the cold hand of betrayal

by ich du

  Anger turned to self-preservation as the horrified Rannick felt his crown slipping. To be the best meant something. It was not only prestigious, it was financially lucrative. Powerful, wealthy employers always requested the best. Up until now, that had been him.

  'What marks are left?' he asked quickly in desperation, scanning the contracts again.

  'Only one.' Remy's voice was like prophecy as he wiped sweat from his bald head. 'Count Banquo Degusta.'

  Rannick held his breath and looked over at the only unretired notice on the entire board, where it had remained for the last eight months.

  Count Banquo Degusta; known within the guild as the impossible mark. Seven separate attempts had been made on the mans life. All seven had failed, and as Rannick contemplated the suicidal nature of such a task, Faust pinned up an eighth with a dagger.

  'Sour-fingered Krellen,' Rannick read. 'Retired by his own poison spoon.'

  'Ah Krellen,' Remy sighed a wistful lament. 'He was good.'

  'He was careless,' Rannick countered coldly. 'Assassins' code, article fifteen,' he quoted confidently. '"Never use another man's cutlery," Krellen and the Duke Bastille learnt that to their mutual demise.' He turned on his heel and began striding back across the hall.

  'Rannick?' Remy called after him, taken aback by his master's abruptness.

  'I'll be at the Drowned Man inn,' he told him, walking away.

  'And the count?'

  Rannick paused, careful to block out the faces of the eight dead assassins.

  'He's been buying up property and businesses all over Luccini and holds sway in the mercantile war. His rivals would pay handsomely for his retirement. You could name your price!' Remy urged with a wry smile.

  Krellen's face flashed before Rannick; ashen pallor of the dead upon his flesh, a withered tongue protruding from his mouth.

  'I will consider it,' Rannick sidestepped. 'But first I need information on this "Crowe" character,' he said, exiting hastily back into the gloom of the entrance way.

  THE DROWNED MAN was a darkly mysterious taverna upon the very fringe of the market plaza of Luccini. Much like the secret entrance to the Assassins' Guild it was located through a series of clandestine passages and alleyways. Outwardly it had little to distinguish itself: dark wood and sun-bleached stone, gloomy windows with an orange tinge. A sign hung from a solitary length of rope and swung languidly in the winter breeze. It depicted a nondescript body washed up upon a barren shore. It was a fitting epitaph to those that dealt in a business concerned with the faceless dead.

  Inside the gloom persisted. A perpetual pall of smoke clung to the interior even when pipes were doused and the fire smothered. Tonight though, the fire roared in an effort to banish away the cold. Suspicious faces huddled around tables and in darkened corners.

  A bar rested at the far end of a crowded room, cluttered with innumerable chairs and tables. A vast quantity of bottles and urns resided behind the counter away from prying eyes. Some bore the tell-tale hue of milky jade absinthe, others the corruptive yet agonisingly addictive luminescence of warp dust-infused potions.

  Two broad wings were set back from the throng, smouldering pipe weed serving as the only illumination. These areas were reserved for especially illustrious patrons. It was here that Rannick sat in silent contemplation.

  He surveyed the filthy clot of thieves, beggars, urchins and mercenaries before him, raising a warming glass of Bretonnian rouge to his lips. Without realising, he had drained it and was about to order another when a name he recognised called his attention.

  'That's right, twenty,' the urchin confirmed, his filth-encrusted face glowing with relish.

  'All slain by the Black Crowe?' a broad-looking dwarf pirate remarked. He regarded the urchin suspiciously, sucking deep on his pipe, absently scratching beneath his eye patch.

  'Yes.' the urchin responded, leaping excitedly upon the table, swinging his gaze around the entire establishment.

  The dwarf rested his hand upon a pistol at his belt.

  'He is the greatest assassin in all of Tilea!'

  He was a wretch, Rannick decided, inwardly seething at this proclamation. Bedecked in tattered rags, a second skin of dirt and street detritus smothering him, the urchin could have been any age. It mattered not; this was the link Rannick had been seeking. Through the urchin he could get to the Crowe.

