by Ryan McCall
Zuri had easily managed to disable the guardian to Kyle’s room. It was a simple stone dog statue that would bark an alarm and try to pin down intruders. The school put it in place until the room could be cleaned. Her absorption amulet had powerful magic that could de-power artifacts like the guardian but it only lasted for a few minutes.
She opened the door and stepped inside. The room was still in disarray from the search the watch had conducted although there were several items packed into boxes from the workers earlier in the day. The bookshelf had remained untouched. She went over and pulled out all the books at the shelf she had scanned during her projection spell. She grabbed at the large black book and it fell on the floor, covers open. She had guessed right, it was a fake book with only a cover, inside was the blue diary she was after. As she picked it up, the light around her absorption amulet went out.
She heard voices outside the room; someone must have disturbed the guardian. Before she could move the door burst open and the stone dog made a loud noise. It leapt into the room towards her but with her skylord agility she managed to roll out of the way and it crashed into the bed.
She used her wings to propel herself towards the door before it made another go at her and she flew through, only to crash into two people. All three of them sprawled onto the ground. She grunted slightly, she had hit her back on the stone floor.
She looked up at whoever she had crashed into. They looked like students, but not mages, more like university students. She stood up and said, “Who in the hell are you two and what are you doing here?”
One of them, the tall, blond one, put his hand to his head. “Uh…we were…um,” he stammered, struggling to come up with an answer.
The other one spoke up next, “We were passing by here when we noticed this stone guardian wasn’t functioning. It came on and started-”
Before he could finish what he was saying the guardian emerged from the room. It let out another loud growl and pounced towards Zuri, its mouth open and aiming to grab her arm. She flashed her amulet at its head and it stopped moving, the head dropping and facing the ground.
She turned back to the two students, anger on her face, “The noise of that guardian will have attracted security, so I suggest you tell me what you’re doing here before I hand you over to them.”
The short, dark-haired boy wasn’t fazed by this, “Go ahead, by all means. We were strolling past when we noticed the open door and inactive guardian, I’m certain they’ll have questions for all of us.”
Zuri gave him a look of absolute fury, “I am a master mage and a teacher at this school. Do you think they’ll believe two university students over my word?”
“That’s up to you,” he replied.
“What the fuck are you doing?” asked the other one. “You’re threatening a master mage.”
“Yes,” he said, smirking, “I guess I am, but the fact that the guardian was inactive tells me she doesn’t want to be here when the guards show up any more than we do. Isn’t that right?” he asked Zuri.
She muttered something in Cartralan, then said, “Fine you’re right, I don’t. I still want to know why you’re here, but this isn’t the place. Follow me.”
“Where are we going?’ asked the tall one.
“My office in the pyromancy building. If I don’t like what you have to say for yourselves, I will turn you over to security.” They both nodded and followed her quietly through the campus pathways.
Her office was sparse with little more than a desk and chair, a book case and a smaller table opposite the desk. Zuri placed Kyle’s diary on her book shelf and sat at her desk. She stared hard at the two students and tapped her fingers on her desk.
“Well,” she said, “I’m waiting to hear what you have to say.”
One of them started to speak, “Look we only-ooph!” The other one had elbowed him in the chest.
“Master-mage, my friend here is a relative of the deceased student and he let curiosity get the better of him. He wanted to find out what happened to his cousin. We came here, broke into the filing room and disturbed that guardian when we arrived. That’s it, nothing else. We’ll get out of your way, we won’t say anything and I’ll talk some sense into him.”
Zuri tapped her fingers again, but slower this time. “You’re related to Kyle?” she asked, looking at Michael.
He nodded. “Second cousin, on my mother’s side,” he replied.
“And you’re students from the other campus yes?” she asked and they both nodded. “Your names?”
“I’m Reese Galius,” said the tall, Estaran-looking one and he pointed to his shorter friend, “and that’s Michael O’Daly.”
“You both took a stupid risk, you know,” she said. “But I cared about your cousin too, which is why I was there.”
“So you don’t trust the watch to uncover the truth either?” asked Michael. As a relative he would know how Kyle’s parents would handle the matter.
“No I don’t. They consider it an open and shut suicide, but I don’t believe it,” she replied. “Since you two like playing investigator so much, you can do me a favor.” She had decided that Kyle’s cousin and his friend could be useful. “Keep an eye out around your campus for watch officers and who they’re talking to. In return I’ll keep tonight’s little escapade between the three of us.”
“You want us to spy on watch officers?” asked Michael.
“Not spy, observe,” replied Zuri, “I suggest you leave the campus with all speed. The guards could make a sweep of the school and you don’t want to be around to get noticed if they do.”
Both of them nodded and quickly exited her office. With them gone Zuri looked over at Kyle’s diary, it was time to find out exactly what had been going on in his head and why he had turned to tarcaine.
She started reading. It began innocuously enough but as she read she soon came upon several pages worth of entries that had made her sick to her stomach. Her insides roiled and she bent over, vomiting into the waste bin beside her desk. She wiped her mouth and went back to the diary.
