by O. J. Lowe
Colour me intrigued, I moved towards him, he vanished into the office and I followed him. There wasn’t anything too descript about it, I doubted it belonged to anyone important.
“Lord Commodore,” I said, determined to keep the respect in my voice. Something was going on here, something I found piquing my curiosity. “Do you have something about Moulton?”
“Forget Moulton,” he said with a snort. “He’s another issue entirely. He’s Valentine and Nivendis’ problem. And yours, I imagine.”
“If it’s a problem for those two, does it not affect you?”
“Valentine drives himself forward as our self-proclaimed leader,” Commodore said. “I never supported that. Moulton was Nivendis’ appointment as the shadow knight. That’s going to rebound badly on him.”
I understood in that instant. “It increases your power if the other two are weakened.”
“Correct,” Commodore replied. “But it’s not the reason I called you here. There’s another matter. A more sensitive one. I didn’t want to bring it up in front of the others.”
Conversations like this never ended well, I knew from bitter experience. “Doubtless you wish to bother them all with a private matter, huh?”
“Of course not,” he said, his lips curling into a smile. “I lost a nephew in the last year. Killed in his own home, you know.”
“Who’d be dumb enough to kill someone related to you?”
“Who indeed?” Commodore said, dug out a picture and showed me a snapshot of a young man with dark hair and brown skin, he wore a tuxedo, a big grin on his face. Next to him, a woman in a wedding dress, a petite woman with black hair and caramel coloured skin, something familiar about her though I was sure I’d never seen her before. She had the most extraordinary almond-coloured eyes. “That’s him on his wedding day. That’s Aaron. My sister’s boy.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Something horrible rushed through my mind. “You’re not accusing me or mine of the deed, are you?”
“No, no,” Commodore replied. “Not at all. I doubt you had anything to do with it. You’d have done a better job. See, when he was killed, it was in his own home, his wife buggered off soon after, the ungrateful bitch.”
“I’m sure there’s more to the story than that,” I prodded.
“She said he’d been getting addicted to the magic,” Commodore admitted, the words coming out slowly. I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t wanted to bring that up. Magic addiction wasn’t a laughing matter, there were very few things that could be done for someone succumbing to it unless they were willing to put the work in off their own back. “He’d been leeching off her, the kill was in self-defence.”
“That’s not impossible,” I said. “Addiction makes people do strange things; acts they’d have never carried out otherwise before.”
“Indeed,” he said. “I can’t challenge her, I can’t petition for her punishment, or for the one who killed him to be slaughtered under council law. It’d mean admitting my own blood wasn’t strong enough to control himself. It’d undermine me and I can’t have that.” He laughed bitterly. “You know who the girl is? You just met her father in the other room.”
“Valentine?”
Commodore spat out another burst of bitter laughter at that. “Fuck me, he doesn’t acknowledge any of his bastards, even if most of them are better than his actual heirs. They’ve had to fight for everything, his heirs have spent their lives being pampered like hell. When Thomas Valentine dies, his family is going to fall into an unholy shitstorm. No, not Valentine. Nivendis.”
That was it, why the girl looked familiar. There was more than a touch of her father about her, I hesitated. “You want me to kill her?”
“Rebecca Meheq isn’t the one I have an issue with, her death could cause me considerable problems should it be linked back to me,” Commodore said. “I’ve been keeping tabs on her, where she lives these days. She’s currently staying with her old schoolfriend, Libby Tombs. All I know is that on the day Aaron died, Tombs paid Nivendis a visit, immediately made her way to my nephew’s house and of the three people in there, only two came out alive.”
“You think Nivendis put her up to it? Killing your nephew?”
“I think it’s a reasonable conclusion,” Commodore said. “How much for you to kill Libby Tombs, Mister Armitage?”
I hesitated, thought about it before I gave an answer. On the surface, Tombs might seem like a soft target. More than that, it’d make a point. Society pages had told of her having a brief dalliance with Levitt in recent months. I liked the idea of being paid to kill her, the notion it might cause Levitt even a smidgen of grief wasn’t unattractive. Delve below the surface though, it wasn’t simple. I like to keep a track on my enemies, I think their separation had been amicable and mutual. Two words I hate. If that throwdown on the bridge with that old vampire had proven anything some months ago, it was that Tombs definitely wasn’t a soft target. Was she bulletproof though? Plenty of people in the Novisarium are better than others, but everyone has a weakness.
“I don’t have a problem taking the contract,” I said. “Understand that my previous business with the Shining Council came first. For a target like Tombs, highly defended and something better than human—” I paused, considered my numbers. I didn’t particularly want to name the price too high to put him off, it’s amazing how many people suddenly reach the conclusion that killing is wrong when it hits them badly in the wallet. Nor did I want to undervalue the act— “Tell you what. Same deal I offered Valentine in there. I need people right now.”
“Fine,” Commodore said. “Kill Libby Tombs and I’ll let you have six apprentices from my family for your school.”
That was interesting. The school was supposed to be secret; I raised an eyebrow in surprise and Commodore smirked at me. “We all know how difficult it is to keep things concealed in this city, do we not? When we looked to hire you, we sought to find out everything we could as leverage if needed. I’m surprised Valentine didn’t use it, if I’m honest. He may still do that when it comes to payment.”
