The Discovery of an Assassin

by Brian Keller

“Well?!?”, Skaiven thundered, “where have you been?!?” Cooper had been expecting this and already knew what he needed to say. He related most of the events of the last few days, omitting anything related to handing out coin, and glossing over who it was that had provided him shelter and the part about the healer. There was nothing to be gained by providing that information to Skaiven, and quite a potential for problems should any of that be revealed. Skaiven listened intently, asking for clarification only with regard to Cooper’s public injuring of the one Dreg’s boy and the unwitnessed killing of the second. Cooper knew he was obliged to describe the public attack, since there would be several onlookers that could provide information of their own, but he doubted that many had a clear view of the weapon he’d used so he described how he’d assembled a spike with a cord tied around it as a weapon. This wasn’t far from the truth but he was describing something he could’ve fashioned himself for free. For the second boy he claimed that he’d simply sprung upon him by surprise and strangled the life from him. For the killing, there’d been no witnesses that could dispute his story.

  Skaiven appeared to accept his version of things, but it did little to calm the older man and this confused Cooper a bit. He’d assumed that Skaiven was angry about the death of Cecil, and with him, and his absence, but now he was less certain. He’d expected after hearing that Cooper had avenged Cecil’s death and had returned to the House that Skaiven would start to calm down, but his tale seemed to almost add to Skaiven’s distress. Cooper had never seen him like this. He had never seen him afraid.

  For Skaiven’s part, he was on the verge of feeling overwhelmed. He recognized a turf war brewing, having been involved in more than one over the years. What he didn’t understand was that turf wars almost always accompanied some major event. Some huge province-wide affair guaranteed to generate large sums of money. Without such an event, sections of the city weren’t worth fighting over. The upcoming Harvest Festival could hardly be expected to generate that amount of coin. Surely there would be plenty of coin changing hands, but a few gold coins for a cart full of grain wasn’t worth a turf war. There had to be something else going on. What made him particularly uneasy was that he was never in such a vulnerable position during any of the previous turf wars. The fact that the kids in his House were so young, none of them would likely even Manifest for a few more years, made him vulnerable in two ways. First, they weren’t regular earners, which often required him to dip into his savings to pay Tribute, and secondly, they certainly weren’t fighters. At least that’s what he’d thought anyway. Now, unexpectedly, one of his better earners was responsible for the death of one Dreg’s boy and the severe injury of another. He hadn’t received any reports yet but from what Cooper was telling him, the injured boy would likely die from his injuries and if his injuries didn’t kill him, the resulting infection surely would. He also hadn’t heard anything about the killing Cooper mentioned, but news of that would surely be forthcoming. It might take a day before the body was discovered. Having two deaths tallied against him would surely mark Cooper for death and likely bring ruin upon Skaiven’s House by association. Skaiven was fairly adept at survival; he’d been raised up as a House kid, been recruited into the Guild, and eventually grew old enough and wealthy enough to obtain a charter for a House of his own. Now his wealth had dwindled and all the kids in his House were still years away from Manifesting, while several Houses in the Dregs each had a few older kids nearly of age to be recruited into the Guild proper if they displayed adequate potential.

  At this moment, Skaiven’s mind was occupied with a single intent, survival for himself and his House, in that order. What did he have available that could tip the balance in his favor? He couldn’t operate from a position of physical strength so he had to be smart. Unbeknownst to the kids, he relied on the flow of information as a source of income even more than he relied on the pittance he collected from the kids. How could he leverage what he had and what he knew to ensure his survival?

  A rough idea began to form in his devious mind and he hoped he could fully develop it as wove a web around Cooper. He knew that Cooper was unlikely to survive the coming storm but he could benefit from him in the meantime.

