A Lady in Crystal

by Toby Bennett

  Seroke couldn’t help his reaction, he knew there was someone in his house, his every instinct screamed it, but despite his incredible senses, he seemed unable to pinpoint the intruder. It was admittedly hard to focus with so many eyes awake but it was always a trade off, the more things he saw at once, the harder it was to focus on any one thing. The storm hadn’t helped, even now the few eyes he had left upstairs were occasionally dazzled by the lightning. His worst problem, however, was the simple strain of physically sustaining so many eyes. They should have been out hunting and of late, even that didn’t seem to be enough. For all he had gained recently, he began to see why the cloak's seller had been ready to part with it. Not that he dared give up the chore of feeding the cloak, with half of Niskar’s underworld just waiting for a chance to get some payback he didn’t dare.

  It seemed that someone was bold enough to challenge him, in spite of the examples he had made. Seroke had a small list in his mind of who might be responsible and he promised himself that, when he found the would be assassin, he would extract everything he knew from him. The sound of the chute moving had made him think that he had finally trapped the intruder but he was disappointed again and the effort of walking with the cloak on was a very draining thing. He did his best to block out the primal frustration and hunger of the eyes but he was too on edge and too weak to lull them back to sleep; in any case, he needed them all prepared to attack. Whoever was in the house with him was well trained and dangerous. Seroke had grown confident with his decision to squeeze the gangs and guilds of the city; each other time that someone had sent an assassin, he had dealt with it easily and the eyes of those responsible had adorned his cloak. It came as a shock to feel vulnerable again.

  Akna watched his mark edge back the way he had come and when the light had faded, he finally allowed himself to breathe. The ledge ran along the wall until he was able to return to the stone floor of the tunnel, though it narrowed considerably and he was forced to lower himself down onto his hands to traverse the last few feet. He quietly blessed whatever gods were watching that he had found the ledge, when he jumped and that it had been wide enough, so that he hadn’t just been left hanging by his finger tips. He resented the fact that he’d had to trust to luck in the first place but as one of his many trainers had been fond of saying, ‘making the most of luck is a skill in itself’. In an abstract way Akna found it interesting that he should care about something like whether he had been lucky or not. Perhaps this was Zenker’s predicted healing. Who could tell? What did it matter?

  What did matter was that he was back in the same dangerous situation, there was one door and he had to get through it. There was simply no way that Seroke could miss the door opening. It was one thing to fool the eyes in the dark, he knew what he was up against and fooling eyes came down to pretty much the same thing whether they were in a body or not. It was quite another thing to open a door into a lit room, with more than a hundred eyes watching and not to be noticed. Akna’s hand went to a pouch at his belt and he withdrew two vials. One contained yellow liquid, the other’s contents were a brilliant purple. Separately they were common enough substances, the yellow liquid was a concentrate of a substance used in cleaning glass, whereas the purple powder was used in making a jeweller’s cement. Together, they made a prodigious amount of gas; the vapour was toxic if breathed long enough but brief exposure was tolerable. There was some merit in the idea of trying to smoke Seroke out of the room, but this kill was important enough that it would be necessary to ensure that the knife had been pushed home. Not to do so was to risk making two very dangerous enemies, the magistrate and his client.

  Akna slunk down the corridor but it was as empty as he had hoped. It surprised him a little that Seroke had not left some watch but then again, Akna reasoned, he might be relying on the door rather than methods, which had clearly failed to bear any fruit. The door at the end of the right hand passage was closed now. If leaving it ajar had been a trap, Seroke had thought better of it, the possibility that it might have been absent mindedness was intriguing but Akna could take nothing for granted. He knelt down and put an eye against the gap near the lock, then he unsheathed his dagger and very slowly, lifted the bar. Once he was satisfied that he would be able to open the door quickly, Akna pulled out a flask of water and two strips of cloth. He wet both strips and wrapped one around the lower half of his face before wedging the other in the gap at the bottom of the door. That done, he laid out a line of jeweller’s purple in front of the door, drew a trench in it with his gloved finger and poured in a generous measure of liquid from his second vial.

