“Me neither,” Mags said glumly. He explained more-or-less what he had picked up from the killers, and the second man nodded, as if not surprised.
“I don’t know what we have here, exactly,” he said, closing his eyes and running his fingers over the back of a hairbrush. “Spies, I’ve seen before; caught one or two. Killers for country or for hire I’ve seen, though we usually don’t intercept those, the King’s bodyguards do. But I have not encountered anything like this. The first lot that came in—the ones that I believe you and your friends uncovered, Mags—were well trained to a point, but most of them were gentlemen trained as spies, not professional spies, and they were just not prepared for Valdemar. It was bad enough when one of their number went mad, but it got worse when that second madman popped up.”
“Got no ideer where ’e come from,” Mags said ruefully. “ ’Tis like mebbe when ’e was s’posed t’be hangin’ ’bout th’ others, but whatever made th’ fust mad sent ’im mad too. An’ they didn’ know ’e was conkers till they got ’im t’ketch Bear so’s Bear c’d take care’a th’ mad’un, an’ then ’twas too late.”
The second man shrugged. “That’s as good an explanation as any. Well, whoever sent them in the first place didn’t make the same mistake twice. They found out about Valdemar, they got people who could pass as natives, and gave orders that the mess be cleaned up as thoroughly as possible.” He paused as he put the unlit lamp he had been examining aside, after he had emptied it of oil so he could be sure there was nothing hidden in the bowl. “They planned. They took their time. They were absolutely methodical. They might not have arrived with exact orders but with the discretion to do whatever had to be done. I think—no, I am sure—they knew they were going to kill these four within moments of talking to them and realizing what a hash they’d made of things. They probably had been given contingency plans and a free rein when they left—wherever they came from. But these four never saw it coming. They thought they were passing the job on to a new team and that they could go home.”
::Ask him how he knows that,:: Nikolas said instantly.
“Nikolas wants ter know how you knowed thet.” Mags waited, head tilted to one side, watching the two Guardsmen. “But I reckon ’tis thet.” He nodded at the empty pack that lay crumpled at the head of the bed.
“You see—” said the first to the second. “That’s what Niko’s been waiting for. Not just Mindspeech. Not just someone clever and agile. There are Trainees by the dozen who have those qualifications. He’s been waiting for someone who can observe and think and not just assume things.”
The second nodded. “You’re right,” he told Mags. “It was the empty pack. And do you know why?”
“ ’Cause it don’t b’long there,” Mags said. “Pack should’a been stowed, prolly wi’ th’ others, outa th’ way. Who needs packs, iffen yer settled in? Iffen feller had it with ’im fer some reason, like ’e were keepin’ somethin’ needful in’t, it’d be at foot of bed, not th’ head, or off t’ side, mebbe i’ corner.” He thought of all the times he’d been briefly in the rooms of other Trainees, all the packs he’d seen. Always, empty ones were stowed on a shelf that was awkward to get to, anywhere out of the way. Always, if they held something the owner wanted to keep in them, they were at the foot of the bed, where they wouldn’t get kicked or tripped over.
Never where that one was. Unless . . .
“Reckon ’e were packin’ up,” Mags said thoughtfully. “Mebbe him an’ t’others cooked up a big meal t’git rid’a stuff that’d spoil. Thet’s when th’ others done ’em, after thet meal. Then they come up here an’ went through ev’thing, jest t’make sure. Prolly where they got thet book an’ stuff they sold Nikolas.”
“Good,” said the second with satisfaction. “And that is why I am fairly certain they heard the Weasel was making inquiries after they did this, not before. Probably shortly after. They would have made several passes through this place, making sure that nothing was left behind. If they hadn’t heard that someone was asking about their victims, they would simply have left this as a mystery—four men, dying after a big meal in this neighborhood—the Guard would have written it off as accidental. Maybe some of the food had gone bad. Maybe they picked the wrong mushrooms. If we tested for poison, we wouldn’t have found anything. No one would have been called on to investigate, the men would have been buried in the Poor Grounds, and that would have been that. But then they heard that someone was snooping about, and they realized they were going to have to clean up a bit more thoroughly than they had first thought, because someone would be smart enough to put four dead bodies together with the fact that the Weasel was looking for information. So they planted the story that these men had left town and set the fire, figuring it would take some time before the Weasel found his buyer. By that time the fire here would have destroyed all signs that there was anything other than four common laborers living here, and no one would associate what the Weasel wanted to know about with this place.”
Mags turned all that over in his head, and nodded slowly. That made plenty of good, sound sense. ::Hope yer feelin’ unguilted,:: he told Nikolas.
::I would, if that were even a word,:: Nikolas retorted. But he sounded more like himself, and that pleased Mags no end.
“Gods, I am never getting the stench out of this uniform,” the first muttered.
“Toss it,” advised the second. “I can’t think of any good way to get it clean. It’s not as if they won’t give us more. It won’t be the first time I’ve tossed a uniform that reeked of death.”
Swiftly, Mags put two and tow together. “You’re not Guard,” he said flatly.
