Changes

by Mercedes Lackey

  Oh, but there was anger as well. Why anger? It was cold and distant. It wasn’t for the failed agents. It wasn’t for anyone in Valdemar. Someone else. Someone had—no, he couldn’t make it out, it was too abstract.

  But now they had stopped; he couldn’t hear their footsteps on the street ahead, and he felt himself getting nearer to their “presence.” He slowed his own pace and slipped up on them at a crawl, careful to remain below the roofline on the opposite side of where they were. When he was as close as he dared get, he hugged the slates, his chin pressed into the roof, and closed his eyes. He let go of everything except the need to listen, with his ears, with his mind. Like a sponge, he soaked up everything around him.

  He could hear them talking, but not clearly. He didn’t think they were speaking Valdemaran now; the cadence, the accents were wrong.

  What were they doing besides talking? Why had they stopped? Did they realize they were being followed?

  No.

  It was this place, this building that he was on. It wasn’t much, one of those narrow two-story houses that was a scant two rooms up, two rooms down, and an attic. There was no one in it. But this was where they had to take care of that . . . unfinished business that was smaller than the greater task the other assassins had left undone.

  . . . an image of a broken trail.

  . . . a little cruel pleasure. The sense that punishment had been meted out.

  One went to the front door and unlocked it. The other stood guard in the street. The strange not-shield tightened over both of them, letting nothing out now.

  Whatever it was that he went in to do, he was done quickly. He came out, conferred with the other, and then, the two—

  Burst into a run from a standing start, with absolutely no warning.

  They ran like deerhounds; Mags could scarcely believe how fast they were. They ran so quietly that he actually hadn’t realized they were moving at all until their “presence” shot away.

  They were already at the end of the block before he had gotten to the edge of the roof. He gazed after them in disbelief and crushing disappointment; he couldn’t hope to catch them or even keep up—already the mind-traces were fading with distance, and in a moment—

  While he tried desperately to keep hold, the faint traces slipped from him and were gone.

  ::Nikolas—:: he said with despair.

  ::I was following,:: came the reply. ::Dallen let me “ride” his link with you. It can’t be helped. See what they were doing in that house, if you can.::

  Well, one thing for sure, he was absolutely not going in the front door. If he’d been in the shoes of these men, he would have left a trap on the door. But they might not be aware that most of the buildings in this part of town had rooftop hatches; that was what he would look for first.

  It was easier to find than he had thought. The owner must have had reason to be up here more frequently than most, for he had installed a real hatch with a solid door, the kind that was in Nikolas’ shop, rather than a makeshift thing you had to move tiles to find. It was locked, but only by a sliding bolt; working by feel, Mags got it open and felt around the edges for any sort of triggering mechanism for a possible trap. It was risky, brushing his fingers around the edges like that, but he kept his body out of direct range of anything that might shoot him as best he could.

  There was nothing. He gave the frame of the hatch a more thorough examination and still saw nothing.

  All right, he was safe so far; holding onto the edge as long as he could, he lowered himself down as far as his arms would reach, then dropped the remaining distance onto the attic floor. There he crouched, listening.

  Nothing. The house was absolutely silent. He couldn’t even hear any vermin.

  . . . light would have been nice.

  Then again, he was used to working in the dark.

  On hands and knees, he felt his way along the attic floor, searching for the hatch that would lead down into the house itself, using the dim patch of sky and stars where the roof hatch was open as his guide in the search, crawling in an ever-widening circle until his hands encountered something raised off the surface of the floor. A hatch identical to the first, also locked.

  He listened with mind and ears, then pressed his ear to the hatch. Still nothing.

  Odd. No rats. No mice. Wunner why?

  It could be that they were extraordinarily vigilant about vermin. It could be that they’d actually had a ratcatcher in recently; once a ratcatcher had gone over a place with his ferrets, it usually took the surviving rats and mice a fortnight or two to work up the courage to come back.

  He worked the second latch open as he had the first. This hatch opened downward, and he peered into the darkness—and this time, he saw a glimmer, a faint shimmer, of light, at the farther end of the house. He thought it would be coming the ground floor, at the back of the house.