Kyle had written the entries in his second year at Warded Spirals, when he was only eleven. It didn’t mention a name, but it went into detail about the abuse done to him and what he had been forced to do.
Someone…no, some monster did that to him she thought in fury. The details described someone known only as ‘master’ who had forced him to engage in sexual acts. Skylords were more empathic than other races and Zuri burned with disgust and anger over what she read on the pages. The pages continued and she felt her stomach quiver again. She wasn’t certain she could keep reading more of this.
But I have to she thought. It’s the only way I’ll find out who was behind this. Then I’ll make them pay! With that thought she lashed out at the glass of water on her desk and it flew into the wall, smashing to pieces.
Despite not having a name it was clear from the diary that it was someone of authority at Warded Spirals and as the details began to fade from the diary entries she reached a point in the entries where it appeared as if Kyle had forgotten the entirety of the abuse. Had he suppressed it due to trauma or had his mind been altered with magic?
There was certainly an indication of mental alteration by the sudden change in style of Kyle’s writing. Combine that with the memory loss and it suggested a mage highly skilled in mental magic. It was a place for her to start anyway.
She contemplated whether she should tell the watch or not. She doubted that it would help. They were set on it being a suicide and writing it off. In addition the Dunn family would not want details like this to be made public, as concerned with their reputation as they were.
They had the power to order the watch to bury the incident if they wanted. No, she would keep this to herself for now. Once she had hard evidence on who was behind this atrocity, she would decide what to do.
She pulled out a fresh piece of paper and began writing down a suspect list along with identifying details she could take from the diary.
Based on the sexual acts Kyle had described, his abuser was male, ruling out a good portion of suspects. Forty percent of all mages of master level and above were female.
Powerful mental magic-that ruled out a few more. But there were still plenty of mages that used it outside of the mind discipline and she didn’t want to automatically assume a teacher or master of mind was responsible. There was something else, Kyle had mentioned details of the Circular Tower.
The only way students or low level mages were allowed in there was with direct oversight from the higher mages. If someone had taken him there they had to have a lot of authority. She began writing down names of everyone she could think that matched the pieces of evidence.
There were ten names on her list, she would have to proceed carefully here. Each of them was a powerful figure and if she was caught asking the wrong questions she could land herself in hot water. For now, it would be best to look for further clues outside the school, like his drug habit.
Clearly his memories had come back to him and he had used tarcaine in order to drown out the trauma; the person who sold him the drugs could know something. It would be safer than asking questions at the Center.
She remembered the watch officer, Sergeant Moreland, had been interested in the man she had seen Kyle with. Tomorrow after classes she would head to the Justice Branch and see if they had information on him.
Chapter 7
The man next to her rested his head back onto a pillow, sighing with pleasure. “That was wonderful,” he said. She let her own head fall down on the pillow next to him.
“I aim to please,” she replied and she ran her finger over his lips as he turned to look at her. Her soft, brown hair hung over her head and the pillow and sweat beaded on her forehead. She slowly sat up and left the bed. She could feel the man’s eyes admiring her naked backside.
She pulled on her clothes, when she was done she looked like an inconspicuous peasant girl, instead of the sultrily-dressed prostitute she was playing. She splashed a bottle of liquid over her hair and face and she felt a tingling as the glamor washed away. Her hair began to grow shorter, rising to below her ears and the color changed to light blonde. Her features were changing as well, her eyes sharpening and her lips becoming less full. She had a long scar running from below her temple to the side of her chin. When the effect had ended she was a different person.
The man tried to say something but all that came out was a mumble. She looked over at him. He was straining to move himself, but he was still in the same position. “Ah,” she said “you can strain as much as you like Mr. Trent, it won’t matter. That poison initiates a state of complete body paralysis.”
She walked over to the bed and looked down at his face, there was fear in his eyes and his body was trembling with the effort he was putting into trying to move. She showed her finger to him, the same one she had ran over his lips “Venom of the Iris cobra. It causes paralysis and then a heart attack within minutes. Fortunately it doesn’t absorb by skin contact, but it will mix with saliva.”
She used the small hand basin to rinse her hand and then thoroughly wiped it down with a hand towel. She then put the towel in a sealed bag and pocketed it. “I doubt they’ll check for it. It’s a rare poison, but better to be cautious and not leave traces.”
His eyes were now full of anger as he watched her movements she matched his gaze and said, “I’d be angry too, staring at my death and unable to do anything about it. You probably want to know why, but I’m afraid I can’t enlighten you. In my profession one doesn’t ask questions. I’m given a target to eliminate, nothing more, nothing less. In your case, whoever wanted you dead, wanted it to look natural.”
She walked over to the large, ornate closet and opened the door, as she did the girl she had been impersonating, Darla, his favorite girl at Madam Shard’s whorehouse, fell out. The assassin pulled her over with and laid her on floor face down. “I’m afraid your beloved whore was dead long before you arrived. I took care of her before using a simple glamour on myself to fool you into thinking I was her.”
