Deepwoods (Book 1)
Page 14
“Well, in that case….” He held out a hand to seal the deal. She took it without hesitation, gripping his forearm, surprised that it felt like she gripped an iron bar. He was deceptively stronger than he looked.
Bloodless shook his head in wry amusement. “Don’t ya know better than ta come within arm’s reach of an assassin?”
“You’re not going to kill me,” she responded with absolute certainty. “My death won’t profit you anything.”
He reclaimed his hand and asked Wolf, “Is she always this crazy?”
“No,” Wolf growled in true agitation. “Sometimes she’s worse.”
Bloodless grinned. “My sympathies.”
Siobhan ignored this by-play and rocked back up to her feet. “Alright, sit tight. I’ll negotiate you out of those chains in a minute. But there’s one last thing.”
Bloodless cocked his head at her, silently questioning.
“I’m not calling you Bloodless,” she informed him bluntly. “That’s the name you give a hunting dog, not a human being. Don’t you have a true name?”
“Not that I know of.”
The answer told her more than he probably intended. Just how young had he been abandoned to the cold mercies of the world that he didn’t even remember the name his parents had given him? If he’d had parents at all, that was. She didn’t like the return of that lifeless quality in his eyes, either. Blowing out a breath, she flipped her hand palm up, letting that pass.
“Then is there a name you prefer to be called by? Or shall I choose one for you?”
He blinked at her, nonplussed and confused.
Wolf cleared his throat behind her. “Siobhan, the only person that can name another is their parent, or someone who acts as a mentor. It’d be very strange for you to name him.”
Oh? Ooops. She hadn’t known that little fact of Wynngaardian culture.
“Ya can,” Bloodless said suddenly, eyes intent on her. For some reason, the expression on his face reminded her of a hungry animal, although why, she couldn’t begin to understand. “Ya can name me.”
She stared back at him for a long moment, trying to figure out why he said so. Was he afraid of upsetting their deal by denying her? That didn’t seem to be it, though. She glanced up at Wolf, but he seemed just as puzzled by this.
Well, alright, he was willing and she truly couldn’t bring herself to call him by a pet’s name. She thought on it for a moment before offering, “Rune. It means ‘secret.’” Heaven knew the man had a boat- load of them.
“Rune,” he repeated and smiled slightly as he said it, as if liking the taste of it. “Sure. I’ll be ya secret, sweet Guildmaster.”
“Not quite how I meant it,” she denied with a shake of the head. “But fine. Rune, sit tight. I’ll have you out of those chains in a few minutes.”
ӜӜӜ
The Ahbiren did not at all like her proposal. In fact, he was with Wolf on this one—the only good assassin was a dead assassin. But after much discussion, promises, and such, he finally relented. Siobhan was well aware that she only got permission because Wolf cheerfully swore that if Rune acted up at all, he’d kill him without hesitation.
Siobhan decided not to care as long as she got Rune out of those chains and under her custody.
She went back to Rune with the key for the manacles in hand, knelt, and undid the chains, taking in his overall condition with a clinical eye. He looked—and smelled—terrible, as if he had been completely neglected except for the odd meals shoved his direction. Assassination attempt aside, how could anyone treat another human being like this? She understood anger, and retaliation, but outright cruelty was beyond her ken. She couldn’t stomach him being left like this.
“Rune, listen to me carefully. The Ahbiren does not like the idea of you living one little bit and he’s going to keep a close eye on you. So stay close to me and don’t cause trouble, alright?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he promised without a hint of sarcasm.
“Good. Now, first order of business, bath.”
He blinked at her, as if he couldn’t possibly have heard her right. “Bath?”
“Bath,” she repeated firmly. “While you’re washing, I’ll rummage up some clothes for you to change into. These need to be in a waste-bin. Then we’ll have Conli—he’s our doctor—take a look at your wrists. Are you hungry? When did you last eat?”
