Weapon of Flesh (Weapon of Flesh Trilogy)

by Jackson, Chris A.

  “Wiggen.” His fingers brushed through her hair again, soft and tender. “It’s time.”

  “No,” she mumbled, snuggling back against his warmth. His skin was like a furnace against her back.

  “Yes, Wiggen. I have to go.”

  “I don’t want you to go.” She clenched her eyes closed, wishing she were dreaming.

  “I know. I don’t want to go, but...”

  “But you have to.” She turned until she could see his face in the dim light, inches from her own. She could see the battle raging behind those luminous eyes, and she knew there was only one way for that conflict to end. “I know.”

  He kissed her and rose from their bed, the fading light of dusk from the high windows playing over his form as he donned his black silks. She sat up as he finished, knowing this could be the last time she ever saw him, and wondering if there was anything she could say to make him stay. She knew there wasn’t.

  “When will you be back?” she asked, pulling her blankets closer. This wasn’t an attempt at modesty, for they knew every inch of one another now; she was already feeling alone, and the blanket still smelled of him and held his warmth. The closer she held it, the longer she could stave off the feeling of being left alone.

  “I should be back by morning. Midmorning at the latest.” He cinched the drawstring of his trousers tight and looked around. He was taking nothing with him; he needed nothing.

  “What should I do if you don’t come back?” Saying it almost broke her heart, but she wanted to know what he wanted. If Lad died, there was nothing left for her. She wanted to do as he wished; nothing else would matter.

  “If I do not come back before highsun tomorrow, go to the inn. The duke will have men there, and you should be safe.” He shrugged, smiled, and added, “Tell them everything I’ve told you about the Grandfather. His estate is near the river in the north of Barleycorn Heights. It is walled and has a single tower higher than any in the district. It’s easy to find.”

  “Should I tell them about you?”

  “It will not matter. If you want to tell them, then yes, but the Grandfather is the one who controls the Assassins’ Guild. I never knew why he wanted those nobles dead, but he’s the one they want. If they kill him, there will be no more nobles murdered.”

  “I’ll tell them,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “Now, let me hold you one more time before you go.”

  “Come here.” He took her in his arms then, burying his face in the nape of her neck. They stood clutching one another for a long time, neither wanting to let go. Then, finally, he whispered, “Wiggen...”

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know. I love you, too.” She released him then, and wiped the tears from her eyes with the corner of her blanket. “Please promise me, Lad. Be careful. Come back to me.”

  “There is nothing I want more in the world than to be with you, Wiggen. I will come back to you if I can. I promise.”

  That was all she could ask of him.

  She pulled him close one last time and kissed him. When their lips parted, she said, “Go now, before I do something silly like break down bawling and beg you to stay.”

  “I will come back to you, Wiggen,” he said, squeezing her hands once more before turning to dash down the steps.

  Wiggen sat down in her blankets, pulling them close. She listened for his passage through the furnace and the vent, but she heard nothing. He was already moving as if his life depended on it, utterly silent, invisible and lethal as death itself.

  “Good,” she said to herself, drawing the blankets closer and breathing deeply of his scent. “Maybe he will come back to me.”

  Captain Norwood leaned back in the chair, his feet on the wide stone hearth, the warmth of the fire baking through the hard leather soles of his boots. The tankard in his lap was almost empty, and it was not his first. Forbish’s tale had taken more than one tankard of ale to swallow, and he still was having trouble believing it.

  “And you say the boy knew nothing of why he’d been given this magic.” He’d heard the same story a dozen times, but he kept repeating it, hoping for some clue.

  “He was as witless to his own purpose as he was to everything else, Captain, I swear it.” The innkeeper sipped his own tankard. “Whoever made him the way he was wanted him ignorant. He didn’t even know what a family was. He asked Wiggen if her being my daughter was the same as two people being friends. If he didn’t know right from wrong, he’d follow orders without question, kill anyone they wanted.”