  The reaction of the chemicals was instantaneous but to his surprise there was no reaction on the other side of the door. The seal at the bottom prevented the gas from entering the room beyond while the reaction was starting but by now, the magistrate must know something was happening outside his chamber. Akna suppressed a cough and again wondered about just leaving and allowing the smoke to do his work for him. The total contents of both vials in a confined space would be life threatening in less than half an hour. Presuming that the magistrate was even in the room that was, perhaps he had not responded because he was elsewhere. There was only one way to know for certain.

  Akna lifted his dagger and shouldered open the door. The room beyond was large but sparsely furnished and already beginning to fill with smoke. The floor rolled with the heavier clouds that rippled with the movement of the agitated eyes. Akna’s own eyes were tearing, so he could only imagine the effect the thicker smoke might be having on a creature that was all eye and no lid, without the luxury of tear ducts. Still, if the bile they contained was anything to go by, Akna could not imagine the things were suffering too much. The magistrate was indeed in the room. Slumped over his desk and apparently asleep or lulled by the fumes. Even through the haze, Akna could detect an unhealthy pallor to his skin but he was not fooled into thinking that Seroke was incapacitated.

  The magistrate did not raise his head to take aim with the crossbow he was holding under the desk. The only warning of the attack that Akna got was the slap of the bow string and the narrowing of the eyes that watched him from Seroke’s back. Akna dodged as fast as he could but he was not quick enough to stop the bolt clipping him on the left shoulder. Akna grunted with the pain and continued his motion with a combat roll into the room. At the same time he flung both half emptied vials in his hand into the corner where they erupted into another billowing cloud of dense smoke. The caustic stuff stung as it made contact with his bloodied shoulder, Akna preferred to believe that than that some cousin to Alanchi’s poison was already curling into his blood stream.

  The air was thick with fumes and the drying cloth over Akna’s mouth did little to mitigate the effect of the churning clouds. Akna knew neither he nor his mark could last long in the room but he had to be sure the job was done before he left. The smoke had robbed Seroke of his supernatural advantage. The only problem, was that Akna had to find new means of finding his target. With sight eliminated other senses had to be relied upon but while he searched, Akna was more likely than his mark to encounter resistance. His boot was already slippery with an eye he had crushed under foot before he had noticed it and that had earned him another crossbow bolt that erupted out of the fog and passed within an inch of his face.

  Akna leapt in the direction the bolt had come from, sweeping his sabre from its scabbard as he came, the razor edge did indeed encounter flesh and sent a jolt up his arm as it hacked into the wood of the desk. Akna knew before he withdrew the blade that it was the gore from another eye that coated the tip, rather than the blood he sought but the slight indrawn breath from his right, when the thing had been destroyed had given him another clue as to his real opponent’s location.

  Seroke was just as intent on finding Akna as the assassin was on finding him. He knew enough to keep moving. The loss of the eye on the desk, only seconds after he had fired and moved away, confirmed that he couldn’t stay put long. He yearned to have a chance to slip
another bolt into his weapon but he did not dare give the assassin enough time to find him. He could still feel the sharpness of the blade that had destroyed the eye and he had no intention of experiencing the sensation first hand.

  The pain did serve one function, the hunt was not one sided and eyes were already streaming towards the desk to engage the assassin. He expected to hear a yelp of surprise at any moment, but in that he was disappointed. The assassin was grimly silent and impossibly quick. The eyes fell upon him, their sharp little teeth sought to pierce his flesh and more than one succeeded in reaching him; sharp barbs flailed, seeking to pierce his skin and freeze him where he stood but the assassin was never there. Even in the smoke, he had an instinct for where the next attack would come from, as if he somehow sensed each of his many attackers without eyes. Soon all that Seroke could gather from the confused melee was a mounting pain. Without the ability to see their opponent and coordinate their attacks, the eyes were outmatched and quickly disposed of.

