Unconcerned about who might have seen him, he reached the high walls of the affluent section of the city and made his way round to the entrance. A crowd of people had gathered outside. Moving as quickly as he could without turning invisible Valan got to the iron gates where he saw a line of guards holding back a throng of onlookers.
‘I need to get inside,’ he shouted as he pushed his way through the crowd to the guards.
‘No one’s getting in or out,’ one of the guards said, raising his large shield and blocking Valan’s progress.
‘It’s the children. I have something that might cure them,’ Valan shouted.
Valan tried to push past the guard, but they doubled up on him, forcing him back.
‘I need to see the children!’
‘The children have already been taken out of the house,’ a member of the public shouted to him. ‘They took them in the direction of the city watch barracks.’
Squeezing his way back through the crowd Valan, soaking with sweat, took off across town. Through alleys and side streets he ran, taking shortcuts to avoid the bulk of the market-day crowds until he turned the corner to the city watch barracks. Valan stopped suddenly, almost colliding with a group of merchants crowding round something. Ducking behind them, he used them as cover until becoming visible, before stepping around to see what had captivated their attention. When he did, he was aghast.
The city watch were pouring oil over eight small figures wrapped in white cloth. The watch-men, who were wearing gloves and had handkerchiefs over their mouths, were clearly taking care not to get too close to the funeral pyre, lighting it from afar and then standing well back.
Valan wanted to move forward, but was rooted to the spot.
He had slain more people than he could remember, but he had a rule against killing children, whom he regarded as innocents. Right or wrongly, he often convinced himself that his murders were getting rid of bad people who were corrupting the world and jeopardising the future of the children of the Drops. But whichever way he looked at it, he was responsible for the eight small bodies burning in a pile before him.
But what could he do?
Valan trudged back to his home on the fourth level, feeling physically sick. When he reached his street he saw Brexoth outside his house.
‘How’d things go last night?’ he barked.
‘Fine.’
‘Did he say anything?’ Brexoth seemed to be trying not to make eye contact as he followed Valan inside the house.
Valan looked at the large, tattooed man.
‘You always ask me that, Brexoth: why? Is there something you’re afraid of these marks telling me?’
Brexoth shuffled his feet.
‘We’d better get going; Mother Jüko wants to see us.’
The men did not speak on the way to the gang leader’s house, nor as they sat at her kitchen table waiting for her.
After ten minutes of sitting in silence, the old lady came into the kitchen. She prepared a tray of tea before bringing it to the table; pouring herself and her visitors a cup, she took a slurp before speaking.
‘Now, Valan, I hear there was a murder in Tarantum?’ She put her hand over her mouth.
‘Do we have to play this game every time? The apothecary’s dead, as you wanted.’
Valan stood, pushed his chair back and went to walk to the door.
‘Sit down,’ Mother Jüko snapped.
Valan turned around and narrowed his eyes as he stared down at her.
‘You’ll leave when I say you leave.’
Valan could feel his neck and face reddening as rage built within him, yet he sat.
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened, sonny?’ she continued in her softly spoken voice.
‘He won’t be cutting up any more people,’ he said, in a monotone.
‘Then you’re ready for your next target.’
Valan shook his head in disbelief.
‘Three in three nights: fantastic. Who is it this time, the Queen of Pholôs? What does your “reliable source” say about this one?’
Mother Jüko took a note from her apron.
‘He’s from the Drops, ten levels down. A drug-dealer. I need him gone tonight.’
Valan snatched up the note. As he prepared again to leave, he put his hand on Brexoth’s shoulder.
‘No point you getting up: she’ll want to talk to you about me. Make sure you clean your mouth when you’ve finished kissing her arse.’
Valan stormed out on to the street. He looked at the gang members loitering outside Mother Jüko’s house. Men of all ages sat around drinking, playing cards or smoking drugs. Whether it was an epiphany or simply a moment of clarity brought on by his rage he was not sure, but Valan suddenly saw his fellow gang members for the layabouts and scum they really were.
Is this it? Is this all we are: sheep? All just following this spiteful old bitch?
Valan started running, just to become invisible, just to be alone. He ran to the surface and sprinted past the smouldering bodies of the eight children he had condemned to death by killing the only man capable of helping them. His emotions boiled over and he raced faster and for longer than he had done before until he collapsed at the edge of an alleyway, clutching his chest and crying in pain. Hearing a low creaking noise above him, he looked up, still sobbing, to see where it was coming from.
‘What the…?’
Valan staggered to his feet. Looking at the purple-and-red sign above the door he glanced around, bewildered.
‘How the hell did I get here?’
As he opened the door a buzzer sounded and Barantur came up from an exposed basement level that Valan could see was full of glass cases and shelves.
Valan looked at him strangely as he walked up the stairs, not quite believing his eyes.
‘Didn’t you have an upstairs?’
‘Did I?’ Barantur asked. ‘Are you sure?’
‘And the sign outside; wasn’t it a different colour?’
