Tuvan studied it and then nodded. “Yeah. Thought it was some kind of merchant’s mark. Why?”
Ridge leaned forward. “We think it’s connected to arms smugglers and slavers. We had a run-in with some of them, and turned up this mark.”
“Burke know about this?”
Rett nodded. “He knows. And the open warrant on slavers hasn’t changed. The arms smuggler—we’re trying to figure out who they’re working with, and what they’re up to. Can’t be anything good.”
Tuvan frowned, deliberating. “I saw some crates marked with this a couple of months ago. Trying to remember where.” He stared into the distance. “Over at Toad Fred’s warehouse—you know the place?”
Rett and Ridge nodded. “Toad” Fred’s appearance had earned him the nickname, a short, squat man with double chins and a wide mouth whose unfortunate resemblance to an amphibian was unmistakable.
“At the time, I didn’t have a reason to care. Just noticed that it was something I hadn’t seen before. I was there for a job taking out an opium dealer, so the crates weren’t any of my business. Don’t know why it stuck in my mind.”
“Can you ask around?” Rett sat back in his chair, still keeping an eye on the patrons around them as much as he watched the door out of long habit. “We keep turning up the boxes of smuggled weapons close to the slavers we’ve run into,” he said, tweaking the truth. “Too often to be a coincidence. Maybe if there were more eyes on the lookout—”
Tuvan nodded. “I’ll look into it.”
“Keep an eye out for the slavers,” Ridge warned. “The caravan we infiltrated was stealing children and selling them off. We got the prisoners out, but that cost us the chance to get more information about the buyers. I know Rett and I aren’t the most popular ones with our folks,” he said, with a vague gesture to indicate the spies and assassins, here and elsewhere. “But slaving’s a death warrant, no questions asked. Clear cut. So no matter what the rest of the Shadows think of us, we’ve got a mandate from the king—and I can’t shake the idea that this is all tied up somehow.”
“Told you before, Breckinridge. Not everyone hates you.” Tuvan grinned. “And hardly anyone hates Kennard,” he said with a nod to Rett. “Thing is, you get the job done. That’s all most of them care about. Your smug bastard personality is just a bonus. And you’ve earned it. You two are good. That rankles with some of them. Those are the kind that keep a kill count, need to prove who’s the bigger man.”
Rett elbowed Ridge before he could make an off-color comment. “We’re not competing,” he said in a level voice. “We do the job and walk away. But this job isn’t done until we figure out what the slavers and the arms smugglers have to do with each other.”
“I heard you two still think that crazy prophet is a threat,” Tuvan said.
Ridge’s expression grew guarded. “Who’s saying that?”
Tuvan shrugged. “No secret that the two of you think the Witch Lord is more than just a clever charlatan, fleecing gullible nobles. And it’s also no secret that the king doesn’t think he’s a danger. But you’re not the only ones who don’t like the Witch Lord, even if it’s just on principle. So you’re not as alone as you might think.”
Rett managed a wan smile. “Good to know.”
Tuvan stood. “I’ll see what I can dig up. On the sigil and the Witch Lord. And I’ll keep my ears open. I might hear things folks won’t say to you.” He grinned. “I don’t make it my life’s work to annoy the fuck out of people.”
###
They left the Black Wolf, and Rett could almost hear Roland sigh in relief that this time their exit didn’t involve any fighting or broken chairs. Maybe it would make their jobs easier to be more popular among the other Shadows, but Rett didn’t give a flying rat’s ass about what the rest of the assassins thought of them.
“Where to now?” he asked as Ridge headed in the opposite direction from their rooms.
“Dockside. I worked a job down by the wharves last year when you were laid up after that son of a bitch carved a hole in you. A former pirate decided he wanted to retire. Gave up his ship, changed his name, started running a thieving ring. Stole from the warehouses and had peddlers who would take the goods inland. Some of the merchants were in on it so that they could cheat on their taxes. Tuvan worked the job with me since you were recovering. Seeing him made me remember.”
“Huh? You never mentioned that before. We’re going to go see a pirate?”
