“Oh no you don’t, you bastard,” Aaron said. He rushed forward and jerked the man’s head up, “Don’t you die on me. She told me triple damnit! Triple!” The stranger’s icy blue eye stared back, cold and glassy in death. “Shit.” He let the dead man’s head fall back with a sigh. Something red flashed in the corner of his vision, and he jerked his blades free, but when he turned nothing was there. He frowned, glancing around the room, but there was no one there but him. Him and the dead. Spending too much time around corpses. No wonder I’m losing it. He slid his blades back, looked around the room for any tell-tale sign of the thing he’d seen then grunted and headed back out into the night.
As he walked, the man’s words replayed in his mind, forcing up memories of his parents’ death, memories he’d spent a lifetime trying to forget, and he grew angrier with each step. Soon, he found himself searching the shadowed alleyways, hoping that some unfortunate footpad or thief would try to rob him. None did, though, and eventually his thoughts turned to the woman. She had some explaining to do. Usually, he didn’t mind not knowing much about a job—at least that way you rarely had to worry about your employer trying to dust you later for knowing too much —but this wouldn’t stand. It had taken him a minute, what with the missing eye and the wounds, but he’d finally recognized the man. It’d be hard not to since he’d seen him on more statues than he could count, not to mention on a picture that had hung in his father’s study so many years ago. The corpse, the one that he wouldn’t get paid triple for, had once been Prince Eladen, son of the late King Marcus, and one of the leaders of the rebel armies. What had the woman got him involved in? He considered the possibilities as he made his way farther into the city and decided that triple hadn’t been enough. Not nearly.
CHAPTER
TWO
Aaron approached the small house where he was to meet his employer and knocked. The space between his shoulder blades itched, and he swallowed past his burning throat, glancing behind him at the street. No one was there and, yet, he could feel eyes watching him, had felt them since he’d left the torture shack. Had one of the assassins still been alive? Was he maybe, even now, staring out at Aaron from one of those dark alleyways?
Don’t be a damned fool, he scolded himself, you’ve been around enough death to know it when you see it. Those boys won’t be following anyone anytime soon, except maybe the Keeper through the fields of eternity. He was shaken up, that was all, and who could blame him? It wasn’t every day that a man stumbled in on the assassination of a prince. But could the man have really been Prince Eladen? And, if so, how? The prince was the second oldest of the nine siblings, and, according to all accounts, was at least fifty, but the man he’d seen hadn’t looked a day over thirty summers.
Still, there was no mistaking that face—ruined or not. He’d heard enough about the prince to know him on sight. His father, after all, had held great respect for Eladen. When Belgarin, the oldest son of the late King Marcus, had two of his siblings assassinated and war broke out between the remaining Royal Seven, Aaron’s father had quickly joined the prince’s army in hopes of helping him bring a real, lasting peace to the people of Telrear.
Aaron frowned and spat. What the man had brought was death. Not just to himself, but to Aaron’s parents who had believed in him. Because of that royal bastard, he’d spent the last years of his childhood in that cruel excuse of an orphanage. As far as Aaron was concerned, the man had got off cheap. He turned back to the door and knocked hard enough to make the weak wood shake in its frame. Still no answer. “To the Fields with this,” he growled. He took a step back and kicked the door. It flew inward and slammed against the inner wall with a crack. Aaron took one last look behind him, saw nothing, and stalked inside.
At one time, the building must have been used for storage by some merchant. The walls were lined with shelves, and there was a small trapdoor to a cellar in the back of the single room. He thought he could detect the faint smell of vegetables or fruit, but there was none in evidence, nor had he seen any when he was summoned here the night before and offered the job—not that he’d been paying much attention with the woman talking about paying him three times his normal rate.
