The knife had only just come free of its hidden sheathe when Cameron was on his feet, striking the inside of the man’s elbow with the ridge of his hand. The man grunted in surprised pain, and before he could recover, Cameron grasped the hand holding the knife and forced it back, driving the blade unceremoniously into its owner’s heart.
The assassin gasped out a wheeze, tottering drunkenly on his feet, but before he could fall, Cameron grabbed him with both hands and sat him down in one of the table’s four chairs, his back to the rest of the room.
Cameron heard a sharp intake of breath and turned to the table nearest him to see an old, gray-haired man staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. He shot a quick glance around the room, assuring himself that no one else had noticed what had happened, then turned back to the old man, a finger on his lips, “My friend can’t handle his drink,” he said.
The old man turned away and began studying his own table as if seeking to divine some hidden pattern in its stained surface. Cameron sighed and reached over, pulling a handkerchief from the assassin’s borrowed server’s tunic and wiping the blood off his hands before tossing the cloth into the man’s lap and taking up his seat once more.
He’d been sitting for no more than a minute when Falen returned, taking the chair across from him with a contented sigh, “Ah, that is so much better.” He glanced at the man sitting slumped at their table before turning to look at Cameron, “Well, I see that you’ve been making friends while I was gone.”
“What can I say? It’s a gift.”
Falen nodded, studying the man for a moment. He lifted the man’s wrist and let it drop. “Yes, well … I’m not sure how to tell you this, Cameron, but your new friend appears quite dead.”
Cameron met his eyes and smiled, “The best kind then.”
Falen swallowed hard. “Well,” he said, reaching for the mug of ale, “at least you ordered me a drink, after all.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh? That bad is it?”
Cameron grunted, “It’s poison.”
Falen frowned, “Well, now that’s a little extreme, isn’t it? Perhaps not the finest vintage, but I’m sure Thom does his best.”
Cameron opened his mouth to speak then thought better of it, shrugging instead.
Falen sighed, grabbed the mug and took a long drink of it before Cameron was able to jerk it from his hands.
“Damnit, Falen,” he hissed, “I just told you it was poison!”
Falen winced and coughed, “Poison’s right. That’s the worst ale I’ve ever tasted.”
“By the Divines, Falen,” he said, “Are you out of your damned mind?”
The dark-skinned man rolled his eyes, “Really, Cameron, there’s no need for all the melodrama. It isn’t as if I’ve never had bad ale before now is it?”
“Come on,” Cameron said, standing up and jerking his friend out of his chair, “There might still be time. If we can get to one of the priests—” Cameron was interrupted by the sound of screaming from across the room. He turned to see a huddle of people gathered around something that was blocked from his view. “Damnit, what now?” He jerked his friend forward and began pushing his way through the crowd.
He was just about to ask if anyone in the crowd was a healer when Thom’s deep voice cut over the din and commotion, “Someone get a priest! Betsy, go damn you, fetch the healer!”
Confused and feeling critical seconds tick by for his friend, Cameron pushed his way through the crowd and saw what had caused all the havoc. A man lay on the floor, the stillness of his chest proof enough that old Thom’s healer would come too late. Something about the corpse’s face struck him as familiar, and Cameron frowned until, in shock, he realized that the man lying dead on the floor was the same man he and Falen had come looking for.
Another realization fell into place, and Cameron turned to Falen, his eyes narrowed.
The smaller man glanced at his friend’s stern expression then at the terrified people gathered around the corpse and sighed, shaking his head, “Melodrama.”
Cameron jerked his friend forward by the collar of his shirt, “Alright,” he growled into Falen’s ear as he jabbed a finger at the corpse, “Explain that.”
Falen shook his head slowly, “I’m no expert, Cameron, but it seems to me that this poor soul came down with the same thing as your friend back at the table. That is … he’s dead.”
Cameron suppressed the urge to scream. Barely. “I know he’s dead,” he hissed, “I’m more concerned with how.”
“Ah. Right,” his friend said, studying the corpse, “Well, this is only a guess, mind you, but I’d say it was poison.”