“Wizards acting dishonourably,” I said, placing a hand on my heart in mock-shock. “Well, I’m amazed. Whatever next?”
“Forewarned is forearmed, is it not?” he said. “You know, you have the chance to prepare yourself a countermeasure.”
“You’re selling out your boss?” I asked, before realising what a dumb question it was. Commodore had already said he didn’t like Valentine and wanted to reduce his personal power.
“And just to sweeten the pot,” the wizard said. “I know you wanted to talk to each of the knights, so—” He clapped his hands and the door opened, the dark-skinned man with the blond hair from earlier walked in, gave me an uneasy grin— “Just to save you tracking them down. Meet Louis Thirlwell, the water knight.”
“Hey, man,” Thirlwell said. “Apologies about earlier. What they asked for, they tend to get, yeah?” He offered me a hand, I reached out and took it, pumped it. He had a surprisingly firm grip, some real power behind the gesture.
“Pleasure, Mister Thirlwell,” I said, “or should I call you Sir Louis.”
“Nah, man, you don’t have to do that. Not even my mum calls me that,” he added with a cheeky grin. “So, what can I do for you?”
“Garrett Moulton,” I said. “What do you know?”
“He’s to shadows what I am to water,” Thirlwell said. “A master of them, he can move through them, allegedly, step into them one place, come out somewhere else entirely. Makes it difficult to track him.”
“You think that’s how he got into High Hall?” I asked, looking at Commodore who shrugged his shoulders.
“Hell, if I know. I’m not concerned about High Hall. I’m more concerned about getting Moulton off the street before the stories start to fly.”
“The exiled fae in the city are already talking, you know,” Thirlwell remarked. “They’re saying a wizard attacked High Hall.”
“As long as they don’t know
it was one of the knights,” Commodore said, “then we might be able to weather the storm. After all, we’re not responsible for what one wizard does.”
“Don’t all the wizards in the Novisarium have to swear allegiance to you?” I asked. “That kinda suggests the opposite of not being responsible.”
I was ignored, decided to drop the conversation and turned back to Thirlwell. “Tell me about Moulton. What was he like?”
“You think we had little knight conventions where we’d stand around and trade life stories? He always kept to himself, man. We don’t like mixing with each other, because there’s always the chance we might end up enemies one day. We don’t like giving each other the ammunition to pinpoint a weakness.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t know anything,” I said.
“Don’t get me wrong, Armitage. We’re all distant with each other. Moulton took it to a different level. He never spoke about himself, at least not to me anyway. Not about his family, not about his friends, not about his hobbies or his pets. The only thing I ever got the impression about him was…” He hesitated, glanced to Commodore. “Permission to speak freely, my lord?”
“Of course.”
“Power. That’s everything he chased. He chased it like a drunk chasing his next pint, the way a junkie wants a next fix. Trust me, someone who wants that much power, it’s never for anything good.”
“Something like trying to kill a fae queen, perhaps?”
“Well maybe,” Thirlwell admitted. “I don’t like to speculate; you shouldn’t put the words into my mouth.”
“Did he ever give the impression he didn’t like the fae?” I wasn’t here to work out why, I was here to kill him. Still, curiosity was a dangerous sin and I wanted to know why he’d done what he’d done. There were easier ways to kill yourself after all. Plus, I wanted to get in his head, work out how he thought and where he might run to.
“Man, who does like the fucking fae?” Thirlwell asked. “He never mentioned them to me.”
“Official stance of the Shining Council on High Hall,” Commodore added, “is that we’re aware it exists, we just don’t acknowledge it. We have no desire to get involved in going there or interact with any of the people.”
“Fair enough.” I turned back to Thirlwell. “So, you can’t think of anywhere he might have run to?”
“If I could, we’d already have checked it out.”
The steely determination in his voice, the barely restrained anger, that said it all for me. They hadn’t called me to do the job because they didn’t want a scene. They’d called me here because they couldn’t find him.
If you want a job done right, seek a professional.
“Oh, Mister Armitage,” Commodore said as the water knight left the room, apparently nothing more to say to me. “One more thing. I feel the need to warn you, since none of my associates did. This contract to kill Moulton and retrieve his amulet.”
“What about it?”
“You’re not the only assassin we hired, I’m afraid.” He gave me an apologetic shrug, a stab of anger tore at my guts, more out of the insult than anything. “I notice they didn’t tell you that.”
“I think a better question might be, why are you?” I challenged.
“I want you to succeed with the mission, you know that. I think we have the potential for a long and healthy partnership. You and me. Not just with Tombs, but I do have plenty of enemies and the cash to make sure they get what they deserve, enemies I can’t act overtly against. If you succeed, you prove to me that you’re the best beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” I said simply. “I’ve been doing this a very long time; longer than you’ve been alive I’d wager. If you doubt our pedigree—”
“That loss you had recently. Failing to fulfil a contract on Loki Fireson. The entire Novisarium witnessed that particular failure. Setbacks like that, they’re bad for business. You can recover from them, but when a reputation takes a knock—”
“I know,” I said. “Don’t I bloody know it.”