In fact, he realized now that he’d acted a fool. He should have known that something was up—no one started off offering that kind of gold for no reason. Instead, he’d set out with a will, questioning, bribing, or threatening all of his contacts until he finally discovered someone who’d heard a rumor about a man being taken prisoner in the Downs by a group of hired men. Not that it’d taken long. Information, like almost everything else, could be bought in Avarest’s poor district as long as you had the gold to spend. The only problem had been that his source hadn’t known the exact location, and Aaron had spent precious time finding the house where the prisoner had been taken. For the prince, it had proved to be too much time.
Not only had he been too late to earn triple his usual fee, but he’d also nearly gotten himself killed in the process and for what? To save the very man who was responsible for his parents’ death? Never before had he been so reckless, and though he’d like to blame it all on thoughts of the gold, the truth was that the woman had a nice rack and a pretty smile, and he hadn’t been thinking much at all by the time he went out in search of the prisoner.
Still, it wasn’t the way he’d acted like a fool for the money, or even how he’d let the woman’s smile work on him that bothered him the most. It was the fact that he hadn’t been careful, and sellswords who weren’t careful lasted about as long as a pig on feast day. You can never know enough about your enemy, his father had told him once, and he’d always followed that advice. Always, that was, until the woman had shown up wielding her damned smile the way a swordmaster might wield a blade.
He glanced around the room and wasn’t surprised to find the place empty. In the center stood the same old, beat-up table the woman had set in, flanked by two guards, when he’d first met her. In the center of it sat a small bag, and a note. He lifted the bag in his hand, hefting its weight. “That’s damn sure not triple,” he muttered sourly as he slid the money into his tunic; that done, he unfolded the note and scanned it, growing angrier with each word.
I have been made aware that you were unable to complete your task. Contained within the bag is your normal rate, reward for your valiant effort. I would not let your failure trouble you. They were long odds at best. I will call on you again.
He noticed that the paper was wrinkled in a few spots, as if the woman had been crying as she wrote it. He turned it over, expecting something more, but that was it. She’d given no name in the note, just as she hadn’t when he’d met her. Failed? He thought angrily, balling the paper up in a fist. What had the crazy woman expected? Of course he’d failed. The Downs was a big place, home to thousands of people, a maze of back alleys and sidestreets. The fact that he’d even been able to find one particularly unlucky bastard in a city full of them had been a miracle, but that wasn’t enough, was it? No, she expected Aaron to find him, take on five hired killers, and then breathe life back into the man like Nalesh, the father of the gods, himself.
But he wasn’t a god, and it would have taken nothing short of that to have saved the prince’s life. And what was that last bit about calling on him again? The woman had some gall that was sure. She’d never told him there were going to be five men, let alone that the man he was being sent to save was none other than Prince Eladen himself. If he’d have known either, or if she hadn’t been quite so good-looking, he would have told her to go screw herself and called it a day.
He sighed as he wondered, yet again, just what he’d got mixed up in. From his experience, good looking women had a way of doing that to a man, but this was too much. Angry husbands and death threats were one thing—dead princes and professional hit squads were quite another. He didn’t care if the woman came offering him a palace and enough gold to swim in, there wasn’t a chance he was going to work for her again. He stuffed the wadded-up note in his p
ocket and walked out.
In the street, he pulled his hood tight against the freezing rain and started out for The Juggling Bear, his mood growing worse with each step. The streets appeared empty, but although he appeared to be the only person foolish enough to venture out into the driving rain, he scanned the dark alleys and shadowed corners of the shops and booths he passed out of habit. He didn’t see anyone, but his hands never strayed far from the blades at his side. In the Downs, what you saw was rarely what you got and careless people had a way of becoming penniless at the best and corpses at the worst. Not that he felt too far from either just then.
By the time he reached the inn, his throat was swollen and each painful, forced breath made him curse the day he’d accepted the woman’s job. He pulled his cloak tightly around him, covering his bloody tunic, and pushed his way past the two bouncers flanking the door without so much as a glance. Once inside, he ignored the steady drum of conversation and laughter coming from the crowded tables and stalked to the bar. “Flinn,” He croaked, tipping his head.