“Well . . . we wear the uniform. We get paid by the Quartermaster like everyone else.” The first man grinned at him.
“D’ye work fer Nikolas, or t’other way round?” Mags was very interested to hear that answer.
“Let’s just say we work for the same person. And since you do too, we probably ought to be polite and introduce ourselves. I’m Tal Merrick. This is Kan Betler. The other three members of our team are Jun Lysle, Ref Graden, and Serj Karmas.” Tal put his hand on his chest and made a little bow.
“Jest Mags,” Mags said, bowing awkwardly. “Got no other name.”
“We know,” said Kan, and waved a little. “Hello, Dallen.”
::Well! How thoughtful!:: Dallen sounded surprised and pleased. ::Tender my greetings please.::
“Dallen says ’lo.” Mags smiled a little. “Aight. Anythin’ I kin do?”
“Not really,” Kan told him. “Takes a bit of training to do what we do, to know what to look for. We investigate any death in Haven that doesn’t seem straightforward. Sometimes we investigate when we are asked to do so by relatives. Rarely we go outside Haven. We work with Nikolas a great deal because he has things we don’t.”
“Mindspeech,” Mags said instantly. “An’ Truth Spell.”
Tal touched one finger to his nose and pointed the same finger at Mags. “Sharp one. And he works with us because deaths that aren’t straightforward sometimes involve threats to the Kingdom and the King.”
“If you aren’t going to die of boredom, you might as well stay and watch,” Kan continued, going back to his methodical sifting of the foreigners’ belongings. “It will save us having to have the Weasel arrested so we can talk to him, and Nikolas will appreciate that we are educating you.”
::That’s only so they can get out of sharing some of the special brandy they keep down at their headquarters,:: Nikolas retorted.
“I ain’t bored,” Mags replied—and it was the truth. He was anything but bored. He watched carefully, making note of what they did and did not do. This was a skill worth having . . . .and now that the bodies were gone and the house was airing out, it was becoming more tolerable to be here.
As expected, they found nothing, and finally, at a point well after midnight, the Special Guards packed up the things they wanted to take away and departed, leaving Mags alone in the house.
He climbed back up on the roof per Nikolas’ instruction—but then something told him not to leave. Not just yet. There was something tickling around the edges of his awareness. A presence—no, several.
For a moment, he was afraid it might be the other assassins, come back to make sure the house had burned as they had planned. But as whoever it was neared, cautious as a feral cat, he knew immediately it wasn’t them.
There were three . . .
They were young. Very young. He sensed their hunger—very physical hunger. They might be young in age, but in the way of poor children, they were old in grief and experience. They were creeping up on the house full of anticipation, but as soon as they saw the doors and windows standing wide open, they stopped in their tracks, hidden in the alley, their anticipation turned to despair.
Mags crept across the roof to the point nearest where they were and strained his ears.
::What have you got, Mags?:: Nikolas asked him urgently.
::Dunno yet. Mebbe somethin’ worth chasin. Kids, but they was comin’ here fer a reason.::
“Hoi!” came a whispered voice. “They done a runner!”
There was a whimper. “We ain’t a-gonna git paid naow! I‘m hungry, Merrow!”
“Shut it!” said a third voice. Mags identified it as belonging to the oldest of the three. “Mebbe they done a runner, but they left house open. Lessee what we kin find. Mebbe they’s still stuff i’ there.”
With infinite caution the three slipped up to the back door. One skittered up to the door and peered inside.
“Ain’t nobody ’ere,” came the whisper. “Pew! Stinks!”
The youngest whimpered again, this time sounding terrified, and the whimper rose to a thin wail. “Noooooo!” the child cried, backing up from the door. “Don’ go in there! It’s Death! It’s Death!”
And despite the hunger that Mags sensed gnawing at her belly, the little girl fled.
The other two paused.
“She’s—” there was an audible gulp. “She’s right. Ma smelt like this, arfter a day . . .”
The older one was indifferent. “So? If they’s dead, they ain’t a-gonna need their stuff. Doors and winders open, must mean Guard’s been an’ gone, an’ ain’t nobody else aroun’. We’ll git first pickin’s. Gotta be somethin’ we kin use er sell.”
The younger hung back. “What if they’s—ghostes?”
“Then them ghostes kin pay us,” the elder said defiantly. “We done what we was ’sposed to. We kin take what they owes us outa their stuff.”
The two figures slipped inside the house, one boldly, one reluctantly.
Oho. So them bastiches got thesselves some errand-runners, eh? An’ th’ new ones don’ know ’bout ’em, or they’d’a tidied up the kids afore they bolted.
Mags weighed the notion of confronting the children—but they might manage to elude him and run, and even if he caught them, they’d probably lie. What to do? He wanted to find out just what sort of errands these youngsters had been running . . .
It made perfect sense for the assassins to use children for almost anything that didn’t require strength. A hungry orphan would do just about anything, no questions asked, if you approached him right, didn’t frighten him, made sure he thought he was getting the better of you.
I surely would’ve, back at th’ mine.
And if you needed to be rid of them, a couple of stray children would never be missed.
