Of Killers and Kings

by Will Wight

  At this rate, the sun would rise and then set before the head alchemist got to his point. “What does it do?”

  His smile gleamed brighter than the slick lenses of his glasses. “It turns you into a Champion.”

  Shera’s eyes widened, and her breath stopped.

  “…for a few hours. With limited capabilities. And some rather inconvenient restrictions.”

  Shera wanted her moment of astonishment back.

  “We have limited physical material from Champions to work with. They don’t seem to trust us for some reason, and voluntarily donated samples preserve Intent so much better than those taken involuntarily. Or from corpses.”

  He shook himself like a dog shaking off water. “What was I going to say? Furman! Get me back on track.”

  “Yes sir.” Even the man’s voice was unobtrusive. “We can’t reliably produce more, because the formula is incomplete and difficult to reproduce even for us. But it will make you faster, stronger, and harder to kill for a few hours at the expense of feverish flu-like symptoms for several days afterward.”

  “I accept,” Shera said, holding out her hand.

  She would have the sample Read first. Lucan could tell her…

  She stopped her thoughts as the wound opened again.

  She knew enough about Reading to know that Intent didn’t easily cling to liquid, but if they had cobbled this together in order to kill her, either a Reader or a Consultant alchemist would be able to warn her.

  Bareius pulled the jar back, out of her reach. “I’d love to hand it over right now, love to, but there are a few caveats you should hear first. For one thing, you should take it immediately, because it requires some time for your body to acclimate to its effect.”

  So I won’t have time to get it analyzed, Shera thought. Convenient.

  “Second, while the existence and nature of this elixir is no secret—we host open lectures describing the makeup of a weaker version for educational purposes—this product’s formula is as different from that one as a cat is from a catfish. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you take it here, in front of me.”

  Shera looked from him to Furman and back. “Is this alchemist humor?”

  “It is not, I’m afraid! Though we work primarily with liquid solutions, alchemist jokes tend to be very dry.”

  Shera kept her hand out. “Give it to me. I’m going to have it Read and analyzed before I take it. You know that. No point in pretending.”

  “Unfortunately, my dear, I have to insist—”

  Mist billowed out from Shera’s dagger, still sheathed at her waist. “I’m telling you now, for the sake of our cooperation, that I’m taking that jar from you.” She felt no anger; she was simply informing him of a fact. “If it’s poisonous, I will kill you. Too late to take it back. If it is what you say it is, I might still drink it.”

  Bareius threw back his head and laughed. “I like you, Shera, I really do, but I don’t like being threatened, so I have prepared myself. Furman!”

  The assistant whistled, and the plaster of the ceiling crumpled inwards.

  A mound of pale flesh fell to the floor in the center of the room. It was an amorphous mound of limbs Shera couldn’t identify, landing in a limp pile.

  And it was clearly dead.

  Blood leaked from it at several points, it didn’t so much as twitch upon slamming into the floor, and Ayana was kneeling on top of it with her shears driven into its sides.

  Shera sometimes forgot that Ayana could use her shears. The knives growing from her fingers should have prevented her from using regular daggers in any normal way, but somehow when Ayana gripped the hilt, her finger-blades surrounded her hand in a harmless cage.

  The thick-bladed daggers of ancient Consultant bronze emerged from the pile of flesh, and Ayana wiped them clean on the creature’s hide. She met Bareius’ eyes with her own pink, disconcerting gaze.

  “Forgive me,” Ayana hissed, drawing out her harsh, ghostly voice. “Does this…dead thing belong to you?”

  Nathanael Bareius shivered.

  Then he shivered again, more dramatically.

  “Well, consider your point made,” Bareius said. He extended the potion out to the side. “Furman, give her the jar!”

  The assistant hurried over, and Shera plucked it from his hand.

  Chapter Four

  five years ago

  Six months after the Emperor’s death, the Capital moaned like a dying beast.

  Shera stood on the corner of a tall building, looking out over the vast, sprawling body of the largest city in the world. The moonlight covered the new layer of smoke that hung in the air; half the structures she could see had some kind of fire damage, and all of them were boarded up or secured in one way or another.

  Pairs of Imperial Guards marched down the streets, their Kameira limbs standing out even more than their red-and-black uniforms. A taloned woman with tufts of feathers behind her ears and her partner, a man with reverse-jointed knees and shining green eyes, looked as though they had been on patrol with no break for weeks. Their uniforms were singed and almost ruined, their short sword chipped and held out. The man rested his hand on the butt of a pistol, and judging by his twitching eyes, he was looking for any excuse to use it.

  A door cracked open near them, and the Guard whipped the gun around, shouting at the citizen to return inside. The door slammed shut, dislodging a shower of charred wood from the doorframe. Neither Guard relaxed for another twenty seconds, scanning the street around them in case the careless citizen had really been the distraction for an ambush.

  There was no ambush. Shera would have found it already.

  A Shepherd slipped out of the shadows next to her, dressed in Consultant blacks that more or less matched her own. “Our preparations are complete,” he whispered, and she nodded.

