now so covered by drying blood as to be almost totally unrecognizable- left no doubt. The Assassins guild was now involved.
I had the feeling that I was the only person in the suite that knew exactly how bad the situation was, and this fact became horribly clear as the idiots I stationed at the door let six inn servants in to clean up the blood as the other two morons kept peeking around the corner like children on Pudding Night, and then her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess of stupid and her nanny insisted on checking back on my progress with irritating regularity.
Finally, I slammed my fist onto the table where we had spread the assassin, bringing all motion to the room to a halt. I gave the servants a look that could curdle milk. They stopped cleaning and instead dried the floor with a few hasty swipes and fairly ran out of the room with the dripping, bloody carpet under their arms.
I pointed at Godwin. “Go prepare four horses. Now.” And I stared at him a heartbeat too long, making sure as he reached the door to the suite he was at a run.
Next I… well I didn’t exactly point at the Grand Duchess, “Milady, we need reinforcements. Can you please draft two letters?”
She nodded and retired to her chamber to fetch the required pen, ink and paper.
Next was Jonathan, my voice dripping with syrupy sweetness, “Get to the damned door and do not- and I realize that this may be complicated so listen clearly- do not let anyone in!”
The tone, mixed with a murderous twitch of the eye, banished Jon in a blink. Then I pointed at Miller once again stern, “Prep your equipment and Godwin’s. You will carry the letters and his equipment down to the stables. You will ride in a pair toward the Duchy. You will gallop. Kill one horse each, then ride the others as fast as you dare. Do not stop for any, and I do mean any, reason. Eating and drinking is optional. Shit in your breeches. If one of you gets held up by brigand or beast, the other is to leave him behind. Do you understand or do I need to fetch some shorter words?”
Theo took a step into the room, but in response to my withering glare, he only puffed out his chest. “These are my men, Crow-” I loaded an obscenely worded, ego-withering retort that was surprisingly cut off as he continued “-if one of them is going to be sent into danger, I will lead him.”
Those words hung in the air like the blade of a guillotine. I nodded once and said nothing, but Theodemar blushed. Miller disappeared into the boys’ room, Theo went to join him, but just as I was about to get back to work, Gelia reappeared.
I gestured to the corpse on the table, “Unless you have been holding out on me, I think she’s too far gone.”
The aged crone’s lips twisted churlishly and then reached out quickly to run a hand through my hair. I shied away like a wounded dog, but she held out her fingers to show them splashed with clotting blood. I reached up to the side of my head and found the same. A curse rose into my throat but then Gelia’s hands had me up and guided me to my room with uncompromising force.
I was on the bed like a recalcitrant child. Perhaps it is that I only have memories of bedding down on blanket covered rocks and mud, but these were fantastically comfortable. I had checked and found them to be goose down mattresses held aloft by a rope latticework attached to the wooden frame. It was almost too decadent, and after a night spent dozing on a couch, the feathers called sweetly to me. In just a moment, however Gelia brought in a bowl of warm water gathered from who-knows-where and began tending my head wound, as quiet and confused as I had ever seen her. Her hands were more tender than ever, and her ministrations more thorough. She began to mutter a prayer as she dabbed salves and pressed a thick pad to the wound. As she packed up her kit my scalp began to burn and itch furiously. It had faded moments later and I brought the pad down to my eye level. I dabbed a fresh patch on my wound, and it came back clean. I started to thank the old woman, but something hateful inside me strangled the words in my belly. I settled for nodding in appreciation, and she moved to leave.
She made it about halfway out the door before turning to appraise me critically. I returned her gaze, only my flat demeanor met her sad searching eyes. Well practiced walls vaulted into the skies of my soul, cutting my soul off from her, but then she spoke, “When I met you, I felt you were the worst tragedy to befall this good family yet. Then I thought you a valiant savior, then I was convinced you were a stalking doom.”
Why do clerics enjoy being cryptic? Can anyone tell me? The next cleric who gives me half veiled commentary is going to find my boot prints covering the back of their robes! It had been a long night without any real sleep. I had little time or patience for this, “Care to tell me why I am such a threat? I have killed at least two dozen men, I have defied death, done the impossible, and rescued her from certain doom at least three times. I have done nothing but great service for Aelia, her men, and you to put a fine point on it.”
Her eyes widened and she shook her head fractionally. Her breath was the only thing powering her words as they escaped past her “You do not know?”
I felt the Animal stir, my fingers itched for a weapon. My voice was a knife that I flung across the space between us, “Know what?”
She retreated from me, holding out a hand to stay me where I was. Her face mirrored her Goddess: A bottomless well of pity. Fangs whirled inside my chest, chewing at my humanity with the need to kill, maim, be feared and thus be safe. “If you truly do not remember, Crow, it is better you should forget. But I do not think your past will lose you as easily as you did it.”
Then she was gone, I leapt to the door, but when I heard the lock snick to enclose her in the sanctity of Aelia’s room I knew the conversation was truly over. My skin flushed and chilled at the same time. The thought of going in and beating the knowledge out of her flitted around in my head like a bird caught in a castle. As little as a few days ago, the thought would have been a serious consideration, by which I mean I would be planning it already, but now I simply shot the thought
and let it twitch and go still on the floor of my mind.
I was changing, every single day, and I did not understand it. All I knew is that the sheer weight of inertia was pulling me in one direction and I found myself swimming in the other. I was exhausted, becoming unsure, in a word: Conflicted. The only thing I was sure of was in conflicts somebody died. My hands went to my belly where a scar rested silently, a testament to the last time I had lost focus at the wrong time.
I set my jaw and determined that if I died at least I would have the satisfaction of watching my life replay in front of my eyes. Then at least I would know who the hell I was. It was the least I deserved.
I sat down next to the corpse just as Theo and Godwin met in the main room. I noticed that only Theo was wearing his mail and tabard though both of them carried identical letters in their hands. I started to ask why he would chose to paint a target on himself, and then it became unnecessary as the pieces became a full picture. He saluted me, and I stood to return it with a fair amount of snap. He nodded to me, obviously trying to convince himself that he was, indeed, brave enough to go through with this. I clapped him on the shoulder, and then Godwin as well to not leave him out. They left the apartment like men, without a word until-
“Ride fast. Don’t let Godwin spare the horses at the cost of your lives.”
My first thought was: Who said that?
The second was: You did, idiot.
Theodemar, a man who was about to make himself a target so that the man who followed him would have a better chance to succeed, smiled and nodded again.
I wouldn’t. My face burned, my stomach twisted, and my heart sank, because I knew this was the most honest thought I have had since the Sorrow Wood. He was a far better man than I, and I wasn’t sure I liked how that made me feel.
Then he was gone.
I stared at the closed door for a long time before I cursed myself for a moon-eyed puppy. I had to roll up my sleeves to avoid soaking my new shirt to the elbows in bodily juices. No matter what you see on stage, death is always a messy affair.
I Know Not: The Legacy of Fox Crow Page 14