Darkblade Guardian

by Andy Peloquin

  “Six of them, correct?” King Ohilmos glanced over at his brother for confirmation.

  “Seven.” Duke Phonnis’ face creased into a snarl. “A new corpse was found earlier this afternoon abandoned just outside the Praamian Wall.”

  “Seven bodies, all in the last three weeks.” The King leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “Four men, two women, including a prostitute from The Gilded Chateau, and now a child.”

  Ilanna’s gut clenched at that last one. Who would kill children? Sadly, during her years in the Night Guild, she’d learned the list of potential suspects would be far longer than she’d like.

  “Such things are less uncommon in Praamis than I care to admit.” King Ohilmos’ eyes darkened. “Which is why the Guild exists in the first place. You organize crime, thus preventing such wanton cruelty and death.”

  Duke Phonnis gave Ilanna a cold, hard-edged smile. “If you can’t keep your thugs and cutthroats under control, Guild Master, your existence will no longer be tolerated.”

  Ilanna didn’t respond to the Duke’s ire; he’d been making the same empty threat for the last eleven years.

  King Ohilmos waved the Duke down. “I might be tempted to allow my brother to lay the blame for their deaths at your feet, but for the strange circumstances surrounding them.”

  This piqued Ilanna’s curiosity. “Strange circumstances?”

  “Two of the men were found dumped in a back alley, their throats slit.” King Ohilmos grimaced in distaste. “But the other five were discovered in a curious state.”

  Duke Phonnis scowled. “Their faces were encased in smooth plaster, and a strange-looking symbol was carved into their chests.”

  King Ohilmos pulled a scrap of parchment from the pile on the table and held it out to her. “Do you recognize this?”

  Ilanna studied the symbol: an almost-complete circle connected to two lines that bent outward in a perfect right angle. The center of the circle depicted something that resembled a sun and moon in close alignment.

  She shook her head. “No, Your Majesty. But I’m certain my people can find out where it comes from.”

  “Precisely what I expected to hear.” King Ohilmos gave a satisfied nod. “The Crown has tolerated the Night Guild’s existence all these years because of their usefulness to maintaining order in Praamis. But only if crime is controlled.” He didn’t need to finish his sentence to make his meaning clear.

  “I will deal with it, Your Majesty.” Ilanna inclined her head. “I can assure you that if anyone in my organization is responsible for the murders, they will be hand-delivered to the Duke for punishment.”

  Duke Phonnis’ face grew smug, like a fox after raiding a henhouse.

  He’d love nothing more than to see every man, woman, and child in the Night Guild hang, Ilanna thought. And me most of all. She numbered among a doubtless very select few that had crossed the Duke and lived.

  “But I know my people,” Ilanna said in a hard voice, “and I can tell you that they are not behind this. The Night Guild will find out who is dealing death in our city and put an end to them. You have my word as Guild Master.”

  King Ohilmos nodded. “Good. I expected no less.” His lips quirked upward. “Your tenure as Guild Master has proven…beneficial to the city. I’d hate for that to change.”

  “Your Majesty.” Ilanna swept a respectful bow, then shot Duke Phonnis a wink. “I’ll try not to kill any of your guards on the way out. Though, given how easily I slipped past them, I doubt I’ll need to. You really should do something about that.”

  Duke Phonnis growled and opened his mouth to retort, but Ilanna was already out the door and into the darkened hallway.

  Ilanna left a different way than she’d entered—she enjoyed the few occasions she was able to practice her thief skills, and breaking into the King’s palace was one of her truest pleasures. Her greatest asset as a Hawk had been her ability to find the vulnerability in any structure. This just happened to be the most heavily-guarded, fortified structure in Praamis. A challenge, to be sure, but Ilanna had had eleven years of practice. King Ohilmos had no idea how many entry points his palace truly had.

  The way back to the kitchens was empty and dark, as she’d expected. It took less than a minute to slip into the storeroom, close the door behind her, and clamber out the window back into the Palace Gardens. From there, it was a simple matter to crawl through the tunnel her predecessor, the former Master Gold, had evidently dug beneath the high walls of the Royal Palace.