For some reason, Rune watched her with a strange look on his face, as if he was having trouble following what she said. But he opened his mouth and managed, “Yesterday morni’n they fed me.”
“Yesterday?” she parroted in exasperation. “You’re a grown man, for pity’s sake! Were they trying to slowly kill you through starvation? Never mind, I’ll get a meal together while you’re washing as well. Where’s Beirly?” she stood and turned on her heel, looking about. “Ah, there he is. BEIRLY!”
Her friend looked up from the box he was moving and called back, “What?”
“Find some clothes that will fit him!” she ordered, pointing a finger down at Rune’s head.
Beirly scratched at the back of his head, stared at Rune for a long second, and then asked, “Why?”
“Because he’s ours for the time being.”
Even from twenty feet away she could see Beirly’s reaction to that piece of news. “Shi! Tell me you didn’t just adopt an assassin!”
She grinned. “I’ve done stranger things!”
“Name one!” Beirly challenged, although he laughed as he retorted.
Well, actually, she couldn’t think of anything that counted as ‘stranger’ right off the top of her head.
Rune chuckled in outright delight. “Ya can’t think of anythi’n.”
“I’m sure something will come to me. Later. In the wee hours of the morning.” She shrugged, unconcerned. “Come along, Rune. We need to find a large tub of hot water.”
Finding hot water took a good hour and a half, due to complications. They could not put an additional eleven people into the house/converted storeroom that Lirah’s people were using, so another storeroom had to be cleared out before Deepwoods could get situated. With everyone pitching in, they managed to clear a sizeable area in short order, giving them a place to sleep right next to Lirah’s building. As impromptu lodging went, it wasn’t half-bad. Siobhan had certainly stayed in worse. This building had housed grain, mostly wheat, and so it smelled slightly musty. But the wooden floors, brick walls, and thatch roof overhead had a nice solidness to them that kept out the weather. Best yet, the doorway and ceilings had enough height for even Tran and Wolf to clear without danger of knocking their heads into something.
A lean-to had been added onto the building at some point, although it was not currently in use for anything. Siobhan declared it a bathing room and had a half-barrel rolled into it for washing. Someone had put in a small well and pump out in the back of the building, and through an open back window, they were able to cart in enough water for washing. She scrounged up a towel, a bar of soap, and a dirty assassin and shoved them all into the room without further ado.
Rune laughed as he went aside, amused by her insistence, but didn’t complain as he closed the door behind him. She stood close-by for a second, waiting to hear the sound of splashing water. Ah, there. Good. Turning, she shooed everyone out of the building and onto the front porch so she could have this conversation outside of Rune’s hearing. Well, hopefully outside of his hearing.
“Alright, Shi, what’s the real story?” Beirly asked in a confidential tone.
She looked around at the circle of faces which, for the most part, stared back in confusion. “In short? The Ahbiren here agreed to let us stay if we took care of a problem for him.”
“Ahhh.” Fei pointed toward Rune’s general direction. “Problem?”
“Assassin who failed to kill the Ahbiren,” she explained with a grimace. “They weren’t sure what to do with him once they caught him.”
“That’s a problem, certainly,” Markl agreed. “And the reason why you brought him
into the guild?”
“He knows Sateren.” Siobhan had, in the course of setting all this up, finally seen the hole in Lirah’s story. “Listen, I think we need him. I think we need him more than I first realized. Lirah said that they were attacked by professionals, either assassins or mercenaries, and that they retreated because they thought most of her people dead. But that doesn’t make sense. Why were they attacked? Not robbery—Lirah still has most of her equipment. If it was a hit, then why leave with the job half finished?”
“If Iron Dragain was behind it, they wouldn’t want witnesses left behind,” Wolf continued her train of thought aloud, brows beetling. “And the guild that did the job wouldn’t leave without making sure all were dead. Unless they were ordered to leave some alive. Sloppy work like that will lose you customers.”
