Weapon of Vengeance (Weapon of Flesh Trilogy)

by Jackson, Chris A.

  “Respect?” Lad was taken aback. “You think a shopkeeper will respect you if you beat him up?”

  “He’ll bloody well respect my fist! And next time he’ll cough up the money without me havin’ to knock a lick of common sense into his thick skull!”

  Lad stared at the Enforcer, utterly dumbfounded. “That’s not respect, Yance. That’s fear.”

  “What’s the difference? Fear is respect!”

  Suddenly Lad realized what her real reason was—she enjoyed meting out pain and fear. With that realization came the memory of the invasion of the Tap and Kettle by a team of Enforcers. They had taken pleasure in their work, far too much pleasure, delighting in the fear and anguish they evoked. Still blind to human emotion at that period of his life, Lad had not understood. Now he knew that there were people who enjoyed giving pain. Yance, apparently, was one of them.

  Lad narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you ever meet the Grandfather, Yance, your previous guildmaster?”

  Her throat flexed as she swallowed hard. “No. But I heard about him.”

  “The Grandfather killed on a whim and tortured for recreation. Did you respect him?”

  “I didn’t know him,” she admitted.

  “But he was strong, fearsome, and pitiless. You would have feared him, and been right to do so. I imagine that means that you respected him.”

  “I suppose…yes, then. I did respect him.”

  “Do you fear me, knowing that I can kill you and you can’t do anything to stop me?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  “So, you admit that you fear me, but your contempt for my rules, and for me personally, clearly show that you don’t respect me. You’ve made my point. Fear does not equal respect.”

  “You’re wrong!” The muscles of her neck bunched and writhed with those two words. Lad recognized the tension in her body; it was exactly how he had felt when he wanted to kill the Grandfather…and couldn’t.

  “Explain how I’m wrong.”

  “I don’t respect you because you didn’t earn that ring!” Her face flushed scarlet. “You don’t understand the guild. You don’t understand what we are. People respect us because we’re strong. If they don’t respect us, we knock some sense into them!”

  A murderous rage boiled the blood in Lad’s veins. His mind’s eye stared once more at Wiggen’s terrified expression as a knife pressed to her throat. People should not have to live in fear because they can’t fight back! That was the reason for his new rules, the truth he wanted to shout in Yance’s face, but she would never accept that. The guild would never accept that. He bit back his anger and focused on the one truth that the guild might accept.

  “It’s you who doesn’t understand, Yance. Fear doesn’t earn respect, it earns hatred. The shopkeepers you beat into paying blood money don’t respect you, they hate you! They fear you, and hate you, and if ever an opportunity arises to harm you, they’ll take it! That is the position you’ve put the guild in with your actions. That, even more than your treason, is why I must now spend your life.”

  Before Yance could even draw another breath, Lad struck.

  His kick smashed her ribs with such force that her lungs ruptured and her heart was pulped against her spine. Blood jetted from her mouth as she slammed back against the wall, landing in a broken heap of twitching arms and legs.

  Korlak’s boots scuffed the floor as he backed away. Even over the scent of blood, Lad could smell the man’s fear.

  Welcome to the world of the average shopkeeper, Korlak, he thought sourly.

  The blinding rage and urge to kill ebbed, replaced by a flood of self-disgust. What would Wiggen have said? Yance would never have changed her ways, and lenience would only have led to more disobedience. He knew he was right. He also knew he was a murderer. Self-loathing welled up in him, palpable and nauseating. He turned toward the door.

  “The other one, Master?” Jingles asked.

  Lad looked over his shoulder at Korlak. He had known the moment he entered the room which of the two had instigated the assault on Quebeck. Korlak would fall in line, and even more important, he would spread the word of what Lad had said and done. But that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve punishment for his treason.

  “Beat him exactly as you saw Master Quebeck was beaten.” He turned to Jingles. “Do it yourself.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Lad cast one more glance at Yance’s body. Her bulging eyes stared blankly back. She’d been helpless, and he killed her. She killed herself the moment she decided to betray the guild. Lad wondered if the Grandfather told himself the same thing the first time he murdered a helpless underling.