  As she slipped into the darkness of the Praamian streets, she couldn’t help smiling at the Duke’s scowling, rage-filled expression.

  A decade hasn’t made the bastard any easier to deal with. Though, she had to admit that made it all the more enjoyable to bait him. Similar to a cat sitting on a high shelf hissing at a leashed hound, safe on its perch and unafraid of consequences. As long as I keep the peace, there’s nothing he can do to me.

  But now someone threatened that peace. People died every day—life in Praamis tended to be hard, cruel, and bloody—but seven bodies in three weeks far exceeded the usual rate.

  Whoever you are, I will find you. Anger flared in her gut. And when I’m done with you, not even the Long Keeper himself will recognize what’s left.

  Chapter Two

  There’s a demon in Praamis.

  The Hunter leaned back against the over-stuffed seat and tried not to growl in frustration as the coach hit what felt like its thousandth rut in the last five minutes. The ten-day journey across the Windy Plains had been uneventful—a sort of boring that verged on frustration, given what awaited him both in Praamis and back home in Voramis.

  He picked up the parchment in his lap and read it again, as he had so many times on this teeth-grindingly dull journey.

  As per your instructions, I’ve had my contacts in Praamis’ Hidden Circle keep an ear to the ground for anything that might indicate the presence of a demon in the city. I believe this fits the bill.

  The note was as concise as it was neat. Graeme, the fat alchemist who ran The Angry Goblin Bookstore in Voramis, tended toward brevity and wrote in a script that bordered on compulsive precision—a far cry from the typical chaos that reigned in his shop. The shelves of his hidden back room looked like they’d been decorated by a hurricane. Yet when it came to information, he was as methodical and organized as a priest of the Coin Counter’s Temple.

  Which explained why the note came accompanied by more scraps of parchment, each describing the details of bodies that had turned up around the city of Praamis. Three corpses, two men and a woman. One of the men had his throat slashed, but the other two victims had been found with their heads encased in plaster, a strange symbol carved into their chests.

  The Hunter held up the parchment that depicted the symbol: a crescent moon and star set in the middle of a circle with two right-angled lines connected.

  Graeme had failed to identify it, though he’d reached out to all of his Hidden Circle contacts across the continent of Einan for information. That would take time, however, and the Hunter wasn’t the sort to wait around.

  The Hunter might not understand the symbol, but he thought he recognized it, at least partially. He’d seen similar runes carved into the walls of the stone tunnels beneath Voramis, again in the twin temples of Kara-ket, and last in the lost city of Enarium. Serenii runes, the writing of the ancient race that the world believed had disappeared from existence thousands of years in the past.

  He knew the truth of the Serenii, however. A truth that no one on Einan knew, that no books would tell, and few could believe.

  Three years ago, his world had changed when he stumbled into Enarium, bleeding and dying from an iron-poisoned wound. In the Lost City, he’d learned that the gods were nothing more than Serenii worshipped by ancient humans. The Serenii had sacrificed themselves to stop the Devourer of Worlds, a being of pure chaos that sought to destroy Einan and every other world in existence. The Hunter, like all o
f his kind—Bucelarii, the offspring of the foul Abiarazi demons—had sworn to help the Serenii in their fight against the Devourer. He alone remained alive to continue the battle.

  To seal the rift against the Devourer of Worlds, the Serenii needed the magical energy that existed inside all living things. Humans had served as the primary source of power for thousands of years, until the Hunter freed them from their prison. Now, he sought the Abiarazi, for the life force coursing within the demons was almost as powerful as the magic within the Serenii.

  He’d dedicated the last three years of his life to hunting down the demons around Einan. In Kara-ket, the Sage had had a map that depicted his Abiarazi agents in every city on the continent. That map had pointed the Hunter in the direction of Praamis, but he hadn’t found even the barest hint of a demon’s presence until now.

  Demons were vicious, bloodthirsty creatures, driven by an innate lust for battle and death. He’d seen them kill men, women, and children without hesitation. He’d lost friends and loved ones to the demons’ cruelty. Where dead bodies and cruel murders abounded, he would always find the hand of an Abiarazi at work.

