Nearly six months ago, when he was here the first time on a reconnaissance mission, it’d struck him as strange that the new guildmaster for Fallen Ward would be such a tightly guarded secret. But now it was even stranger. What sort of leader could be so bad that they would sacrifice the security of the city in order to keep it hidden? If the guildmaster was that incompetent then wouldn’t it be better to get rid of tradition and fire the man?
Yes this was all very, very strange.
It took considerable patience and timing on his part, but eventually Rune found a chink in the defenses, and he was able to find a perch near the compound that would let him sit unobserved. It was nothing glamorous. Just a simple nook in between a chimney and a third floor balcony edge. But it kept him out of line of sight from the street, it gave him a comfortable place to sit, and if by any chance it rained, it would provide him with decent shelter. Really, he had done more with less in the past.
Settling in comfortably, he pulled the small spyglass out of his pocket, and started observing.
He sat like that for nearly two days, only leaving once in the dead of night in order to refill his flask of water and answer the necessities of nature. After two long days of sitting in the same spot, he was able to see the pattern of the patrols, and gain an idea of how to slip through them. They had covered all angles of the compound well, but like everyone else in the world, they had this inherent weakness: they never looked up. Rune had taken advantage of this his entire life. Unless some sound or flash of movement caught their attention, most people did not look up as a rule. One of the easiest ways to infiltrate an area was to simply go by rooftop. One of the first things he had tried when testing his boundaries with Deepwoods was to see if he could escape by rooftop. Of course, Fei had quickly shot down this idea as he too was a rooftop lurker. But he was definitely in the minority. Rune had never encountered that problem before. And it was not likely he would do so again.
The guards at this compound especially never seemed to be interested in looking up. Which was all for the better, as it made this job easier for him. With an entrance and exit strategy more or less mapped in his head, the only problem that Rune still faced was that he had no idea who the guildmaster was, or where he would be located in the compound. In the two days of watching the area, not once had he seen anyone that could be the guildmaster. There was only one solution to this problem. He would have to infiltrate the compound and then find a place where he could lurk inside until he could figure out who the guildmaster was. It would mean spending a great deal of time in their attic crawlspace. But he did not see any other way around it.
Rune had this bad feeling that he was going to be spending at least two or three days in that compound. And here he had hoped that he would be able to leave for home by now. Ah well. He was fairly certain that Siobhan and Denney liked him most of the time. They’d only kill him a little.
He hesitated a split second, looking into his food pouch. He had little more than a sliver of bread in there, although his flask of water was full. Should he stop, go get more supplies, before sneaking in? No, better to go in as light as possible. He’d steal something from the kitchens in there if he stayed more than a day.
Seeing no other option, he dropped from his rooftop perch to the outer wall of the compound and then quickly over the side. Slipping in between the patrols, he was able to gain the corner of the main building without being spotted. He climbed onto the roof with nothing more than a single heave of the shoulders, and then moved as far into the interior of the roof as he could. From here, only someone else on a second or third story would be able to see him. It would be impossible from the ground.
It took some hunting, but Rune eventually found an access point through a rarely used attic window. Slipping inside, he was careful to latch it shut behind him before moving on. Well, he was finally inside.
Now the real work began.
It took Rune about two hours in the attic to realize that the situation in the city was nothing compared to what the compound was like. No one seemed to realize what anyone else should be doing. And even in here most did not know who their new guildmaster was. Or at least Rune assumed that because different people would refer to the guildmaster by different genders. Sometimes they referred to the guildmaster as him or her, sometimes it was a young person, sometimes it was someone in their middle years, sometimes it was a child. No one really seemed to know.
Needless to say, that was very frustrating to the assassin eavesdropping in the attics.
Rune eventually tumbled onto the fact that very elaborate food trays were being sent to an inner room in the main building. From the way that the kitchen staff talked, this was meant for the guildmaster. As that seemed the easiest method of tracking, he simply followed where the food tray was going. No doubt other people had thought of the same method, as there were multiple checkpoints in the hallways, and the inner rooms were almost like a distinct building in and of itself. It would be hard to approach without someone recognizing an intruder was there. Even Rune, in his crawlspace, could not get any closer than the hallway leading into the inner room. The attic space and the roof were separated from the main building by a good four feet.
Well, this was a fine pickle. Rune had half-assumed that he could approach in the dead of night without triggering any alarms simply by using the crawlspaces. But his approach to this area was going to be much harder than that. It was almost like this space used to be an inner courtyard or an interior garden. There was no sense of it being intended to hold a house. The little building inside the space was little better than four rooms large, and while it looked very elaborate, it also looked relatively new compared to the rest of the building. Rune could not shake off the feeling that this place was built for a single purpose—to house and hide the new guildmaster.
Lining up his eye with a small crack in the boards, Rune watched the tray go inside and then after a significant amount of time had passed, the tray came back out again. Only half of the food had been eaten. Either the guildmaster had the appetite of a child, or he was spoiled enough that he did not feel like finishing the food. For all he knew it could be both.
Seriously, this lack of information even after looking in the compound for a full day was driving him crazy.
