by Sam Sykes
Her smile grew so long and cruel as to make Fennoc’s look mild by comparison.
“And you think to convince me that you’ll kill her? Right here? Right now?” She shook her head. “We both know there is only one way out of this, my dear.”
I looked down at Dalaris. Slowly, I felt a frown weigh upon my face. My knife dropped away from her throat. I sighed.
She was right. There was only one way out of this. And I did know it.
But damned if I was ready to admit it.
A quick snap of my wrist. A cry of alarm. My knife went flying from my fingers.
It tumbled through the air, struck the globe of light above Dalaris. The crystal shattered into a dozen fragments and the magical substance within hissed out of existence, bathing the world in darkness.
Vishera let out a series of curses as she whirled about with her wand. But the sparks forming at the tip of it were nowhere near bright enough to allow her more than a tiny bit of light. She held it out before her, searching for me.
But I was already gone.
Low to the ground, breath soft, feet swift, I swept to a nearby wall and put my back to it. I felt papers rustle behind me; a bookshelf. I held my breath as I watched the tiny light of her wand dart fervently in the darkness.
There’d be no hope of finding my knife in the gloom. Nor would it matter; whatever shield she had was still up. Even if she was a little more screwed than before, I was still just as screwed as I had ever been.
Do this line of work long enough, you see a lot of people meet their end in a lot of different ways. And somehow, it’s always the opposite of what you think it’ll be. I’ve seen brave warriors beg and cry for their mothers before they’ve died. I’ve seen brilliant wizards struck dumb and speechless by their impending demise. I always wondered how I’d go.
I supposed that all depended on how I lived. And here, at the end of it all, I knew that I had been an immense pain in the ass to an awful lot of people.
No need to give that up now.
“So, I bet you’re used to being called insane by now,” I said from the dark. “But has anyone pointed out how stupid you are?”
Vishera whirled in my direction, thrust her wand out. But her clenched jaw spoke no words. She scanned the darkness, searching for me.
“You’ve got more money than anyone else in Yanmass,” I continued. “And you spent it on this?”
“It’s the only way,” she snarled.
“What, really? You didn’t think to hire an army of mercenaries or something? Or maybe buy a nice catapult? You’re sure maybe you didn’t really just want a little bundle of hellfire to bounce on your knee?”
“Silence!”
Her roar was followed by another command word. A bolt of lightning shot out, struck the bookshelf and set it ablaze. But I was already gone, crawling across the floor until I arrived at the wall behind her.
“No, I get it. You want a way to secure your legacy.”
She whirled once again, trying to get a fix on my voice. I crept slowly against the wall, low to the ground.
“Your father was killed by Qadirans, right? You want to avenge him by reshaping Taldor in an image of your family. You don’t want vengeance against Qadira, you want vengeance against the people who failed him.”
“They were weak.” She thrust her wand out. “Cowards. We’ll all be better off—”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that part. But this isn’t for them, is it? No one comes up with a plan this insane just for the sake of someone else. Let alone a woman as rich and spoiled and selfish as—”
Another word. Another burst of lightning. I could feel it snake past me this time. It struck an alchemical apparatus behind me, shattering the many vials and beakers and spilling viscous liquids onto the floor.
And I was moving again. She was angry now, hurling more lightning in the dark in an attempt to strike me. Good. I could work with that.
Whether I could survive it was another matter.
I kept crawling around until I felt it: cold iron at my back. I slid my way to my feet.
“It’s never about them. It’s always been about you and your fears. Because you know what all this is for, right?”
“Shut up!” She whirled.
“You just don’t want to go out like your father.”
“Be quiet!” She leveled her wand in my direction.
“Some nameless fool who died for nothing.”
She spoke a word.
And I fell to the ground.
I kicked backward. The door to Fennoc’s cell went swinging open. The lightning bolt from Vishera’s wand went arcing over my head, bolted into the cell. And there, it struck something solid.
There was a brief grunt.
And then a brief silence.
And then? Very long, very low laughter.
I could feel him. Fennoc’s malice radiated out of him like a fire. It was the same disquiet, the same eerie sensation that I had felt before, amplified to a proportion that bore me to the ground. His hatred, his fury, it felt too big, unleashed …
Unshackled.
The sound of metal clinking upon stone. The sound of hooves striding forward. The sound of leathery wings stretching.
I could only bear to hear him. I looked up only once to see him striding past me, black even against this darkness, and then looked down to the floor again, lest he notice me.
But I didn’t need to.
His eyes were for her alone.
I glanced up and saw the terror painted on Vishera’s face as she thrust the wand out impotently before her.
“No!” she gasped. “The spell! The shackles, they…”
“Such a delicate business, binding a demon,” Fennoc said. “The most powerful wizards study the process for years, dedicating their lives to figuring out its intricacies. And even they make mistakes. And you, dear?”
He strode toward her.
“You are but a hobbyist.”
She screamed, command word after command word, hurling bolt after bolt of lightning into him. He cackled, luxuriated in the electricity, even cried out in what sounded like ecstasy; but he did not stop. He continued walking leisurely toward her until she finally turned to run.