Valan looked around him at the unfamiliar layout, unsure if it was the same building. Everything he had seen earlier was still on display, yet it was rearranged; scrolls and potions now sat where the rings and wands were and magical cloaks and belts now replaced the sceptres and amulets.
Barantur stood behind the counter smiling warmly at his visitor.
‘You’re not too sure about what it is you know, are you?’
‘I know that you’re not what you seem, old man.’
‘You could say that neither of us are what we seem. Take, for example, a man without a shadow who can disappear in the full light of day. Take another man, who kills without remorse and without question. Then take a third man, one who has been killing innocent people for years. Is it possible that these three men are one and the same?’
‘I’m part of…’ Valan muttered, feeling like a child caught in the act of committing a petty misdemeanour.
‘A gang?’ Barantur interrupted. ‘Yes, I know. And yet here you are, talking to a small fat man who owns a shop which sells oddities and rarities.’
Valan thought about this.
‘How do you know I’ve been killing innocent people?’
‘People who reach a certain age can succumb to a slow madness. It’s like a candle of reason goes out in their mind, and they become irrational, ill-at-ease, and sometimes bloodthirsty.’
Not for the first time the two men looked each other in the eye.
‘Those children are dead because of me. How could I have been such a fool, killing so many people on the orders of that demented woman?’
‘Perhaps you were blinded by loyalty; perhaps you had a need to belong to something.’
‘What should I do?’ Valan asked.
Valan was not entirely sure why he was asking a short, rotund shopkeeper, who he had met twice, for counsel
, but it seemed right somehow.
Barantur was giving him something he had not got for a long time. Honesty.
‘You can either continue along your present path or you can put a stop to it. That choice is yours. But what you cannot do, you can no longer say that you do not know the truth. You may have been oblivious to the facts yesterday but today ignorance is no longer an excuse.’
‘I know what has to be done,’ Valan said.
‘Then, before you go, I have a gift.’ Barantur turned and lifted a small chest from the shelf before placing it on the counter.
Valan frowned.
‘It’s something to help you make your decision. Whatever course of action you decide on, the contents of this box will help you,’ Barantur said as he turned the chest towards Valan and opened it.
Inside the chest was a small vial of blue liquid. Valan unpopped its cork, smelling it. It gave off a pungent aroma like rotting cheese; he screwed his face up and gagged.
‘It smells toxic.’
‘It is toxic. Poisonous as well, if you drink it. That’s why it’s a lotion.’
Valan shook the vial, making the blue liquid swirl.
‘A lotion?’
‘Why not try it for yourself,’ Barantur replied, pointing at Valan’s scorpion tattoo. ‘Rub it on and it will do what your conscience wants it to do.’
Valan pulled up the sleeve of his tunic and poured the contents of the vial over the tattoo. When the blue liquid touched it, the ink smeared across his skin.
‘Here, use this.’
Barantur took a cloth from beneath the counter and Valan wiped his shoulder. Within seconds the tattoo was gone, leaving no sign that it had ever existed.
‘I guess that was your decision then,’ Barantur said.
Gazing wide eyed down at where his tattoo was, Valan was amazed to see that it was now gone.
‘What was that lotion?’
‘Think of it as ‘a new start’.’
Valan pulled down the sleeve of his tunic and turned towards the door.
‘Your killing days are over then, eh?’ Barantur called after him.
Valan paused in the doorway.
‘Not quite. I have to carry out one final assassination.’
As Valan walked back to the fourth tier of the Drops, he felt an emptiness that he had not experienced for a very long time. Despair gripped his mind, working its way through his soul and eating him up like a ravenous creature released from confinement.
Reaching his home Valan walked in, the coin dropping as he opened the door. He fell upon the mattress and buried himself in the blankets; he would need sleep, he was going to have another busy night.
Drifting off he thought about what the old man had told him, he thought about the gang he spent most of his life with, the gang he was no longer a part of with his tattoo gone.
A few hours later he woke in darkness. Reaching for the tallow lamp he lit it before getting out of bed, stretching the tightness out of his muscles. He placed the candle on the ground and got dressed, pulling on his mask and bending down on one knee. Reaching into his pocket he took out the note that Mother Jüko had given him and put it into the flame of the candle, where it burned up in a matter of seconds.
‘I am the bringer of death, the instrument of destruction whom all enemies fear. I am the invisible blade that strikes unseen in the darkness. I am the shadowless damned.’
When he had finished he put the palm of his hand on the candle, extinguishing it as he always did. It was time.
Mother Jüko did not know what had woken her but, try as she might, she could not get back to sleep. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed her feet into the thick, woollen slippers she always wore, before hobbling to her bedroom door. Arthritis had weakened her legs enough to ensure she was housebound. Not that it mattered; she ran the most powerful gang in the Drops of Tarantum from the comfort of her home.
