by Brent Weeks
Durzo found an unlocked window on the second floor. The general’s wife was asleep in the bed: they weren’t so Ceuran as to sleep on woven mats. They were, however, poor enough that the mattress was stuffed with straw rather than feathers. The general’s wife was a plain woman, snoring gently and sprawled more in the middle than to one side of the bed. The covers on the side she was facing had been disturbed.
The wetboy slid into the room, using his Talent to soften the sound of his footsteps on the hardwood floor.
Curious. A quick glance confirmed that the general hadn’t just come for a nocturnal conjugal visit. They actually shared the room. Perhaps he was even poorer than people thought.
Durzo’s brow furrowed under his mask. It was a detail he didn’t need to know. He drew the short poisoner’s knife and walked toward the bed. She’d never feel a thing.
He stopped. The woman was turned toward the disturbed covers. She’d been sleeping close to her husband before he got up. Not on the far side of the bed, the way a woman merely doing her marital duties would.
It was a love match. After her murder, Aleine Gunder had planned to offer the general a quick remarriage to a rich noblewoman. But this general, who’d married a lowborn woman for love, would react quite differently to his wife’s murder than a man who’d married for ambition.
The idiot. The prince was so consumed with ambition that he thought everyone else was, too. The wetboy sheathed the knife and stepped into the hall. He still had to know where the general stood. Immediately.
“Dammit, man! King Davin’s dying. I’d be surprised if he’s got a week left.”
Whoever had spoken was mostly right. The wetboy had given the king his final dose of poison tonight. By dawn, he would be dead, leaving a throne in contention between one man who was strong and just, and another who was weak and corrupt. The underworld Sa’kagé was not disinterested in the outcome.
The voice had come from the receiving room downstairs. The wetboy hurried to the end of the hall. The house was so small that the receiving room doubled as the study. He had a perfect view of the two men.
General Brant Agon had a graying beard, close-trimmed hair that he didn’t comb, and a jerky way of moving, keeping his eyes on everything. He was thin and sinewy, his legs slightly bowed from a life in the saddle.
The man across from him was Duke Regnus Gyre. The wing-backed chair creaked as he shifted his weight. He was a huge man, both tall and wide, and little of his bulk was fat. He folded ringed fingers on his belly.
By the Night Angels. I could kill them both and end the Nine’s worries right now.
“Are we deceiving ourselves, Brant?” Duke Gyre asked.
The general didn’t answer immediately. “My lord—”
“No, Brant. I need your opinion as a friend, not as a vassal.” Durzo crept closer. He drew the throwing knives slowly, careful with the poisoned edges.
“If we do nothing,” the general said, “Aleine Gunder will become king. He is a weak, foul, and faithless man. The Sa’kagé already owns the Warrens; the king’s patrols won’t even leave the main roads, and you know all the reasons that’s only bound to get worse. The Death Games entrenched the Sa’kagé. Aleine doesn’t have the will or the inclination to oppose the Sa’kagé now, while we can still root them out. So are we deceiving ourselves in thinking that you’d be a better king? Not at all. And the throne is yours by rights.”
Blint almost smiled. The underworld’s lords, the Sa’kagé Nine, agreed with every word—which was why Blint was making sure Regnus Gyre didn’t become king.
“And tactically? We could do it?”
“With minimal bloodshed. Duke Wesseros is out of the country. My own regiment is in the city. The men believe in you, my lord. We need a strong king. A good king. We need you, Regnus.”
Duke Gyre looked at his hands. “And Aleine’s family? They’ll be part of the ‘minimal bloodshed’?”
The general’s voice was quiet. “You want the truth? Yes. Even if we don’t order it, one of our men will kill them to protect you, even if it meant hanging. They believe in you that much.”
Duke Gyre breathed. “So the question is, does the good of many in the future outweigh the murder of a few now?”
How long has it been since I had such qualms? Durzo barely stifled an overpowering urge to throw the daggers.
The suddenness of his rage shook him. What was that about?
