The Assassin's Blade

by H J Peterson

  “These all sound very good,” Friedrich said as he looked up from the menu at Katalin. “What do you recommend?”

  “I’ve always enjoyed the Valtruscan wedding soup,” she replied.

  Friedrich found that item on the menu. It did sound rather good: meatballs in a chicken broth with various herbs thrown in.

  “I think that’s what I’ll get, then,” Friedrich said. He looked over his shoulder at Chayim, who wasn’t even looking at the menu, anymore. Instead, he was scanning the streets, seemingly searching for any sort of danger from commoners that weren’t happy about seeing Friedrich and Katalin eating at the café.

  “I’m fine; I don’t need to get anything,” he said simply. Friedrich frowned at that.

  “Of course, you need to get something.” Katalin said it before Friedrich could. “Let us apologize for dragging you around on our afternoon together; you can’t possibly enjoy babysitting us.”

  “Besides, it’s not like you’ll be the one paying for it,” Friedrich said. “My father gave us plenty of money for today: I can pay for whatever you end up getting.”

  Chayim looked at him for a few seconds, then sighed, picking up the menu.

  “If you insist,” he said as he began to look through the menu and the hostess brought out the wine. It really was of a great vintage: it was fifty years old, back from when Vorbereich and Rochereux were still on good terms, and it likely had a price tag that might make even Eltz take notice.

  “Have you decided what you would like to order?” the hostess asked.

  Friedrich looked back at Chayim, who was still looking at the menu. “Do you know what you want?”

  Chayim stared at the menu for a few more seconds, then nodded.

  Friedrich looked back at the hostess. “Yes, I believe we do.”

  “I’ll have the Magyaran style goulash, please,” Katalin said. The hostess nodded and wrote down her order.

  “How spicy would you like that, my lady?” the hostess asked.

  “Very spicy,” Katalin said. The hostess gave her a weird look, but she didn’t question her. She simply wrote down the order and moved on to Friedrich.

  “I’ll have the wedding soup, please,” he said. The hostess nodded and wrote that down, then looked back at Chayim.

  “Are the Bourikas here anything like they are back home?” Chayim asked.

  “I’m not sure that anything could match what’s back home, but I think what we have here is as close as you could get,” the hostess said. “Is that what you want, then?”

  Chayim nodded.

  Once she had all that down, the hostess promised that she would have their orders out as soon as she could and went back inside.

  “Well, I guess the goulash explains why you come all the way here for lunch,” Friedrich said. “Does your father not have your servants make things from Magyar?”

  Katalin sighed and rubbed her temples.

  “He wants us to assimilate to Vorbereich more; he even insists that we all speak Vorbereicher at home, now,” she said. “Whenever I’m missing home, I come here, get some goulash, or I find you and help you with your Magyaran.”

  Friedrich smiled. “So, I remind you of home? And that’s a good thing?”

  “Yes on both counts,” Katalin said. She looked out into the street at the people passing by. Only a few gave them weird looks. “You know, if we can get your father to agree to the marriage, I would really love to take you to Magyar; I feel like you would really like it there.”

  “Why do you say that?” Friedrich asked, trying to not show how much his heart hurt at the reminder that that afternoon might just be their last together.

  “Everyone’s a little… off there, and that includes the nobles,” Katalin said. “Here, it seems like all the men have to be these strong men who love drinking beer and hunting; back home, the only real qualification for being a real man is to be skilled in some sort of trade, and that includes the nobles; there’s plenty of men who are like Vorbereicher men, but there’s also plenty of men who are a little more like you.”

  “So, what you’re trying to tell me is that Magyar is for the weird people who wouldn’t be appreciated everywhere else?” Friedrich asked. “I guess that’s pretty comforting.”

  Katalin slugged him in the arm. “You know what I meant, Friedrich.” She took a sip of her wine as she looked across the street, again. She looked worried as she did, her eyebrows furrowed.

  “What is it?” Friedrich asked as he looked across the street.

  He saw it almost the second he did: there was a group of men standing across the street, staring at them. They stood in the shadows beneath the awning of a bookstore, their arms folded, a look on their face that made Friedrich’s skin crawl. They looked like the kind of guys that could strangle a man with their bare hands, and that wasn’t something that he wanted to get on the bad side of.

  “I see them.” It looked like Chayim was on high alert now, too. He looked ready to pounce, his hands in his jacket. Seeing him like that made Friedrich horribly nervous: seeing the normally calm and collected Chayim on the verge of pulling out his gun and shooting someone really didn’t make him feel any better about… whatever was about to go down. “They look like the Archangel’s lot, Friedrich; I think it would be a good idea to go sit inside, before they try and stir up trouble.”

  “He’s right,” Katalin said.

  They had come off the wall and were starting to walk towards them. Friedrich picked up the wine bottle and his glass of wine, standing up, the panic beginning to rise. “Let’s hurry and go back inside.”

  Katalin and Chayim grabbed their things and began to hurry inside as the group began to approach them. They were close; much too close for comfort, enough so that Friedrich was really worried that they might not get inside in time.