  Seroke did not wait around to discover the outcome of the fight, instead he crawled towards the door. So close to the floor, it was a struggle not to choke. It felt like an age since he had had a breath but he did not dare try to take one, since he would almost certainly cough and give away his position. The cloak was heavy and awkward, its bulk making it hard to move stealthily; his resentment for the thing was growing with each moment and he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was still draining his strength. Across the room, the assassin fell backwards crushing the eyes that had found purchase on his back. There was a lot of pain in that but it gave Seroke new hope, once the man hit the floor it would be over, they’d swarm over him like blade fish on a swimming rat. More pain bloomed as the assassin fought off the eager eyes that took the place of those he had killed; there was blood on the floor now, the man must be hurting. Seroke could hear the wood of his desk groaning and knew it would not be long. He decided to risk standing up and taking a quick gulp of the less contaminated air, it burned and he coughed, despite himself.

  Akna’s ears pricked up at the sound of the slight cough from near the door. The dagger in his left hand swept back and he sent the blade spinning into the smoke. He threw himself right after the blade, through the flailing eyes and gouging teeth, relying on the suddenness of his action to buy him precious seconds. Seroke had known the blade was coming before it had even left his opponent’s hand and he had dodged to avoid it but that was exactly what Akna had counted on. As the thrown dagger clattered against the half open door, Akna’s sabre lanced into the magistrate's body. Seroke had none of his killer’s composure and he screamed as the metal entered his body. The first strike was not fatal but his shock at the blow was, Akna quickly aimed a second strike at the misty form in front of him.

  The magistrate's legs gave way and he slumped but to Akna’s dismay, something still lunged at him out of the mist. A flailing horror materialised in front of him, as the cloak detached itself from Seroke’s dying body and lunged at him, seeking his blood to bring it strength. Many fleshy tendrils whipped towards him, piercing his skin and sending impulses through his fatigued body. Akna felt the flood of chemicals and promises that the cloak customarily used to lull and control its victims; no one should have been able to resist the impulses that ricocheted through his strained nerves. The ghosts of the dead and things from more distant realms whispered to him, torturing and stroking every neuron but he had left the part of himself that might respond to such things on Lothar’s bloodstained table. The sabre struck again sheering through the fine leather strips that made up the cloak and bursting hungry eyes. The slack flesh colapsed and was lost in the churning smoke and Akna limped from the stinking room and up into the fresh air that followed on the heels of the storm. It was Akna Asemutt’s first successful assassination.

  Chapter 8:

  “The long fingered thief has stolen moments that I cannot keep

  And traced these weary lines upon my face;

  He has drunk his fill of the tears I weep

  And whipped me on at his own hurried pace”

  “You wait till you get to my age lad, the teeth are the first thing to go.”

  Akna paid no mind to the older man beside him, the ash-men had insisted on sending their best man and Alanchi had done likewise. Neither one of them was particularly comfortable with each other or with the job. As far as Roga was concerned Akna was too quiet, not that theirs was a profession given too much talk but there was a kind of safety in hearing another killer talk to you. A man’s voice could tell you all sorts of things, warn you of trouble before it happened. Roga was very good at reading voices and hiding his own tone, indeed many of his victims had not detected any ill intent until they felt the knife slip into their side. To Roga someone, as obviously unbalanced as Akna, was a real liability. Then again who was going to tell him? It was just over three years since Roga had first heard about Akna, right after the death of magistrate Soroke and in that time the boy had developed into one of the most feared men in the city. Many people whispered about a killer who matched the golems of Harport for his relentlessness. He was a man without qualms or conscience and even men, hardened to the brutal necessities of the life, said there was something wrong with him, that he was not quite all there. Having met him, Rogan knew what they meant; there was something alien about the young man’s face, it betrayed no emotion, except when Akna obviously made an effort to mimic the expressions of those around him, but even when he forced a smile or a laugh, there was no hiding the fact that there was something wrong, something dead in his eyes.