  She continued staring over the city where she had been born, watching its decay. One knife-thrust had done all this.

  Well, one thrust and a careful side-to-side sawing motion to make sure she caught the heart.

  “Gardener?” the Shepherd whispered again. “We don’t have much time.”

  Shera rested her hand on her left-hand shear, glad she wasn’t a Reader. She didn’t want to feel whatever noxious cocktail of Intent was bound up in the blade that had killed the Emperor of humanity.

  In fact, sometimes she imagined she could feel something from the blade anyway.

  “Let me know when they ram the gates,” she said.

  “Gardener…” The roof beneath them trembled under a great impact.

  Shera groaned. “I get it, let’s go. Assume primary positions, prepare to signal the Masons, and move the decoy into place. Start the cleaning crew in the attic.”

  “The cleaners are on standby until the area is secure, Gardener.”

  “Get them started. They’ll be fine.”

  The Shepherds assigned to cleaning duty usually had no experience in combat and certainly wouldn’t be equipped for it. Standard procedure suggested they should be kept in reserve until the fighting was over, but there would be no fighting.

  She was following Guild doctrine today, so she had prepared three possibilities: a primary plan, a backup plan, and an emergency plan. None involved open battle. At least, not from the cleaning crew.

  And the faster this towering Capital home was cleaned, the more impressed their client would be.

  She finally turned to face the opposite side of the building, where she looked down over the mansion on which she stood. It belonged to one Alberrett Kingson, a distant descendant of the Emperor himself. The grounds surrounding them were massive by Capital standards, filled with a lush garden that would block the view of the surrounding city from anyone on ground level.

  The outer gate had been torn open, most of the manicured bushes torn down and burned or woven into makeshift shelters for the ragtag mob that camped on the home’s doorstep.

  There were eighty-six malcontent men and women down there. Some were sur
vivors of the original band that had faced Alberrett’s security, and some had joined in after they saw the gate of a towering mansion broken open.

  The siege of the Kingson household had lasted two days and was well into its second night, but it was about to break.

  Now a team of men carried a massive trunk of a battering ram between them, its far end carved into a fist. According to the Shepherds and Masons who had investigated, the ram had been looted from a military museum, and was therefore heavily invested with the Intent to break down barriers. Stronger Intent than that which secured Alberrett’s doors.

  Luckily for him, he’d already hired the Consultants.

  The furious, desperate men, goaded by the cries of those behind them, pulled the ram back. Shera crouched on the roof in the shadow of a gargoyle. With three fingers, she signaled another nearby Shepherd.

  Instantly, six smoking flasks flew out from the roof in smooth arcs, landing all around the mob. The Capital citizens shouted as the flasks shattered on the ground, releasing billowing clouds of pink-tinged smoke. One started swinging wildly with a knife, two fired pistols blind, thinking they were under attack.

  Seconds after inhaling a breath of the alchemical smoke, the first rioter fell to his knees, before toppling to the ground.

  The others followed suit, dropping weapons from limp hands. The massive battering ram fell as the men holding it lost strength, the ram itself collapsing onto three of them. The siege weapon would need to be moved before those three suffocated under its weight.

  Shera unfurled a silk rope from the roof and slid down four stories to the ground. Only two members of the mob still stood, cloths over their mouths and noses.

  “Good work,” Shera said to the Masons once she touched down.

  The two undercover Consultants that had joined the mob saluted her. After she acknowledged them, they walked over to the battering ram, pushing it off the chests of the men who had fallen beneath it.

  The cloths over the Masons’ faces were invested and treated with alchemy to make their breathing safe, as was the shroud of cloth over Shera’s face, though the cloud had already begun to disperse.

  Black-clad Shepherds scuttled out of the shadows like spiders, dragging away unconscious rioters. Shera’s orders: their primary plan called for no gardening. These people would be dumped into alleyways, groggy and with little memory of the last several days.

  The client would see the mob outside his house gone and his security redesigned and rebuilt by experts at the Consultant’s Guild.

  Shepherds would keep an eye on the redistributed citizens for a few days, making sure they had no further plans of organized violence. Even if they did, so long as they didn’t plot anything against Alberrett Kingson or another client, the Consultants would leave them alone.

  Of course, it would have been cheaper to kill them. In fact, that had been Yala’s order to Shera at the beginning of this assignment.

  “Impress them,” the High Councilor had demanded. “The Kingsons are one of the few remaining families with any influence. Show them how firm the Consultants can be.”

  Leaving the rioters alive was more expensive, more difficult, and would get Shera in trouble with the High Council. She had been tempted to travel the easy road, as usual, but something needled at the back of her mind this time.

  These people weren’t useless or irredeemable. They were just scared. If she could spare them, she should.

  Some might say that this whole situation in the Capital was Shera’s responsibility, but she didn’t see it that way. If anyone was responsible, it was the Emperor himself, who had relied on her to kill him. Or the High Council of Architects for accelerating her timeline.

  These people were here not because of the mistakes they had made, but the mistakes of others. She’d give them one chance.

  One.

