“That’s fine with me.”
They walked in companionable silence while traversing two narrow alleys and a broad avenue. It was late, so there were few people on the street, but Lad never relaxed his vigilance. The rain eased from downpour to shower, allowing him to pick up more sounds and scents again. Metal clanking inside a second-floor apartment; just someone cooking. The scent of blood; only a butcher shop upwind. The creak of a window followed by a splash; someone emptying a chamber pot from a tenement window. Mya finally broke the silence as they crossed from the South Dock district into Eastmarket.
“What did you think of the meeting with Jayse? Do you think he’s sincere, or is there something else behind his request?”
Though Mya was very good at gauging people, and her tactical thinking was nothing short of brilliant, she often asked his opinion of their clients and colleagues, relying on his keen perceptions. People had tells, habits that betrayed their unease or nervousness, and Lad rarely missed fidgety fingers, pursed lips, or even the subtle tensing of muscles. Even Mya had tells, though she guarded her true emotions more closely than most. He would never admit to such an intimate knowledge of her body language, but he had learned much by watching her over the years.
“He didn’t show signs of being evasive.” He thought about it for a few steps, distracted by a sudden movement. Just a flapping awning. “I think he was sincere, but then, he runs a gambling house. He may be gambling that your help will be worth more than he’ll have to pay you.”
“That’s kind of what I thought. He just seemed…I don’t know…too nice. Almost like he was buttering me up.”
“He seemed eager to tell you what he thought you wanted to hear. It could mean many things: he’s trying to take advantage of you, he’s afraid of you, he wants to have sex with you, or—”
“Sex?” She stopped cold, her eyes slashing at him through the rain. “You think he wanted sex from me?”
“His actions could be construed in that way.” He looked at her curiously. Had she truly not considered that possibility? He had seen men’s eyes follow her as she strode past, lingering on slim curves and snug trousers. He shrugged. “Why would that surprise you, Mya? You’re an attractive, powerful young woman. Surely you’ve looked at men and thought—”
“Yes, Lad, I’ve looked at men and thought about having sex with them, but that’s not the issue.” Blood flushed to her face. The muscles of her jaw tensed and relaxed rhythmically, her teeth chirping against one another like tiny crickets. These were some of Mya’s tells. His comment had struck a nerve.
“It’s not?”
“No, it’s not. If that’s what Jayse wants from me, he’s in for a big surprise!” She turned and continued on her way, her stride purposeful as she mounted High Bridge. Below, the rain-swollen river ran fast and dark, the roar of rushing water overwhelming the sounds of her steps. Lad matched Mya’s pace, curious about what had set her off. He waited until they had descended from the arched bridge so he wouldn’t have to shout his question.
“Why?”
“Because he’s a businessman, and I’m a master in the guild!” Her voice sounded hard now. She crossed Broad Street, slowing as she entered the narrow alley that was the quickest path through the long block of shops lining the waterfront. Water still gurgled across the cobbles and through the gutters, but at least the rain had eased to a sprinkle. “I don’t piss in my own bath, Lad. Relationships with business associates are a bad—”
The hiss of an indrawn breath from the shadows…
Lad moved before the sound of a puff of air through the dart gun reached his ears.
Hand on her shoulder, pull her out of the line of attack…
Mya yelped, but yielded as he thrust her out of the way.
…step around, acquire the target…
The dart that sped toward them was too small to cause much damage, and so, must be poisoned.
…palm sweep and pivot.
Lad’s open palm slapped the dart aside without touching the barbed head, and he leapt toward its source. A blade sang from a sheath, another assassin in his path, sword arcing out of the night toward his throat.
Recognition of one’s opponent, his weapons, his expertise, is vital for survival. Remember!
Katana. The information came to him instinctively, without any deliberation on his part. Expert wielder, probably trained by a western blademaster. Lateral stroke meant to decapitate. Timing and execution perfect.