She took a pinch from Darla’s tarcaine supply and sprinkled it around the dead girl’s mouth then rubbed what remained off her hands and stood up. “That about does it I think,” she said, “When they find the two of you, you’ll have died from too much excitement and Darla here will be a drug overdose.”
Trent suddenly gave out a ragged breath and his back arched slightly. “That’s the venom kicking in,” she said. “I must admit for an old man you were spry in the sack,” and she smirked. He gave off one last gasp before all the tension went out of his body and his eyes slowly closed.
She scanned the room one more time, double-checking that there was nothing she could have missed. Once satisfied, she opened the window and carefully climbed up towards the roof. She pulled herself up and silently walked across two more buildings before reaching a fire ladder and made her way down to empty alley. Now all she had to do was report in on her success.
Her usual place to meet was a tavern, the Iron Boot, in the working class Charwood district. She entered through the main doors and her training kicked in. She slipped into the mannerisms of a working factory girl that matched her disguise.
Half a dozen factories were within a snail’s crawl from the Iron Boot and many of the workers came here for meals at all hours of the day, even in the middle of the night. Most of the factories ran on twenty four hour schedules and several shifts finishing during the night.
There were only a dozen or so people right now and all of them were preoccupied drinking. Most of them were sitting at the bar, soot and oil on their clothing identifying them as factory workers. One group of four was taking up a table in the middle.
At one of the booths to the side sat a dignified looking elf. He had the bronze skin tone common to Talfey elves and wore his hair in the pulled back, ponytail style of Tal Feros, but it was raven black in color, closer to the elves Ze Feros, than the gold and silver hair common to Talfey elves.
He was dressed in an immaculately clean dark-green blazer and a white shirt and was reading a newspaper, the Alkos City Chronicle. He had a steaming, hot beverage on the table in front of him. He looked up at her entrance, placed his newspaper down and sat back, watching her. She moved over to the booth and sat down opposite him. “It’s done,” she said, “all clean.”
“Good,” he replied. “The client will be pleased. This is for you.” He passed an envelope across the table to her.
She picked it up and tested its weight in her hand. “This feels light,” she said.
“Did they not explain it to you Lucina? You opted to become a free agent. It means you have more choice in your jobs. But it also means that when you do use take our contracts, our commission is larger than you may have been used to,” he replied.
Lucina paused before answering. For a long time she had been a member of the Arm of Assassins, a criminal organization based in Longhaven, It was the only life and home she had known since the loss her birth family in her youth.
She had been one of the many child refugees of the Estaran Civil War and had drifted before being captured by slave traffickers and taken to Longhaven, a city notorious for its crime and corruption. She had managed to kill one of her guards and escaped and spent a year on the streets before she became involved with the Arm.
After her training, apprenticing and eventual graduation to master assassin, she had wanted a change. The Arm wasn’t inflexible and allowed members to leave under certain circumstances. She was considered a reserve member of the Arm.
She still paid fees and had to run targets by her contact, currently the elf sitting across from her, Ral tor’Kraos. But she also had the freedom to take what jobs she wanted and to choose where she operated. The Arm was happy to have another member operating in the capital, as their influence here was nowhere as strong as it was in Longhaven.
“Oh it was explained, though they never mentioned the exact number. I’m not complaining,” she said, w
hile pocketing the envelope. “I knew it would be different, besides I’m making do.”
“Yes so I hear,” said Ral. “In fact I would say you’re doing rather well, considering the high level clients you’ve been taking contracts with. And your jobs have been masterful, it was an excellent decision for you to move here.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
He sipped his drink. “What would you say if your fee jobs could go back to the normal rate permanently?”
She looked at him with disbelieving eyes, “I’d say I don’t believe you.”
Ral chuckled, “Normally, yes. But this is different. The Arm has a high value contract that we want you to fulfill. The Dark Hand himself asked for you.”
Lucina blinked at the mention of that. The Dark Hand was the head of the Arm and the only members aware of his identity where the Circle of Five, his most trusted assassins. He appeared from time to time at Arm assemblies, but was usually covered in shadow magic, all anyone could see was a bipedal-shaped shade and he never spoke. He was considered the greatest assassin in the world.
He saw her reaction. “Yes, I thought that would get your attention. You see Lucina, your abilities at silent contracts are excellent but you’re even better at sharpshooting. One of our best and that’s why we need you for this.”
Lucina smiled. The truth was she preferred assassinations with guns, especially long range kills. It made her feel like a god, looking down at the target who never had a clue at what was coming. “I’m listening,” she said.
“If this contract if successful, you will return to full membership rates for Arm contracts, but you remain free to take your own jobs in Alkos City. In addition you will be paid one hundred, thousand crowns upon completion.”
Lucina’s eyebrows raised and she whistled lightly. That was more money than she had ever received for a contract. The target must be high-profile indeed.
“I know you have other contracts ongoing right now. Don’t worry, you’ll have time to fulfill them. The target will not arrive in Alkos for several weeks, which is fortunate because we will need time to prepare.” He leaned forward, speaking more softly. “This will not be simple Lucina. When this target is ended there will be dire consequences, so we must make certain everything is perfectly planned for execution, escape and evasion.”
