Assassin's End

by D. K. Holmberg

  “What’s this about, Talia?” I asked.

  “What it’s always been about. Power. With Carth gone, there’s been something of a power bubble here. I suspect in other places, too. I’ve done what I can to hold it together, but there’s been movement I haven’t been able to understand. Then you showed up.”

  “Who was Moldan?”

  “Was?”

  I shrugged.

  Her eyes narrowed, and I wondered if she was disappointed that she hadn’t been the one to kill him or whether she had needed him for information. For her sake, I hoped it was the former. “Hired help, essentially, but better connected than most.”

  “You used him?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Galen. You know the line of work that I’m in.”

  “I just didn’t know that you’d use yourself that way.”

  “I use what I need to get what I need.”

  “Like Carth taught you?”

  “I think we both know that Carth never had the same need. She was more capable in so many ways.”

  “What were you trying to understand?” I asked. This was about more than Talia, and more than about the man that Lorst had sent me after. I would never have expected Talia to be in the middle of something like that, but then, she probably put herself there.

  “There has been someone—her, I suspect,” Talia said, pointing to the woman, “searching for men and women exiled from Elaeavn. When I heard that, I began to keep my lines of communication open, searching for what they might be after. The request seemed strange enough. Few of your people come out of Elaeavn, and those who do are exiles for the most part.”

  I nodded. Exiles. Forgotten. Or those born to Forgotten. And if someone had been searching for those like me, that mean there was something else taking place beyond what I knew, and maybe beyond what Lorst knew.

  “Why did you risk yourself like this?” I asked.

  “I didn’t risk myself.”

  “No? Seems that if you had to use a man like Moldan, then you were willing to risk yourself more than what you normally would have.”

  “Because they were searching for an assassin of Elaeavn. And I only know of one assassin from there.”

  Damn. She had done it to help me, thinking I was the reason that these people searched. But I didn’t think that was the case. Seeing the reaction to me at this woman’s estate, I doubted they had planned on finding me. That didn’t mean they weren’t prepared, but that there was another they really wanted.

  There was only other assassin of Elaeavn that I knew of. And he was the reason that I was here.

  Had Lorst played me?

  “That bastard,” I swore under my breath.

  Cael frowned, her eyes narrowed as she Read me.

  If Asador wanted an Elaeavn assassin, why not give them one?

  It was the sort of thing that I would have done. Only, I hadn’t expected it from Lorst, not after the way that he described himself, or the fact that he claimed that he’d created the name.

  “What?” Talia asked.

  “Nothing. Only there is another assassin from Elaeavn. And he’s the reason I’m here.”

  “Why?”

  “He claimed there was someone he searched for.”

  Now I had to wonder how much of that was true. What if Lorst didn’t really search for anyone? What if he’d only used it as an excuse? Only, I’d seen him facing the other Slider. Were it not for Lorst, I would have lost Cael, and we had lost the crystal.

  “She’s starting to wake up,” Cael said.

  “Good. Because I have questions for her.”

  I stood next to the woman and pulled a knife out and simply held it in a loose grip. The woman was bound, rope around her wrists and ankles, tight enough that she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere but loose enough that it wouldn’t harm her. If she didn’t manage to Slide away, we might be able to get answers.

  Her eyes opened, and she looked up at me. I saw faint traces of swirling light—telltale signs that she attempted to Slide—that quickly disappeared. Her eyes widened, and she began thrashing.

  “Won’t do you any good to try to Slide,” I said.

  “What have you done to me?” she demanded. “Release me or you will—”

  “I’ll what? Kill the rest of your guards?” I crouched next to her. “You recognized me. Not many do. How is that?”

  That wasn’t necessarily true. There were plenty who recognized me around Eban, and my name certain had garnered enough recognition, but I was surprised that an Elvraeth woman—Forgotten or not—had recognized it. That wasn’t something that I had expected.

  “I didn’t recognize you, not at first,” she said.

  I was impressed by how quickly she had come to grips with the fact that she was confined. She didn’t fight or try to escape like so many would have.

  “Then how did you know about me?”

  “I know the name Galen. I would suggest that most exiles have heard of you in one way or another. You have quite the reputation—well-earned, it would appear. I had not expected to see you in Asador. I thought you only worked in Eban.”

  I sniffed. “Not anymore.”

  She turned and seemed to finally see Cael. Her eyes widened slightly. “So it would seem. They have sent you after us, then?”

  “Who?”

  She laughed and leaned her head back, staring at the ceiling. “Who. You come with one of the Elvraeth, daughter to Naelm, and question who. I have not questioned your skill. Do not question my intelligence.”

  I glanced over at Cael. That answered the question of whether they recognized each other. The woman recognized Cael, and Cael recognized her. Which meant this woman would have been a recent exile, or recent enough for Cael to know her.

  “I wasn’t sent for you,” I told her. “I wouldn’t have known about you had your men not brought me to your estate.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “It wasn’t her estate,” Cael said.

  I looked over. “Not hers? Then why would she have been there? And why had they brought me to her?”

