The cheering got louder. Lord Slaughter waved. “I appreciate your support and pledge to run Jannpar as I have run my House—with fairness and compassion for all but those who wish to destroy us.”
The cheering and celebrations went on all day and into the night. Many hours later they were all back in their House and Lord Slaughter was in bed, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted but victorious.
Marco, Dean, and Melissa were in Marco’s room, waiting until they were sure the rest of the House was sleeping to discuss the day’s events, when Lady Slaughter came in without knocking.
“Mother, is everything well?” Marco asked as she shut the door tightly behind her.
She nodded and flicked her thumb—a silence web encircled the four of them. This was an expensive spell and Lady Slaughter had never used it with them before.
She smiled at their shocked and nervous expressions. “I just wanted to compliment the three of you on your backup plan. It was truly well-executed and made things so much easier. Only a few things had to be altered.”
“Excuse me?” Melissa asked, as Marco and Dean stared.
Lady Slaughter chuckled. “You were so meticulous, but you were just taking far too long. I couldn’t keep feeding Lord Slaughter the right things to think and say forever, children. I allowed you to set the stage, but I believe I understand the political landscape a bit better than you three do. Mass hysteria is a very useful thing if you’ve planned properly.”
The three assassins all gaped. “It was you?” Marco asked finally. “All of them, in one night?”
“There were over two dozen, in all parts of the city,” Dean added.
Lady Slaughter smiled modestly but didn’t reply.
“It would be close to impossible,” Melissa said. “But not for the best assassin in the land.”
“Thank you, dear,” Lady Slaughter said. “We’ll keep this between us, of course. Due to your father’s move to Chairman, I have taken the post of Head of the Guild. I’ll be assigning our top assassins, ergo, the three of you, to the hunt for these ‘rogue assassins’ and other conspirators. Enjoy your ‘banishment’ during your grand tour of Tavaria and be careful when you go into Cadnis and Veed—we don’t want to start a real war, after all.”
“You can count on us, Mother,” Marco said.
Lady Slaughter hugged each one of them. “I know. But, this time … you’ll be following my plan. Agreed?”
The three assassins looked at each other, then back to Lady Slaughter.
“You mean, we’ll be following your plan again, don’t you?” Melissa asked.
Lady Slaughter smiled. “I have no idea what you mean, dear.” And with that, she flicked her finger and the silence web disappeared. She nodded to them and left the room.
They were quiet for a few long seconds. “How long do you think she had this planned?” Dean asked.
“Months?” Marco suggested.
Melissa shook her head and grinned. “Knowing your mother? I’d say she had this planned, potentially, before she met your father.”
Marco grinned back. “Well, she is the best.”
Dean laughed. “And long may she reign.”
Footprints of the Hound
Violette Malan
“Which of them, do you think, is trying to kill the other?”
Dhulyn Wolfshead shrugged but didn’t look up from the tracks she was examining. “Naru’s the one who hired us, so let’s try keeping him alive.”
Parno Lionsmane nodded, returning his sword to its sheath. “So what made these prints?” He had done a fair amount of hunting when he was still part of a House, but everyone knew that Outlanders made the best trackers—he’d wager Dhulyn could track a fish in water. So he was more than a little surprised when she didn’t answer right away.
“What?” he said. “Shamans of your tribe didn’t draw these in the snow for you to study when you were a baby?”
His Partner snorted. “Unlikely. This isn’t a what, it’s a who. Rather too exactly what we would have expected to see, given the tales we’ve been spun.”
“The footprints of a gigantic hound?”
“Too gigantic, and not very hound like.”
“The daemon, do you think?”
Dhulyn straightened and shot him a look that made him laugh as she dusted her hands off on her leather trousers. “What makes you think there is one?”
Parno nodded in the direction of the elaborate tent in which their client was taking his rest after spending most of the evening making offerings to his family gods. “He thinks so.”
“He thinks losing the Sakarai market for coriander is worth risking his life.”
“If people didn’t think that way, we’d have far less work.”
“Granted.” She frowned at the marks, drawing down her blood-red brows. “In any event, these prints are false.”
He glared at her. “When were you going to tell me?”
She gave him the smile she saved only for him. “Apparently, now.”
Parno shook his head. Outlanders and their sense of humor. “False, hence who and not what. I’d wager the younger of the cousins.” He looked at her sideways. “We are sure one of them is trying to kill the other.”
“No way to be sure unless we see more of the game played out.”
“So what about these marks?”
“Remove them.” She smiled her wolf’s smile, the tiny scar pulling her upper lip back in a snarl. “Then watch to see which of them goes looking in the morning.”
* * *
Three days earlier, Parno had looked up from examining the edges of his daggers when a hush fell over the patrons of the Werquon Inn. The same thing had happened when he and his Partner, Dhulyn, had arrived the day before. Since Dhulyn went bareheaded by habit, everyone saw her Mercenary Badge right away, whereupon the talk, gambling, and grumbling had resumed. A few of the patrons had nodded at them, and one or two even offered them drinks. Since Dhulyn was Senior Brother, Parno left it up to her to refuse the offers. Somehow people, even here in the most southerly mountain crossroads of Berdana, were more likely to take the Wolfshead seriously and not persist in forcing their hospitality on her.