  The Shepherds had already hauled off several unconscious bodies, leaving Shera looking around at the half-burned shrubs and piles of garbage strewn over what had once been a garden. The soil was churned up from the dozens of people who had camped here for days.

  There were far more sleeping rioters than Shepherds, so the Consultants would have to make multiple trips. The plan allowed over an hour for the transport of bodies, including dump sites within ten minutes of this mansion.

  She took a deep breath, the lingering sweet-chemical scent of alchemy making her faintly lightheaded even through her shroud. She savored the flavor as a taste of a job well done, enjoying the first notes of satisfaction and relief.

  Everything had run smoothly without a single disruption. They hadn’t needed the decoy, the backup plan, her secondary team, or any gardening. Best of all, she didn’t have to carry any of these bodies. If only all her missions over the last six months had gone so easily.

  Her relief lasted until the piping trill of a red-ringed sparrow cut through the groaning background noise of the smoldering Capital.

  Every Consultant heard it at once, and none of the Shepherds froze. They dropped the bodies they had carried, all dashing for a hiding place. The Masons that had once been part of the rioters collapsed to the ground, feigning unconsciousness.

  Shera did the same instinctively, throwing herself to the ground behind a pile of firewood. Her hand brushed the hilt of her left-hand shear, and she shuddered as an eager buzzing passed up her wrist. She jerked her hand away.

  For this mission, the team leaders had each been given an invested whistle that was designed to signal nearby Consultants. The red-ringed sparrow’s cry was the sign of enemies approaching.

  Shera knew that there was no predicting the Capital’s traffic even in the best of times, but the streets were supposed to have been clear.

  She spent a moment resenting the nonexistent sparrow whose cry had alerted her, even as she palmed a spade. The triangular blade sat in her hand, ready for throwing.

  Then she waited for the enemy.

  With the outer gate broken open, the front lawn destroyed and littered with bodies, and the front doors cracked, Alberrett Kingson’s mansion was open and vulnerable to the night. Drawn by its weakness, predators soon approached.

  Shera heard them coming before she saw them, whooping and laughing as though they had nothing to fear from the smoky streets. The first to emerge from the moonlit haze was a bald, skinny man who wore no shirt beneath a leather vest. He wore a pistol on each hip and carried a length of lead pipe, wearing a twitchy grin.

  He lit up when he saw the broken gate and the bodies inside, shouting back to the people following. “Hey now, we got a ripe one!”

  Between the darkness, the drifting smoke, and her restricted view from behind a pile of firewood, Shera found it difficult to get a proper count, but she estimated there were eighteen in this band altogether.

  The news-sheets would have called them a “street gang,” but Shera had started to think of them as packs.

  Unlike the mobs of ordinary Capital citizens that found outlets to their fear and anger in violence, these packs of scavengers would be a mix of former criminals, soldiers, or Guild members that had foraged up some weapons and knew how to use them. They could overwhelm any individual Imperial Guard patrol, but not the Guard as a whole, so the Guardsmen and these packs tended to give each other a wide berth.

  In effect, packs like these now roamed the Capital as they wished.

  They would have been included in the preliminary report the Shepherds and Masons had provided before the mission even started, but there was no predicting the path of such a pack with any certainty.

  The sparrow whistle had done its job; her scouting team had picked up on this pack and determined that they were too big to deal with separately, so they had given her warning.

  She still hung onto hope that they would leave on their own. It wasn’t too unreasonable, she thought.

  The first few of the pack to arrive instantly dropped to their knees and began stripping the unconscious rioters of anything that looked valuable. “Still alive,” one c
alled.

  A grim-looking man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a bandana over his mouth stepped up, surveying the scene. He had a pistol on his left hip and a formerly decorative cavalry saber in his right hand. His red, black, and gold uniform was worn and dirty, and looked like it had been cobbled together from different Imperial army units. He had been a soldier, maybe as recently as a few months ago.

  “They’ve been staying here for a day or two,” he said. “What put them to sleep tonight?” He looked warily from downed tree to pile of firewood to ragged tent; anywhere that might hide enemies.

  There was at least one Shepherd hiding behind each of them.

  He didn’t notice them, so at least he wasn’t a Champion in disguise or some kind of alchemically enhanced warrior.

  A murmur of response and a few quick jokes spread through his followers, and this time Shera counted seventeen.

  “Alchemy,” a hooded woman declared.

  He nodded. “Strip them, then we leave.”

  Shera breathed more easily.

  The Shepherds would have to work hard to avoid the pack of criminals moving all around the yard, but they lived for chances to show off their skills. By dawn, they would be bragging to each other about how they had slipped between six men unnoticed with only a broken twig for cover.

  Then the soldier slammed his cavalry saber into the ribs of a sleeping looter, and Shera’s blood began to freeze. The other members of his pack joined in, some with more relish than others. The man wearing only a vest laughed again as he clubbed a skull with his length of pipe.

  She didn’t know why they had decided to kill the unconscious men. The leader had given no order; it was as though they had made the decision as one. Like some hive of Elderspawn that shared a mind.

  Though they didn’t know it, they had changed her plan.