  Lad looked back to Jingles, refusing to let his disgust show. “When you’re done, call in a crew to clean up the mess, pay Lyghter whatever you think is fair, and get back to work.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Lad was out the door and halfway down the hall before he heard the first wet crunch of Jingles’ fist striking flesh.

  Chapter II

  Captain Norwood rubbed his burning eyes and resumed pacing in front of the large diagram tacked to his office wall. He’d been staring at the damned thing for three days now, and knew it line by line.

  “Fat lot of good it’s done me.”

  He stopped pacing and stared some more. The diagram depicted the battle site near Fiveway Fountain. Quite detailed, it showed every bush, tree, lamppost, and bench. Stick figures represented the corpses, twenty-eight in all. Fewer than a dozen were stuck with yellow pins bearing tiny cards printed with personal information: name, title or profession, and next of kin. But it was the five black pins that drew his attention, each representing a corpse killed by a poisoned black dart. The same type of dart and the same poison they’d found on a dead woman in an alley not two weeks ago. Like the first dart, all these had lodged in the victims’ throats at a steep angle, indicating that the killer had shot from a height.

  The same assassin? If so, how are these two incidents related?

  He glanced to the vial-encased darts on his desk. He still had no information on their origin. The duke had insisted that they first concentrate their investigation on identifying the victims, since at least three had been prominent citizens. Only in the last couple of days had Sergeant Tamir been investigating the darts. The poison, white scorpion venom, was common enough to be readily available, and therefore difficult to trace. The tiny spring-loaded missiles, however, seemed to have been custom-made. Finding the crafter of those darts had a high likelihood of leading them to the assassin, but so far they had nothing.

  The knock on his door came as a welcome interruption.

  “Come in!”

  Tamir strode in, igniting a spark of hope in Norwood’s heart. “Did you get anything?”

  “Oh, plenty!” Tamir’s smile oozed sarcasm. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he withdrew several items. “I got a solid gold pocket watch for only two crowns that stopped working fifteen minutes after I left the shop.” He dropped the watch onto Norwood’s desk. “I got a garlic peeler that’s guaranteed never to need cleaning, though I haven’t tried it out yet.” The reeking device thumped down beside the watch. “And I got this here pen knife that has a cork screw, a pair of scissors, a toothpick, a nail file, a fish scaler, and a little thingy that’ll trim your nose hairs!” He peered at the confusing contraption uncertainly. “No blade though, and I’m not quite sure which little thingy is which.”

  Norwood looked at his sergeant with an utter lack of amusement. “So, nothing on the dart.”

  “Not a thing.” Tamir retrieved a glass vial from another pocket and shook it, rattling the little black dart inside. “Nobody’s ever seen such a thing before, let alone made one. The closest thing to real information was a tidbit from that fellow who makes cuckoo clocks in a shop down on Mullet Avenue. He said he’d heard of something kinda similar, something that injected poison, I mean, from a man who used to hunt big game.”

  “Someone hunted big game with po
isoned darts?” Norwood looked dubious. “Sounds like a good way to poison whoever eats the meat.”

  “No, no. He used poppy extract. Just put ’em to sleep. He’d hunt weird critters for the Imperial Zoo in Tsing. Used a crossbow, though; the bolts had a spring and plunger. Apparently the guy dropped a pachyderm with one shot, loaded it on a wagon, and brought it back for the crown prince’s tenth birthday celebration.”

  Norwood sighed. “The crown prince is over forty now, so this hunter has got to be older than me. I can’t see him running across roofs to shoot darts down at people. The hunter’s name?”

  Tamir consulted his notebook. “Wembly, but he moved to a village north of Tsing years ago. It’d take months to track him down to ask him questions.”

  “The clockmaker didn’t know who made those bolts?”

  “No.”

  “Anyplace you haven’t looked yet?”

