by JANRAE FRANK
"Go away," Talons ordered. "Let me sleep."
They responded to the order by racing into the room and throwing themselves on top of her. Talons yelped and tried to cover up more as they worked to uncover her and find the non-existent tickle spots they were convinced existed. This was definitely not helping Talons' reputation as one of the most cold-blooded assassins in the Guild. She had a hundred kills to her credit, yet would not be twenty before late spring. However, thanks to the girl's vivid descriptions of the stone troll Talons killed last autumn, the Guildsmyn were starting to refer to her as Trollbane and that compensated for some of the embarrassment.
A loudly cleared throat from some one standing in the doorway stopped the play. Talons uncovered herself and stared over the girls' shoulders. The girls gulped and dived under the blankets. Talons' face lost all expression and her eyes turned cold and empty. Talons the playmate vanished; replaced by Talons Trollbane the assassin.
The High Patriarch to Hadjys stood in the door, glancing at the girls in solemn disapproval.
"I'll be with you in a moment, Holy Father. Just give me a moment to dress."
He nodded. "I will await you in the west study."
* * * *
Talons dressed quickly, sliding into black leather over wool: a studded tunic and trousers shoved into knee boots with a low heel. She left her baldric with its six blades hanging from the pegs on the wall, swung her shadow cloak over her shoulders, and fastened it. She carried no obvious weapons while at home, but she never went unarmed. The soft black gloves with the fingertips missing that she always wore – even in summer – concealed a magic set of rune claws, which had given her her name among the Guildsmyn. She could summon and dismiss them at will.
Then she set off for the west study by taking the north hallway, rather than crossing the great hall, choosing discretion rather than speed. The Patriarch rarely came to the palace unless it was of extreme importance or direst emergency. Talons reached the west study in good time. She knocked once, and then swept into the room. While her expression gave away nothing, she was surprised to find just her grandsire and the Patriarch, no mission advisors. She assumed a formal stance before them with her hands clasped behind her back, waiting for permission to sit.
Her grandsire granted it with a nod to the chair behind her. "You will be gratified to know that Aejystrys Rowan has survived," he told her as she took her seat.
That was very good news, though puzzling, for Hanadi, who was reliable, claimed to have seen her dead body. Talons inclined her head in acknowledgement.
"How are your ribs?" the Patriarch asked solicitously, referring to the two that had been broken by the stone troll she slew.
"I am fit, Holy Father. Thank you."
"We have a task for you which involves Aejystrys Rowan. Her household was attacked recently by a band led by a sa'necari," her grandsire explained. "The attackers were defeated, the sa'necari captured. They are interrogating him now, when they are finished they will execute him."
"As they should," Talons replied.
"No," the Patriarch corrected, "as you should. His soul must be sent to Hadjys. Our god himself has requested this as a favor to one of the nine elder gods. This sa'necari was once a priest of Kalirion. He betrayed his vows and embraced the magics of death and blood."
"Do I go secretly or openly?"
"Aejystrys Rowan is a friend to our faith and the Guild. Go openly. However, should she refuse to give him to you, then you must take him by stealth."
"Gather what you need, Talons," her grandsire said. "You leave within the hour for Vorgensburg. Little Bit is already being saddled."
"Vorgensburg?" Not Rowanslea? Strange.
"The mage who revived her took her there," said the Patriarch.
* * * *
It was the scent of roses that alerted Talons to his presence. After scanning the room for him in vain, she turned her attention to the conspicuous lump under her blankets, which she had first assumed was either Jysy or Arruth since that was where she left them. She walked over and kicked the lump hard.
"Oww!" a male voice exclaimed.
"Come on out, Dynarien. I was not planning on going back to bed, if that is what you were hoping for."
"Well," he said, emerging with a calico cat in hand, "you told me no touching, not no snuggling."
Talons scowled. "I don't want you, Dynarien. Not now. Not ever."
"You are the first woman I have ever encountered who did not want me."
