Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  From atop the bluestone guard-wall, Ghrenna den’Tanuk’s hands conducted an unconscious inventory as she studied the ornate manse in the night. Hunkered next to her Guild-mate Shara den’Lhoruhan, beneath a hardy cover of eldunne branches, she checked her lock pick set, fighting and throwing knives, and the sleeping darts in a neat row on her buckled leather harness. She touched one glove to her braided bun of white-blonde hair, then checked the comb at her crown to make certain her dark hood remained in place over it. But the evening they had chosen was balmy, with no wind to betray their position to guard dogs, nor tease Ghrenna’s hair from beneath her hood. Both thieves wore dark leathers with cowls up in the moonless night, though Ghrenna wore her Kingsmen greys, a deep charcoal with ornate tooling upon the leather, Alrashemni emblems etched into buckles and steel.

  Everything in order, Ghrenna took a long draw from her threllis-pipe, locked between her teeth where it would stay for the remainder of the evening. Visions came when they came, but when she had threllis they merely flickered across her sight, indistinct. And threllis was imperative to keep her from spasming when she had a vision, its numbing sedation just enough to keep her in control of her faculties.

  And remaining in control of her faculties was a priority while she was at work.

  But Ghrenna felt ready tonight, her muscles loose, her mind calm except the dull roar of a headache. Headaches plagued her because of her visions; this one was nothing notable tonight. Gazing at the hulking byrunstone manse that towered in the darkness, quiet as a fennewith-haze, she noted with precision everything about the manor. Only three guards maintained a perimeter, a poor detail. They pivoted at predictable intervals, their movements lax in the muggy night. The lone dog, a lazy wolfhound, gnawed at a carcass on the front stairs. Only four lights burned in the upper halls, and a few in the basement kitchens, to be expected.

  And avoided.

  Ghrenna made the proceed hand signal. Shara nodded, then lifted her dart tube and blew a round-dart with a white flag to the foot of the wall behind them. The two grapples Ghrenna had set suddenly had tension, and presently Luc den’Orissian and Gherris den’Mal, part of Ghrenna and Shara’s regular Guild, were squatting upon the wall next to them. Ghrenna waited for them to get settled at the top and haul up the grapples, her dark blue eyes flickering over the guards and the dog. They hadn’t changed their patterns. And they weren’t watching the wall.

  She made a hand signal to the group.

  Proceed.

  No alarm was raised as they slipped over the wall and snuck through the dappled shadows of manicured greenery. A long row of cypress trees had been foolishly planted nearly all the way to the house, providing excellent cover. Ghrenna didn't relish thieving. It was a poor profession in which to use her Kingsman training, slipping through the shadows like a common thug, but it was practical. She couldn't hold a regular trade. She'd tried to apprentice with an apothecary once, right after she'd arrived in Fhouria. One seizure from a particularly strong vision had sent her crashing into rows of vials, glass bottles shattering everywhere.

  Her levelheadedness was a boon in the thieving trade, however. Her ability to plan, to navigate situations and think things through, like for tonight. She halted them at the end of the cypress row, raising a hand, signaling for darts. Three properly blown sleeping-darts and the hulking guards collapsed softly upon the front steps, dreaming until tomorrow.

  The dog had Gherris’ knife buried in its throat, which he strode forward silently to retrieve. Five years younger, Gherris was Alrashemni, a Second Seal when the Summons came. Excellent with knives, Gherris was an asset. But like a bricked wall, his emotions were unassailable. Ghrenna had never seen him smile. But his eyes flashed with pleasure to have made a kill, and something about it made Ghrenna shiver.

  She nodded to him. He nodded back, his gaze hooded once more.

  Key rings were removed, the guards looted and hauled into the bushes beside the door. Ghrenna made the proceed hand signal again, and Luc stepped to the front door. The door was unlocked and not in need of picks, but he bent quickly to squirt oil upon the hinges anyway, obsessive about the details. From where she stood with her back to the door, Ghrenna could see his merry green eyes lit with mischief beneath his dark hood. He saw her watching; winked at her and grinned. A born rogue, Luc was golden-handsome, a creature of the gutter. Street performing had graduated to hustles, relying upon his wit and tall good looks, which had matured into professional thieving. It was rumored that there was no lock Luc couldn’t pick, no man he couldn’t swindle, and no woman he couldn’t seduce.

  At last, Luc hauled on the large iron handle, which opened without a sound. They were inside in a flash, melting into the darkened hall like graveyard mist. Luc stepped to the left wall with Ghrenna. Gherris and Shara took the opposite, their usual arrangement. Shara pointed the way she had scouted at the party, signaling upstairs, third floor, second door on right, lockbox.