  “I’ve not done much in The Sprawls yet.” Tamir rattled the dart vial again and put it back in his pocket. “Nothing much down there but tinkers and pot makers. I figure whoever makes these things probably charges a few crowns apiece, and can afford to have a nice place in a better part of town.”

  “Well, we can’t take anything for granted, so you can start slumming this afternoon. On the way, stop at our temporary office down by the docks and pick up Sergeant Maekin’s report on the Bargeman’s Guild.” Norwood returned to his diagram and tapped one of the pins with a note attached. “Youtrin…a damned guildmaster. There’s got to be something deeper going on here. Smuggling, maybe. Who knows?”

  Guild war… Was this the culmination of the Assassins Guild “squabbles” that his late night intruder had told him of? Norwood wondered if the man he’d spoken with had been reduced to a stick figure on the diagram. So far, they’d been unable to connect any of the known dead to organized crime. If these people were members of the Assassins Guild, they’d hidden their illicit activities well. Tamir’s voice intruded on his thoughts.

  “We’ve been going through Youtrin’s warehouses for a week, sir. He might be involved in some tithe dodging, but we’ve found nothing more illegal than that.”

  “So far, Maekin’s only looking into his Bargeman’s Guild connections. Tell him to cast a wider net. I want to know who owed Youtrin money, who he was sleeping with, who he paid rent to, and who paid rent to him. Everything. Do the same with the fencing master and the madam, and we’ll see what connections we can make.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tamir picked up the trinkets he’d bought. “You want the watch? It’s solid gold!” He grinned at his scowling commander and pocketed the worthless piece of junk. “I know, I know. Get to work.”

  “You should open up a stall on Stargazer Street, Tam, because you just read my mind.”

  Tamir snorted a laugh and left. Norwood turned back to his diagram.

  The three prominent Twailin citizens they’d identified among the dead were the only leads they had in this case, besides the darts, and all were turning up blank. His mind automatically veered back to that now-familiar train of thought.

  What in the Nine Hells would a guildmaster in the Bargeman’s Guild, a West Crescent madam, and a fencing master be doing with the Assassins Guild?

  Gleaming steel flashed toward Sereth’s gut. The Master Blade parried the lunge easily. His riposte rang off the quillons of his opponent’s weapon, and he intercepted the counterthrust. Steel sang on steel, and the soles of his boots whisked softly as he danced away from his opponent.

  By the gods, this is boring.

  He stepped back to disengage and assess his student’s stance. Though barely fifteen years old, the boy was a fair fencer in a rote sort of way. He knew the basic forms, but performed them without imagination, no earnest threat, and entirely too much predictability.

  In the neighborhood where Sereth grew up, this pretty boy wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. By his age, Sereth had already mastered the art of fighting with dagger and short sword, and signed his name in blood on a piece of rune-inscribed vellum, dedicating his life to the Assassins Guild.

  Never thought it would lead to begging nobles to let me babysit their whelps, playing patty-cake with blunted blades.

  Despite the irony, Sereth was secretly pleased that his fencing studio had finally attracted its first noble-born student, the young Lord Leonard Barrrington. The rent in Barleycorn Heights was outrageous, but he needed to project the right image to attract customers, and money wasn’t a problem. More students would follow, he knew, but he had to offer something that other instructors didn’t. He had to stand out, and as yet he didn’t know how to accomplish that. Unlike his former master, Horice, he couldn’t rely on witty banter and high-class connections to bring in eager young nobles wanting to learn how to duel. After only two lessons with the young Lord Barrington, however, Sereth was less than enchanted.

  The boy stamped his foot in a poor feint and lunged.

  Time for a real lesson, boy.

  Sereth stepped into the lunge with a twisting parry that denied a stop-thrust, locked his quillons to his student’s, and pushed. Barrington strained to push him back, but Sereth’s rear foot was well planted, and he outweighed his student by at least two stone. For a moment they stood, neither with an advantage, both knowing the first to break the clinch would be at a disadvantage. Then Sereth drew a stiletto from the back of his sparring jacket and poked the tip carefully into his student’s belly, dimpling the boy’s padded plastron by two inches.