It was Regnus. The man reminded him of another king he’d once served. A king worthy of it.
“That’s for you to answer, my lord,” General Agon said. “But, if I may, is the question really so philosophical?”
“What do you mean?”
“You still love Nalia, don’t you?” Nalia was Aleine Gunder’s wife.
Regnus looked stricken. “I was betrothed to her for ten years, Brant. We were each other’s first lovers.”
“My lord, I’m sorry,” the general said. “It’s not my—”
“No, Brant. I never speak of it. As I decide whether to be a man or a king, let me.” He breathed deeply. “It’s been fifteen years since Nalia’s father broke our betrothal and married her to that dog Aleine. I should be over it. I am, except when I have to see her with her children and have to imagine her sharing a bed with Aleine Gunder. The only joy my marriage has given me is my son Logan, and I can scarce believe her own has been better.”
“My lord, given the involuntary nature of both of your weddings, could you not divorce Catrinna and marry—”
“No.” Regnus shook his head. “If the queen’s children live, they will always be a threat to my son, whether I exile them or adopt them. Nalia’s eldest boy is fourteen—too old to forget that he was destined for a throne.”
“The right is on your side, my lord, and who knows but that answers unforeseen may arise to these problems once you sit on the throne?”
Regnus nodded unhappily, obviously knowing he held hundreds or thousands of lives in his hands, not knowing he held his own as well. If he plots rebellion, I’ll kill him now, I swear by the Night Angels. I serve only the Sa’kagé now. And myself. Always myself.
“May generations unborn forgive me,” Regnus Gyre said, tears gleaming in his eyes. “But I will not commit murder for what may be, Brant. I cannot. I will swear fealty.”
The wetboy slid the daggers back into their sheaths, ignoring the twin feelings of relief and despair he felt.
It’s that damned woman. She’s ruined me. She’s ruined everything.
Blint saw the ambush from fifty paces away, and walked right into its teeth. The sun was still an hour from rising and the only people on the twisting streets of the Warrens were merchants who’d fallen asleep where they shouldn’t have and were hurrying home to their wives.
The guild—Black Dragon from the guild glyphs he’d passed—was hiding around a narrow choke point in the alley where guild rats could spring up to clog both ends of the street and also attack from the low rooftops.
He had affected a bad right knee and pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders, the hood pulled low over his face. As he limped into the trap, one of the older children, a big as they called them, jumped into the alley ahead of him and whistled, brandishing a rusty saber. Guild rats surrounded the wetboy.
“Clever,” Durzo said. “You keep a lookout before dawn when most of the other guilds are sleeping, and you’re able to jump a few bags who’ve been out all night whoring. They don’t want to explain any bruises from fighting to their wives, so they hand over their coins. Not bad. Whose idea was that?”
“Azoth’s,” a big said, pointing past the wetboy.
“Shut up, Roth!” the guild head said.
The wetboy looked at the small boy on the rooftop. He was holding a rock aloft, his pale blue eyes intent, ready. He looked familiar. “Oh, now you’ve given him away,” Durzo said.
“You shut up, too!” the guild head said, shaking the saber at him. “Hand over your purse or we’ll kill you.”
“
Ja’laliel,” a black guild rat said, “he called them ‘bags.’ A merchant wouldn’t know we call ’em that. He’s Sa’kagé.”
“Shut up, Jarl! We need this.” Ja’laliel coughed and spat blood. “Just give us your—”
“I don’t have the time for this. Move,” Durzo said.
“Hand it—”
The wetboy darted forward, his left hand twisting Ja’laliel’s sword hand, snatching the saber, and his body spinning in. His right elbow cracked against the guild head’s temple, but he pulled the blow so it wouldn’t kill.
The fight was over by the time the guild rats flinched.
“I said I don’t have time for this,” Durzo said. He threw back his hood.
He knew he was nothing special to look at. He was lanky and sharp-featured, with dark blond hair and a wispy blond beard over lightly pockmarked cheeks. But he might have had three heads from the way the children shrank back.