  Skaiven turned to Cooper and waved him into his room. He saw Cooper raise his eyebrows in an unspoken question and Skaiven answered him, ”ye’ve not earned a beatin’, lad. I have a task for ye but I need to teach ya a few things first, if ye’re keen to learn.”. Cooper followed Skaiven into his room. The older man brought out a crate of metal parts and tools and began laying them out, pairing some of them up according to their functions. While he was doing this he explained how locking mechanisms on doors differed from locks on windows. He pointed at one particular lock and the corresponding tool beside it. He explained the lock is called a warded lock. It gained its name from the fact that the keyway was made through a stack of wafers designed to prevent an incorrect key from turning within it. These wafers are called wards. The spring mechanism to release the lock is far within the lock, beyond the wards. The tool designed to open this type of lock is narrow along its length with a wider tip. This wide tip is designed to bypass the wards and engage the spring when to tool is turned within the lock. Skaiven further explained that the way to defeat any lock was to understand how it worked and then build a tool, or set of tools to exploit its weaknesses. Some of the locks in Skaiven’s collection had been partially cut open to display the internal workings. Skaiven handled a few of them as he explained what they were called and demonstrated how they reacted to a proper key.

  Skaiven pushed a set of picks and what he called a ‘tumbler’ lock across the table toward Cooper. He demonstrated how to use the tools as he explained how it was necessary to maintain correct tension on the part of the lock that contained the keyway while a pick was inserted to manipulate the pins inside. Once all the pins were correctly aligned the keyway, or cylinder, could turn. Inserting the proper key aligned the pins all at once allowing the cylinder to turn. As Cooper fiddled with the picks and locks Skaiven explained that there were other ways that this type of lock could be defeated, but the preferred methods were by either making a copy of the key or by picking it. Most other methods damaged the lock or destroyed it. Sometimes this didn’t matter, but most times concealing the fact that the lock had been defeated was almost as important as getting through it in the first place.

  While Cooper was busying himself with getting a feel for keeping tension while manipulating pins, Skaiven pulled one of many rolls of paper from a shelf, untied it and unrolled it at the far end of the table. He then weighed down the corners of the paper with locks or tools that Cooper wasn’t messing with. He called Cooper over and explained that what he was showing him was a map. Cooper had never seen such a thing before but could read some of the writing on it and started to form a little understanding of it as Skaiven explained how a map tried to show how the land would look to a bird flying high above the ground, so that someone reading the map could understand how the land was connected. Cooper knew that the city was much bigger than he could see all at once from the ground but the same could be said just for Batter’s Field. One time he and Chesim had climbed up to the roof of a two story building and looked around. They’d never been so far above the ground and thought they could surely look across the sea from there and were disappointed to discover that all they could see was more water. Looking to the west they could see beyond the Palisade Wall and all the way to the crenelated walls of the palace on the other side. They could even see part of the stone walls of The Stand beyond the palace. Now, looking at the map he could see all these locations arranged in front of him in a size he could almost cover up with both hands.

  Cooper started to ask Skaiven why he was teaching him about all this, but kept his silence. Skaiven would reveal his purpose when he was ready. Skaiven pointed to the map, drawing Cooper’s attention to the Whitefoam River and the course it took through the city. He explained that the Whitefoam was an important reference fea
ture and each of the bridges were something called Landmarks. There were four bridges that crossed the Whitefoam River within the city: two between the Waterfront and the Trade Quarter, one between the Palisades and The Grid, and one between the Palace and The Heights.

  Skaiven pointed out the neighborhood called The Grid which is where the wealthy middle class merchants had built their homes. This area of the city burned almost entirely to the ground many, many years ago. It was rumored to have been something gone wrong with spells or experiments at the college. After the fire, the wealthiest merchants formed a Planning Commission. The Commission had hired engineers, masons and other craftsman and had dug up the entire neighborhood to build an underground sewer system and a separate network of aqueducts connected to the Whitefoam River. It was at this time that the banks of the Whitefoam River were dug out and quarried stone walls were added. Channels were made to connect the Whitefoam to the cisterns that fed the aqueducts. The underground sewer system had prompted several noble families to purchase properties in the Grid. These families usually maintained their manses in The Heights as a place to conduct business and hold parties in grand style but lived day-to-day at their home in The Grid.