  “You’re dead, young lord.”

  “What?” The surprise in the boy’s voice was ridiculously satisfying. The strength left his stance and he stepped back, ripping off his protective wire mask to glare down at the blade in Sereth’s off hand. “That’s not fair!”

  “No, it’s not.” Sereth removed his own mask and leveled a cold smile at his student. This is what he needs, Sereth realized. This is what will set me apart from the other dueling masters. “Life isn’t fair. Fights certainly aren’t fair. If you think otherwise, then your first real fight will be your last, young lord.” He raised the stiletto in a mocking left-handed salute and tucked it away. “This is not a game.”

  “But, to strike with a hidden blade… It’s…”

  “Dishonorable?”

  “Meaning no disrespect, sir, but yes.”

  “Your father’s not paying me to teach you honor. He’s paying me to teach you the art of dueling.” Sereth racked his practice sword and waved his apprentice over. “Not all lessons are learned with the sword. Enough sparring for today, Lord Barrington.”

  Sereth’s assistant, an eager young apprentice named Lem, dutifully took his master’s mask, then assisted him in removing the padded plastron, leather gorget, sword-hand glove, and underlying jacket with its buckles in the back.

  “But in a duel, you must fight according to rules,” argued Barrington as he racked his own sword.

  “And an honorable man will follow those rules. But what happens when you’re challenged by a man who has no honor?” Sereth stripped off his sweat-sodden shirt and accepted a towel from Lem. “I’ve learned to expect less-than-honorable behavior when life and blood are on the line.”

  The boy gazed wide-eyed at the scars that crisscrossed Sereth’s torso before continuing his argument. “But if an opponent resorted to a hidden weapon to win, my seconds would avenge me.”

  “If you choose your seconds well, yes, but being avenged doesn’t make you any less dead, does it?” Sereth grinned, but there was no humor in it. Scrubbing himself dry with the towel, he caught the look of horror on the boy’s face and laughed. “Do you think every man who calls you out for kissing his sister will be honorable?”

  “Well, no, but… I mean…”

  “And what if you’re set upon by thugs? Do you think outlaws will fight honorably?”

  “Well, I know Twailin isn’t exactly safe!” The boy waved the notion aside. “I mean, there was a horrible slaughter in West Crescent just last week, but nothing like that could ever
happen to one of us!”

  The reminder of that night drained all of Sereth’s mirth. In a flash of memory, he once again watched Lad slice Horice in two with the Master Blade’s own enchanted sword. Watched…and did nothing.

  I couldn’t have prevented his death!

  That truth comforted Sereth during sleepless nights. Though he had detested Horice, he would have fought to the death to protect him if there had been a chance. Against Lad, there was no chance. Sereth could never forget that if he wanted to survive the new guildmaster’s reign. Snapping back to the present, he noted a dangerous look in his student’s eyes; the notion that his noble birth kept him safe. In this city, that was a deadly assumption.

  “I suggest you look back in history about five years, young Lord Barrington. Ask your father how many of his noble friends were slaughtered in their beds by dishonorable men.” Sereth shivered with the thought that the one who had committed those murders was now his master. He covered the involuntary reaction by slipping a clean shirt over his head. The smooth, rich fabric caressed his skin like his old clothing never had, a perquisite of his new position. “I’ll see you day after tomorrow.”

  “Will you teach me how to fight with both a dagger and rapier?” The enthusiasm in the boy’s eyes was nauseating.

  How eager they are to play at killing.

  “Teach you how to fight dishonorably? I will not!” The affront on the boy’s face was laughable, but it gave Sereth the opportunity to make his pitch. By giving Barrington something to tell his friends, some secret others couldn’t offer, Sereth would gain students. And with a bevy of nobles sparring in his studio, who knew what gems of information might inadvertently drop. Raising an eyebrow in consideration, he eyed his student dubiously. “However, I will teach you to defend against it. Honorable men must, after all, be prepared to deal with scoundrels.”

  “Yes, Master Sereth!” Leonard’s eyes lit with fervor. “Thank you!”