Six.
Hardest thing to make, easiest thing to break, is a reputation. I never liked riddles. No patience for them. Of course, every hunt is a riddle. You need to think outside the box, look at things from a different point of view. It all comes back to thinking like a target, using the information you have to sift through what they’ve done and where they might go.
We were three, me, Job and Black, between us we’d started to pool money into a joint fund, keeping fifty percent of our individual profits and throwing the rest of the money into something better. A union of killers. Some might have thought it a twee idea, but strength in numbers felt like a better idea the older I got. We didn’t have to look out for each other, but it was an insurance policy in more way than one. If one assassin failed, another could pick up where he left off. If a vengeful family member came after the killer of a loved one, the reputation of our organisation might well make them think twice. After all, a lone wolf can kill another lone wolf under the right circumstances. Knowing that you’re going to have to deal with the rest of the pack will make anyone think twice. Most might well consider it not worth it.
Of course, we always needed new talent. Most assassins kept to themselves, some didn’t even know they had the killer instinct until the spark was fanned into a roaring flame. Just as I need to now, years later, I visited all the various peoples of the Novisarium, searching out those whom they wanted rid of, seeking those they couldn’t use. And when I wandered into Bear City, I found myself engaged in a highly productive discussion with Queen Rachel Behr, a tall woman with exceptionally white hair though she didn’t appear aged in the slightest. I’d never met someone with yellow eyes before, nor a voice so sharp it could cut glass.
Whether you believe them to be half-breeds or not, and I really shouldn’t throw stones where that’s concerned, they’re still royalty amongst their people and you show them the respect they deserve. I’d bowed before the queen, I’d spoken honeyed words to convey said respect to her, given her the dignity she required. And there was something regal about her, even before you realised that she could rip your head off with minimal effort.
“What do you desire of me?” she asked, leaning forward to fix that strangely potent gaze on me. “You come here to seek the favour of me.” She made a show of sniffing the air, wrinkled her nose at me. Her husband, Earl, sat at her side, an elderly gentleman in his sixties with a wispy grey beard “You smell of smoke and ash, Mister Armitage, it’s a scent I’ve only ever heard tales of, and I doubt it means anything good.”
Different people respond to different stimuli, what I might offer to the wolf-king to sweeten the pot wouldn’t necessarily appease the bear-queen in the same way. We’re all individuals. Just like everyone else, after all.
“I seek an apprentice,” I said.
“And you’ve come to me for that?” She raised a bushy eyebrow in bemusement.
“Every race has its… shall we say troublemakers?” I’d nearly said undesirables. That might well not have gone down well. “And inevitably, they turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth. You know the sort, your majesty, those who seek bloodlust and mayhem, those who struggle to be controlled. I seek such an individual.”
“Why?”
It wasn’t a stupid question and as such, I gave her an honest answer. “An apprentice I can mould, a bloodlust I can direct. I’m a man of death, a master assassin and well, why work with what you can easily bargain away? I respectfully ask that you surrender one with no hope to me in exchange for future considerations.”
“What might these future considerations be?” She winked at me as she said it, she knew all too damn well and yet she wanted me to spell it out.
“Rivals and enemies spring up from anywhere,” I mused. “Having a master assassin owe you a favour might be a boon that could save your kingdom one day. I did consider offering you payment, but I realised the insult that would proffer. You
’re not a shopkeeper or a slave-trader, you’re a queen and I’m going to treat you as such. This is the sort of gift you give a queen, a future service from a master craftsman.”
“You have a high opinion of yourself,” she smiled.
“I believe when one has an excellent record of success, it doesn’t need to be shouted from the rooftops, but it is worth reminding those who doubt you,” I replied. “Can we make a compact, your majesty?”
She closed her eyes, leaned back on her throne and hummed quietly to herself, hands gripping the arms of her seat tight, before those eyes snapped open. “I think we can,” she said. “There’s a young man in my kingdom, a godson of one of my ladies. He’s been naught but trouble of late, you know what they’re like at that age.”
“Indeed, I do,” I murmured. “Assassination is a noble cause, your majesty, especially with what I have in mind to build. If you fear him becoming a common cutthroat, I have grander designs on him than that.”
“I truly don’t care,” she said. “I was considering exiling him anyway. He can’t be controlled; he can’t be reasoned with. If you want him, he’s your problem. And I consider you in my debt for it.”
I bowed my head. “Truly a win-win situation for you then, am I right?”
And that, in short, was the story of how I came to make the acquaintance of Wynsor Castle. He was everything she’d said he was, a sullen, stubborn youth with the capability to turn into a grizzly bear. Getting him to toe my party line was… I’m going to call it a challenge and we’ll leave it there. Still, she’d made some big promises about his savagery and I’d been impressed, between us we’d managed to turn him into a furry Exocet, someone unleashed for the hardest of missions, when brute force was the order of the day. Nobody does that quite like a werebear.
Thus, the power of reputation. Even then, we were building, even someone like the queen of bears saw what we could do for her and was amenable to giving up one of her subjects in exchange for something we could do for her in the future.