  Skaiven began speaking with more confidence and sounded like he was preparing to reveal his task for Cooper. Skaiven asked him if he’d ever set foot in The Grid. Cooper looked at Skaiven in stunned silence. The penalty for a Batter’s Field kid getting caught crossing from the Waterfront to the Trade Quarter usually was getting kicked from the bridge into the river. The guards just made sure that when the kid climbed out of the river it was on the Waterfront side or they’d put him or her back in the water. A Batter’s Field kid caught in The Grid could expect penalties ranging from a simple but thorough thrashing or being thrown in a cell or sent to the work camps, all depending on the mood of the guard at the time and the need to fill the chains in the work camps. Cooper managed to stutter out a “N-no” by way of reply.

  Skaiven told Cooper that he had information about where a very wealthy family hid their coins and jewelry in their home in The Grid. He also knew that family was throwing a party at their manse in The Heights during the annual Harvest Festival so the house would be empty except for a few staff members and a couple of guards patrolling the house and grounds. Cooper had never done anything like this before, and he knew Skaiven was aware of that. He had to wonder what had changed to prompt Skaiven to push Cooper in this direction. Surely there was no connection between this and Cecil’s death or his own absence. Cooper started putting pieces together when he thought about how the news of him killing that Dreg’s boy seemed to agitate Skaiven more than he already had been, but those thoughts vanished as Skaiven handed him a new lock to study.

  Cooper was kept busy with studies over the following days. Busy enough that he couldn’t see the adjustments that Skaiven was making with the other kids in the House. He introduced a pecking order of sorts, a rough hierarchy, and had divided the Trade Quarter into parcels. He also assigned the kids to these different areas of the Trade Quarter. The kids complained about that, many had spots that they favored and a few others rotated about the Trade Quarter the same way Cooper had done. It took less than a half dozen open-handed blows to completely silence those complaints. As the complaints stopped, so did the pummeling. Skaiven demanded that the kids observe for any movements of all the Dregs boys they saw. He even reduced the daily dues to three coppers to make it easier for the kids to focus on being good observers. Skaiven also said he’d allow what he called Equivalent Value as a replacement for dues. He’d always demanded coins before, but now he said he would accept other items that could be sold for coin. The coin from the sale of those items would be applied to the kids’ dues. This gave the kids a lot to think about. Had Cooper not been on the other side of the House taking locks apart to understand how they worked, he’d have heard all this and his mind would’ve gone to work processing the information. A mind like Cooper’s might’ve even unraveled what was really going on. Skaiven had maneuvered his children well.

  The Harvest Festival was less than 3 weeks away and Skaiven had Cooper studying locks, maps, floorplans and even a bit of architecture all day and into the night. Skaiven had even suspended Cooper’s requirement to pay dues. Cooper was just relieved that Skaiven hadn’t demanded his dues for the time he’d been away healing. After the first week of studying locks, Cooper’s fingers ached from manipulating picks and tools and he was seeing mechanisms in his sleep, or at least what precious few hours Skaiven allowed him to sleep. Each evening Skaiven took Cooper into town. The guards on the South Bridge just gave Skaiven a short nod as they passed by them. Skaiven took a different route through the Trade Quarter each night but they always turned north and went to the boundary between the Trade Quarter and The Grid. Cooper was shown how to choose spots to set up and observe guard movements and time the patrols. Most guards didn’t hold to a precise schedule but the times were usually pretty close, within a minute or two one way or the other. Cooper also learned that few guards patrolled inside The Grid, the patrols mostly focused on the periphery. In that regard, it was similar to the Trade Quarter; getting in was a challenge, but once inside he could move freely. Cooper wondered if that similarity applied to other places too.

  Cooper was seeing a side of Skaiven he never knew about. He knew all about Skaiven the House Father but now he was learning about Skaiven the Thief. The old man was still harsh. He’d leave for a few hours each days and leave a pile of locks on the table. If Cooper hadn’t unlocked them all by the time he’d returned, punishment would follow. Except now punishment wasn’t in the form of beatings. Skaiven would make Cooper hang from the rafters for an hour, or squat down for hours at a time. If he dropped from the rafters too soon, or if he failed to hold his squatted position for the allotted time, that’s when Cooper would feel the lash. At least one part of his body felt burned each day either from the exercise or from the lash. His ribs were healing more completely every day, but hanging from the rafters was almost more than he could manage.