“Right?” she agreed. “It’s like the attack was designed to make us think Iron Dragain had betrayed Blackstone. They waited until Lirah was close to Sateren, left her alive with all of her people, all so they can cast suspicion on Iron Dragain. But I don’t think it was them. I think it’s that third party that Markl thought up in Quigg.”
“There’s no reason for a third party to attack, though,” Markl pointed out.
“That we know of,” Sylvie corrected. “But we don’t know every business dealing that Blackstone and Iron Dragain are involved in. There could be something else going on behind the scenes, something that would explain this.”
“We don’t know who to trust right now,” Siobhan sighed, “but I’m inclined to trust Iron Dragain. I honestly think them innocent in all of this. That said, I want to send a message to them. They’re the closest safe harbor we’ve got, if we can get to their main holdings. I don’t want to risk that open road again, not until we understand what’s going on.”
“Which is why you want him.” Tran inclined his head toward the building, indicating Rune. “You think he can get into Sateren without raising any attention.”
“He said he was born and raised there. He knows the city better than any of us. Fei, I’m going to put together a message and I want you to deliver it with Rune.”
Fei quirked a brow at her. “Because you don’t trust him?”
She shook her head in wry amusement. “Would you? But also, I think Iron Dragain is more likely to trust any message I send if someone from Deepwoods delivers it.”
Fei pondered that for a moment before stating, “I want to test his skills before we go.”
“Fair enough.”
The front door opened and a damp assassin poked his head out, a towel hanging around his neck. He looked remarkably better with all of the dirt and grime off of him. He also, strangely, looked younger. In fact, Siobhan realized after a startled blink that Rune couldn’t be far past his teenage years. “Testi’n me aside, I don’t think ya should contact Iron Dragain yet.”
Siobhan had a flash of chagrin that he’d overheard their conversation. Shaking that off, she turned to face him squarely. “For future reference, how sharp is your hearing?”
“Quite sharp.” He grinned at her, a surprisingly boyish expression. “I promised ta help ya even when ya didn’t know the right question to ask. If ya want ta know who attacked yer friends, I can help ya find out.”
Siobhan blinked at him in surprise. “You can?”
“Easy, easy,” he assured her. “My old guild is the largest assassin’s guild in Sateren. All requests went through them first. I don’t know if they were the ones that actually did the work themselves, but they’d certainly know who commissioned it.”
She rubbed at her chin thoughtfully. Granted, it would help a great deal if they knew who was behind the attack. She would at least know who to trust. “What do you need to pull this off?”
“I need ta arrange a meet between ya and one of the karls.”
“Karl?” she repeated, having never heard the term before.
Rune gave her a strange look in return. “Ya don’t know what a karl is? How do Robargean guilds rank the people, then?”
Markl chose to explain. “From lowest to highest, it’s initiate, guildmember, sentinel, officer, advisor, guildmaster. But this is only true for the largest guilds, there’s a different structure in small ones.”
Or little structure at all, Siobhan reflected in wry humor. Herself aside, no one had a rank in Deepwoods.
“Hehhhh,” Rune drawled out as he processed this. Then he shrugged. “Sounds like it’s simpler here. We only have four ranks—praell, karls, jarls, and guildmaster. Praells are like the guildmembers, I guess, and the karls are like the officers. Jarls are the highest up, and they work directly for the guildmaster. For what we need ta know, any karl will do.”
While all of this sounded very promising, it didn’t really ease all of Siobhan’s concerns. “Is it safe for you to meet with anyone from your old guild? I mean, all things considered.” She jerked a thumb at the village in illustration.
His face became rigid with a fake smile. “Ya called it earlier, when ya said I was sent on a suicide mission. If by some miracle, I succeeded, they would have forgiven me and kept me in the guild. But I didn’t, so I’m outcast from them. Since they were the ones cutting ties, they won’t care what I do.”
She glanced at Wolf, who knew the inner workings of a dark guild better than she, silently asking if that were truly the case. Wolf held a bleak expression and he nodded ever so slightly in confirmation.