Ridge shook his head. “No. I had an informant in the warehouse. If he’s still around, and if he remembers that I paid him well, maybe he’ll know more about the markings.”
The city of Caralocia sprawled inland from the harbor, with the palace on a bluff behind a high wall. Ships from all over the kingdom made for a busy port and prosperous shops and marketplaces. Large warehouses near the docks housed shipments from across Landria until they could be sold to the merchants, caravans, and traveling peddlers who would sell the goods from one end of the land to the other.
The warehouses and docks were a long way from the glittering palace or the neat shops and respectable pubs of the main district. The wharves were dark and dodgy, a place for drunks and opium whores, pickpockets, and ruffians. The ships that came into the harbor carried crews assembled from every port in the kingdom, but Rett had also heard tales of men who passed out drunk and woke up at sea, pressed into service. The king’s guards patrolled, but they could not be everywhere, and the harbor alleys and side streets formed a dark warren that was almost impossible to fully safeguard. Even assassins knew to be wary walking the waterfront late at night.
Ridge walked like he owned the place, and with Rett in lockstep beside him, others tended to get out of their way. Their weapons could be in hand within seconds, but Rett still scanned the area with every step, looking for danger.
A man dodged from an alley as they passed, lurching toward Ridge. Before the man knew what had happened, Ridge pushed him up against a wall, twisting his arm behind him. “It’s not nice to pick pockets,” Ridge hissed into the man’s ear, earning a curse in response. The thief’s left hand twitched, and Ridge slammed the man’s wrist against the wall, knocking the shiv from his grip. “You chose the wrong mark.” Ridge’s punch sent the man reeling, then falling. He’d wake up later if someone else didn’t come along and finish the job.
After they had walked a few more blocks, Ridge stopped and nodded toward a two-story building still lit up despite the hours. The large double doors were open, and men moved back and forth between the wagons that carried cargo unloaded from the ships. “That’s the place. Assuming he’s still there.”
Rett and Ridge were dressed much the same as the men unloading the crates. They wandered in, and stood to one side, as Ridge scanned faces for the informant. “There he is,” Ridge said, and Rett followed his gaze to a skinny dark-haired man with large ears and a receding jaw. “I called him Twitch because he’s as jumpy as a cat in a doghouse.”
The man must have sensed their presence, because he looked up and froze, recognizing Ridge. For a second, Rett thought the man might bolt. Then the dockworker slumped, as if accepting the inevitable, and jerked his head toward a side door.
Ridge and Rett slipped out and circled around. Twitch lived up to his name, shuffling from one foot to the other, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. His gaze skittered side to side, and he led them into the shadows around the corner from the warehouse.
“They’ll notice. I can’t stay long.”
“You’ve seen this?” Ridge pulled out the same drawing he had shown Tuven at the Black Wolf.
Twitch shook his head, but Rett had seen his eyes widen, giving away the lie. “There’s coin in it for you if you tell us what you know,” Ridge said, pulling out two bronze from his pocket and holding them up.
“It’s marked on special crates,” Twitch said, his voice high and rushed. “They come in from all over, not just one place. Maybe once or twice a month, a couple at a time. The boss watc
hes them like they’re gold. Maybe they are; I’ve never seen them open. They’re heavy, and they rattle. Those get loaded separate, not with the other stuff. Go out on wagons that come by just for them. Like I said, special.”
“Do you know where the wagons go?”
Twitch moved to answer, but his body jerked forward, and his whole form went stiff as his breath ended in a gasp and his eyes went wide. A trickle of blood started from the corner of his mouth, and then Twitch collapsed, a knife hilt-deep in his back.
Ridge ran in the direction the killer must have gone. From the angle of the way the knife hit, it didn’t take much to figure out where the thrower had been. Rett knelt next to Twitch. The dockworker was bleeding out fast, but he wasn’t dead yet.
“Where do the wagons go?” Rett asked again, leaning down to catch the man’s whisper.
“Ranford,” Twitch breathed. “Some went…” He slumped in Rett’s hold, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Ridge ran toward them but shook his head as Rett looked up hopefully. “Couldn’t find the bastard.”