  Then again, what exactly would these people do to them out in the open like this? If they did anything, they would just end up getting arrested; it didn’t make any sense to Friedrich for them to risk that.

  “Get inside,” Chayim said. “I’ll handle this.”

  Friedrich wanted to argue with him, but the thugs were there, and the last thing he wanted was to be out on the street with them. He went inside with Katalin and sat down at one of the tables, watching Chayim as the thugs walked up to him and gave a silence prayer that he wouldn’t get himself hurt or something.

  “What do you want?” Chayim asked, his voice low. In all honesty, it kind of scared Friedrich: he’d never heard the older Borusali speak like that.

  One of the thugs held up his hands mockingly. “Now, who ever said that we want something, old timer? Believe me when I say that it isn’t really about what we want.” The lead thug looked past Chayim at Friedrich and Katalin, a look to kill.

  Friedrich couldn’t help but feel a little scared. He didn’t ask for this; the last thing he really wanted was a confrontation with these people, and he certainly didn’t want Chayim to be caught in the middle of… this.

  “Then what is this about?” Chayim asked. “All my lord and lady want is to have a quiet lunch together; is that so wrong?”

  “All we want is some equality,” one of the other thugs said. “Those two lordlings that you’re babysitting have more money stuck between the cushions of their daddy’s carriage than some of us make in a month. Do you really think that’s right?”

  “And do you actually think that scaring some kids who aren’t doing anything is going to change that?” Chayim asked. “Go get a job, son; that’s the only good way to make ends meet.”

  The second Chayim said it, Friedrich wished he hadn’t: the thugs really didn’t appreciate that sentiment. You could see it in the look on their faces: their facial expressions grew dark, and for a few seconds, Friedrich couldn’t help but worry that they were going to do something horrible to Chayim for saying it. Even the hostess, who was cleaning off one of the tables, stopped what she was doing to stare at what was happening just outside the restaurant.

  �
�Go call the police,” one of the other workers said quietly to her. “I don’t like where this is heading.”

  The hostess nodded and hurried over to the phone, quickly dialing for the operator so they could connect them to the police department.

  “Don’t get snippy with me, old man,” the thug said as he drew his weapon from inside his jacket: a knife, one that looked pretty nasty. Friedrich clenched his fists before they could start shaking, and Katalin put a hand on his arm in an effort to comfort him. The expression on her face was flat, as if she was doing her best to keep herself from showing her own emotions. “Now, are you going to let us through, or are you going to insist on protecting some lordlings?”

  To Friedrich’s surprise, Katalin stood up and walked over to the doorway. It seemed like she intended on doing something about what was happening.

  “Katalin, wait!” he said, but she didn’t listen. Instead, she pulled Chayim away from the thugs and put herself between them. Chayim looked absolutely horrified by it, but the look on Katalin’s face didn’t exactly leave much room for argument.

  “Get away from us, or else!” The power and authority in her voice surprised everyone, including Friedrich.

  The lead thug laughed and folded his arms over his chest. It looked like he thought this was a big joke, and Friedrich wasn’t sure that he could blame him: Katalin wasn’t exactly an imposing person.

  “Or else what?” the thug asked. “Are you going to call your daddy and make him take care of us?”

  “No: I was planning on taking care of you bastards, myself.”

  The thug stared at her for a few seconds, surprised; obviously, he hadn’t expected this much resistance in whatever he was trying to do, especially not from a woman. Then, he got an angry look on his face as he pointed his knife at her.

  Friedrich could feel the blood drain from his face. As much as he wanted to get up and get Katalin out of the way of that knife, he found that he couldn’t move: he was too scared, and it made him sick with shame.

  “If you insist!”

  The thug began to swing his knife, making Friedrich’s heart stop.

  Katalin held her hand out, pointing it at the knife, then waved her hand to the side, as if dismissing him.

  To Friedrich’s surprise, the second she did, the knife flew out of the thug’s hand and launched towards the wall.

  Friedrich couldn’t believe it. Had Katalin been some sort of Shaper this whole time?

  “What the hell-“

  Katalin didn’t let the thug finish his sentence. She pushed her hands out at the lead thug. The second she did, the thug went flying. He looked like he was falling as he was launched across the street, and when he hit the wall of the bookshop across the street, he didn’t fall down to the sidewalk: instead, he stayed stuck there as he rolled around on the wall in pain; it was as if that wall had suddenly become down.

  Katalin glared at the other thugs, both of whom were looking really nervous, now.

  “Obviously, you didn’t hear me the first time,” she said. “I said, get the hell away from us!”

  They didn’t ask twice, that time. They ran, running away from the café and their leader.

  Satisfied, Katalin walked back over at the table and sat down, as if nothing had happened. Chayim stood in the doorway for a few seconds, staring at the thug on the wall across the street, unsure of whether or not he’d simply imagined what had just happened.

  “You never told me you’re a Shaper,” Friedrich said as Katalin took her seat. Chayim walked over to a table next to theirs, sat down, and simply stared across the restaurant. “How long have you been able to do that?”