  The woman smiled. “We shouldn’t have attacked you, Galen. You could have been useful. But now—”

  Cael jerked her head quickly around, facing the back of the room.

  She’d detected something, but there wouldn’t be any way in or out from the back of the room, not without… Sliding.

  The woman couldn’t do anything. Slithca would last long enough that she would be incapacitated. But that didn’t mean that we hadn’t been followed. I had assumed that she had been the person that Moldan had brought me to, but if there were others, then we were unprepared.

  “Get her out of here!” I shouted to Talia.

  She ran forward and grabbed Cael. I couldn’t react the way that I needed if I worried about Cael, and it was clearly going to get nasty very quickly here.

  “I have another place that’ll be safe,” Talia said.

  They ran from the room as light shimmered from three Sliders.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  I grabbed a handful of darts, placing the slithca-tipped ones in my right hand. The others were all terad tipped. There was no more coxberry. At least not until I found my way to the apothecary again.

  The woman laughed darkly. “Now we’ll get to see how skilled the great Galen really is,” she said.

  10

  As soon as the first person appeared, I flicked a dart at them. It struck, and they fell. It occurred to me that I might want to make certain that I wasn’t hitting someone like Lorst, but then, if Lorst made the mistake of simply Sliding into where I might be, he deserved what happened to him.

  The other two emerged from their Slides and then Slid again. One of them saw the woman lying on the cot near the hearth, restrained. She was the reason they’d come. They disappeared again with a shimmer of color.

  I glanced at the unmoving man. With his neatly trimmed beard and sun-weathered skin, he looked nothing like a person from Elaeavn.
And maybe that was the point.

  “Telmun,” the woman said softly.

  “He shouldn’t have come.”

  “Did you expect them to leave me here? Would you leave someone you cared about behind?”

  With her ability to Read limited by the Slithca, at least I didn’t have to worry about her Reading me and knowing the answer to that. I wasn’t sure that I wanted her in my mind, piecing together the fears that now drove me. It was bad enough that she’d seen Cael and likely had some understanding of what it was.

  Before I could answer her question, there came another soft shimmer that preceded a Slide. Without my Sight, I wouldn’t have seen anything. I readied my darts, but no one came out of a Slide.

  I moved in a steady circle, ready for whoever might appear. The darts clutched in my hands meant instant death. I glanced at her, wondering if that was what I really wanted to do.

  Did I want to kill? I didn’t have any of the answers I needed, not as I usually did before taking a job. Why were they after me? And what did they want from Lorst? That was who they were really after, I suspected. And what happened with Talia’s shop to cause fire to burn through it?

  I was plopped into an unfamiliar city and had jumped in on the attack in a way that I never would have were I in Eban. In that way, I felt almost as if I were being used.

  Putting the terad-tipped darts away, I held onto the slithca-tipped darts.

  When the shimmering appeared again, I flipped a dart immediately. The man dropped as he appeared, the slithca working quickly. I noted that it stuck into his shoulder. A lucky shot more than anything skilled.

  There was sound behind me and I spun.

  A younger woman stood at the edge of the cot, working on freeing the other with a sharp knife. I flipped the dart at her.

  The bindings holding the first woman failed. She lunged up, putting herself in between the dart and the other woman. The dart sunk into her chest and a determined smile crossed her face.

  I had one dart left.

  I flipped it, catching the newcomer in the neck.

  She blinked slowly and then sunk to the ground.

  I began to relax. I could bind these three again, and then we could take the time needed to interrogate them. I would know what they were hiding here and then why they had wanted Lorst, before risking Cael by going after Talia. So long as Cael was safe, I didn’t care what else I did.

  I found some rope near the back wall and began to bind the woman we’d brought here when I saw a flashing of color.

  Another person Sliding?

  This time, I reached for the remaining darts—all but one of them terad—and ducked behind the woman to wait, using the cot and the other woman to block my presence.

  Two people appeared.

  “They’re here,” someone said. “I sensed the direction that they Slid.”

  “Yes, but why are they here?”

  This was a voice that sounded familiar, but I had no idea why.

  “Look. Rebecca. We’ve found her, Josun.”

  I stiffened, suddenly understanding why I recognized the voice. This was the man who had abducted Cael and had fought Lorst. This was the man I’d been sent to find.

  And here he had come after me.

  No. Not me. This woman. Rebecca Elvraeth. The name wasn’t familiar to me, but then I’d been out of the city so long that few of the Elvraeth were familiar to me.

  To understand what this was all about, I needed to capture Josun. And then I would need to get to Lorst. But first I had to get through this.

  One slithca-coated dart remained. The other was terad.

  I reached into my pocket, grabbing the pair of knives I had on me as well. They might be needed, especially if this went the wrong way.

  Someone approached.

  I rolled to the side, noting that it was the other man—the one with Josun. With a flick of one of the knives, I sent it toward him.

  The knife spun in the air, hovering much like what Lorst had done.

  I looked at the knife. They were ones that Lorst had given me, and I hadn’t paid attention to the fact that they were made out of lorcith.