Lad knew the fine, layered steel of a katana would not break as easily as a common tempered blade. He twisted in mid-air, arching his spine and flinging back his head. The edge of the blade passed a half inch from his nose, so close that he could see the glimmering reflection of his own eyes in its wavy luster. He clapped the flat of the blade between his palms and used the power behind the attacker’s strike, as well as his own momentum, to pirouette around the sword.
As his heel met with the wielder’s temple, Lad pulled back minutely, exerting enough force to knock the man senseless, but not enough to snap his neck.
I will not kill for you…
Lad had held to that tenant for five years. Not once had he killed in Mya’s service, and tonight he would not break that vow.
Dropping to his feet, he released the blade in a flipping motion. As the braided sharkskin hilt slapped into his palm, he assessed his remaining opponents.
Three more.
The attacker with the blowgun stepped back even as the other two advanced. The nearest held two daggers low and ready to strike, but she had not anticipated Lad’s theft of the first assailant’s sword, which gave him a considerable advantage in reach. He parried her two thrusts, then swung the weapon in an arc. The flat of the blade met with her skull, and she fell like a poleaxed steer. Her partner dodged out of reach.
As the momentum of Lad’s stroke turned him, he spied movement above and beyond Mya, two more assailants dropping from the rooftops. They would reach her before he could finish with these, but she was already turning to face them, her daggers out. Lad knew she was not without skill; he just hoped she survived until he could lend his aid.
The puff of air from the dart caster’s second shot sounded like a hammer blow in his mind. Intuition and training brought the blade up into the path of the dart, and the envenomed tip shattered against the flat of the katana. He leapt, knocked the blowgun aside, and placed a careful kick into her chest. The blow broke ribs, and her head cracked against the brick wall. She fell in a wheezing heap, but she, too, would live.
The last assailant stood with two hooked axes at the ready, but hesitated. Lad brought the katana around and settled into a proper stance, ready for the man’s attack.
It didn’t come.
The axe wielder’s gaze flicked past Lad, and then he simply backed away, turned and ran.
Lad whirled, ready to deal with the other two assailants, hoping that Mya had managed to stay alive. Unfortunately, he was too late.
Mya stood over two corpses, a bloody blade in each hand. One assassin’s throat was slit from ear to ear, while the other bore a wound to her left eye which undoubtedly penetrated all the way to the back of her skull. Unlike Lad, Mya had no compunctions about killing.
“Did their blades touch you?” He dropped the katana and approached her, looking for signs of weakness or pain in her stance. “They were poisoned.”
“No.” She looked at the daggers in her hands as if surprised they were there. Her eyes shone white, wide in the dim light. He could see her pulse pounding in her throat. “No, they didn’t even scratch me! HA!”
“You’re sure?” He looked her over, but her clothes weren’t torn or cut.
“Sure.” She took a deep breath and grinned at him. “They made such a racket coming off of the roof, I was ready, and surprised them.” She bent to clean her daggers on one of the fallen assassins’ cloaks, then stood and indicated the three unconscious foes. “We should take one to question.”
“Please. No, Mya.” He g
ripped her shoulder. “We should go.”
“Let me have a look at them, then.” She rolled the swordsman over and snorted in disgust. “I know this one. Wu Jah; I think that’s his name. Journeyman Blade. I should cut his head off and send it to Horice in a box!”
“Two deaths are enough for one night, and now you know who sent them. Come. Let’s be off.”
“If I send a message, maybe this bullshit will stop!”
“Or Horice will want revenge for the insult and try again.” He turned her away from the prostrate forms. “Come on.”
“Fine.” She sheathed her daggers and followed him down the alley at an easy trot.
Four blocks later they slowed to a walk. Lad was on high alert, but his attentiveness was so intuitive, he managed to replay the attack in his mind as they travelled. Never before had they been attacked by more than two or three assassins. Mya had been lucky tonight; a scratch from a poisoned weapon was as lethal as a dagger to the heart. She was more proficient than he had thought if she could kill two attackers with no harm to herself. Even though they had initiated the attack, he regretted the deaths. They had only been following orders. He knew what it was like to have to follow orders, and he knew that someone would mourn them.