  I’m coming for you, demon. He dropped a hand to the dagger at his belt. It was a practical weapon, with a gently curving double-edged blade, an extra-wide crossguard, a gemstone set into its pommel. The dagger, a gift from the Serenii he had sworn to serve, would aid him in his quest.

  “Praamis ahead, sir!”

  The voice of the coachman snapped the Hunter from his thoughts. He twitched aside the curtain and peered out the tiny window.

  About bloody time!

  The western and southern sides of Praamis were sprawling messes of shacks, canvas tents strung onto rickety wooden structures, and buildings that looked slapped together in a hurry. The reek of the thick mire and muck coating the road drifted into the Hunter’s carriage in nauseating waves. Filthy, dust-covered men, women, and children in torn and threadbare clothing watched his coach rattle past with dull eyes.

  Beyond the sea of shanties, the ancient Praamian Wall rose around the city proper, a crumbling barrier that served as a memento of a war-torn time long past. As the Hunter’s coach rattled beneath the high, arching gateway, he found the buildings of Praamis itself a little more solid. These were built with brick and stone rather than wood and canvas, but the dull clay roof tiles and whitewash peeling from the walls lent it an air of poverty and dilapidation.

  Warehouses bordered the broad avenue, giving way to busy avenues where carts and wagons hauled produce, goods, and casks of Praamian wine and beer. The driver maneuvered expertly through the crowded lane and rattled up along the main thoroughfare that led deeper into Praamis.

  He drew in a deep breath, glad for the myriad scents that marked life in a busy city. His sensitive nostrils had grown tired of the boring smells of dust, dry grass, animal carcasses, and more dust that hung thick on the Windy Plains. Here, a thousand people with a thousand different unique scents moved through the streets.

  The sharp tang of spices hung thick in the air of the next marketplace a few streets away—Old Town Market, I think it’s called—accompanied by the rich aroma of cooking meat, the pungent stink of draft animals, and hundreds more odors that filtered into his senses.

  The Hunter couldn’t help comparing the city to his own home of Voramis. Though the buildings looked older, more worn by time, the streets were cleaner, the people within the Praamian Wall better-dressed than those in the Beggar’s Quarter.

  Yet he knew the truth of cities like Praamis. Malandria had been one of the most beautiful places he’d visited on his journey north, but it had hidden a deep, dark ugliness.

  Just as beautiful garments often hide ugly souls, he thought.

  Off to one side of the marketplace, a dusky-skinned man in a dust-covered brown cloak stood on a wooden crate and shouted at the people passing by.

  “The Long Keeper is your only hope of salvation!” he cried to the small crowd of listeners that had been attracted by the fanatic zeal echoing in his voice. “When the end comes—and it will come for us all, sooner than you might imagine—only his embrace will keep you safe from the death and destruction. Throw yourself on his mercy and plead for your eternal souls!”

  He had features foreign to Praamis, his swarthy skin more common to the sun-kissed far north of Einan.

  The Hunter snorted. If only he knew how false everything he’s preaching is. The Long Keeper, like all the other so-called “gods” of Einan were the fabrication of primitive humans, perpetrated and encouraged by the temples and priestly orders that used religion to gain power and wealth.

  His coach rumbled out of the marketplace and down a side street in the direction of The Gardens, the section of town where the wealthier merchants and newer noble Houses of Praamis owned vast mansions. The way to The Gardens was usually clear, yet a moment later, the Hunter found himself thrown forward when the coachman pulled the vehicle to an abrupt halt.

  “What the deuce was that, my man?” The Hunter spoke not in his own voice, but the prim, proper, slightly effete voice of a nobleman.

  “Sorry, my lord,” replied the coachman. “The street’s blocked.”

  “Well, go around it!”

  “Can’t, my lord.” The coachman sounded apologetic. “Too many people in the way.”

  The Hunter gave a foppish snort of disdain and was about to speak, when a familiar smell caught his attention. Beneath the pungent odor of animal droppings and the stink of unwashed men and women, he caught a smell of death. Not the ancient rot and decay that marked a demon, but death nonetheless. Flesh rotted not by time, but by some foul poison.