  He dropped down onto the floor and made his way toward that faint glow, confident now that the house was empty. He thought these might be bedrooms; there were large, bulky objects on the floor, and a musty, bitter smell. It was nothing he could identify. Not exactly a perfume, but not exactly a stink, either. The closest he could come was some sort of bitter herb.

  The light was coming up a staircase at the back of the house.

  Damn. I hate this.

  There was no good way to get up or down a staircase when you didn’t know what was waiting for you on the next floor. All he could do was lie down flat on his belly and scoot himself awkwardly down the stairs a little at a time, hoping that if there was someone there after all, and his Gift had gone completely unreliable, he would see them before they saw him.

  But he saw the source of the light first.

  It was a candle, left burning atop what looked like a heap of clothing and bedding. This was where the smell was coming from. It looked as if the cloth had been drenched in some sort of oil, it was stained and dark, and there was a sort of dull sheen on it.

  Once the candle burned down—which would not even take a candlemark—the clothing would catch fire. With all that oil the place would be ablaze in no time. Was this what the assassin had come into the house to set up?

  ::Probably,:: Nikolas confirmed. ::It’s a good way to ensure that you are long gone when the fire starts.::

  And that candle was awfully slim and short—

  Mags didn’t bother with getting to his feet; tumbling down the stairs was faster. At the bottom he bounced up and ran over to the pile of clothing and snatched the candle out of it.

  This looked like the kitchen: fireplace with some pots, the table on which all the clothing had been heaped, some chairs, implements on the counters. He wrinkled his nose; the smell of the oil had covered up the stink of spoiled food. But it was old; he went to look at the pots, and they were half full of mold and spoiled food, all of it dried and cracking.

  No one had been here in a while. Why bother to burn it down?

  Then he recognized another smell.

  He knew that smell . . .

  Absolute dread rolled over him, and he shuddered. He remembered that smell from the mines, when Col Pieters and his boys had hidden things they didn’t want anyone to ever find, knocked out the supports of the tunnels their secrets had been left in, and buried them in the waste rock that held no gems. But the rock never stopped the rot, and the smell would permeate through the mine and get into everything, and all you could do was tie rags around your mouth and nose and try to breathe through them until time and vermin took care of the problem. And try not to think too hard about what was making the smell, because if you did . . .

  He didn’t want to go into the next room. He didn’t want to see what was there.

  He didn’t have a choice.

  ::Wait—Mags—:: Nikolas’ mind-voice interrupted him.

  This room had a door between it and the next; Mags propped the candle in a little wax, pulled off his shirt and jerkin, took the shirt and wrapped it around his face, making sure to cover his mouth
and nose, before putting the jerkin back on. Then he tried the door.

  ::Am I yer partner, or not?:: he asked fiercely, telling himself not to be sick.

  ::You are. But you don’t have to do this.::

  ::I’ll haveta do’t sometime. Ye knows thet. Fust time might’s well be now.::

  He sensed Nikolas’ resignation. ::I’ll send the Guard. When they take over from you, get out the same way you got in.::

  The door wasn’t locked, but it had been jammed shut. Not caring now about noise, he rammed it repeatedly with his shoulder, hearing something crack every time he did, as if he was breaking some sort of seal. Each time he did it, more of the stench puffed out around the frame. Finally the door gave, and he stumbled into the room.

  The candlelight flickered over a scene of grotesque, even macabre, horror.

  Even through his shirt the stench was appalling.

  The stench of four bloated bodies sprawled across the furniture in bizarre poses of ease, as if they were all relaxing. Their clothing wasn’t disarranged, there was no sign of a fight, no sign even that they had been carried in here. They looked exactly as if they had come here together to pass some time before bed.

  But they weren’t relaxing. They were dead.

  Dead, without a mark on them to show how they had died.