Family, friends, lovers…
The dead were beyond fear and pain; it was the living who would suffer.
“This attack could have been prevented, Mya.”
“You’re right.” She cast him another vicious grin. “I should have killed Horice months ago.”
“That’s not what I meant!” He bit back his temper and forcibly calmed the tone of his voice. A deep breath returned his heart to a slow, easy cadence. “You ignore the council. They retaliate. If you paid them more heed…”
“They are old and irrelevant. They don't understand me, and I refuse to kowtow to their whims.” She gave him an impatient glare; they’d had this discussion before. “I’ve tried to make the guild a less-brutal organization at your request, and I’ve succeeded with my own faction. By opposing the other masters, I’m trying to force them to change their ways. If I cooperate, the guild stays as bloody and brutal as always. You can’t have it both ways, Lad.”
“I know, but the violence is only worsening.”
“There’s no way to make lambs out of lions. Things change slowly or not at all, and change threatens the way they’re used to doing business, which threatens their power.”
“They wield enough power, Mya. If you cooperated on some things, they might—”
“You mean submit!” She gave him a short, humorless laugh. “No, Lad, if I give them a taste, they'll take the whole larder."
“Very well. You know these people better than I do.” That was true enough. Lad understood human nature, and had even managed to grasp the intricacies of bantering speech patterns, irony, and humor, but the machinations of the Assassins Guild were beyond him. He knew one thing, however, and voiced it as plainly as he could. “They’ll continue to try to kill you if you continue to alienate and ignore them.”
"Ha! Let them try. That’s what you’re here for, my friend.”
She gripped his shoulder, and he forced himself not to slap her hand away. He knew it wasn’t an attack, but Mya’s touch made him tense, which was odd, considering what they’d been through. She’d once cut a crossbow bolt out of his spleen, refusing his pleas to let him die. He’d never thanked her for that. Maybe he should have.
“We have the perfect relationship, Lad. You protect me…and I protect you."
Lad tensed again. You protect me…and I protect you. From Mya, it sounded more like a threat than a promise. He protected her from harm. In exchange, she kept guild Enforcers away from the Tap and Kettle, and kept his head out of a noose. Lad had blood on his hands, and as unwilling as his actions might have been, the Royal Guard would still hang him if they ever discovered he had killed more than a dozen nobles five years ago.
Their agreement was simple, but as with any agreement with Mya, it worked to her advantage. To Lad, it was a trap he couldn’t escape without breaking his word twice over—his promise to Mya to protect her, as well as his promise to himself not to kill—for he knew she would never let him go until one of them lay dead in some back alley. He was too valuable to her, and she would never give up an advantage.
Finally, they approached the Golden Cockerel. Warm light glowed from the two large windows in the front of the bar’s ground floor. Two men lounged on the porch, and one of them opened the door as Mya and Lad approached.
“Evening, Miss. Hell of a night for a stroll.”
The two men were Hunters, and they were on duty. They didn’t look like assassins, of course, but that didn’t change what they were.
“Evening, Vic.” Mya nodded in passing.
Warmth and light, laughter and the clatter of dice, the clink and clatter of cups and glasses, all met his senses at once. Lad’s tension eased as he followed Mya into the pub’s boisterous common room. Many of those present—barmaids and prostitutes, gamblers and drinkers—were Mya’s Hunters. Here, if nowhere else in the city of Twailin, she was safe enough without his protection.
“Join me for some mulled wine, Lad?” Mya handed her cloak to the elderly woman at the door and accepted a towel for her dripping hair.
He nodded to the cloak-check woman, who gave him a motherly smile and a wink. As she hung up Mya’s cloak, he noted the row of straight scars that crossed the underside of her forearm. She, too, was one of Mya’s people, and each scar, he knew, denoted a kill.
Fathers, brothers, daughters, friends…
“No, thank you. I should go.”
“Well, be careful. I don’t want you to catch your death in this weather.”