Why? Questions swirled around in her head without answer and she turned her eyes back to Rune, unsure if she could give voice to any of them.
Rune took a step closer to her, closing the gap, which put Tran and Wolf distinctly on edge. Only then did she realize he was exactly her height, as their eyes were on the same level. “Ya want ta know,” he said quietly, voice unusually gravelly. “If I knew it was suicide, why go? Yer big wolf here doesn’t ask, cause he knows. Ya don’t switch guilds in a city. No dark guild will trust ya if ya leave one ta go ta another, and the other guilds will just as soon throw ya in a cell as look at ya. I couldn’t leave here—I didn’t have the supplies ta travel. I’d be dead if I took ta the road. Odds were, I’d die tryi’n ta kill the old man, too, but at least the odds were better taki’n the job.” That humorless smile darted over his face again. “So ya see, I had nothi’n to bargain with. Ya got rooked, Guildmaster.”
She met that smile without flinching. “I bargained for an expert on Sateren. Did you lie to me about that?”
His brows compressed briefly in a small frown. “No.”
“Then I’m satisfied.” Judging from the way his mouth soundlessly moved, he had no idea what to think about that, much less how to respond. Taking pity on him, she clapped a hand to his shoulder. It felt like she grasped a warm wooden post. Was he nothing but bone and muscle? “We’ll talk about how to contact someone from your old guild in a bit. First, introductions. This is Markl, Conli, Denney, Sylvie, Wolf, Tran, Beirly and Fei. The dogs are Pyper and Pete. Everyone, this is Rune. He’ll be with us until we return through Island Pass.”
There were some nods and greetings around the group, all of them said warily. Rune greeted them back cheerfully, enjoying their awkwardness.
Siobhan let out a sigh and hoped the mood would pass as everyone got used to him. “Rune, ground rules are these—treat everyone with respect, the women especially. If we ask you for an escort, do so. If something’s broken, go to Beirly. If there’s danger, Wolf, Tran or Fei needs to be told first. They’re my enforcers. If it’s trade-related, talk to Sylvie. If it’s medical, talk to Conli. Got all that?”
Rune had that odd look on his face again, as if he couldn’t understand what she was doing or why she was doing it. But he responded, “Yes, Guildmaster.”
“If it doesn’t fit any of the above, you’re always welcome to talk to me,” she assured him, hoping he would do so. She needed him to trust her, otherwise this dangerous situation would get a lot worse. “For now, Conli, take a look at him. I’ll get some food while you do that.”
Siobhan tuned it out and went to the next thing. “Sylvie, can you buy some food for us, enough to last us another two weeks or so? Lirah said it would take at least that long for people to be recovered enough to move.”
Sylvie gave her a silent salute before moving off the porch.
Almost belatedly, she told Markl, “Help her. I’m sure it’ll be too much for one to carry.”
“Of course.” He readily fell into Sylvie’s wake.
That started, she went to the next thing. “Fei, talk to Lirah’s group and get an exact accounting of what happened. Get me details—what they looked like, what weapons they used, which direction they retreated to, you know the drill. The more information I have, the better.”
Fei nodded and silently went to do as bid.
Let’s see…what else…. “Tran—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he refused in a low rumble.
“Ahhh…” Remembering that Rune’s hearing was unusually good, she instead pointed in his general direction, head cocked in question. Tran nodded sourly. Wolf backed him up with a nod as well, arms crossed over his chest in a stubborn manner. Siobhan blew out a breath. So, neither Tran nor Wolf would let the boy out of their sight, eh? Well, for the time being, that was probably prudent.
“Fine,” she sighed in resignation. “I’ll find a plate of food for him and some better fitting clothes.” The ones that Beirly had handed her hung on the boy so bad it was a wonder his pants stayed up. She also had to figure out where Rune’s weapons had been put. Surely the villagers had kept them instead of just throwing them out. Whether or not she would hand them over immediately would be a matter to decide later.