Cameron glanced at the corpse. No foam at the mouth, no blood on the lips. If there were any signs to indicate poisoning, they were beyond him. “Why do you say that?”
“Hm?” The smaller man mumbled, his eyes never leaving the corpse.
“I said why do you think he was poisoned?”
“Oh, that. Well, on account of I poisoned him.”
“What, by all the Divines, are you talking about?” Cameron demanded, “You couldn’t have poisoned him. You’ve been with me the whole ti—” he paused as pieces began to click into place then met his friend’s gaze, “You said you had to use the privy.”
Falen swallowed hard and nodded, “And so I did. Why, I can even prove it. Though, I must warn you, it won’t be pleasant. Still, if you hold your breath—”
“Forget that,” Cameron said, running a hand through his short-cropped brown hair, “Where did you get the poison?”
Falen cocked his head to the side and looked at Cameron like a tutor looking at a particularly dense student, “Why, from him, of course.”
Cameron said nothing, but something in his expression must have given away the direction of his thoughts. Falen fidgeted uncomfortably, “I … that is … a man really shouldn’t order himself an ale at the same time that he’s planning on poisoning someone—it’s poor form. And if he does, then he certainly shouldn’t trust the assassin he’s hired to consider his well-being.” He shook his head sadly, “Notoriously fickle, assassins.”
Cameron frowned, “Wait. Are you saying the assassin betrayed him?”
Falen glanced at him, frowning, “What? No, of course not. I was speaking more in generalities.” He took in Cameron’s hard stare and pressed on, “Let us say that if a man is foolish enough to order an ale in the same tavern where he intends to commit murder by poison, and if he is naïve enough to trust said task in the hands of an assassin, he most certainly shouldn’t leave his drink unattended for nearly a quarter of a minute while he hatches nefarious schemes with said assassin.”
Cameron frowned, “But how did you—no,” he said shaking his head, “Never mind. I don’t really want to know. Go and perform the rites on the man at the table.” He glanced back at the corpse, “I’ll take care of this one.”
The dark-skinned man nodded, “Meet you at the front?”
Cameron sighed, “If you must.”
He watched his partner disappear through the crowd then he stepped up to the corpse and withdrew his hood. Gasps of surprise and fear as the men and women in the crowd took in his face, his eyes. Of course, they had known who he was, what he was, but it was one thing to see a snake on the ground at your feet; it is quite another when the snake bears its fangs. “In accordance,” he began, his voice ringing in the near-silence of the common room, “with the laws of King Arafel and the Church, in pursuit of the wishes of the Holy Divines, may they always hear our pleas, I, Cameron Shale, Harvester and Chosen Instrument of the Divine’s will, hereby claim the spirit of this man, one Brent Teshran, for Sanctification, as decried in this months’ Drawing. Should any man or woman interfere in the carrying out of this appointed task, he or she will be dealt with,” he paused, glancing around the room at the frightened people, “with finality.”
No one spoke, only stared at him with wide eyes, so Cameron nodded, satisfied, and knelt down beside the
body. He withdrew the necklace from the inside of his shirt, displaying the medallion of the Harvesters. To all appearances, the medal that made up the medallion looked simple enough, a hammered bronze circle in the center of which sat a spread hand, the fingers and thumb connected to the circle at five points. This symbol marked him as a Harvester, but the true function of the medallion lay not so much as a badge of office, but in the magic with which it had been infused. A magic that allowed its wielder—when properly trained—to withdraw the essence of an individual and to carry it inside of himself. Of course, the individual had to be dead at the time, and there was only a small window—sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes—after death in which the magic would work.
Taking a slow deep breath to prepare himself, Cameron pulled the dead man’s shirt aside and placed the circle of medal on his chest, above the still heart, then placed his own hand atop it. As always, the metal was cold to the touch, a cold so intense that it seemed to burn, but as the magic did its work, it began to grow first warm, then hot.