"Hmmph! What do want?"
"This cat is a present for Aejys Rowan. I hoped you would deliver it for me."
"I don't owe you any favors."
"I know. But this is a very important favor. I will owe you something in return."
"Enough for you to keep your hands off Birdie? Forever?"
"Is that why you will not have me? Birdie? I like Birdie."
"She's thirteen years old."
"She won't always be. I could wait until she comes of age in two years before I lie with her again."
"No."
"This cat is very important."
"Deliver it yourself."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because Aejys Rowan is a favorite of Aroana."
"You have my terms."
Dynarien looked unhappy as he extended the cat to Talons. "So be it. I accept your terms. Her name is Dree." He would miss Birdie; it had been so sweet to lie between her inexperienced young legs.
The instant the cat left his hands for Talons' he disappeared.
"Now, what could be so important about you, little puss," Talons murmured, stroking the pretty calico, "that that rakehell would finally agree to stop shoving his rod into Birdie?" The cat purred loudly. She sat the cat on her bed and removed her cloak. The baldric of blades came off the pegs and went over her head. Next she took down two pairs of matching stilettos. One pair went into her arm sheaths and the second into her boots. She returned her shadow cloak to her shoulders, then covered it with a heavier, wool cloak: The shadow cloak was not made for the kind of real warmth she needed for traveling by gryphonback in mid-winter, but should she need it she wanted it to hand and not packed away. Finally she retrieved the backpack, which she always kept packed and ready. Talons shifted things around in it, and then reached for the calico.
"You will have to hide in here, little one. I do not need people asking me why I am taking a cat along. Delivering you is a small price to pay to protect Birdie from that predatory godling."
Dree hissed, surprising Talons. "You understand what I say?"
"Meow."
"You think I should lessen that to say, philandering?"
"Hiss."
"Promiscuous?"
"Meow."
"All right. Now get in the bag."
* * * *
Skree and Josiah sat on a rug in the middle of the floor in Skree's room. A bottle of Dragonsbreath and a shot glass waited beside Skree. Skree filled the glass precisely to a line he has painted on it earlier that day and handed it to Josiah. "Wait."
Skree gripped Josiah's wrist. "Now." Skree watched the blackened, seemingly dead magic centers awaken, becoming spotted with golden power, leaking in many disconnected directions.
Taun took the glass from Josiah and refilled it. Skree continued to Read until the leakage steadied. "Now."
Josiah drank the next glass.
The centers brightened still more, slowly finding linkages. "Now." Skree said.
Taun passed a third glass to Josiah.
The centers completed awakened, brightening to tiny suns. Skree shook his head. "I cannot find the reason it works this way. I think tomorrow we will see how holadil affects these same centers."
Josiah looked disheartened.
"I will keep trying, Josiah," Skree said.
Josiah rose and went out; he had not wanted to leave Aejys, even for the few minutes Skree's test required, but his godfather had insisted they not continue putting it off.
As he passed through the parlor, he nodded at Zyne to get on with her other business. Zyne shook her long green hair out from around the lacework of her gills, watching him covertly from the edges of her eyes, measuring him closely. She had been the first to answer the mage-call Skree sent out at solstice. She rose and left.
* * * *
Talons arrived at a pre-arranged meeting place along the beach in the shadow of a rocky outcropping. An aged, bent old mon greeted her. They clasped arms, and then the gaffer hugged her with the strength of a far younger mon. When he released her, Talons stepped back and said, "I'm sorry about your daughter and your two grandchildren."
"They knew the risks. At least your grandsire has seen fit to appoint a guardian for the younger ones, keep the family business going."
Talons could sense his sadness though he concealed it well. "I saw Wilstryn fall, but I could not reach her in time. She died bravely. I killed the shifter."
"She was a tough mon. I was very proud of her."
"Yes, she was. Do you want the whole story of what happened in Armaten?"
The gaffer's eyes filled with gratitude. "Yes."