  “And when he fought, when those thugs threatened you, you said you saw him heal a wound that would have killed a man.” Once again, it wasn’t a question as much as a statement waiting for corroboration.

  “He had a knife through his back and almost out his stomach, and all he did was pull it out, without so much as a twitch, mind you, and slit the bastard’s throat with it.” Forbish drained his tankard and reached for the pitcher. That also had not been their first. “In less time than it takes one side of an oat cake to brown, he was healed.”

  “Incredible.” Norwood finished his tankard and held it out to be filled again.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it.” He poured the Captain’s tankard full, and then emptied the pitcher into his own. “There’s more magic than flesh to that boy, I tell you, but he saved Wiggen and me from those thugs.”

  “And you’re sure he’s the one committing these murders.”

  “From what you described, how these people were killed and how nobody could stand against him...it’s got to be Lad. That and the timing. I mean, the first murder was right after he vanished.”

  “It does sound like too much to be coincidence.” He paused, sipped and stared into the flames for a while before he said, “Magic... It had to be. Why didn’t I trust my instincts?”

  “I’m no wizard, but I’ve never heard of magic being used like that. That’s probably exactly why they had Lad made the way he is. I mean, you could look at him, see him walking right down the street, and he just looks like a scrawny kid. But the way he moved...so fast you couldn’t see it. Whoever made him sure knew what they were doing.” He leaned forward and looked at the captain until the man met his eyes. “That’s the person you want, Captain. Lad was just the weapon, the killer’s the one who’s controlling him. If he’s still controlling him.”

  “That’s not likely to go very far with the duke, Forbish. He wants the killer, not some wizard. If this boy killed my men and those nobles, he’s the one who’s got to answer for it.”

  “But he’s spelled! It’d be like...like a man puts a viper in another man’s bed, and the snake bites this fellow and he dies. You don’t arrest the snake, do you?”

  “Just because the boy didn’t know right from wrong doesn’t make him innocent.”

  “He knew killing was wrong, Captain! He knew because my Wiggen told him it was wrong. Wiggen’s the only reason those last two nobles aren’t dead. Whatever happened when he took Wiggen out of that cell must have set him free. Lad wouldn’t have killed on his own, not if someone just told him to. There had to be some kind of a charm or spell that made him do it.”

  “Or a threat,” Norwood suggested with a raised eyebrow. “You say your daughter and this boy were involved. Well, whoever stole him away could have held the threat of harming her over his head if he didn’t do as they said.”

  “I suppose that could be, but what would have prevented him from running straight here and telling us the first time he was out on his own?” Forbish shook his head. They’d been over it dozens of times, and every idea for why Lad would kill fell flat except one: magic.

  Norwood sipped his ale, unsure of what to do with all the information Forbish had revealed. He still had no specifics on how to find this boy, let alone who was controlling him, but he felt that Forbish was telling him the truth.

  “I can’t keep the boy from being punished, Forbish,” he said finally, putting his
tankard down and pushing himself to his feet. “He’s killed too many of my men and too many high-ranking nobles. The Duke won’t allow justice not to fall on the murderer of his kinsmen, not even if the boy is guiltless.”

  Forbish nodded, seeing the logic of it, though not liking it one bit. Even if Lad walked through the door of the Tap and Kettle this instant, Norwood would be bound by his oath to the duke to arrest him. With so much evidence against him, and now Forbish’s own word that Lad was the killer, the boy would be on the guillotine in a week.

  He knows, Lad thought to himself as he scanned the Grandfather’s estate from hiding. Guards patrolled the walls in pairs, walking at irregular intervals, never out of sight of one another, and the gate guard had been doubled. Half of the guards carried crossbows loaded and ready. Additional guards were posted at the five corners of the outer wall, and watched both the courtyard and the street. He knows I’m coming for him, and he’s afraid.

  That makes us even.