Strictly speaking, the Werquon Inn wasn’t an inn at all. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t even a building. True, it was anchored at one end by the remains of a stone wall and a vast fireplace—apparently used for both cooking and heat—but the walls and ceiling were a combination of thin leathers, heavy canvas, and swathes of woolen fabric. Its “rooms” were made up of similar materials, either attached to the main structure or detached, depending on how much the traveller wanted to pay. It had taken Parno the better part of the previous afternoon to feel warm enough to shed his fur-lined cloak. Meanwhile Dhulyn had sat reading her book of poetry, bare-headed and bare-armed, with no sign of discomfort. An Outlander from the frozen plains well to the south, she was apt to find the chill of spring in the foothills of the Syrena Niweff Mountains refreshing.
“Your pardon, you are Mercenaries, of the Brotherhood?” The speaker was the older of two well-dressed men, obviously both Berdanans from their dark coloring and formal headscarves.
Parno gestured at the red and dark yellow tattoo reaching from his temples to above his ears. “As you can see from our badges.” Dhulyn did not look up from her book. “I am Parno Lionsmane, called the Chanter, I fight with my Partner, Dhulyn Wolfshead.”
“Called the Scholar,” she said, sitting up as she closed her book on a finger.
“It seems such a stroke of luck,” the younger of the two men said. “To find Mercenaries, just now, when we are in need of guides to take us through the Guadil Pass.” A frown ghosted its way across the older man’s face, and Parno thought he knew why. Letting people know how badly you wanted their service wasn’t the best way to get it at a good price.
“I am Naru al Difor, a spice merchant of Suwala, and this is the son of my mother’s brother, Simka al Difor,” the older man said, indicating in the Berdanan way both
the family and business relationship. “I must be at the trade fair in Kadib by the fourth day after the full moon.”
“Eleven days from now, in other words,” the cousin chimed in. Dhulyn smiled her wolf’s smile and the young man took a step back, his enthusiasm suddenly dimmed. “The Guadil Pass is the only route that will get us there in time. When we saw you …”
“It’s not our usual practice to turn down work.” Dhulyn produced a slim-bladed knife out of nowhere and used it to mark her place in her book. “But do you really need Mercenary Brothers to guide you? There’s the road, right there, you can’t get lost, and you have armed people with you.” She gestured with her book at two men standing not far off.
The merchants exchanged glances before the older one leaned in. “We can afford the Brotherhood,” he said. “And it’s not to guide, but to guard.” He gestured at the bench on the room-side of the table and, when neither Mercenary objected, sat down.
Dhulyn waited in silence. She could outwait any townman, that went without saying. The two cousins looked at Parno, instinct telling them he was the more civilized of the two Brothers, but Parno merely smiled and recited the steps of the Turtle Shora to himself.
“It’s because of the curse,” the younger one, Simka, finally blurted.
Dhulyn lifted one blood-red eyebrow and looked at her Partner. Parno looked back, careful to let his face show only the mildest of polite interest.
“If we have to deal with Mages, I’m not sure you could afford to pay us,” Dhulyn said.
This time it was Naru al Difor who answered, shaking his head. “It’s a family curse,” he said. “Generations old. No one knows how it started—”
“Or if it’s even real,” said Simka. His eyes flicked for the merest of moments to his older cousin.
“In any case,” Naru reasserted himself with a pointed look at Simka, “I have no choice. I must be in Kadib in eleven days and only the pass will get me there in time.”
“What form does the curse take?” Parno asked. “We’re Mercenary Brothers, not Healers, or even Menders.”
“No, no, it’s bodyguards I need,” the merchant said. “Stories of the curse have been handed down in our family for generations …” he hesitated, clearly unsure how to go on.
“We’re from this area originally,” Simka said. “Hill people, but traders even then. The pass is vital to trade in these parts, as you might well imagine—we had to use it. But then the daemon came, in the form of a huge sand-wolf, attacking always the most senior family member present in the caravan.” He exchanged a look with his cousin. “It’s said they tried sending only employees, but business suffered. Finally, our great great-grandmother moved the whole family to the river valley, and then the sea coast, to escape the curse. It’s said she had only the one child, and the family would have died out if she hadn’t moved.”
“Can it be killed, this daemon? Always supposing it still lives.” Trust Dhulyn to ask the practical questions.
“The stories say it can,” Naru said. “But that eventually another comes—or the same one returns from the dead. I cannot risk it. Since our grandmother’s day, we travel always around, by land or sea. But this time I cannot. Not and meet my commitments honorably.”
“And you are not concerned about the daemon?” Parno asked Simka.
It was as clear as though he’d written it down that the younger man didn’t believe in it. “I’m not the heir,” is what he said aloud.
But you’d like to be, Parno thought. Daemon curse or no daemon curse.
* * *
It had taken the better part of three days, the road climbing steadily, for the caravan to reach the Guadil Pass. Parno could see that most of the other travellers, and even some of the ponies, found the air at these heights thinner than was comfortable. As the Brotherhood had a Shora for this—not that they shared all their Schooling with others—he and Dhulyn had no trouble.