  'He could best even Vespero!' the urchin boasted, wavering drunkenly as he upended a few glasses, one into the mercenary dwarfs lap.

  'A bold statement.' the ale-drenched dwarf said, reaching for his pistol, enraged at the urchin's undisguised amusement.

  'Bold and inaccurate.' another voice said. A man, pale and severe, black beard neat and trim, moved out of one of the wings, the darkness peeling away at his approach. Clad in black, he drew a duelling sword from beneath a deep crimson cloak.

  The urchin's amusement turned to sober concern as he staggered down from the table.

  Rannick watched with interest.

  'Enough!' a loud voice bellowed from the back of the room. A thickly muscled barkeep, tanned and weather-beaten, held a stout looking blunderbuss across the bar.

  'Back to your seats.' he urged with menacing politeness. The blunderbuss shot could shred everything before him. Several of the patrons with minds on their own business looked nervously, pleadingly between the mouth of the gun and the trio of man, dwarf and urchin.

  The dwarf raised his hand and returned to his seat with a muttered oath. The duellist disappeared silently, back into the gloom.

  'And as for you.' the barkeep said, 'out!'

  As if suddenly scalded, and with a last glance at the gaping maw of the blunderbuss, the urchin was gone, lost in the dark.

  THE NIGHT DREW in around him, cold and silent as the urchin tramped dazedly through the streets. Snow was falling and it covered the approaching plaza with a whitening veil.

  He looked up into the night and watched the flakes drift down languidly, disintegrating quickly on his alcohol warmed skin. When he looked back there was a shadow figure before him and the prick of a dagger at his neck.

  'Wha...' the urchin began but was silenced when the blade was pressed harder, nearly piercing the skin.

  'You work for the Black Crowe.' a voice like hardening ice told him.

  'The Black Crowe? No, I-'

  'This.' the voice said, a second dagger urging a filthy hand into the moonlight, 'tells me different.' A gold ring shone, its emblem picked out in sharp relief, that of a bird in flight, a crow. The urchin's skinny hand quivered with fear.

  'You have only this chance to save yourself.' the voice warned. 'Where is he and what are his plans?'

  Tears ploughed watery farrows through the grime on the urchin's face revealing pale, white skin beneath.

  'I don't know.' he rasped, constricted by fear and the dagger at his neck. The shadow pressed harder and a ruby of blood peeled away down the blade.

  'Wait!' the urchin begged, 'I have only met him once in the shadows. He said he needed eyes and ears in the city, that it was dangerous for him in the open. I was promised a generous pay and that a bird would bring instructions.' he explained with blathering speed. 'I take the note to the guild house and I send the contracts back with the bird.'

  'When?' the shadow asked, increasing the blade pressure.

  'All hours, he contacts me when he needs me, I swear by Taal!' he said with difficulty.

  'His plans?'

  'A murder.' was the urchin's choked retort, 'tonight.'

  Who?'

  'Count Banquo.'

  The shadow assailing him appeared to flinch, if only slightly, but then composed itself.

  'He will kill me for this.' the urchin sobbed, the blade released at last. He fell to his knees as if in penance, exhausted, shining with dappled sweat.

  'Pray that he does.' the shadow figure replied. The night enveloped him as he retreated. In moments he was a merely a dark memory, one with the shadow.

  THE WINTER WIND whipped a
bleak and chilling chorus as Rannick crouched upon the barren rooftop of a lofty tenement. Through a powerful lens he espied the austere and well-fortified bastion of Count Banquo. The lens had been gifted to him by an Empire explorer for the retirement of a persistent necromancer. An esoteric payment, it had nonetheless proved invaluable on many occasions.

  Six guards patrolled the outer wall upon a circumventing walkway. They were mercenaries, possibly marksmen; a tattoo common to the principality of Miragliano upon one cheek. They held low-slung crossbows with practiced ease and watched the night with keen eyes. Two watchtowers surged high into the dark, jutting from the ochre walls like spikes. Staves that gleamed like silver blades in the moonlight were set around them. Each held a garrison of two men similarly armed. There was a single gate, wooden with iron studs bored into the timber. It was barred and set solid with a heavy lock. The guard patrol was thickest here.