  He moved through the shadows cast by street lamps, invisible as a ghost and as silent as a falling feather. He circled the entire estate twice, analyzing the security, looking for an opening. It was not a fortress; there were no crenellations, no towers to support flanking fire. The wall was simply a sheer twenty-foot-high expanse of fitted stone, the top flat and featureless and about the width of a wagon. He’d gone over it many times—once with an arrow in his chest—so it didn’t present much of a barrier. The real barrier was the additional force of guards. If just one of them saw him, a single shout of alarm would bring them all down on him. He could not fight them all, nor did he want to. The guards were not his enemies; they just worked for the Grandfather. They didn’t even belong to the guild. He didn’t want to kill anyone he didn’t have to.

  So, the problem was not getting in, but doing so without being seen, just as when he’d killed for the Grandfather. The necessary similarity in tactics made him smile thinly; if Mya only knew...

  Mya...

  That was a problem. She was the one element of the Grandfather’s security that he could not predict. Strangely, the security measures he could see bore none of her distinctive brand of deception. Simply adding more guards was a typically brute-force tactic, and if Mya was anything, it was subtle and deceitful, which led him to question whether she was part of the security he would be facing this night. Did the Grandfather still trust her? Had she left after he disappeared? Was she still a slave? Was she even alive?

  Too many unanswered questions.

  He could only proceed with all these possibilities in mind and be ready for every eventuality.

  Like a courtyard full of bowmen ready to fill me full of arrows, he thought, pushing the fear down.

  That was the other problem. He’d never had to deal with fear before; he’d never had fear before. Now it gnawed at his every step, set his heart pounding and his ears ringing with surging adrenaline. His senses sang with an acuity he’d never felt, but he had to keep reminding his hands not to shake. Fear, it seemed, was a double-edged sword.

  He picked a spot midpoint on the longest segment of wall, and so, as far as possible from the corner posts. The walking patrols passed one another at this point occasionally, and when they passed, for a very short moment, their backs would be to one another and their positions would obscure the view of the other watchers. There would be a dead zone, a patch of wall that was not being watched at all. Maybe.

  He waited, crouched in the shadows across the narrow street, watching and listening.

  The moment came.

  The guards approached, their hard boots clicking on the stone in a staccato rhythm. They passed without a word and walked on. Three running steps brought Lad across the street, the last of which changed his horizontal momentum to vertical. One foot touched the wall on the way up, and his fingertips clutched the edge. He twisted in a spiral flip as he cleared the wall, taking note of the guards in passing. Their backs remained to him, their steps relaxed. He dropped to the courtyard, landing in a crouch, eyes and ears straining for signs that he’d been seen. He vanished into the shadows against the wall and waited, calming his hammering heart with several deep breaths. No shouts rang out, no running footfalls echoed against the stone, and no bowmen waited in the courtyard ready to fill him full of arrows.

  Well, that’s good, he thought, moving along the wall to a spot where he could cross the courtyard without being observed. There was a service entrance near the stables that he had used once before. It led past the kitchens, which should be quiet this late at night. The door was never locked since the kitchen staff were in and out so often, and it had never been guarded.

  Not until tonight.

  As Lad slipped through the door, he found himself standing less than a foot from two sleepy guards. Their eyes widened to the point that he thought they might pop out as both guards drew breath to shout an alarm. All they managed were truncated gasps, since Lad hit each one with a careful blow just below the larynx. Neither was a killing stroke, but both men were effectively deprived of the ability to speak. In the confusing melee that followed, Lad discovered that not killing was much more difficult than killing. In the end, however, one guard lay unconscious and the other lay moaning weakly, clutching his manhood. Two minutes later, both lay gagged and bound in the kitchen pantry. He knew they would be missed eventually, but he didn’t know how long it would be.

  Time was now a factor.

  He had to find the Grandfather quickly, and there was just one person who always knew exactly where to find the guildmaster. Fortunately, he also knew exactly where to find the Grandfather’s valet.