  “I found out when I was ten,” Katalin said. “It’s part of the reason why we moved away from Magyar: I had a pretty hard time controlling it, and it scared people.” She gave him a sheepish look. “You don’t care that much, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Friedrich said. “I don’t care that you’re a… um…”

  “Dodger,” Katalin said.

  “Honestly, Katalin; I don’t care,” Friedrich said. “I love you, and the fact that you have a quirk doesn’t change things.”

  More like a blessing in disguise. He couldn’t believe his luck. Eltz had wanted a Shaper in the family for years: the last one in the House had been nearly two hundred years ago. Houses were vulnerable if they didn’t have Shapers: they were seen as genetically weak, and he’d grown up being told that it was just a matter of time before Eltz’s enemies rose up against them, took what they saw as their rightful place in the social hierarchy. Eltz’s long list of possible courtships all involved girls from houses with proud Shaper traditions, but as far as he knew, none of those girls were actually Shapers, themselves. Eltz couldn’t possibly refuse a marriage to a Shaper, could he?

  Friedrich couldn’t decide if he was more relieved to know that Katalin was a Shaper, or more ashamed about how he was going to use that information.

  XII. ADELRIC

  Adelric was screwed.

  He was handcuffed to a table in an interrogation cell in the basement of police headquarters. He supposed that he could melt off the handcuffs, but that was pretty dangerous: even if he just focused his power on the chain that was linked into the table, metal was a good enough conductor of heat that he would burn his wrists to hell before he managed to melt the chain. The affects would be even worse than normal: the cuffs looked like they were made of iron, which had a higher melting point than most metals. Besides, even if he managed to get that off, he would then have to escape the building, which was filled with police officers, inspectors, and Shapers. He was stuck, without a way to get unstuck.

  Unless, of course, someone were to come storming in to rescue him like some child’s bedtime story.

  Adelric sighed and looked at the ceiling. Fat chance of that happening: the only person who might launch a rescue was Bator, and he doubted he’d care enough about him to send anyone to get him.

  He stared down at the chains, trying to figure out what to do about them. He supposed that he could start melting them, then scream bloody murder when they started burning his wrists. The guard that was probably standing right outside the door to the interrogation room would probably come in and take off the handcuffs before he could really hurt himself. Then, he could attack the guard before he could get another pair of handcuffs on him and make his escape. It was a terrible idea, but… well, it was his only idea.

  Adelric took a deep breath and got to work, taking the chain in his hands and heating up the chain.

  It didn’t exactly take long before the heat spread to Adelric’s wrists. They continued to heat up, turning from simply being a little warm to being hot. In fact, he was fairly certain that he heard his skin starting to sizzle.

  He cursed, taking his hands off of the chain and tried to ignore the pain in his wrists. The metal wasn’t even starting to change color: it would have to get a whole lot hotter if he was going to melt the chain, and by that point, his skin would probably start to literally melt.

  Adelric knocked his head gently on the table and sighed. He was going to sit around in this stupid room until someone came and get him. If someone wanted to get him.

  A few minutes later, he heard something he wasn’t expecting to hear: shouting coming from outside the interrogation room. It sounded like somebody was getting attacked-

  The door to the interrogation cell was kicked down, revealing the person who was doing the beating. It was Klara, and boy, did she not look happy.

  “K-Klara?” he asked. She didn’t say anything as she walked in. “What are you doing here?”

  “What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” Klara snapped. Bator must have sent her: something told him that she wouldn’t have come on her own. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  Adelric stared at her for a few seconds as Klara’s metal hand began to change, morphing the fingers until it turned into one of the ten tools her hand could make: a pair of bolt cutters. She cut the chain,
letting Adelric’s hands free of the table.

  She turned around and walked out of the room, her hand returning to its usual shape, before Adelric could even get to his feet.

  “Did Bator send you?” He asked as he got out of his seat and followed close behind her. He made sure to grab his violin, which Inspector Ikeda had left propped up against the wall across from the interrogation room.

  “What the hell d’you think?” Klara snapped as they walked towards the stairs. There was an injured guard on the ground by the stairs, who stared up at Klara with hatred in his eyes and his arms wrapped around his stomach, likely hiding whatever injury he now had.

  “You aren’t going to get away with this,” the guard growled. “When Brooks and Ikeda find out about this, they’ll hunt the two of you down like dogs-“

  Klara didn’t let him finish his sentence. She kicked him in the stomach, making the guard double over, cursing.

  She pointed a metallic finger at him. “Shut up, an’ don't test me!”

  She stormed up the stairs.

  He followed Klara up the stairs-

  Only to discover that there were about twenty Shapers at the top of the stairs, ready to kill them. They all almost exclusively had blue epaulettes: it looked like they thought that Dodgers were all it would take to stop Klara from escaping with Adelric.

  Sadly, they were probably right.

  “Freeze!” One of the Dodgers shouted as he pulled out his gun. The others didn’t, likely assuming that Adelric and Klara would follow their leader’s orders. “Put your hands behind your head, or I’ll shoot!”

  Klara looked so damned pissed, as if this was just some sort of inconvenience. Adelric couldn’t help but feel a little scared for the Dodgers; Klara was not someone you wanted to be around when she was angry, and Adelric knew that from experience.