  Akna was still young to come as far as he had but there was no hint left of the boy who had failed his first kill for house Asemutt. He had not even heard the name of his Order spoken out in this wider world and he was becoming something very different to the fanatic he had been groomed to be. With most of his passion literally torn from him, Akna had taken on the air of brooding silence that Roga found so disconcerting. Zenker claimed that he was becoming more human every day but if he was, it was a human being of a very chilling kind. There was no release in wine or women and the lessons he took from his new life brought no light to his shadowed eyes. He lived and killed without emotion and felt neither joy nor shame in the furtive looks that he got from those who knew his reputation.

  Not that killing would necessarily be involved in what Roga and Akna had been commissioned to do on this particular cycle. The erratic tides of Nisgul often flooded the city with dark water and nightmares but sometimes the lake pulled back and revealed something of what she had taken. The ground was still wet beneath Akna’s boots and tiny aquatic creatures scurried through the shallow pools and stinking slime, left behind by the water’s retreat. The whole place might be flooded in a few hours time but for now, the lake had relinquished its grip on the oldest parts of the city. No one could remember when the water had retreated this far and the guilds of the city had been quick to take advantage of the treasures that had been left temporally in the open.

  Street children swarmed over crumbled houses and weed choked old streets, like crabs looking for anything that the tenants of another century might have left behind in a panic when the waters rose. That was before the canals and the levies, when kings had still ruled the city and the flow of coins had not only been to the Asylum. There were many treasures still to be found in the drying mud, if you were quick, you might even dig down to old store rooms and strong boxes and pull out gold and gems. The gold was spent quickly but the gems were often beyond price. The ancient fathers of the city had stored many old dreams. Strange and wild, they were dreams of a more primal time when, some said, daemons still visited men as they slept and wove visions that had brought pleasure and terror to the races that had lived by the black lake, before stone had touched mortar, before Niskaan had swallowed the sun.

  There were greater and lesser troves to be found at such a time but one was accepted to be simply legend. The tomb of Takiaza, Third Hierophant of Niskaan and the first patriarch to pre
side over the finished tomb of the fallen god, had been regarded as long lost. The second half of the Hierophant’s life had been dedicated to echoing some of the grandeur of his god’s mausoleum in his own and many precious things had been packed into the lavish tomb in the days leading up to his death. As if the god were jealous, the waters of the lake had risen and never receded, swallowing the tomb. Takiaza had been buried three days later, in a long forgotten corner of the growing Asylum, a few weathered marks on the stone the only indication that one of Niskan’s greatest sons lay there.

  Whenever the lake drew back for more than a cycle, there was always someone who mounted an expedition to find the old tomb. This time it looked as though it may have been found. The scavenger had no idea of the significance of the silver sculpture he had found, after all he had never actually seen the moon. The Ash-men, who got the lion's share of the things scooped up from the old city, were also at a loss but the find looked valuable enough to merit some interest. The scavenger had been well paid for the remarkably untarnished sculpture and directions to the place where he had found it but with only a few cycles at most before the water reclaimed everything, they had needed an expert quickly, that was where Zenker came in and when you got Zenker, you got Alanchi.

  All this inevitably led to Akna and Roga, standing before the slimy heap that had once been Takiaza’s pride. Operatives from both guilds had made short work of the debris obstructing the entrance and then spread out, to make sure that no one interrupted the two representatives of each guild as they inspected the prize. Time was of the essence, thus it was better to send in two experienced men, rather than to choke the place with people, who would not be able to tell what was truly valuable. Akna had never regained his strong connection to Niskaan’s realm; whatever damage had been done by Lothar it had denied him that but he was still well trained and he had a good sense for the occult, even if he could not practice it as he had once hoped. Roga could spot a copper slith in a junk rat’s nest from a thousand paces away. There was no way to tell how dangerous it might be in the tomb; some summoning and traps would have faded or stopped working; some would never have been activated, since the official burial had never happened. The richest prizes would be protected but neither man was much bothered by the prospect. So long as the tide did not come back in while they were down there and the other guilds were kept away Akna and Roga could not imagine any reason why they would not be as successful as they always were.