by Gregory Ashe
Chapter Thirty-eight
Dag leaned up against the corner of the low wall. Pantale and her barrel were nowhere to be seen, and the streets of the Tacline were empty, except for the bundled up man who scurried from shadow to shadow, a hundred yards ahead of Dag.
Evus. It was so sweet to see him, like the first night of spring, or the way Rida’s mouth twitched before she smiled. The promise of something great to come. Dag hurried after him, keeping a safe distance. Forgotten was his decision to betray Brech and put an end to the war before it began.
He was a bit surprised when the Apsian lord stopped outside Coi’s house. If he thinks he’s here to stop a rebellion, Dag thought, he’s in for disappointment. Too bad he won’t live for the real disappointment—seeing Brech’s troops burn the city to the ground.
The house was still dark, its manicured yards as empty as the street. The woman had been foolish, if she was still here, not to post guards. Dag had expected better of her. Still, it would make his job easier. Two throwing knives in his back and Trenius Evus would be about as capable of opening a cheiron as a cat on coals.
Evus fumbled with the lock at the gate for a moment. He opened it and walked through, locking the gate behind him and making his way up the path to the house. Dag waited for him to disappear inside before leaping the gate. It was too easy—he had spotted the flaws in the fence the first time he had come, and finding those gaps in the sharpened metal was second nature to him. He landed quietly, unseen—he hoped. Clouds had moved in, the lines of the great thunderheads visible in the weak starlight even as they blocked out the moon. Dag hurried up the path.
No lights shone in the front windows. Maybe they left, Dag thought. The door opened easily to his touch. He winced at the loud click of wood on stone as he pulled it open. For a moment, the memory of those ravenous flames he had seen Evus conjure rushed back to him, and Dag hesitated. The man could be waiting on the other side of the door. Dag pulled it open.
Darkness met him. Dag slipped inside. No sign of Evus in the front room. No guards. Doors stood on three walls, a thick carpet—its yellow embroidery stained with blood—covered the marble floor where the dead guard had lain last time. The door to the left was open—nothing, just a wood-floored hallway that marked the new addition. The door to the right was next. The stench hit Dag’s nostrils as he came close. Death.
He pulled the door open. Bodies—men and women, guards and servants, slaughtered. Vicious gashes, like an animal’s claws, had opened unarmored bellies and throats; others had suffered more obvious wounds—dagger thrusts, sword cuts across the face. The small guardroom had been turned into an abattoir.
Dag shut the door. Evus had not done that, he was sure, although he would not have put it past the Apsian. Torture and butchery is in the man’s blood, after all. But the bodies were old, the blood crusted and dried.
He took the third door. A marble-tiled hall led toward the back of the house. The way he had come before. He passed the salon where he had fought with Pontus—the wood panel where his throwing knife had stuck was still splintered—and into the next hall. At the end of the hall stood a pair of doors, one of which stood half open. A scream sounded. A deeper shout. Then one heavy thump.
Dag readied his throwing knives and positioned himself at the edge of the door where he could peer into the room. Evus lay on the floor in a pool of blood near the two Apsian women. Dag could not tell if all were dead. The girl, at least, was. Her throat had been ripped out by some sort of wild animal. Dag’s heart broke, but his gaze did not linger; someone was coming toward him. An old man, skin papery-tight, thin tufts of hair clinging to a speckled scalp. Dag drew back from the door. The old man was coming straight toward him, oblivious to the assassin’s presence. Dag hugged the wall behind the door and raised his knives.
When the old man staggered through the door, Dag struggled to keep from gasping. He was a walking corpse, impossibly old. The eyes, though—they were the worst. Dag knew them; this was Brech’s pet monster. Fashim. Aged, yes, but the same face, the same dark, mad eyes. A dagger jutted out of the man’s back. It would take more than that to stop the sorcerer. I send him because he is unpredictable, Brech had said. He is a wild lion, loose in a city of sheep. He will do what a sane man could not.
He had killed the girl; it had to have been him. She should have been happy, Dag thought.
Brech’s monster moved past Dag without seeing him. Dag darted forward and plunged his dagger into the man’s back, low, where the kidney was, and brought his throwing knife across Fashim’s throat. Fashim stumbled. Blood, thick and cold, oozed from both wounds. Dag recoiled, drawing his knives back with him. The blood of a dead man stuck to his hands.
Impossibly, the man still stood. Fashim turned, a smile covering the age-splotched parchment skin. He traced something in the air. Dag recognized a cheiron—he had seen one before. He struck again, long dagger speeding toward Fashim’s groin, to open the artery there. Fashim spoke before the blade could strike home.
Something slammed Dag backward into the wood-paneled walls. He heard the crack of wood, and in harmony, the crack of bone. Stars filled his vision. Everything seemed to expand around him, so that for a moment he hung in the brilliant flash of a concussion, scarce aware that he could not breath. Darkness closed in around him.