“Durzo Blint,” Roth murmured.
Rocks rattled to the ground.
“Durzo Blint,” the name passed through the guild rats in waves. He saw fear and awe in their eyes. They’d just tried to mug a legend.
He smirked. “Sharpen this. Only an amateur lets his blade rust.” He threw the saber into a gutter clotted with sewage. Then he walked through the mob. They scattered as if he might kill them all.
Azoth watched him stride into the early morning mists, disappearing like so many other hopes into the sinkhole of the Warrens. Durzo Blint was everything Azoth wasn’t. He was powerful, dangerous, confident, fearless. He was like a god. He’d looked at the whole guild arrayed against him—even the bigs like Roth and Ja’laliel and Rat—and he’d been amused. Amused! Someday, Azoth swore. He didn’t quite dare even think the whole thought, lest Blint sense his presumption, but his whole body yearned for it. Someday.
When Blint was far enough away not to notice, Azoth followed.
4
The bashers guarding the Nine’s subterranean chamber eyed Durzo sourly. They were twins and two of the biggest men in the Sa’kagé. Each had a lightning bolt tattooed down his forehead.
“Weapons?” one said.
“Lefty,” Durzo said in greeting, removing his sword, three daggers, the darts strapped to his wrist, and a number of small glass balls from his other arm.
“I’m Lefty,” the other one said, patting down Blint vigorously.
“You mind?” Durzo asked. “We both know if I wanted to kill anyone in there I could, with or without weapons.”
Lefty flushed. “Why don’t I ram this pretty sword—”
“What Lefty means is, why don’t you pretend not to be a threat, and we’ll pretend we’re the reason,” Bernerd said. “It’s just a formality, Blint. Like asking someone how they are when you don’t care.”
“I don’t ask.”
“I was sorry to hear about Vonda,” Bernerd said. Durzo stopped cold, a lance twisting through his guts. “Really,” the big man said. He held the door open. Glanced at his brother.
Part of Durzo knew he should say something cutting or threatening or funny, but his tongue was leaden.
“Um, Master Blint?” Bernerd said. Recovering, Durzo stepped into the Nine’s meeting room without raising his eyes.
It was a place to inspire fear. Carved from black fireglass, a platform dominated the room. Nine chairs sat on the platform. A tenth chair sat above them like a throne. There was only bare floor facing the chairs. Those the Nine interviewed would stand.
The chamber was a tight rectangle, but it was deep. The ceiling was so high it disappeared in the darkness. It gave those questioned the feeling of being interrogated in hell. That the chairs, walls, and even the floor were carved with little gargoyles, dragons, and people, all screaming, did nothing to cool the effect.
But Durzo walked in with an easy familiarity. The night held no terrors for him. The shadows welcomed his eyes, hid nothing from him. At least that much is left me.
The Nine had their cowls on, except for Momma K, though most knew there was no hiding their identities from Durzo. Above them, the Shinga, Pon Dradin, sat in his throne. He was as still and silent as usual.
“Ith the wife dead?” Corbin Fishill asked. He was a fashionable, handsome man with a reputation for cruelty, especially toward those children in the guilds he managed. The laughter his lisp might have provoked somehow dried up under the ever-present malice on his face.
“Things aren’t as you expected,” Durzo said. He gave his report briefly. The king would soon die, and the men whom the Sa’kagé had feared would try to succeed him would not press their claim. That left the throne to Aleine Gunder, who was too weak to dare interfere with the Sa’kagé.
“I would suggest,” Durzo said, “that we make the prince promote General Agon to lord general. Agon would keep the prince from consolidating his power, and if Khalidor makes any move—”
The tiny former slave master interrupted, “While we acknowledge your …complaint against Khalidor, Master Blint, we aren’t to squander our political capital on some general.”
“We don’t have to,” Momma K said. The Mistress of Pleasures was still beautiful, though it had been years since she was the city’s most celebrated courtesan. “We can get what we want by pretending someone else asked for it.” Everyone stopped and listened. “The prince was willing to buy off the general with a political marriage. So we tell him that Agon’s price is a political appointment instead. The general won’t ever know, and the prince isn’t likely to ask about it.”