  Ghrenna knew Shara’s information was good. She nodded and took point. With a mind like steel, there was nothing Shara couldn’t remember. Ghrenna trusted her implicitly, her constant ally since they had abandoned the Fleetrunners together eight years ago. Memorizing layouts of buildings was Shara’s specialty, along with faces and names of their next possible scores. And tonight’s score was the lockbox, the family’s heirloom jewelry. Everything else was catch-as-catch-can.

  Their journey up to the second floor was uneventful. No servants were about this late in the manse of Couthis Emry den’Thorel. Scouted at a masked ball the night prior, they had found that there were no other guards. The rumors Shara had elicited at the party were proving true. A wealthy addict, the young Couthis was lax in security. Careless with his possessions, he threw lavish parties to smoke fennewith, which sent even the hardiest addicts into languid largesse. Apparently, most of the manor's retainers had taken severance pay and quit, not wanting to be associated with Emry’s antics. It was largely rumored that young Emry was going to get his throat slit some deep night, when he was high.

  Ghrenna glanced over at Gherris. Already, her lean companion was toying with a small knife, itching for a kill as they paced to the third floor. Pausing outside the appointed door, two to each side, they tucked in next to a pair of ancient armor-suits. Looking down, Ghrenna watched the light that played beneath the ironbound door as Luc set to oiling the hinges. The flickers of light were strong, the blaze of a fire.

  After a minute more of listening, Ghrenna decided to risk it.

  Pick it, she signed to Luc. He set to, his skills needed this time.

  Five minutes, she signed to Shara. Fighting, leave. Yells, leave. Silence, send Luc. Shara nodded again, and so did Luc, who was done with his lock picking. Gherris merely watched her, brooding. He wanted a kill. Ghrenna could practically smell it.

  She nodded, slipped inside. The door was silent, thanks to Luc’s obsessiveness, shutting behind her with barely a click. Ghrenna froze in utter stillness, blending into the dark wood of the door, even though light from the fire played across her face. Her dark blue eyes roved the bedroom, absorbing every feature. She was a shadow in the dark, capable of pristine stillness. Invading hushed rooms abandoned by gaiety was her specialty. Sometimes her Guild-mates even forgot she was there, only a curl of smoke from her pipe, or a flash of her white-blonde hair giving her away. No matter how long Ghrenna needed to wait for the perfect score, she could.

  Patient. Practical.

  Courhe den’Byrune, she had been nicknamed by her team, the Heart of Byrunstone. In a trade often ruled by hotheaded men, Ghrenna was a valuable irregularity. Her efficient scores kept her in good with her threllis supplier, whose wares didn’t come cheap. Better yet, thieving was generally a profession without brutality. Especially if one was fast, quiet, and effective.

  Unlike the war-front.

  Ghrenna would never go back to the war. She had seen how women died upon the battlefield. Especially Kingsmen women. Never again would she wear the unifo
rm of Alrou-Mendera’s army, conscripted as she had been ten years ago against her will. She would wear her Kingsmen attire until her death, recovered from Alrashesh after her desertion, come Halsos' Hell and Burnwater. The Kingsmen had taken her in when she had been abandoned by her tundra-born parents, and though she was not Alrashemni bloodline, she would honor her oath to them until the end of her days.

  But tonight, like nearly every night thieving, could be navigated without death, if she was careful. A whip-lean man lay sprawled upon the heavy canopied bed, shirtless. Even across the room, Ghrenna could see his breeches were undone, baring a white, emaciated abdomen. A naked woman sprawled next to him, her limbs pale by the light of the dying fire. Ghrenna’s gaze flicked around the room, noting two closed servant’s doors, a few empty sitting-chairs, and a lounging-couch by the fire. And the lockbox of solid iron with etched filigree by a writing desk, just behind the bed.

  Ghrenna took a breath, sliding carefully over ornate Praoughian carpets, her sleeping dart-tube ready near her lips. She was nearly there when one of the side-doors opened. Ghrenna froze, blending into one of the tall ironwood pillars of the canopied bed with their dark velvet curtains, holding her breath. A worn-looking maid entered and approached the fire. She stoked it, added more logs, brushed her hands off noisily. The couple upon the bed lay still, drug-deep and dead to the world. She stood with a sniff as she glared at the couple, fists on her hips in disgust, giving Ghrenna a moment of heart-pounding fear where she stood by the bedpost in the maid’s line of sight.

  But as always happened when Ghrenna was willing herself to be unseen, a strange coolness rose in her mind. And now it came smoothly, licking out like the spun tendrils of a spider’s webbing. Ghrenna felt something like a touch; a gossamer breath where her mind seemed to ease into the maid’s.

  As if her mind spoke, whispering through the maid’s thoughts.