  9

  The Guardsmen had sent some of their most experienced and hardened men, but even they had been overcome with nausea and had had to leave the building. Several had been violently ill. And the curious thing was—at least in Mags’ mind—there was not a man among them, himself included, who would not happily have seen these men hang. At the very least these “victims” had conspired to wipe out a stableful of Companions; they were spies, they had colluded in kidnapping a Healer Trainee and probably would have killed him when he was of no further use to them. But your head could tell you all that a thousand times, but your gut was going to react to the visceral stench in the time-honored fashion, and that was all there was to it.

  Someone dispensed mint-soaked scarves to wrap around their faces, and that helped. But after the initial group arrived and set up a line that no one would be allowed to cross, there was a wait for a Special Squad, a wait during which the Guard Captain insisted that no one could touch or move anything.

  Finally the Special Squad arrived, laden with bags and implements and lanterns, and the others dispersed to hold the curious outside an established perimeter, their faces reflecting their relief. Mags remained, partly out of curiosity and partly in case any of this new group wanted to ask him anything.

  They had stronger stomachs than he did, that was certain. For all that he could tell, the stench didn’t bother them at all. They examined the bodies in place, minutely; they confiscated every used dish and pot, then, after (finally!) having the bodies closed up into waterproof bags and transported on a cart somewhere, they allowed all the windows to be opened so that the place could air out. Mags was intensely grateful for the brisk breeze, and felt very sorry for anyone nearby who was downwind of the house.

  Two of the Special Squad combed over the room of death like misers searching for a lost gem while the rest accompanied the bodies and the confiscated objects back to wherever they were being taken. One of them actually was picking up small things and carefully bagging them, and when Mags finally gave in to his curiosity and came to see what he was doing, he saw to his surprise that the young Guardsman was picking up dead bugs.

  The fellow looked up and saw Mags staring at him in disbelief. “Didn’t you notice there weren’t any flies?” he pointed out, and held up a dead one.

  Mags blinked. “Ye mean, them flies is all dead?”

  “As dead as last year’s leaves,” the fellow replied. “And I will bet that is why there are no mice or rats here, either. It might have been poison in the food, but given all the dead insects, I suspect poison fumes or smoke of some sort.”

  “Ye kin do thet?” Mags gulped. That was altogether nasty. How could you guard against something like that? “Ye kin poison summun with stuff they breathe in?”

  “It’s not easy, and it’s rather difficult to get people to sit there and breathe the stuff, but, yes, it can be done. Of course, if you drug them first, it’s trivial, and judging by their relative positions, they were either drunk or drugged when they died.” The Guardsman went back to picking up bugs. “Whatever it was, it would have to work quickly. It might have been a poison in the food or drink, but that wouldn’t account for the dead bugs. We can test for most poisons, but not the sort that are inhaled, and the men who did this might have been trying to prevent anyone from finding out that these men were murdered rather than died by accident. I do think, however, that the room was sealed after they were dead, rather than before. Probably to keep the stink from leaking out and betraying whoever did this until they were ready to burn the house down.”

  “ ’Ow long’ve they bin dead?” he asked, a little repulsed, but a little fascinated by someone who would talk so matter-of-factly about grisly corpses.

  “More than a day, not more than two.” The reply was prompt. “It’s been warm, the room was sealed—normally bodies don’t bloat until the third day, but the room probably got rather hot during the day, and that would speed things up.”

  Mags relayed all this to Nikolas.

  ::Hmm. So it appears that they died before or about the same time as the guide,:: came the reply.

  ::Reckon so.:: And that begged the question—how long had these new killers been in Haven before they rid themselves of the first lot? And why? ::Ye’ve been askin’ ’bout strangers fer long?:: That was a good place to start.

  ::The Weasel is an established persona of mine, and he’s always bought and sold information,:: Nikolas said thoughtfully. ::But I have only been asking specifically about foreigners for a week.::

  It would have taken a few days for that particular piece of information to get around . . .