  “Let me see,” the Hunter snapped. He pushed open the door and stepped out into the street, straightening his clothing. He wore an ostentatiously colored jacket, vest, and trousers, far too elaborate in style to be comfortable or practical and edged with more lace than a woman’s evening gown. He’d be rid of them in a heartbeat, but they were all required for his current disguise. Pulling his cloak forward to conceal Soulhunger, he pushed into the crowd.

  “Step aside, step aside!” He pitched his voice deliberately higher to make himself sound younger. The façade he wore would be in his early thirties, not five thousand years old like the Bucelarii beneath.

  A burly man in a flour-stained apron turned to snarl at him, but stopped when he caught sight of the Hunter’s face—with its prominent nose, weak jaw, high cheekbones, and angular chin—and rich robes. Evidently the pretentious demeanor and garish clothing of a nobleman was enough to convince the man not to growl a response. Commoners of cities like Praamis and Voramis disdained noblemen, but never to their faces. Lords and ladies had a tendency to kill first and ask forgiveness later.

  “What’s all the fuss?” The Hunter shoved his way forward with just enough force to displace people, yet not hurl them aside. His inhuman strength, a gift of his Bucelarii heritage, gave him the strength to snap a man’s leg with only mild effort. “What’s going on here? I demand an explanation!”

  His eyes fell on the body before the words had finished leaving his mouth. He stepped into the alley, heedless of the muck that squelched under his shoes, and crouched over the corpse. A child, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, with features just on the healthy side of emaciated, a thin torso, and limbs that had just begun to grow gangly. The Hunter didn’t need his keen nostrils to tell him the boy had been poisoned—the bright blue color of the lad’s lips was unmistakable, and a perfect match for his azure coat, vest, and trousers.

  The Hunter scanned the area for any indication of who had killed the child or abandoned the body. The mud had been disturbed by drag marks that ended at the boy’s heels. Someone had dragged the body and dumped it there. Two footprints were visible beside the body, and a round imprint that might have been from a knee.

  Almost as if someone knelt beside the body. But why?

  The Hunter’s eyes went to the boy’s right hand, which was closed into a tight fist. A tiny scrap of pa
rchment poked between the child’s fingers.

  What is that?

  He moved closer and pried open the boy’s fingers. Within the victim’s palm lay a paper crumpled into a tight wad, and lodged in one of the boy’s fingernails was a single dull brown thread. The Hunter quickly snatched the two objects and concealed them from the crowd behind him.

  “Poor little Bluejacket,” said a woman’s voice from behind him.

  The Hunter turned and fixed the speaker with a lordly frown. “You know this lad?”

  “No, my lord,” the woman said with a vigorous shake of her head. “But his clothes, you see. He’s one of Lady Chasteyn’s Bluejackets.”

  The Hunter studied the boy’s clothing. Though he had the look of a street urchin, his clothes were well-tailored and as clean as could be expected of a child this age.

  Before the Hunter could ask who Lady Chasteyn was and what the Bluejackets were, shouts of “Make way for the Guard!” echoed loud from the back of the crowd. People moved aside or were shoved aside as four men in the olive robes and silver breastplates of the Praamian Guard marched toward the body.

  The leader of the squad narrowed his eyes at the sight of the Hunter. “Here now, who the bloody hell are ye and what are ye doin’?”

  The Hunter drew himself up to his full height—more than a hand’s breadth taller than the Praamian Guard—and plastered a look of disdain on his face. “Lord Harrenth Anglion, son of Lord Enusk Anglion. And who, pray tell, are you to speak to me in such a disrespectful manner?”

  The guard paled but held his ground. “Sergeant Mayten, fifth squad, Old Town Company. We’ve been called about that!” He thrust a finger toward the corpse.

  “Good,” the Hunter snapped. “About time. This crowd was blocking my coach, so the sooner you can clear the way, the sooner I can be on with my business.”

  “Right.” Sergeant Mayten cleared his throat and shouted at the crowd. “Away, the lot of ye! The Duke’ll handle this.”