The innkeeper nodded his balding head from behind the counter and focused his attention back on the mug he was cleaning, either unaware or unconcerned with the blood on the sellsword’s tunic or the rasp in his voice. To hear him tell it, Flinn had once been a soldier in the army back before King Marcus died and threw the kingdom into chaos. As his last act, Marcus had split the kingdom into seven portions, ignoring his eldest son Belgarin’s claim to the throne. Instead, he’d wanted his children to lead Telrear together, stating in his will that he believed that no single man or woman should rule over the entire kingdom. Aaron supposed that he’d get his wish one way or the other.
After all, it had been twenty years since Marcus’s death, eighteen of which had been filled with wars and battles while each royal heir or heiress squandered thousands of men’s lives because they’d decided that a man just couldn’t make due with ruling only a seventh portion of a kingdom. Eighteen years of bloody ambushes and assassinations as each sibling tried to eliminate the others, and they showed no signs of slowing. Yeah, Aaron thought bitterly, the old king will get his wish. Before much longer, there won’t be much of a nation left to rule.
And what could a man do about it? Nothing but become another corpse in a sea of them and what was the point of that? “A mug of the strongest shit you got, Flinn.” He said, rubbing a hand over his aching throat, “It’s been a long night.”
The innkeeper grunted in acknowledgment and turned to get the bottle. Aaron believed that the old man had been a soldier—he didn’t care enough not to—but the man’s fighting days were done, that was certain. His was a muscled frame gone to fat. His chest was still broad, his arms thick, but a massive gut hung over his trousers, wobbling back and forth sickeningly as he poured the drink, and he was always winded as if he’d just finished an all-day march. Of course, if neither of these things were evidence enough that his soldiering days were long behind him, then the wooden pole that served for his right leg damn sure was.
Aaron shook his head. The man had fought and bled on another man’s orders, no doubt believing that he would be rewarded with honor and glory for his dedication to the cause and this was what he had to show for it, a shabby, beaten-down inn in a place where a man would gut you as soon as look at you—sooner really—and a wooden leg. Aaron didn’t know about the glory of serving a just cause—he wasn’t convinced there were any, and if there were they were destined to fail, but he did know one thing, Flinn wasn’t going to win any races anytime soon. It was a stupid, pointless way to become a cripple. Still, he liked the innkeeper well enough—as far as he liked anyone. The man talked little and knew how to mind his business.
He took a long pull from the mug, wincing as the ale burned its way down his ruined throat. “Damn, Flinn.” He coughed, “This tastes like horse piss.”
The burly innkeeper smiled, running a hand through his gray beard, “Yeah, but the best horse piss money can buy.”
Aaron grunted and took another swallow. It wouldn’t make the pain go away or push back the memory of the prince’s screams, but another drink or two would make him care less and that was about as good as a man could expect. He was raising his mug again when someone bumped into him from behind nearly making him spill his ale. His knife was halfway out of its sheathe at his side before he spun and saw a man smiling at him, his face red from drink.
Examining the stranger through narrowed eyes, taking in his young, acne-covered face, Aaron decided that he wasn’t a man at all, but a kid that couldn’t have been a day over eighteen summers. “’Scuse me,” the kid said in a drunken slur, “Didn’t mean to bump ya.” He glanced back at a table where two women and a man—apparently friends of his—were watching, laughing and whispering to each other as if someone had just told a joke. He turned to the sellsword with a lopsided, drunken grin, “Say, friend, how about you buy me a drink?”
The kid let out a squeak of surprise as Aaron grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and jerked him close. “I’m not your fucking friend, kid. How about instead of buying you a drink I give you some advice. Take your ass back over there to your woman and your friends before your night ends up getting a whole lot worse.”
“Easy, man,” the youth said, trying—and failing—to pull away from Aaron’s grip. After a moment, Aaron let him go. “Just take it easy,” the kid said, making a show of straightening his shirt, “I was just foolin’ with ya.”
“I am taking it easy,” Aaron growled. “You don’t want to see me when I’m not. Now get out of my face.”