  The same thought must have occurred to Nikolas. ::Damn. By looking for them, I killed them. I wanted to catch them, not kill them.::

  That puzzled Mags—not that Nikolas was unhappy about these men being killed, but that he blamed himself. ::I’m purt sure ye didn’ toss poison i’ their fire, sir.::

  ::I might just as well have,:: Nikolas replied bleakly. ::If—::

  ::I’m purt sure they was gonna get kilt anyway, sir,:: Mags interrupted, as he watched these odd Guardsmen finish combing the room, then spread out to the rest of the house. ::Thet was how them others thet I was follerin’ was thinkin’ anyroad. Ye fail, ye die, leastwise, if this new lot gits sent t’clean up yer mess.:: He paused. ::Coulda jest been coincidence too. Or they coulda bin killt, an’ then these others heard ’bout you lookin’, an’ figgered t’ pass on that th’ fust ones’d got away an collect them some money at same time.::

  ::Maybe,:: Nikolas replied, then went silent.

  Well, Mags had done his best, and if Nikolas was going to brood about this, there wasn’t much he could do about it. All things considered, through, if he were a ruthless killer who could not only send searchers on the proverbial wild hare hunt and make some money at the same time? He’d do just that.

  That might have been why they decided to burn down the building with the bodies in it rather than just leaving them for someone to find. Having someone find the bodies of four people who were supposedly leaving the country at a brisk pace would certainly alert the authorities that there was someone else in town who not only had provided the misinformation but had probably done the murders in the first place.

  These Guardsmen fascinated him, despite their grisly avocation. Obviously they expected to learn something from the things they were collecting, but what? He followed the bug collector up to the second story. The air was much better up here. He didn’t even need his mint-soaked scarf.

  There were plenty of lanterns up here as well, which gave him a very good look at the two Guardsmen who were left. They looked remarkably alike—not as if they were from the s
ame family, exactly, but as if they had been picked precisely to be unmemorable. They both had hair and eyes of the same neutral brownish, faces that were neither round nor square, short nor long, both were of middling height and weight, neither had any distinguishing features. Rather like Nikolas in a way, although with Nikolas, a good deal of his ability to be “invisible” rested with his training.

  It seemed that the fellow Mags had been talking to wasn’t just a bug collector. When Mags got there, he was helping another man go through the dead folks’ belongings, and not just sort through them, but take them apart. Hems were opened on clothing, linings torn out, mattresses were cut open, any object was picked up, examined minutely for—

  What? Why were they poking and prodding, closing their eyes and running their fingertips over things?

  The bug-fellow opened his eyes to see Mags staring at him, perplexed. He cracked a very slight smile. “Secret compartments,” he said, without waiting for Mags to ask him the question. “And if you have Mindspeech, would you kindly tell Nikolas that if he eats himself up over this, I am going to drag him out of his bed later today and beat him senseless? That seems to be the only thing that gets through his thick skull.”

  The other man uttered a smothered chuckle.

  “But—how?” Mags asked. “How’re ye lookin’ fer stuff that’s s’posed t’be hid?”

  “Well, if we had found one, I could show you, but in general, we look for something that seems to be solid, or solidish, but is a little too light. That’s why we are weighing these things in our hands. We look for drawers or compartments that are too short. We close our eyes and use our fingers, hunting for concealed seams and test to see if what seem to be solid panels will actually move. Thus far, I am sorry to say, we have found nothing.”

  “This place has been cleaned,” the second man said, with an air of one pronouncing a judgment. “I don’t think we’ll find anything unless these lads thought they might be betrayed and hid something, or the killers made a mistake. I don’t think either is likely. That fire was cleverly and carefully set. The room was sealed to keep the stink from getting out too much; there’s pitch all around the doors and windows, and it would have set up around the front door once they closed and locked it. They didn’t need to break the seal to set the fire; you said they came in the back way. There would have been remains, but nothing that could have been identified, and anyone investigating would have seen four drunks in the front of the house, and what was left of the table in the kitchen, and figured a perfectly ordinary bunch of fools left a candle stuck to a table soaked in grease and were too drunk to notice when it set a fire. I don’t think anyone that thorough is likely to have been careless with his victims’ belongings.”