And then, he reached out for her. His hand passed through the shimmering air of her shield effortlessly and seized her by the throat. She let out an ungodly moan as he raised her into the air. Through the darkness, his smile was bright and his eyes blazed with fire.
“Now then, darling,” Fennoc said. “After being your guest for so long, I have been looking forward to returning the favor. Let me show you…”
Fires burst into being around his body, spread out until they surrounded him and Vishera both.
“… where I call home.”
Her shriek was lost in the roar of fire as the flames engulfed both of them. They burned bright enough to fill the entire room in one blinding inferno. And then, just as swiftly, the conflagration faded.
And the two of them with it.
And I was left alone with the darkness.
25
Stains on the Carpet
Once you get past all the traps, monsters, and frequent eviscerations, adventurers have it pretty easy, don’t they?
No, I mean it. Everything in a dungeon is a pretty straightforward affair. You get some idiots to go down into a hole with you, you kill everything you come across, you trip a few traps, maybe say a fond farewell to a companion who got unlucky and took an arrow to the face, then grab a lot of treasure and head back to whatever piss-soaked inn you crawled out of to spend it all on booze and floozies.
Simple, right?
That’s what I should have done. Hired on with some meat-head warrior and some bearded wizard and gone down to plunder vaults of orcs or whatever. And if I had less of an aversion to getting stabbed by orcs, I probably would have done it.
But you do this line of work long enough, you come to realize that the only person who ever goes into it is the sort of person th
at can’t do things straightforward. This line of work is meant for those of us who can’t look someone in the eye unless we’re telling them a lie, those of us who don’t feel comfortable unless someone else is worse off than us, those of us who can’t ever quite seem to figure out when we’ve got a good thing going and should just stop.
Like now.
I looked down at my empty wineglass, tilted it back to drain the last few precious drops that remained, and then held it expectantly above my head. A little fellow—skinny, bright-eyed, and full of energy—came scampering up to me, flashing his servant’s uniform like it was a gods-damned war banner.
“Mistress?” he asked.
“More,” I replied.
“Of course.” He had the bottle ready; which figured, since this was my fifth glass. “If this vintage is not to your liking, I can find you another. Lady Sidara instructed us to offer you whatever you wish.”
“Yeah. Isn’t she a peach.”
I leaned on the railing, stared down upon the main hall of House Amalien and the crowd gathered therein. Fat men, pale women, all of them dressed in fineries, all of them swilling wine and eating parts of animals that you weren’t supposed to. All of them had come for the big news.
And the big news was currently standing in the middle of the room.
I had to say, for a guy who hadn’t spoken to anyone that wasn’t a painting for most of his life, Visheron was quite the extrovert. His goatee neatly trimmed, his clothes fine and flouncy, his hat expertly angled to hide the horns on his head, the young artist commanded the attention of at least two dozen aristocrats, all of them cackling at some joke he had told.
More than a few of the women there cast him rather sultry gazes. But, as their chests didn’t look like they would bring them crashing to the earth, I didn’t see Visheron paying much attention to them.
Most of his attentions, it seemed, were for the tall, regal-looking man that came into his circle with a pair of wineglasses. Alarin cracked a joke of his own, no doubt just as stupid, that sent the circle laughing again, almost as hysterically. Which figured, since Alarin was almost as rich as Visheron was now. And soon, they would be ridiculously rich.
I suppose you might be wondering how that all happened.
Shortly after Vishera’s untimely departure, I freed Dalaris and dragged her, half-paralyzed from the drugs, out of the hole and into the house. There was no sign of Halamox or his centaurs, unless you counted the dozens of corpses they left behind.
They were, however, several dozen armed guards from House Amalien, with Alarin at their head, looking quite curious as to why I, bloodied and singed, was dragging his dead brother’s former fiancée down the stairs and into the great hall in her underthings.
Frankly, I was more surprised that it took them so long to respond. If they hadn’t sensed the insane amounts of magic coming out of the house, then surely they’d noticed the centaurs tearing things up. Personally, I had suspicions that Alarin was content to let a little carnage be wrought upon his only rival in the city before intervening.
But I hadn’t been about to voice those suspicions when his guards all trained their crossbows on me.
Fortunately, though, I hadn’t had to. In another few moments, all our eyes had turned to the stairwell as Visheron, clad in a flimsy robe and nightcap, had descended.
I still don’t know if it was sorcery or his own natural charisma that did it, but Visheron revealed that his mother had disappeared earlier—likely due to fear from being targeted by the centaurs—and had summoned him from Oppara to continue her business.
Dalaris and myself he explained as having been abducted by the centaur invaders and rescued by his house guards at great sacrifice.
I could tell, even then, that Alarin hadn’t believed it. Not all of it, anyway. But Alarin was rich and, like any rich man, understood that the truth should never get in the way of money.
“Mistress?”
I glanced to my side, took the wineglass from the servant and set about draining it. He, helpfully, slipped back against the wall and waited for me to finish it again.