Instilling fear and respect in equal measure, she had a terrifying reputation. Neither the people on the surface nor the criminal fraternity in the lower levels were safe from her vengeance: and they all knew it.
The city was frightened of her and in turn, she herself had forgotten what fear was. She had not feared anyone or anything in over four decades, such was her position of power and assurance. Perhaps if she had done, she may not have ventured to her kitchen in the dead of night. As it was, she pushed open its door and shuffled across the stone-tiled floor to her pantry with a lantern in her hand, for a late meal.
‘I hope you slept well, old woman.’
Recognising the voice, she turned to face her intruder, who was sitting at her table. Valan had never come to her home with his weapons or armour on before. Tonight he came with both.
Mother Jüko smiled.
‘You startled me. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m here for answers.’
‘To which questions?’
‘Why I’ve been killing innocent people? The apothecary, for example.’
‘He was saving the wrong people – members of other gangs. And I couldn’t let that stand in my city.’
‘You had a healer killed because you disagreed with whom he was healing? Are you really that twisted? And what about the so-called slave trader?’
‘He was freeing slaves. Obtaining them with the help of the officials in Stormhaven and then ushering them out of the city; putting my friends, the real slave-traders, out of business.’
‘You’re spitefulness astounds even me. Do you realise how sick you are? What about this dealer of drugs that I was supposed to kill tonight?’
‘He makes medicines for the people on the lower levels. They’re vermin, they don’t deserve to live.’
‘No, Jüko, you don’t deserve to live.’
Valan got to his feet.
‘I thought I told you to carry out an assassination tonight,’ she said, wagging her finger as if he were a naughty child.
‘I am.’
‘The guards outside my door—’
‘Are dead already’
‘You wouldn’t dare. I’m the leader of the Scorpions and I’m ordering you to stop at once.’
Mother Jüko’s voice wavered and she was trembling.
Valan pulled up his left sleeve, revealing his bare arm.
‘I’m not a Scorpion.’
For the first time in four decades, Mother Jüko experienced fear.
‘Then what are you waiting for?’ she asked, her frown giving way to a look of resentment.
She backed away as Valan walked towards her.
‘You think I’m stupid? Brexoth patrols these streets every night and checks in on me,’ she muttered, her voice breaking as she forced out the words in a panic. ‘He’ll see the dead guards and every Scorpion in the Drops will be waiting for you the minute you walk out of my front door.’
Valan pulled down his mask, leaving only his black coloured eyes exposed, and triggered the wrist blade in his right gauntlet.
‘I’m counting on it,’ he said before driving his blade into Mother Jüko’s midriff.
The colour drained from her face as Valan then opened her neck with a flash of his blade. He watched as the life passed from the old woman. Then he went upstairs and searched around. A chest at the bottom of Mother Jüko’s bed was filled with gold pieces.
Blood money from the assassinations I’ve been carrying out, no doubt, he thought.
Hearing a commotion in the street Valan went back downstairs. He looked into the kitchen and saw Mother Jüko’s body lying in the floor. He picked up her lantern and smashed it against the window of the front room.
Years ago I pulled you from a burning building, Jüko, now I’m leaving you in one, he thought.
As the house caught fire he opened the front door and walked outside. There in the street
around fifty of the Scorpions, Brexoth at their head, waited. Seeing him emerge they readied themselves, lifting shields and drawing weapons.
Triggering the wrist blade in his left gauntlet, Valan stepped forward and glared at the faces in the crowd. Anger was written on each one. It pained him to think that he once belonged to the same gang as these thieves, murderers and rapists.
As the howling wind blew through the Drops of Tarantum, Valan, surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, attacked.
Chapter VII
The Deafening Silence of Willow Fairthrác
It was late afternoon as the prison wagon trundled along the forest path, escorted by four blue-cloaked guards, two walking in front and two behind. The high priest sat up top beside the driver, picking crumbs from his grubby yellow robes and flicking them away with his fingers.
‘We have company,’ the driver said.
The high priest, an aging, portly man, squinted down the track to see an armoured figure standing in the middle of the path. He had a whip, which he was coiling in his hands. The figure was shrouded in a shimmering blue aura.
‘Who the hell is this?’ the high priest muttered.
The armoured man walked towards the wagon, the faint blue light rippling and crackling over his body as he moved.
‘Can we help you?’ the high priest shouted.
‘Maybe you can and maybe you can’t,’ the man replied, his voice booming inside the enclosed helm. ‘I seem to have lost my shadow.’
There was a stunned silence before the priest screamed out in a shrill voice. ‘Seize him.’
The four guards drew their swords and ran forward, moving to surround the armoured man and cut off any potential escape.
He calmly stood there.
The first guard ran to him swinging his sword and bringing it down on the man’s neck. Just as his weapon was about to land there was loud crack as sparks shot from the stranger’s body to the guard’s sword. The blue aura now enveloped the guard and he fell to the ground screaming in pain. The other guards hesitated in confusion, shouting for one another to attack.
Shadowless Page 19