“We’ll have to move more slowly,” he told her, “if we don’t want people becoming ill. We can make up time on the downslope.”
But though she nodded her agreement, from the look on Dhulyn’s face, their clients’ shortness of breath was not what occupied her attention. She tilted her chin at the two merchants standing almost a full span beyond their packed and folded tents. “Tell me, what do you see?”
“Considering that’s just about where we saw the tracks last night, I see one man trying to frighten the other. And unless you noticed whose idea it was to walk that way, we still don’t know which is which.”
“The younger cousin went into the elder’s tent, but they came out together.” Dhulyn frowned, drawing air in through her nose. “But there is more. The old servant, Bertol, has been with the family the longest, and his father before him. He says the Scholars have records of the family’s original holdings, just on the other side of the Pass, which was, in fact, under their control. So we know it must have been something drastic, to make them give up such a trade advantage. The family was indeed moved after several killings by large, wolf-like animals, possibly a daemon. So at the least we know the tale is no recent invention.”
“I’ll wager you my second-best dagger young Simka sneaks out of his tent to make more footprints tonight,” Parno said.
“Following the failure of last night’s display, the guilty party may rethink his strategy. We may see prints, or something different, or nothing at all.”
“So is it a wager then?”
As the night passed with no incidents, Parno could consider himself lucky she hadn’t taken him up on his wager. The merchants’ people were breakfasted, packed, and ready to be on the road when the sun had risen only a fingers-width. After silent consultation with her Partner, Dhulyn nudged her horse into step with Simka’s. She was now close enough to hear the laboring of his breath as his lungs tried to deal with the thin air of the Pass.
“Long, slow breaths,” she told him. “Take in as much air as you can with each one.”
“You’ve encountered these conditions before?” The man took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“We’re Schooled in every type of condition.” Would he notice she hadn’t answered the question? “I would ask a favor of you.”
“Anything.”
Dhulyn was familiar with the gleam in Simka’s eye. Many men—and women—were attracted to Mercenary Brothers, of both sexes. It was partly the thrill of being with someone who had killed, and partly the knowledge that this bedmate would not be staying to complicate their lives. There were others who found Dhulyn’s Outlander coloring exotic, since her pale skin, hair the color of old blood, and gray eyes were rare among civilized people.
She was experienced enough in flirting, however, to know that Simka merely attempted to distract her. She held his eye, her face impassive, until he looked away.
“Refrain from making any more tracks to unnerve your cousin.”
“You saw them? It was you who removed them?”
Really, townmen were too easy to trap. His blink and startled look alone were all the proof of guilt she needed. “It’s our business to see them,” she said. “Just as it’s our business to keep your cousin safe and healthy. This altitude is hard enough on him, without his being frightened.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” The young man frowned, a furrow appearing between his brows. “It was meant as a joke. Naru’s so serious all the time.”
“Remember, if some joke of yours kills him, it will be part of my job to ensure you will never find anything funny again.” Without giving him a chance to respond, Dhulyn nodded and let her horse fall back until she was riding next to Parno. “He’s the one planting the tracks all right.”
“Demons and perverts,” Parno swore under his breath. “How did you find out?”
Dhulyn related the conversation. “He’ll have to be a better actor if he plans to make a living as a trader,” she concluded.
“It’s clear he plans to make a living by taking his cousin’s.”
&nbs
p; * * *
Dhulyn rolled to her feet, sword in hand, before the whistle faded away. She waited, and sure enough another whistle signaled which direction she should go. That it hadn’t come immediately told her there was no urgency. As she went, she noted that both Naru and Simka’s tents were open, and she moved faster. Sun and Moon strike them blind, she and her Partner were fools. They should have stood guard inside the man’s tent, instead of limiting themselves to a perimeter watch.
She found Parno several spans up the hillside, where the waxing moon gave light to a small clearing among the pines. He stood over a body. It was hard to see color in the moonlight, but Dhulyn thought from the clothing that this was the old servant Bertol, who had spoken with her about the al Difor family, not their client. Her breath came more easily, but she was still angry.
“Have you moved the body?”
“Am I an idiot?” Parno looked around. “Step around that way, there’s a lot of blood here.”
“That is not what killed him, however. Look here, the man fell backward onto this rock.” She reached her fingers carefully around the slack head. “Feel his skull, here.”
Parno did as she asked and then sat back on his heels. “He was fighting something off. There’s his staff over there, where it fell from his hand.”
Dhulyn picked it up, shaking her head. “Look there, on his forearm, the blood and the bite marks. Evidently an animal. What’s not evident is who attacked whom. The end of the staff has a small amount of hair on it, as if he managed to strike his opponent. It could be a case of defense on both sides. Anything running off as you came?”
“Not a thing.” Parno stepped back, frowning. “From the other side of the camp I thought I saw movement. By the time I reached here—” He gestured at the ground, his voice tight. “This is more than footprints. Do we conclude the cousin also did this? Killed an old family retainer and made it look like an animal attack?”
Guilds & Glaives Page 11