  The maid’s gaze slipped past her, unseeing. Missing Ghrenna entirely, though she was in plain view. The maid went back to the door, then returned, and slammed a tray noisily upon the desk with a pitcher of water. She spun on her heel and left with a huff, closing the door.

  Ghrenna breathed out, her heartbeats smoothing in relief. She had not been seen, and the couple on the bed still hadn’t stirred. She gave it another moment, then silently approached the desk, touching the lockbox, examining it. The thirty-bennel hasps were solid, but the locks were nothing Luc couldn’t handle. A rhennel-bolt, an uringle-puzzle, and a fhass-key, the three old-fashioned locks wouldn't stall Luc. Ghrenna slid over to the bed, observing the couple. They were the problem. The uringle-puzzle would be noisy, no matter how much oil Luc gave it.

  Ghrenna bent closer, removing her pipe from her mouth so the couple on the bed wouldn’t smell it, even though threllis burned nearly smokeless, her dart tube ready at her lips instead. She watched the slow rise and fall of the man’s chest, which she assumed was Couthis Emry, clearly heavily sedated. He had the look of the addicted bourgeois, his overall leanness too gaunt, a smudge of shadows beneath his closed eyes. He looked like he just might sleep through anything.

  But the woman...

  Ghrenna bent closer, watching the shadows of her ribs. Slowly, she reached out, placing two light fingers on the woman’s wrist. She was cold. Cold and very dead. She backed off, just as the door she had come through opened, and she heard the quick pace of Luc’s footsteps.

  Ghrenna threw Luc a quick flurry of signing as he rounded the edge of the desk. Woman dead. Man drugged. Puzzle, key, and bolt. Proceed.

  Luc’s blonde eyebrows lifted inside the shadows of his hood. You killed her? He signed back. Byrune. His wicked white grin flashed in the fire’s light.

  Ghrenna shook her head. Drug-death.

  Luc looked slightly crestfallen, then grinned again as he set to work. Luc loved a scandal, but not as much as he loved lock picking. The fhass-key he oiled and picked first with his long clever fingers. Then the bolt snapped back with a report Ghrenna was sure would have wakened the dead woman. But Couthis Emry merely snorted, one hand sliding down to fondle himself in his drugged haze. The puzzle-lock was noisier than either of them anticipated. Each time Luc turned the dial it made a groaning creak, which caused them both to wince and the drugged man to shift uneasily.

  Luc paused, eyebrows lifting, then signed. He’ll wake. Cease?

  Ghrenna shook her head. Proceed.

  Luc turned the dial again, and it gave a hideous shriek. The man on the bed came awake with a deep gasp as if rising from the grave. Ghrenna had a moment to decide. If she hit him with a sleeping dart, the sedative could overdose him with that much fennewith already in his system. But then she saw his eyelids were fluttering, that he still languished deep in drug-addled dreams.

  Cool with calculation, Ghrenna was on the bed in a flash. “Shh, Emry…”

  Ghrenna laid a hand on the Couthis’ chest, playing the part of his dead woman. Pushing him back down to the mattress with a gentle hand, she willed him to see her as his lover, to feel her just the same. She felt the tendrils of her mind reaching out, smoothing into him, whispering. Emry went without a fuss, but his rapid blinking indicated hallucinations. Fennewith was famous for it. Ghrenna had no idea what his mind was conjuring, whether he would scream and wake the manse, or spin on in blissful abandonment. Either way, threllis would calm him, so she leaned in, exhaling threllis-smoke into the man’s mouth and nose. At the same time, she willed him to be calm, the tendrils of her mind pouring out towards him like the tide of her smoke.

  His eyelids fluttered slower as he took a deep inhalation.

  “Anjelica…” he breathed, running his hands up over Ghrenna’s buttocks. A stifled guffaw came from Luc, still clicking through the puzzle. She shot him a hard gaze, then turned back to the Couthis.

  “I’m here, lover.” Ghrenna leaned in, wafting more smoke into Emry's mouth and nose, then giving him a long, slow kiss, feeling her tendrils plucking at his mind. She reached down to massage his crotch, willing him to focus on the eroticism of the touch. Anything to keep him from focusing on the noise from the puzzle-lock and seeing that Ghrenna was not the girl who now lay next to him, cold.

  “Mmm… threllis.” The Couthis pawed at Ghrenna’s throat. “Give me a draw, love…make me spin…”

  Ghrenna held her pipe to his lips. He sucked greedily like a babe at teat, inhaling fully and holding it for a ten-count. A practiced addict.

  “Mmm… Cheridwen Hills… where did you get Cheridwen?” The Couthis' eyelids slipped closed, smoke sighing from between his flushed lips.

  “I keep a little just for us, love.”

  The clicking from the puzzle-lock stopped abruptly. Ghrenna heard a chunk as Luc pulled the lockbox open, and then the sweet slither of velvet cases and pouches as he began to raid it.