Cameron winced as he felt the essence of the man, carried over the magical connection, seep into him. It was a trickle at first, and in his mind arose a faint memory, not his own, in which a woman sang as she poured water on flowers in a small, private garden. He looked at her with eyes that were not his from where he sat on the ground, his small, child’s hands sodden with dirt and mud.
More memories followed, snatches and glimpses of a life he’d never lived until it felt as if he would be swept away by the force of them. Images flashed in his mind in rapid succession, a hundred, a thousand remembered voices reverberated in his skull, so many voices blended together, a storm of sound, so that he could pick out no single words. Feelings, not his own, rushed through him, memories of bitter hate, aching love, envy, and lust, and hope. Then, when he felt sure that he would be crushed beneath the weight of what he took upon himself, the flood of impressions slowed, then stopped altogether. Cameron sucked in a deep, shuddery breath and concentrated on stilling the rapid beating of his own heart.
He rose on shaky legs and looked around at the crowd of people watching him with horrified, stricken expressions on their faces. “It is done,” he grated in a voice raw and torn as if from hours spent screaming, “The sacrifice has been made.” With that, he turned and started toward the door, the crowd parting around him the way they might stray from a leper. Cameron ignored those looks of disgust and hate that followed him as he made his way across the common room. After all, he had endured many such before. Look if you want, he thought, hate me if you want. What do you know of duty?
Falen was waiting for him in the street, an expression of what could have been sorrow written on his features. His eyes were a dull faded gold that was nearly bronze, a result of years spent gathering essence and one that all Harvester’s shared. Men referred to the effect as the “glimmer”, and it was a much more obvious reminder of what they were than the medallions hung about their necks. As for Cameron, he knew that—could he see himself—his own eyes would be shining a bright gold, the sign that he had recently absorbed the essence of another. “The assassin?” He asked, knowing the answer even as he asked.
Falen shook his head, gesturing to his dull, golden eyes, “I’m afraid not.”
Cameron nodded wearily, “Very well. We got the one we came for.” He turned to stare back at the inn where, no doubt, men and women were whispering in fear and more than a little relief. Death had come, had breathed upon their necks but, today at least, it had passed them by. His eyes glowed in the darkness like twin suns and, for a moment, neither of them spoke.
“It’s a sad thing we do, isn’t it?” The smaller man asked.
Cameron shrugged, forcing his eyes away from the tavern, “It’s necessary.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
Cameron looked at his companion in the light of the moon and was surprised to note a single tear winding its way down his cheek, “It is. We don’t get to choose, Falen. If I got to choose what my life would be like, do you think I would have chosen a father that—” he paused, realizing that he’d been shouting and took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. “The world is how it is, Falen. Not how we would have it.” The smaller man started to say something, but Cameron forestalled him with a raised hand, “Not now, Falen. None of your jokes or riddles, no subtle jibes. Please. Not now.”
The dark-skinned man shook his head sadly, “I find nothing funny in any of this, my friend.”
Something about the way he said it made Cameron angry, and it was an effort to keep from yelling again. Instead, he took a step closer to his partner and cocked a thumb back at the people who had gathered in the doorway of the tavern, watching them. “Wipe your face. Shed your tears, if you must—you always do—but not here. Not now. For now, just do your damned duty. The man was going to poison us, if you’ll recall. Besides, it isn’t as if you knew him.”
Falen glanced at the tavern, within which lay the husk that had once held a man’s soul, “No, Cameron, I don’t know them. No one does, not anymore, and if that isn’t a reason for sadness then nothing is.”
“Enough,” Cameron said, “It’s time we left.”
Falen nodded, a troubled expression on his face, “You lead. I’ll follow.”
CHAPTER TWO
Nicks shifted, wincing at the sharp, burning pain on his inner thighs where, he could feel, he was beginning to chafe. He sneezed and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his guardsman tunic, nearly poking his eye out with the halberd he held as he did, “Divines, but I must be cursed.” He glanced over at his fellow guardsman. Even in the poor light of the covered lantern hung on either side of the wrought-iron gate behind them, the man looked enormous, with a chest and a set of shoulders that must have driven tailors mad. With arms as big as most men’s legs, legs as big as most men’s waists, and a strong-jawed, handsome face, the man looked less like a royal guardsman than some great warrior-god of the past, one to inspire a bard’s song, or a maiden’s wet dream.