"Ladonys arn Rowan and Laeoli were with her: Aejystrys Rowan's na'halaef and their daughter, paladins both. But when I got there Wilstryn was the only one left standing. She had run out of arrows and pulled her knives..." In that wise Talons began the tale.
* * * *
Talons entered the Cock and Boar in the late afternoon. The common room had only a handful of chairs and tables, widely scattered. It did not look like the prosperous tavern she had been told it was. She spied bloodstains on the floor that looked recent. She wished she had been briefed better. The gaffer had not been able to tell her much, only that an attack had been made on the tavern. There were six myn, all in trousers and padded leather like guards or soldiers and armed with knives and swords. They sat together at one table near the stairs. A large, red-haired mon rose when he saw her.
"We're closed," he said, approaching.
Talons took his measure from behind empty, expressionless eyes. If he made any untoward moves she could take him out easily. "I have come to see Aejystrys Rowan."
"No one sees her right now," Omer told her, taking her measure as she had taken his. To the untrained eye, judging from her face and build, she was a young girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, but she moved with the easy confidence of someone older, dressed in black leather with her knives showing. Sharani ages were hard to gauge at times especially for someone who had only known three in his whole life. Omer, however, recognized her from her manner as a professional, someone not to be underestimated.
"Tell her I am an associate of Hanadi Majios and have come on urgent business."
Omer considered this. Hanadi had been very important in ways he did not fully understand, spear-heading an attack on the local allies of the foreign duelist who had murdered Aejys' ba'halaef, Brendorn, the male member of her marital triad, last summer. "I'm just the captain of the guard. I'll tell Master Becca you're here and let her decide if you see Aejys."
"As you will." Talons sat down at one of the empty tables as Omer departed. She unshouldered her pack into the chair beside her.
One of the female guardsmyn came to the table. "We will want to have a look inside that," she said.
Talons shrugged and opened it, taking the calico into her arms.
"A cat?"
"A gift to Aejystrys Rowan from a mutual friend."
Some of the other guardsmyn sauntered over, peering curiously at the calico.
"She's a pretty thing."
The first guardsmon went through the pack, taking everything out, then putting it all back. By then the calico was being passed around, purring happily in each new set of arms.
"You know," the first guardsmon said, "if we'd had some cats, that viper would never have gotten her lordship."
"Viper?" Talons questioned. "I had not heard about that."
The whole group fell silent then, handing the calico back.
"If you have not heard, then it is not our place to tell you," the first guardsmon said.
Talons nodded, stroking the calico. The gaffer told her that Aejys had been taken out somehow in the first moments of the attack, but did not know how. That fact had not been made public at the posthumous trial of Thomas Cedarbird.
"Master Becca will see you," said Omer, coming down the stairs.
Talons stood with the cat nestled in one arm.
"What is this?" Omer asked.
"A gift to Aejystrys Rowan from a mutual friend," Talons repeated what she had told the guardsmyn.
Omer saw no harm in a simple cat, so he gestured for Talons to follow him. He led her upstairs, down the hall and around a corner to a room near the back above the kitchens.
Becca sat at a large battered desk. Omer took Clemmerick's chair beside it. As big as Omer was he did not fill the chair. Talons' gauged the size of the chair's normal occupant at somewhere near that of the stone troll she had killed. Becca indicated that she should sit and Talons settled into a simple wooden chair before the desk.
"You are an associate of Hanadi Majios?"
"Yes."
"What do you want, Guildsmon? Wait," Becca raised her hand to stop Talons before she spoke. "I want your sacred oath that everything you say is truth."
Talons gave her a thin, empty smile: the mon knew clearly what she was doing and was cautious. "By the book and the blade, I swear it."
Omer stared at Talons, betraying just the thinnest slice of astonishment, which melted into relief that he had trusted his instincts and not pushed his luck with her.
Talons gave him a slight nod.
"What is your name and why are you here?" Becca asked.
"I am called Talons Trollbane. I am here because the Dark Judge wants the soul of the sa'necari you captured."