“Catch my…” He automatically gave her a naïve look. “You mean catch a chill and become sick, right?”
“Very good, Lad.” She smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. He forced himself to not flinch. “But there’s more than one way to catch your death in garrote weather.”
“Oh, right. Yes. I’ll be careful.”
“Do that. And thank you, Lad.” She squeezed his shoulder, and her sincere tone told him what she meant. He’d saved her life again tonight.
“You’re welcome, Mya.” He nodded, then turned and walked out into the rain and toward his other life.
Chapter III
Mya shivered, but not from any chill brought on by her damp hair or dripping clothes. Watching Lad’s departure always felt like a warm blanket being pulled away, baring her to the cold night air. Mya knew she was safe here. Surrounded by her most reliable Hunters, she had nothing to fear. Besides, her performance tonight proved that physical dangers were less of a threat than they had once been. Still, after five years of having Lad at her side, Mya found herself comforted by his presence, and felt strangely exposed without him.
She shook off the feeling, dismissing it as post-fight tension. Her nerves still sang with adrenalin after their brush with Horice’s assassins. She finished toweling her hair and returned the damp cloth. “Thanks, Jules.”
“No problem, dear. Night like this isn’t fit for a walk without a warm towel and a mug of wine to greet you home.”
“Too true.” She surveyed the boisterous common room. Home. Yes, it felt good to be home.
Mya breathed deep, savoring the scents, sights and sounds of her only refuge in the city. Paxal, her long-time landlord and self-appointed mother hen, stood behind the long teak-wood bar. Over his shoulder, the ridiculous portrait of a crowing golden rooster—the pub’s namesake—glowed in the lamplight. As if sensing her gaze, Paxal looked up, gave her a nod and a gap-toothed smile. Mya smiled back. Aside from Lad, the barkeep was the person in the world she trusted most. More than a decade ago, he had taken in a frightened runaway, allowing her to sleep in the storeroom for the work she could do. After her sudden appointment to journeyman, then master, five years ago, he suggested she use the bar as her base of operations and had never asked for payment. She paid him, of
course, but he had never once asked. She could never pay for his loyalty, she knew. That was something he had given her free of charge, that and one simple piece of advice one night years ago.
“There are two kinds of people in this world, Mya. People with power and people who live in fear. You have to decide which you are going to be.”
“Which are you?” she’d asked, and he’d given her one of his rare smiles.
“Well, I’m the third type. The type that just doesn’t give a shit anymore. But you’re too young to be like that.”
That axiom had been the single directing precept of her life from that point forward. She would be one of those with power, not one of those who lived in fear. The next day, she had sought out the Assassins Guild, submitted to their tests, and signed the blood contract.
Conversations rose from the bar and gaming tables. About half the people here were hers, and they had strict orders to maintain a festive air. The non-guild clientele remained blissfully unaware that the winsome young man on the next bar stool, or the buxom barmaid, might have just returned from casing a potential target, collecting a finder’s fee for hunting down a fleeing debtor, or even slitting a throat.
A hearty laugh from one of the gaming tables told her someone had won a hand of cards or a roll of the dice. She encouraged her people to game; their contrived wins drew others to the tables. Guild member winnings were figured in as part of their pay, with Mya footing the expense. Everyone was happy, and the pub was always bustling.
Mya had once offered Paxal a formal appointment to the guild, complete with salary, but he’d just smiled his fatherly smile and shook his shaggy head. “Too old for that crap, Miss Mya. Barkeep’s good enough for me. I’m my own boss and I drink for free.” She’d let it drop without another word, but made sure his business thrived.
As Mya crossed the room, her nerves still jangling, she nodded to her people, one of the familiar barmaids, and a couple of regulars who knew her…or thought they knew her. Her pretense of being Paxal’s rich niece allowed her to come and go at will. She strode down the short hall at the back of the common room, past the washrooms and storage chambers, to the thick oak door at the end. A heavy-set bouncer stood before the door, his huge arms crossed over a chest as broad and sturdy as an ale keg.
Weapon of Blood Page 3