“Cover me.”
Before Ridge could ask questions Rett wasn’t sure he could answer, he gripped Twitch with hands on either side of the man’s temples. Afraid to think too hard about what he was doing, Rett gathered his magic and pushed.
He found himself in a dim place filled with images. Memories, Rett thought. Twitch’s memories. Rett had never tried anything like this before, and now he moved on sheer instinct. The images were growing fainter with every second as Twitch’s life faded. Rett rummaged through the memories, frantically looking for what he needed, hoping he would recognize it if he found it.
There. Rett thought he heard Twitch’s voice, and he saw crates being loaded on a wagon. But unlike the usual plain, battered wagons that hauled cargo to towns inland, this one was painted and in good repair. The driver looked better dressed than the norm, and Rett realized the man wore a livery shirt and pants, minus the jacket. The wagon itself bore no insignia, but Rett caught sight of the jacket on the driver’s seat, with a crest on the arm.
Color bled from the images, as they slowed to a crawl. Vivid hues faded to gray, and Rett realized he had grown very cold. What happens if I’m in his mind when he dies? Rett thought with horror.
He turned and ran, fighting through the ghostly memories, shivering so hard that breathing became difficult. He could feel his own heart slowing, and his chest felt heavy. Rett tried to pull back, unsure how to let go.
Ridge’s voice sounded from a great distance, barely audible, and Rett fixed on it like a beacon. He fought against the torpor that made his movements uncoordinated and sluggish, focused on taking one step and then another, toward the voice that called him.
Pain flared across his face, sharp enough to make him gasp, and then again. It jolted his heart and sparked his anger, and he threw himself toward the source, as another sharp slap cracked against his skin.
Rett came to with a gasp, on his knees over Twitch’s corpse, staring into Ridge’s frightened face. “Are you back?” Ridge stared at him, pale and wide-eyed as if he had seen a ghost.
“Yeah,” Rett managed, fighting to clear his head. His thoughts felt muddy, and his knees almost failed him when he tried to stand.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ridge said, hauling Rett up and getting a shoulder under his arm. “Come on. You can tell me what in the name of the gods happened once we’re far away from here.”
By the time they had gone a block, Rett pulled loose, able to walk for himself. Ridge gave him a skeptical once-over but did not push when Rett kept going. They watched the shadows, wondering if Twitch’s killer followed them, or whether he had finished his task when the knife that found its mark in the man’s back.
“I saw it,” Rett managed, as they neared the place they had left their horses. “The wagon. And the man driving it.”
Ridge looked at him, worried and unbelieving. “When? Where? There wasn’t anyone else in the alley.”
Rett shook his head, his nerves still jangling. “Let’s just get inside,” he said, refusing to meet Ridge’s gaze and swinging up onto his horse.
He avoided Ridge’s attempts at conversation on the ride back to their lodging house, trying to figure out for himself exactly what had happened and whether it had been real. Henri met them in the stables with his uncanny ability to predict their arrival, and shooed them inside, promising to see to the horses and assuring them that food awaited.
Ridge could not contain his questions. “You almost died back in that alley.” His voice was sharp with worry. “I saw you put your hands on Twitch’s temples, and then you just…went away. You didn’t hear me; you didn’t see me. I thought for sure whoever knifed Twitch was going to come back for us, and you were just…gone.”
Ridge began to pace. “And then your whole body went stiff, and your breathing changed, and when I tried to pull you away, you were freezing cold.” He blew out a long breath. “I thought you were going to die.”
“So did I.” Rett turned away as he peeled off his coat and hung it on a hook. Their rooms smelled of warm meat pie, date tarts, and fresh coffee. The food sat on the table, and a cup of what he guessed to be whiskey accompanied each plate, while a pot of coffee boiled in the embers on the hearth.
Ridge watched him, head tilted quizzically as he tried to make sense of what he had seen. “You did something. With your magic.”
Rett swallowed hard and nodded. Even now, he didn’t feel completely right. His heartbeat had returned to normal, and he could breathe easily once more, but the fog in his head had not completely cleared, and the cold lingered in his bones far more than the temperature of the night would excuse.