  Emry’s eyebrows knit at the sound, and he struggled to pull his eyes open. “Is that Jhulinne? Aeon! Tell her to keep it down…! Give us another draw, love…”

  Ghrenna gave him her pipe again, letting him hold it, taking deep inhalations, willing him to relax. She massaged his crotch and Emry moaned, low and obliterated. He did not fight her when she reached to reclaim her pipe, his arm falling limply to the coverlet. But as his arm fell, it brushed the dead woman, and he shied away.

  “Ugh… who put a fish in my bed…?”

  Ghrenna hastily pushed the dead woman over some, willing him calm. “That’s just the tray, love. Jhulinne brought us some cold khremm. Here, let me move it off the bed.”

  Ghrenna shot a glare at Luc, who was nearly finished with his raiding. He played his part, right on cue, lifting the tray upon the table and setting it back, loud enough for it to clink.

  “There, love,” Ghrenna murmured. “It’s on the table now.”

  “Mmm… kiss me, sweetling…” Couthis Emry’s needy hands began pawing ineffectively at her harness and jerkin. “Kiss me again… you were so ripe at the ball… kiss me like that… are you dressed? Leather? I like leather…
yes, let’s have sex again… let’s undo all this…”

  Luc was finished, now waiting by the door. Ghrenna gave the drug-addled Emry another deep kiss, then stood, extracting herself. “Just a moment, love… I need to use the chamber-pot.”

  “Go fast, love…” Couthis Emry settled into the lavender sachet-pillows, his words hardly a whisper and his stiffened ardor flagging. “Go fast…”

  Ghrenna paced quickly to the door where Luc waited, grinning, vastly amused. He flicked her nose. She narrowed her eyes, and then they were out the door. Gherris and Shara were vague shadows in the hall, and fell into step as the quartet retreated. Watching for movement, the four made their way back out the front door of the manse, paced the garden quietly, and slipped up and over the wall.

  Only once they were a good league away, moving through a forested swath north of town, did Luc start braying. “Ghrenna! You ice-hearted bint! Seducing a man half-naked and buried in fennewith! Next to a dead woman, no less! And right in front of me…?! Byrune!”

  “We’re not exclusive, Luc.” It was her regular answer. Luc wasn’t the only man who warmed Ghrenna’s bed from time to time, though she knew he desperately wanted to be. But like usual, he laughed it off, his pride in being a womanizer too great to show hurt. Ghrenna wouldn’t settle for any man, and she’d made it plain to Luc these past few years, though only Shara knew the truth of it.

  Ghrenna’s headache suddenly throbbed, lancing and vicious. A vision tried to surface, indistinct. Her stride paused as she blinked, trying to clear it, drawing deep on the threllis-pipe clenched between her teeth. A ship on a long lake, mountains rearing up into a cloud-heavy sky. A man, hunkering by the rails as wind lashed rain against his beard-roughened cheeks. His lost, empty grey eyes, as beautiful as the sea under storm-clouds.

  Elohl.

  The vision stopped her breath. Stopped her heart for just a moment. Just like her visions of him always did. Pacing in the darkness beneath the trees, her comrades hadn’t noticed.

  Gherris shot Ghrenna a sour look. “You killed someone tonight?”

  Ghrenna took a deep inhalation of threllis, forced herself to walk on. Her guildmates didn’t know about the visions, except for Shara. “The woman was already dead. Fennewith overdose.”

  Gherris grunted.

  “How much did we get?” Shara’s laugh was bright in the darkness.

  “A good haul, ladies and gents,” Luc chortled. “A good haul. Back to our digs? Divvy it? You girls can take our tithe to the Consortium. I have an appointment I’d rather not miss.”

  “Appointment?” Ghrenna glanced over. “Are you losing all your winnings dicing again?”

  “Losing?” He tweaked her nose, tried for a kiss. Ghrenna batted him out of the way, her thoughts full of Elohl. Luc paced onward, as if he didn’t care. “I never lose, ladies. After what I saw this evening? Lord Luc feels lucky tonight!”

  “You’re no lord.” Shara grinned.

  “Am I not?” Luc turned to her, his smile rakish.

  Shara gave him a false punch to the gut, which he mimed receiving. But Ghrenna was a thousand leagues away now. As if the tendrils of her mind had been pulled straight to Elohl, she could still see the boat in her mind’s eye, even though the actual vision was gone. She could still feel Elohl. The set of his jaw, the emptiness of his beautiful, commanding stare. A feeling of hopelessness rose in her, suddenly. A deep sensation of need.

  Ghrenna took a tremendous pull from her threllis-pipe, pushing back the headache that now rose into a relentless hammering.

  CHAPTER 4 – ELOHL