That’s how, two days later, I wound up here, in a fancy dress, drinking fancy wine at a party celebrating the official pact of House Stelvan, House Amalien, and House Sidara.
Trade agreements would be announced soon, guards at caravan-rests would be replenished to fend off centaurs, and everyone would be rich and happy.
In the hall below, a smile crossed Visheron’s face, a little too wide and a little too sinister to resemble anything but his father’s. For my part, I didn’t like the idea of him having all of his mother’s wealth. True, he wasn’t his mother. But he was the son of a vicious, horrifying psychopath and a demon, so the thought of him having access to all her money, magic, and forbidden knowledge didn’t make me feel optimistic for anybody he entered a pact with.
But, then again, Alarin was a merchant, so they couldn’t be that dissimilar in views.
My concern was for their third partner.
I found her, standing well away from Visheron and Alarin’s circle of sycophants. Her back was to a pillar. Her eyes were on the wineglass she hadn’t so much as taken a sip from. She did nothing more than occasionally smile and nod to the few people who remembered there were three houses in the pact.
Understandably, she hadn’t been well in the past two days since being freed from Vishera’s laboratory. She was twitchy when she was awake, restless when she tried to sleep, withdrawn and quiet. I expected she would be for some time. You don’t walk away from a situation like that without some scars. And if you’re lucky, all you get is visible ones.
I couldn’t begin to fathom what she was thinking, behind those massive spectacles. For the same reason, I couldn’t begin to fathom why she had agreed to this “pact” in the first place. Her fortunes were meager compared to Alarin and Visheron’s. Whatever they saw in her, they doubtless wanted to exploit. Surely, she could see that.
But perhaps she didn’t want to see it. Perhaps she didn’t want to think about it. Perhaps she just wanted this all to be over as soon as it could. I could understand that. She wanted to put all of this behind her: Gerowan, Vishera, the centaurs …
And me.
That thought came dangerously close to knocking me sober. I looked down at the remains of my wineglass, drained it and held it out.
“The vintage is to your liking, mistress?” the servant asked, rushing forward.
“Very,” I said. I handed him the glass. When he moved to refill it, I simply took the bottle. “So much so that I’m going to take the rest of it. That’s fine, right?”
“Er … I could … get you a bigger glass, if you liked?”
“I wouldn’t want you to trouble yourself.” I shot him a smile and a wink. “A glass wouldn’t last me the walk back, now would it?”
“I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Good thing no one asked you to.” I turned and began to stalk toward the stairs, taking another swig from the bottle.
“But what do I tell Lady Sidara?” he called after me.
I paused, stood there for what felt like a very long time.
“Tell her…” After a moment, I sighed. “Don’t tell her a damn thing.” I walked away and held the bottle of wine high above my head. “Just give her one of these.”
* * *
In all my favorite stories, the hero always disappears without a trace. Whether they’re a lover, a mysterious warrior, or a daring rogue, it always ends the same: the people they just saved look for them to thank and find not a single shred of evidence that they were ever there.
So maybe I was being slightly less than classic when I left a trail of wine-stained clothes and an empty bottle on the floor as I wandered naked through Dalaris’s house, but whatever. She was going to get servants, soon, and I wanted to make sure they earned their keep.
I felt slightly cheated by the wine. I was too drunk to be quick and careful about this, but not nearly drunk enough to be clever. So
I simply stumbled up the stairs to the small room where I had been staying.
I found my leathers in the wardrobe—Dalaris had put them there, thinking perhaps that I’d stay awhile longer—and slipped into them. I strapped my belt around my waist, my knife hanging off of it at my hip. What little else I had, I gathered up and tossed into a satchel that clinked with the sound of coins.
My reward.
In all this, I had almost forgotten Dalaris owed me money. And now, I had almost forgotten that she had paid it. How much had it been? Five hundred platinum? I couldn’t remember. Nor could I even think what to do with it.
It was this city.
That’s what I told myself. I’d been here too long, gotten too distracted. Once I was gone, I could find my head and a way to spend all this. Maybe I could go to Oppara and get really drunk … or go to Galt and get really, really drunk. Or maybe I could …
“You left without saying goodbye.”
I froze. I could feel Dalaris’s eyes upon me, looking right through me, so keenly that I was afraid to turn around and see them myself.
“So, that’s it?” she asked, her voice soft. “You’re just … going? Without a word?”
“Well, obviously not now,” I said. “You just ruined that.”
“Don’t joke,” she replied. “And don’t pretend that you can just walk away from this.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“I just thought…”
“I know what you thought.” I sighed. “You thought that I’d be here for you, right? Your trusted advisor in the shadows? Your streetwise friend, here to steer you clear of these shady merchants and their deals? Well, I can’t. I’ve got better things to do than sit here and watch over a rich girl.”
I had been hoping I wouldn’t have to make a clichéd tough-girl speech, to be honest. Because I had also been hoping that this wasn’t going to turn out this way. Of course, I should have seen it was going to be one typical, gritty farewell, and—
“No, you idiot.”