“I didn’t think about it, I just acted,” he said, still avoiding Ridge’s eyes as he sat down at the table. Rett fought the urge to down the whiskey in a single gulp. “I knew if Twitch died without telling us what he saw, that we’d hit a blank wall. So I…went in after him.”
“In where?” Ridge had not moved, still staring at Rett with a mix of worry and misgiving in his expression.
Rett took a swallow of the whiskey and looked down. “In his mind. Like the Sight except…different.”
Ridge stepped to the table, all his focus on Rett. “You went into a dying man’s mind? Are you crazy?”
“Maybe,” Rett replied with a wan smile. “I told you, I didn’t think. There wasn’t time. I wondered if I could see what he knew, and so I grabbed him, and I pushed.”
Ridge closed his eyes, and from his posture, Rett guessed his friend debated whether to ask more questions or take a swing at him for his stupidity. “Forget the ‘how’ for a moment. What did you see?”
Rett told him about the wagon and the driver. “I’ve seen that crest before. One of the minor nobles, I think…out a distance from the city.” He paused. “Twitch said ‘Ranford’ when I asked him where the crates were going.”
“Can you remember the crest well enough to draw it?” Ridge asked, and Rett gave a shaky nod. Ridge returned a moment later with a piece of parchment, quill, and ink.
Rett moved his food aside, unsure his stomach at the moment could keep anything down. His hand shook as he took the quill, and he saw that Ridge noticed as well, but his friend said nothing.
“Like this, I think.” He sketched out the crest and slid the parchment over to Ridge.
“And he said some of the crates went to Ranford?”
Rett nodded. “That’s West of Caralocia. I’m trying to remember which of the nobility have land out there, and who the players are. We don’t usually have work that takes us in that direction.”
Ridge snorted. “Because the nobles out there rarely draw the king’s attention enough to require assassination. Plenty of farms, lots of cows and sheep. Ranford’s always had middling power at best to influence the king. Not like the more aggressive nobles who’ve got their fingers in the shipping trade. You can bet they’ve got King Kristoph’s ear.”
The
door opened, interrupting their conversation. Henri stepped in, managing to look clean and unruffled although he had just come from the stables. Rett privately wondered if their squire stashed extra changes of clothing in various locations. “Is dinner to your liking?”
“Did you cook this?” Ridge asked with his mouth full of food.
A small smile tugged at the corners of Henri’s mouth. “I did. Just something to fill the hours while the two of you were away. After I cleaned the tack, polished the boots, sharpened the extra blades…”
“We understand, Henri,” Rett said with a laugh. “You’re indispensable. Did you eat?”
Henri nodded. “I learned a long time ago to eat when I’m hungry and not wait for the two of you,” he observed, raising an eyebrow. “But thanks for asking. Should I retrieve the medical kit? You look undamaged. But there’s blood on your jacket,” he noted, assessing Rett. “And yours as well,” he added with a closer look at Ridge. “Am I missing something?”
Rett rubbed his temple, still feeling off-center from the magic he had used in the alley. “Not our blood, for once,” he replied. “One of Ridge’s informants was just about to tell us something that someone else really didn’t want us to hear.”
“I see.”
“What do you know about Ranford?” Ridge wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Rett kicked him, and Henri gave a disapproving look. Ridge muttered something under his breath and reached for a napkin.
Henri took off his coat and hung it on a peg, closing and locking the door behind him. “Funny you ask. I’ve been making inquiries about that marking you showed me. Some of the people I spoke to remember seeing crates with that mark coming in on ships. None of the boxes had an address for delivery on their paperwork, but one of the serving girls I know overheard a wagon driver say he’d been told to take the boxes to Ranford and meet a man in another wagon who would take them farther.”
“What happened?” Rett asked.
“She didn’t know. The driver never returned. Killed on the road by highwaymen,” Henri replied. “Convenient, isn’t it?”
Assassin's Honor (Assassins of Landria Book 1) Page 7