  The count's first mistake.

  Assassins' Code #46: The strongest resistance will always stand at the obvious entrance. Attack obliquely and catch your enemy where he expects you the least.

  At such a high vantage point Rannick could see right over the forbidding wall and into the grounds. It smacked of the usual flamboyant opulence enjoyed by those with privilege, but more interestingly was bereft of any guards. There were three hounds left free to wander, sleek and brutish, heavily muscled and doubtlessly vicious if no guard was willing to be amongst them. The entrance to the count's inner sanctum lay across their stalking ground up stone steps and through two marble pillars. It was decorative and held little threat of determined resistance. Rannick had found his opening.

  If he was to believe the filthy urchin, and the panic in his eyes told Rannick he was honest, then he had little time to act. The lackey would no doubt try to get a warning to his master. He had been left alive and undamaged precisely for this purpose. How sweet it would be to sweep in and retire the count and then watch from the shadows, the Black Crowe enraged at Rannick's audacious bid to turn the tables. And besides, the urchin's death would have gone against the code.

  Assassins' Code #3: Unless it's personal, never kill someone without first agreeing a fee.

  Speed now paramount, Rannick slid down the tenement with controlled urgency, landing athletically into the sheltered street below. Tall and arching domiciles, businesses and taverns cloaked his advance superbly. Rannick clung to the shadows cast by the overhead moonlight. He scampered through the winding streets until he was poised at the very threshold of the count's dominion.

  The guard was re-doubled at the gate so Rannick slipped around the south-facing wall where the shadows were the deepest. Within their dark embrace he watched as the guard patrols overlapped. There was a moment when the wall was left unprotected. Rannick scaled up in a second, soundless and deadly. Upon the walkway he scurried across to the flat wall of the first watchtower. The angle would make it impossible to be seen by the marksmen above. A few more seconds and the patrolling mercenary would return. A moment to ensure his path was clear and Rannick traversed the width of the walkway and plunged into the leafy void below.

  Within a thick, evergreen bush Rannick drew forth a small thin pipe from one of the voluminous pockets that bedecked his blackened garb. From another pouch came three darts, made in such a way that they would not reflect any light. His keen senses told him the dogs were closing on him. His scent had alerted them that an intruder was present.

  In the noiseless dark, Rannick waited.

  It only took a few patient moments and a long, muscled canine loped into view. Rannick waited until he caught sight of the other two. They were advancing toward him, long pink tongues lapping the air for scent clues, eyes pricked up alertly, bodies poised with the threat of violence.

  Rannick fired. Three times, three hits, each an expert shot into the jugular, immediately getting into the bloodstream. The dogs fell, slumbering almost instantly, the wolfish features made tame by sleep.

  Rannick could have used a deadly poison, this way his time in the mansion would be curtailed, but he took the assassins' code very seriously.

  Assassins' Code #18: Killing a man by mistake is fine, but a dog... Many difficulties can arise from killing a dog...

  Certain that the guards could not see him, Rannick sneaked through the foliage that reminded him of Frenzini's Mansion.

  Perhaps all such habitations adhered to a floor plan, he wondered briefly before speeding silently up the stone steps and beyond the marble pillars of the entrance.

  As he had suspected, the door was not locked nor barred and swung open freely. Rannick allowed a wedge of moonlight to spill into the hall beyond and slipped through, closing the door behind him with an almost undetectable click.

  The hallway confronting him was dark, thrown into greyish half-light by a glass-domed ceiling of the vast lobby beyond. The immense room was pockmarked with marble and bronze statuettes, amongst them Borgio, the mercenary captain known as the Besieger, slain in his own bathtub, and the scientist Leonardo de Miragliano, holding aloft an alchemist's globe. There were others too: merchant princes, entrepreneurs and even a conceited likeness of the count himself, every inch the statesman. There were tapestries also, depicting ancient battles, treaties and coronations. The count was indeed a controlling factor in the mercantile war if the trappings of his domicile were any gauge.