“And that gives us leverage to reopen the slavery issue,” the slave master said.
“I’ll be damned if we turn slavers again,” another said. He was a big man gone to fat, with heavy jowls, small eyes, and scarred fists befitting the master of the Sa’kagé’s bashers.
“That converthation can wait. Blint doethn’t need to be here for that,” Corbin Fishill said. He turned his heavy-lidded eyes to Blint. “You didn’t kill tonight.” He let the statement hang, unadorned.
Durzo looked at him, refusing to take the provocation.
“Can you thtill do it?”
Words were useless with a man like Corbin Fishill. He spoke the language of meat. Durzo walked to him. Corbin didn’t flinch, didn’t turn aside as Durzo came toward the platform, though several of the Nine were clearly nervous. Under Fishill’s velvet trousers, Blint could see his muscles bunch.
Corbin kicked at Durzo’s face, but Durzo had already moved. He slammed a needle deep into Corbin’s calf and stepped back.
A bell rang and a moment later, Bernerd and Lefty burst into the room. Blint crossed his arms and made no move to defend himself.
Blint was tall, but his mass was all lean muscle and sinew. Lefty charged like a warhorse. Durzo merely extended both hands, unclenched, but when Lefty crashed into him, the impossible happened. Instead of crushing the smaller man, Lefty’s sprint ended instantly.
His face stopped first, his nose popping against Durzo’s open hand. The rest of him continued forward. His body lifted parallel to the ground, then crashed to the stone floor.
“Thtop!” Corbin Fishill shouted.
Bernerd skidded to a halt in front of Durzo and then knelt by his brother. Lefty was moaning, his bleeding nose filling the mouth of a rat carved into the rock floor.
Corbin pulled the needle out of his calf with a grimace. “What ith thith, Blint?”
“You want to know if I can still kill?” Durzo put a small vial in front of the basher. “If that needle was poisoned, this is the antidote. But if the needle wasn’t poisoned, the antidote will kill you. Drink it or don’t.”
“Drink it, Corbin,” Pon Dradin said. It was the first time the Shinga had spoken since Blint entered. “You know, Blint, you’d be a better wetboy if you didn’t know you were the best. You are—but you still take your orders from me. The next time you touch one of my Nine, there will be consequences. Now get the hell out.”
The tunnel felt wrong. Azoth had been in other tunnels
before, and if he wasn’t exactly comfortable with moving through the cloying dark by touch, he could still do it. This tunnel had started out like any other: rough cut, winding, and of course dark. But as it plunged deeper into the earth, the walls got straighter, the floor smoother. This tunnel was important.
But that was different, not wrong. What was wrong was one step in front of Azoth. He squatted on his heels, resting, thinking. He didn’t sit. You only sat when you knew there was nothing you’d have to run away from.
He couldn’t smell anything different, though the air was as heavy and thick as gruel down here. If he squinted, he thought could see something, but he was pretty sure that was just from squeezing his eyes. He extended his hand again. Was the air cooler just there?
Then he was sure he felt the air shift. Sudden fear arced through Azoth. Blint had passed through here twenty minutes ago. He hadn’t carried a torch. Azoth hadn’t thought about it then. Now he remembered the stories.
A little puff of sour air lapped at his cheek. Azoth almost ran, but he didn’t know which way was safe to run. He had no way to defend himself. The Fist kept all the weapons. Another puff touched his other cheek. It smells. Like garlic?
“There are secrets in this world, kid,” a voice said. “Secrets like magical alarms and the identities of the Nine. If you take another step, you’ll find one of those secrets. Then two nice bashers with orders to kill intruders will find you.”
“Master Blint?” Azoth searched the darkness.
“Next time you follow a man, don’t be so furtive. It makes you conspicuous.”
Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound good. “Master Blint?”
He heard laughter up the tunnel, moving away.