  The knives were useless if they could use them against me. I wondered if Lorst had known that they could.

  “The assassin,” Josun said.

  He Slid, traveling only a few feet. When he emerged from his Slide, he did so much faster than the others, barely giving me the chance to notice where he would emerge. I prepared to throw the slithca-coated dart, but I didn’t want to waste it and didn’t want to risk missing him.

  He spun toward me, and so did a knife.

  I ducked, rolling.

  I came to my feet next to the dead man. A steel knife was tucked into his belt, and I grabbed it, throwing it at the other man. If I could deal with them one at a time, I would have a chance to capture Josun alive, but if it came down to it, I might have to kill him. Better to survive and figure out what to do next than to die in the attempt.

  Josun Slid, pulling the other man with him.

  This time, I noticed the Sliding more intently. Colors swirled, and I flipped the terad-tipped dart as soon as they appeared, catching the other man in the arm.

  Josun rounded on me. “You’ve wandered into something that’s beyond you, assassin.”

  “I seem to have a tendency to do that.”

  “You could be useful. I know that you’ve been exiled. The others would be willing to excuse this little… incident if you worked for them.”

  “Is that what this is? Some sort of incident? Because it looks to me like you came here to rescue them.”

  “Rescue? Is that what you thought?”

  A knife appeared, flying away from him untouched and sunk into Rebecca’s back.

  Damn. This wasn’t what I had expected at all.

  When another knife appeared, I flung my remaining knife at it, managing to keep it from sinking into the other woman with Rebecca.

  “This has nothing to do with you, assassin.”

  “Oh, I think that it does. Especially when you took the crystal from us.”

  Josun Slid. It was so subtle that I barely saw it. “Ah. Now I know why you’ve gotten involved. The Elvraeth hired you.”

  This time I smiled. “Why does everyone keep thinking that the Elvraeth hired me? They exiled me in the first place. And when I attempted to return, they wanted nothing to do with me, sentencing me to Ilphaesn.”

  Josun jumped toward me. Without the shimmer of light around him as he Slid, I would never have seen it. As it was, I ducked to the side, jumping away.

  “Now I understand why you’ve come. And who sent you. He’s a fool, you know that? Thinking to involve himself in things that are greater than him. The smith who thinks he should rule.”

  “I don’t know about him,” I said as Josun started to Slide again, “but I don’t think it should be you.”

  When Josun started to Slide, I flicked the other slithca dart at him.

  It caught him in the hand.

  He Slid, but with the weakened dose of slithca, it wasn’t enough to completely knock him out, only slow him. As he emerged, I grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground. He attempted to Slide, but I think the slithca prevented that much.

  As he started to pass out, he whispered, “You’ll never find it, you know. Now that we have it, you’ll never find it.”

  11

  With Josun bound, all I could do was wait.

  All were dosed with slithca now, and I had to see what this was all about. I wasn’t convinced I would get the answers that I needed, but I wouldn’t act again without having more information than I did now.

  I checked on Rebecca’s wound and pulled the knife free. It had pierced her shoulder and bled a little when the knife was withdrawn but was not life-threatening.

  The other woman stirred first.

  She jerked against the cloth I’d used to tie her with and I suspected that she tried Sliding but found that she couldn’t. She looked around, eyes wild
until her gaze settled on me.

  “Doesn’t matter if you try to Slide,” I said.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “Just limiting you for a little while.”

  “Why? What did we do to you?”

  I shook my head. “You attacked me. I think that was enough.”

  “Not you! We came for Rebecca.”

  “And she leads the Forgotten here?”

  I struggled with understanding that there was more organization to the Forgotten than I had believed, but there really could be no other explanation.

  “Not leads. We’ve been trying to reach her.”

  “What do you mean? I thought the Forgotten all worked together.”

  “Not all of us are willing to go as far as them. They’ve… done things.”

  “And Josun?” I asked, pointing to where he remained bound, this time to the wall. I readied another dose of slithca. I would keep him dosed as long as necessary until we managed to get answers.

  She attempted to stand but fell forward. Another side effect of slithca. “We’re not with him.”

  “Then who are you with?”

  She looked at Rebecca and saw that she still breathed, and sighed. “We wanted only to be left alone. Only a few of us ever lived in Elaeavn. The rest…”

  “Were born outside the city. You?” I asked.

  “Cort,” she whispered. “That’s my home. And I would return, but it’s too dangerous. We’ve been forced to band together because others have continued to attack, rounding up those of Elaeavn.”

  I wondered how much of this Lorst had known. Had he understood that there was a battle outside of Elaeavn for control of the Forgotten? Was that why he had brought me in?

  I didn’t think so. He brought me in because he wanted to draw out Josun and figured that I would be able to capture him. And he was right. I had managed to grab Josun. But I had also managed to get others, and I didn’t know what this was all about.

  “Why?”

  “There’s something going on,” she said. “A war of some sorts. We’re all forced to pick sides. Some have been willing to go to great lengths to survive. The rest of us…”

  A war. Had Talia known?