The halberd the man carried—the same size as Nicks’ own—looked like a toy in his hands and Nicks thought, not for the first time, that the man would have seemed more at home on some great battlefield of the past, covered in the blood of his enemies and inspiring the men he led through his courage and prowess. But as the man turned, meeting Nicks’ eyes with the vacant, confused expression he always wore, the illusion was shattered. If the man was a great warrior, he was one that had taken one too many hits to the head, and if he was a god, he was a simple one.
“Folks says as it’s a great honor to be chosen to guard the First Temple, Nicks.”
Nicks hacked and spat, rubbing a hand over his face where he’d cut it shaving that morning—he never could seemed to get the damned thing sharp enough. “Right now, I reckon this honor’s got my balls lookin’ like a couple of shriveled tomatoes that some malicious bastard’s went at with sandpaper.”
The bigger man blinked his eyes rapidly, a tick he often displayed when confused—which was most times—and one that had earned him his nickname. “Why would anybody use sandpaper on tomatoes, Nicks?” Blinks asked.
Nicks grunted. He’d known better, of course. Blinks wasn’t very good with metaphors. “He wouldn’t, that’s all,” he said.
Blinks frowned, “Well. Why’d you bring it up for?”
Nicks sighed. Blinks was a good man—as loyal a friend as a man could ask for—but he had a way of makin’ a man consider the benefits of suicide even on the best of days. And, just now, Nicks was soaked through, standing in rain so thick he thought soon he’d be floating in it. He was tired, bored, and chafed so bad he’d spend the next few days walking like a man who’d made one too many visits to the whores on Cheapside. He glanced back, past the gate they guarded, to the First Temple of the Divines. It was the only building in the city of Carel that came close to matching the size of King Arafel’s castle. A big, imposing structure with three turrets reaching toward the sky that many men claimed reminded
them of hands. Nicks figured that, if that were true, those hands were flipping him the bird just now.
“Nicks,” Blinks said, his whisper urgent.
Nicks turned back and saw, by the lanterns hung at regular intervals in the street, that two men were approaching the gate. Their forms were indistinct in the driving rain and the darkness, but he didn’t miss the tell-tale golden glow of one of the two’s eyes, the orbs shining like torches in the night. His breath caught in his throat, and he stood straighter, ignoring the ache in his lower back. “Evenin’, Harvesters,” he said, bowing as they approached. “An evil night, ain’t it?”
The two men came into the circle of lantern light at the gate, and Nicks swallowed as he recognized the bigger of the two. The man glanced at his smaller, dark-skinned partner, as if daring him to speak, then turned back, “No more evil than any other.” He snapped.
Nicks nodded and swung the door of the gate open, “As you say, sir.”
The big man grunted and walked through without a word, the smaller shrugging apologetically at Nicks before following after.
Nicks waited until they’d disappeared into the temple’s wide, gold-inlaid doors before turning back to Blinks, “By the Divines, those bastards give me the chills.”
“Might be it’s the rain.”
“What’s that?”
“The chills. I said it might be the rain is givin’ you the chills.”
Nicks studied his friend for several seconds. “The rain. It’s a wonder you’ve lived this long, Blinks.”
The big man shrugged, “Their eyes are gold, that’s all. My uncle Erwin’s eyes are so red you’d swear his guts was eat up with fire.”
“Your uncle’s guts are ate up but not with fire—the man drinks enough rum to drown a city.”
Blinks nodded thoughtfully, “Well, there is that.”
“Besides, that wasn’t just any Harvester. That was the one folks call the Reaper. Cold-hearted son of a bitch, to hear folks tell it. Some say as he’s the best swordsman in the city, second only to Marek himself, and not all that shy about showin’ his skill to any man as speaks the wrong way, if you catch my meanin.’”
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