"You took out a troll?" Omer asked, surprised.
"Stone troll. Alone."
"Shiiittttt," Omer hissed appreciatively which brought just a tiny whiff of a smile from Talons.
* * * *
Aejys met with Talons in the main meeting chamber. She sat at the head of the large oblong table with Skree on one side of her and Josiah on the other. Josiah carried a longsword at his shoulder and a pair of knives at his sides. Talons found that interesting for her sources had described him as a simple drunkard sailor while this mon seemed at ease and competent – dangerously so. The triton was a completely unknown quantity. Aejys looked pale and weak, barely able to hold her head up. A small nerien healer hovered about her, helping her with her pipe. Her hands were splinted. Talons wondered about the 'viper' story. Had Aejys been bitten by something so venomous the Sharani resistance could not fight it off?
Talons took her seat at the end of the table. Omer sat down on her left and Becca on her right.
"Why are you here?" Aejys asked, her voice sounding strained with the effort to speak.
"Hadjys wants the soul of the sa'necari you captured as a favor to Kalirion."
The triton frowned, turning to Aejys. "You said he was mine."
"If you kill him," Talons pointed out, "his soul will go to the Hellgod to someday return to this world. If I take his life, his soul will go to Hadjys and suffer for eternity or until it is cleansed by suffering. The Dark Judge will give him far more pain than you can."
"That is true, Skree," Josiah spoke.
"They do not believe in torture. I want him to die in pieces."
"While it is true we do not torture," Talons said. "I will make an exception in this case and you can watch, triton."
"My name is Skree," he told her. "If you will make his death slow and ugly, I will yield my rights to you in this."
"Just recite his crimes while I work," Talons smiled darkly. She would now have three sa'necari numbered among her kills; even though this was an execution, it still counted. There were now only a handful of Guildsmyn with a more deadly reputation than hers – all but one were in their forties while she was not yet
twenty. It felt very good.
Skree matched her smile, and then said, "Come. We finished the interrogation some hours ago and I have been eager to watch him die." Skree rose from his chair.
"A moment." Talons lifted the calico to the table. The cat ran immediately to Aejys, rubbing and purring. "She is a gift to you from the Rose Warrior. Her name is Dree."
Aejys' eyes lit then. "Dynarien. When the viper's bite cast me back again to the edge of death, he came to me in a dream, putting a single drop of elixir on my lips. The gift is accepted."
So. The holy rakehell has already meddled as much as he dared. "Have you the dead viper?"
"I have it," Skree said, "I have been reading it, trying to find a way to cure the lingering effects of the venom."
"When the sa'necari is slain, his head and heart taken, you must show me the viper. My people know much of poisons and venoms – and their antidotes."
The little nerien perked up and smiled at her, his expression so sweet and hopeful that Talons returned it.
* * * *
The sa'necari and a blinded Vorgeni were held in the North Cellar, which had been cleared out and turned into a makeshift dungeon. They were both tied to the remaining wine rack bolted to the wall. Josiah, Omer, and Skree accompanied her.
"Strip him. Stake him out on the floor, spread-eagle. That's how they do their own victims when the intention is mortgiefan."
Omer went for a hammer and nails while Josiah and Skree cut away Dinger's clothing.
Talons leaned close to the withered sa'necari. "Do you know what I am?" she asked.
Dinger shook his head frantically, already weeping with terror.
"I am Hadjys' executioner. This day the Dark Judge will have your soul as a favor to the god you betrayed. You participated in the genocide of the lifemages, people who were once your friends, whose work you shared. You were a lifemage."
Dinger screamed. Skree had spelled him to the truth and he tended to say far more and in greater detail than anyone really wanted to hear. "Yes. Yes. I did it. I betrayed the north coast temple. We took them as they slept. Mephistis gave me the women. I sheathed myself in their bodies and felt them die. They tasted so sweet – Gods! Gods have mercy on me. Have mercy."