  Rannick smiled. This contract would be both prestigious and lucrative. As he advanced slowly, heading for a large and ornately fashioned marble staircase up which he assumed would be the count's bedrooms and study, a thought occurred to him.

  Where are the guards?

  No dogs, no men, not even a decent alarm. This Count Banquo was arrogant indeed if he thought he only needed protection outside his little empire. Rannick imagined him as vainglorious, full of his own self-importance, unwilling perhaps to even share his vast quarters with the hired riffraff that patrolled the cold stone at his border.

  'That arrogance shall prove your undoing, dear count.' Rannick whispered as he trod softly up the staircase, his padded shoes making no sound upon the chilled stone.

  The mansion was immense. There had to be a hundred or so rooms, but as Rannick reached the very top of the staircase he was rewarded for his intuition. A faint wash of yellowing light was visible down a passage directly before him. A thick oaken banister ran around the platform, upon which he was standing, and several passages and portals lay along its circumference. Here was the route Rannick sought.

  Tentatively Rannick edged forward down the corridor. The silence persisted, filled with the threat of discovery. Rannick ignored it, and eventually reached a closed door at the end of the corridor, a hazy blade of yellow light issuing from the crack.

  Rannick pressed his ear against the door and listened hard. There was movement and muttering from beyond. It sounded distant, likely from within another corridor behind it, possibly leading to the count's private chambers. The door was off its latch and carefully Rannick eased it open a fraction so that he could peer at what was beyond.

  He was right, another corridor lay before him. Shorter this time, a junction peeling off to the east and west at its terminus. A shadow was cast over the western passage, thrown by the wan lamplight set at intervals, arranged in gilt wall-mounted candelabras. Rannick slid within, hugging the right hand wall, stepping quickly up the corridor until he reached the junction.

  Without breath he peered around the corner, low and cloaked by shadows. And there he was - mythical, untouchable, death warrant of assassins from across the length and breadth of Tilea, the impossible mark: the Count Banquo Degusta.

  Now that he saw him, Rannick could not help but feel let down. He was a youthful man, indeed, but held no presence, no ardour and was at least a full half-head shorter than he; a man, that was all, and soon to be a dead one. Rannick wondered briefly how he could ever have lasted this long. His contemporaries had been sloppy, allowing their judgement to be clouded. Now they were dead, lives thrown away in vain to p
erpetuate a myth of mere flesh and blood. He would give no such quarter.

  The count bumbled down the corridor towards an open door. From what Rannick could see, it appeared to be a study, a bookcase and the hint of a decanter and wine beyond. He wore a long crimson cloak with fur trim, night robes, and in his left hand held a glass of red wine. He had his back to him but Rannick was unconcerned about this. There was no honour in this act. He would not be another portrait on Faust's wall. He pulled the blowpipe from his pocket once more and this time produced a black dart with a red band at the tip.

  Black venom.

  His death would be slow and painful. The poison would first paralyse his vocal chords, silencing his screams, then it would attack his lungs, making it feel as if he were swallowing his own blood. After the visions and the blinding pain it would stop his heart. He would be able to feel it slow even through his agony and know the moment at which Morr had come for him.

  Rannick balanced the pipe carefully between two fingers and picked out a spot on the back of the count's neck and fired. Then something happened for which Rannick had not prepared.

  He missed.

  Doubtlessly addled from the liquor in his bloodstream the count stumbled at the very last second, the deadly dart missing by the scantest possible distance. Instead it hit a low hung tapestry, embedding soundlessly.

  Rannick shrunk back, watching as the count upended most of the wine onto a plush ivory carpet, oblivious to the fact that he had just escaped certain death but for a lucky chance!

  He shuffled off, careful to avoid the spill, and slipped into the open doorway of the study. Once his back was to him again, Rannick peeled away from the darkness and trod, silently and purposefully, after the count. He wouldn't miss again.

  The count busied himself with a glass and decanter within a plush looking study that held a strong aroma of lavender. It was filled with vast volumes of history, geography, art and even warfare - an impressive collection. It was almost a pity he would never read them again. Just as the count had finished filling a second glass of red wine, he felt cold steel at his neck.