  It was the week before the Harvest Festival, Cooper was leading Skaiven through the paths and byways. The last few nights they always ended up watching the same building for an hour or so. Cooper assumed this house was his target. More than once he’d almost asked why he was breaking in to do the theft and not Skaiven himself. Cooper had been told how important this task was and it seemed strange that his first task as a burglar should be so critical. Each time he was about to ask, he convinced himself that the task couldn’t be so important and this was just Skaiven’s way of making him pay close attention to his lessons.

  Tonight, before leaving the House, Skaiven had told Cooper his task was to study the doors and windows of the target house, from arm’s length. The boy could see the sense of it, but that surely didn’t help calm the fluttering in his belly. Each night Cooper had been studying the movements of the guards inside the house. Since they all carried lanterns it was a simple matter to note their progress floor to floor and room to room. He’d never really looked at guards before, he’d always just watched for the guards and tried to be somewhere else as soon as he saw them. City patrols only walked past once every hour, but those guards weren’t really looking at the houses, it seemed to Cooper that these guards weren’t really looking at anything at all. They were just walking a route. He wondered if that was the same in the Trade Quarter. That made it seem less remarkable that Cecil’s body would be found lying in the middle of the street to be first discovered by local merchants rather than the guards. “Pay attention!”, Cooper told himself. A lapse in concentration during this task could lead to discovery and failure. Failure would result in either jail, being shackled in the camps, or execution.

  As soon as the City Guard had passed, Cooper scrutinized the house and noted the location of the guards in the house and on the grounds. Skaiven had told him that during the party most of these guards would accompany the family and patrol the mansion in The Heights, where the party was ta
king place, and not this one. Cooper had been told to expect a pair of guards patrolling the grounds here and no more than three guards inside, and in all likelihood there would only be one or two inside. “That means sneaking in tonight will be much more difficult than it will be then”, except that tonight he wouldn’t actually be breaking in. As soon as all the house guards were further to the interior of the house Cooper scuttled across the street, slid over the low wall, skirted between the manicured plants and settled into the shadows at the side of the building. He took a moment to listen to the noises around him; the night birds, the insects, the frogs along the river bank a few blocks away. Everything felt like it was in its place. He leaned away from the building and started studying the windows. The foundation wall of the building extended at least three feet above the ground before the first floor actually began. This set the window sill about six feet off the ground. The windows were real glass, so that would present a problem. He felt confident that he’d be able to defeat the simple latches on the windows but he couldn’t be expected to leap up and hold himself steady on the window sill while he worked his way around the window latch. At least not without breaking some glass and alerting everyone inside. Cooper would either need to bring a short ladder with him the night of the theft or he’d need to find another entrance point. He flitted from shadow to shadow along the side of the building, pausing briefly within each shadow allowing it to absorb him before moving to the next. As he approached the door, he knew one of the inside guards should soon be coming down the grand staircase. Cooper paused to avoid silhouetting himself through the glass panel beside the door. As the guard reached the bottom of the stairs and his lantern flashed across the door and window from the inside Cooper made a startling observation. “The glass panel beside the door has a latch on the inside! That means the panel is either hinged somewhere or is entirely removable!”. Once the guard had passed, Cooper glided out of the shadows, knelt down in front of the door and studied the lock. This was the riskiest part of the whole venture since even though he’d studied the guards’ movements, in this location he was exposed and any neighbor across the street could look through a window and see him. It was approximately two-thirty in the morning, so this was unlikely to happen, but it was still a risk. Cooper slipped a pick into the lock and pressed it against the pins. He slowly withdrew the pick listening intently and counting the pins as they snapped back into position. He counted five pins. Skaiven had given him some five pin locks to defeat. His best time still took him several minutes to get the lock open but that was while sitting in relative comfort in his own House with no guard looking to catch him and put a rope around his neck. Skaiven assured him that he’d get faster with practice, but he’d only been practicing for a couple weeks and had less than a week left to prepare.