The kid looked to Flinn for help, but when the bartender only shrugged, his expression blank, the youth swallowed hard, “S-sorry,” he mumbled before turning and hurrying back to his friends.
Aaron sighed and met Flinn’s gaze, “Kids these days.”
The fat man barked a laugh as he picked up a mug and began cleaning it with a linen towel, “Pity the old generation. ‘Course, we were all young once.”
“Not that young,” Aaron said, downing the rest of his ale. Flinn poured him another without waiting to be asked and walked away as someone else shouted for a refill. Aaron took his time with the second drink, trying to get his thoughts in order, trying to decide what to do next. He wanted to talk to the woman, to figure out just what she’d gotten him into, but he didn’t know how to reach her, and he had better things to do with his time than comb the city in search of a woman whose name he didn’t even know. Namely, drink.
A sudden thought struck him and his arms broke out in gooseflesh. What if someone had seen him leave the place? What if they’d gone in and seen the prince’s body, had recognized him? “Damn her,” he muttered under his breath. The citizens of the Downs were great at ignoring or forgetting anything that might prove to be inconvenient for them, but they were also opportunists. The dead men were probably being stripped down for valuables even now. And why by all the gods didn’t I think of that?
Now that he considered it, he realized without a doubt that someone had seen him leave; the woman had said as much in her note. How else would she have known that he hadn’t got Eladen out alive? “Another?” Aaron looked up at the waiting barman and was surprised to find that his mug was empty.
He considered for a moment then shook his head reluctantly. Suddenly, getting drunk didn’t seem like a very wise decision. “What are you trying to kill me?” he said. “No thanks. Just put the two on my tab.”
“Sure.”
Aaron nodded at the man, “Alright then.” He rose and made his way up the stairs to his room where he was surprised to find a hot bath waiting. He locked the door and, with a grunt of satisfaction, began to undress. He’d only been staying at the Bear for less than a week—as a sellsword he was never short of enemies, and he made it a point not to stay in one inn for too long—but he thought he could really grow to like Flinn. The man might be a cobbler’s worst nightmare, but he was a fine innkeeper.
He sighed contentedly as he settled into the hot water,
and it wasn’t long before his thoughts drifted back to the prince. What had the man been doing in Avarest’s poor district? In some ways, the Downs was a fine place. A man didn’t have to go far to find cheap boarding, cheap liquor, and—best of all—cheap women. Of course, he didn’t have to go far to get robbed or murdered either and most of the women were only worth the money with the lights off.
Aaron didn’t doubt that the prince, like all men—or women for that matter—had certain lusts that were most easily sated in the near lawless streets of the Downs, but he was also just as sure that one of the perks of royalty was being able to order out for that kind of thing. So, then, what had brought him to the Downs and how was the woman connected? Even more troubling, how did a fifty something year old man—for if he really was Prince Eladen that would be his age—manage to appear like a man of no more than thirty summers? He doubted that even royal dandies had access to that kind of powder and face paint.
The questions ran through his head, unanswered, until the bathwater grew tepid and his fingers were wrinkled. Aaron had always believed—since his parents’ death and his time spent at the orphanage at least—that it was best to keep to yourself, to mind your own business and let everyone else mind theirs. After all, no one could stick a knife in your back if you didn’t let them get close. He avoided authority and causes like they were death itself, and the last thing he needed was to get mixed up in a prince’s assassination. If his parents’ murder had taught him anything, it was that when a man got involved with princes and politics he tended to end up dead.
Still, as much as he hated it, he was involved now. The woman had made sure of that. It was all well and good to avoid others, to keep yourself distant, but it was just plain bat-shit stupid to ignore everything going on around you until you felt the prick of the blade and nothing after. He decided that no matter how tempting it was to try to forget everything that had happened and go about his own business, he couldn’t. Instead, he would find the woman, and she would tell him just what he was involved in, or—pretty or not—he’d make sure she regretted ever hiring him.
A Sellsword's Compassion_Book One of the Seven Virtues Page 2