  He stood at the base of the main stair, patiently awaiting his master’s call. He would stand here until summoned or informed of his master’s wish that he retire. He did not expect to sleep this night, but that was not unusual. He would wait and watch and listen; such were his duties.

  He also did not expect to live through the night.

  But if it was required that he die, that also was his duty.

  He waited, watched and listened.

  The first indication that the time had come for him to serve his master came with the pressure of two fingers upon either side of his throat. He started to take a breath. There were six guards just on the other side of the main door. He knew they were too far to save his life, but if he raised an alarm...

  “I can feel it if you try to speak,” a voice whispered in his ear. “If you do, I will crush your throat before a sound escapes your lips. Nod if you understand me.”

  He nodded. He thought of the daggers at his belt; if he could twist and strike quickly enough...

  “If you do as I say, you’ll live. If you try for a dagger, you’ll be dead before it clears the sheath.” There was a pause, and the pressure on his throat increased until it was uncomfortable. “Decide which it will be, but do so quickly.”

  He lifted his hands away from his body and his weapons. There was no profit in dying when he could serve his master just as well by living.

  “Good. Now, tell me, very quietly, where is the Grandfather?”

  The pressure eased until he felt he could speak.

  “He is in the interrogation room,” he whispered, then added, “entertaining someone.”

  “You mean the room where I was kept?”

  He nodded.

  “Now, where is Mya?”

  He could not help but smile as he said, “She is being entertained.”

  The grip on his throat shifted, and the pressure increased sharply. His vision dimmed, and darkness welled up and overcame him.

  He had no idea how much time had passed when he woke, bound and gagged in a closet, wondering why he was still alive.

  Lad’s senses were stretched to a fever pitch as he crept down the hall from the sparring room toward the stairs. Fear had become a part of him now, familiar and welcome, like the pain of his blisters. Fear and pain; the two things he had not felt until the previous night had become his allies, companions that kept him a
live and reminded him that he was not invulnerable.

  The only thing that had not changed in him was his curiosity. The valet’s words rang in his mind, and he wondered at their meaning. He knew there was no love lost between the valet and Mya, and he knew he’d interpreted the amusement in the valet’s voice correctly. This did not bode well for Mya, but he couldn’t be sure his surmise was correct until he reached the interrogation chamber.

  He listened at the top of the stairs for as long as he dared, knowing the longer he took, the greater the chance that either the guards’ or the valet’s absences would be discovered. If that happened, he was dead.

  He descended ten steps, paused to listen for a few breaths, and then continued for ten more. He paused and listened after each ten, before continuing. Finally, more than two-thirds of the way to the bottom, he heard something. Someone was breathing, quick and shallow from exertion, fear or pain. Ten more steps and he could see the door and the sliver of white lamplight seeping from under it. Then he smelled something that stopped him in his tracks. It was familiar, and stimulated a cascade of memories. He’d smelled it many times before.

  It was blood.

  He reached the door and rested a hand on the latch, listening yet again. Only one person’s breathing reached his ears, but he knew the Grandfather could remain silent if he so chose, just as Lad was doing now. This reeked of a trap, but he wouldn’t know unless he opened the door. He pressed the latch carefully, feeling and listening for anything that wasn’t right. The simple mechanism worked freely, and he felt the latch click with the faintest tap of metal on wood. He pushed ever so gently, straining to detect the slightest resistance. The door swung easily on its hinges. When there was a wide-enough gap, Lad held the door steady and ran one finger along the edge, feeling for wires or trip strings. There was nothing. He opened the door further, inch by careful inch, until he could slip through the gap.

  He knew the inside of this room like he knew the roof of his own mouth. It had been his prison for many days. There were no shadows with the overhead lamps lit. There was nowhere for him to hide near the door, and several places within where someone might lie in wait undetected. Once inside, he would be exposed. He catalogued in his mind the best places an assailant could hide and edged through, scanning for danger