All right. Then the best thing to do would be to eavesdrop on them now, follow them back to whatever place they called home, and figure out exactly where that was. If he tried to intercept them now, they’d run. After all, they could tell by the stink that someone had died here. Anyone they encountered would likely be involved in a killing or be a rival looter. Better to approach them later, when he could figure out how best to get at them without spooking them.
He slipped back inside the house and stayed well out of sight, but not out of hearing. One of the two found a candle and the means of lighting it, and they carried it with them as they went from room to room. Once inside, when they thought they were alone, they were not exactly stealthy. Unfortunately, he didn’t learn very much from listening to them, since most of their comments were restricted to evaluating how much they could carry away and what was likely to bring the most money if they sold it.
When they moved their search upstairs, he pulled himself back up into the attic and listened from there.
Adults might have been disappointed, even angered, by the lack of things of real value—what the Guards hadn’t taken, he suspected that the pair of killers had carried away—or by the fact that garments had been ripped up and things taken apart. But these little fellows were not dismayed—and he certainly felt kinship with them when they discovered a pile of warm stockings and exclaimed in glee to find that not one had a hole in it. He remembered a time when finding a stocking of any sort was cause for rejoicing.
Eventually they staggered out, laboring under the burden of two full packs apiece, one carried on the back and one in the front, with whatever else they thought salable tied on the outside. It made them ungainly and ridiculously easy to follow, and they were so concerned with their burdens that they were not paying any attention to their surroundings at all. He was even able to follow them down on the ground, ghosting along behind them near enough that he could still overhear their occasional mutterings.
But such disregard for their surroundings was not only to his advantage. It also made them targets.
He spotted the thief about the same time that the thief spotted them. A ragged youth in his teens, he was lounging in a doorway near what Mags figured was an ale shop when he saw the two children. Mags sensed his greed and glee as soon as he spotted the easy targets, and knew then what the fellow was. He was probably a little younger than Mags, but he was several years older and much taller and heavier than his potential victims. In fact, he was not at all unlike—
The flash of memory overcame Mags for a moment.
Mags sensed the cutpurse who was hiding in the alley ahead; then sensed that the thief had spotted the assassin that Mags called Temper. The surface thoughts of the thief, desperation crossed with greed, alarmed Mags, and he stopped, bending over to fumble with a shoe while he tried to figure out what was going to happen and if he could do anything about it.
The would-be thief was a boy, not a man, a boy no older than he was. A boy with a master to answer to, and who, so far today, had nothing to bring back to him. Coming back meant a beating or worse, and no supper. The boy looked at Temper with the eyes of a hunter and saw good clothing, a man well fed, with no obvious weapons. That was enough; the thief made his decision. Before Mags could even think of something to try to stop him, the boy was moving.
His was the cut-and-run style, rushing at the victim from under cover, cutting the bands of the belt pouch, and dashing off with it. Effective only when conditions favored a swift escape, it was well suited to a night thief and to thefts where crowds thickened and thinned again, hampering pursuit.
The boy thought he had such conditions—night, the alley, and a half a dozen escape routes on the other side of the street.
He was wrong.
The man heard the running footsteps; his instincts all came alive, and an unholy glee came over him.
The rest was a blur to Mags, caught as he was between the thoughts of the cutpurse and the thoughts of Temper. Temper threw off such violence that it rocked Mags back on his heels, but it was precise and calculated violence, and an acute pleasure in what he was about to do that was very nearly pain in and of itself.
The man moved at the last minute; the boy’s outstretched hands missed the tempting purse. There was a moment of anger and bewilderment on the part of the thief as his hands closed on air.
Then a flash of terrible pain and incredulity.
Then nothing.
And in the street ahead, all that anyone would have seen was the thief make a rush, the man step aside, and the thief fall
ing to the ground as if he had stumbled. Except the thief didn’t get up again.
Temper passed on, leaving the cooling body of the boy in the street. It happened that quickly. One moment the thief was alive, the next, dead.
Mags shook off the unwelcome memory, and this new thief faded back into the shadows and waited for the two laden boys to pass, figuring to take them from behind. Burdened as they were, they wouldn’t be able to run or fight effectively.
Mags swarmed up a drainpipe and got onto the roof; he waited for the older boy to come out of the shadows and paced him while he followed the children, making sure that they didn’t have an adult protector anywhere about. When the thief was positive they were alone, he made his move.
That was when Mags dropped down on him from above.
All that training at the hands of the Weaponsmaster culminated in a move so perfectly executed that he thought his mentor would probably be beside himself with pleasure if he could have seen it. Mags managed to knock the boy cold without damaging him too much, and do it so silently that the children up ahead of him were not even aware that anything had happened.
Mags dragged the young thief into the shelter of an alley, pulled him behind a pile of garbage, and left him there. Bad luck, tosser, he thought, as he resumed tailing the children. Mebbe that’ll teach ye not t’rob kiddies.
The children staggered into what looked like an enormous abandoned building; it was hard to tell in this light, but part of it looked fallen in. Burned out, perhaps?
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