But at least he now knew where the guildmaster was. And that was a better situation than where he’d started out this morning. Carefully, he eased his way toward the right, doing a perimeter around the house. Rune was trying to find some way to connect to the little house without making his approach obvious. But whoever had built this area had done well in making sure that sneaking was difficult, if not downright impossible. The way that the guards had been positioned took advantage of the area. There was a guard at each corner and each door, all of them facing out towards the main building. Even in the dead of night, Rune would find it hard to go from rooftop to rooftop without catching someone’s attention. It was late in the afternoon now, and while there was not a great deal of natural light that came into this area, someone had lit torches all the way around. There were also lanterns hanging from each corner of the roof. It was as bright as it would’ve been in midmorning.
He didn’t see any other way around this. Rune would have to defeat all six men so quickly, and so quietly, that no alarm could be raised. Judging by the way that the men moved, they were not going to be easy opponents, so Rune did not believe that taking them down silently would be possible. The idea that he had come this far and had come so close without being able to realize his goal made him unbelievably frustrated. Especially since he knew without a doubt that as soon as he returned home he would be in serious trouble. Rune was of the opinion that if you were going to be in trouble for it, you might as well make it worth it. And since that was the case, there was no way that he could return home without having finished this.
Rune’s lips crawled back in a feral smile. A frustrated assassin was a very dangerous creature. The idiots below were about to realize this.
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Contrary to popular belief, the best time to attack the night patrol was not at midnight. People were still more or less awake at that point. Rune had discovered early on that the stillest part of the night was actually about two o’clock in the morning. Even the best guards became sluggish at that point, their eyelids heavy, and while they would still be standing on their feet and moving, they would not be as alert as they needed to be. Rune would wait for that moment and see if any openings appeared. If they did not, he would retreat a little and rethink his strategy.
Come to think of it, it might be a better idea to attack early in the morning anyway. Rune would need to quickly leave the city once he had done the deed, and it would be hard to make a clean escape until the sun was high enough in the sky to use the paths. Perhaps he should aim for four o’clock in the morning. Sunrise was only an hour and a half later, after all. Rune nodded to himself, satisfied with this new plan. That was what he’d do.
Since it was barely sunset, and he had many hours to kill before he needed to move, Rune decided it was a good chance to catch up on some sleep. After all, he was in as secure of a location as possible while in the middle of enemy territory. Pillowing his head on his arm, he settled in.
Siobhan had once accused him of being part cat because he was able to sleep anywhere. Rune could not deny that there was some truth to what she said. Cats, after all, became even more alert when they were asleep. Rune fancied that he did the same thing. So even though he slept, he still came alert when the guards were changed out below, and he still heard the clock tower in the city toll out the midnight hour. Rune slept for another three hours before deciding that he had had enough rest. Stretching as much as he could within the narrow space, he got the blood to flowing again. Awake and ready to move, he went for the side window that he had discovered in his earlier sweep of the place, and carefully eased his way out onto the roof. Rune didn’t make a sound, and he was careful to keep his profile low so that he didn’t make a silhouette against the night sky. Imitating a spider, he climbed his way around until he could just see over the edge of the roof and into the inner courtyard below.
As expected, the guards were not as alert as the previous ones had been. They were still moving, and it was obvious that they were still trying to do their duties, but there was a great deal of yawning, and sometimes they would lean their weapons against the wall so that they could rub their eyes and slap at their face. It was obvious that they were struggling to stay awake and alert. Perfect.
All Rune had to do was wait for one of them to turn to lean his weapon against the wall with his back facing the wrong direction, and take advantage of it. As soon as one of them did this, he shifted quickly to that area of the roof and then leapt the four foot distance. He was not, of course, completely silent when he landed. His boots made a slight scraping noise against the tiles of the roof. But Rune was no amateur. As soon as he had gained the roof he went completely flat so that no one from the ground would be able to see him.
“Did you hear something?”
“Like what?”
“Like some sort of scraping sound.”
“I’ve been hearing that for the past hour every time someone puts a weapon down.”
“This sounded different.”
“Well, do you see anything?”
The first guard mumbled something that sounded like ‘must be my imagination’ and went back to slapping his face. Rune gave a minute shake of the head. The man should have listened to his instincts.
Satisfied that no one below suspected anything, Rune went for the window that he had been eyeballing since sunset. It was latched, but he had a folding knife in his pocket that solved that problem. The window was small and round, and was definitely meant to be only decorative instead of functional. It was something of a squeeze for Rune to get through. In fact, he had to take his belt pouch off first in order to manage it. Once he was through, he let out a silent huff of relief and put the pouch back on.
Finally, he was inside.
Trying to find the access panel in pitch darkness was always something of a challenge. But after so many years of doing this, Rune had developed very sensitive fingertips. It took a little fumbling, and patience, but eventually he found that niche in the wooden boards that meant he had found the panel. Lifting it up a bare inch, he strained his ears and listened hard. When he did not hear any sounds except for heavy breathing, he lifted the panel completely aside and dropped through to the floor below.
Rune’s first impression was that half of the loot that had been stolen from the other cities was all jammed inside of this room. There seemed to be gold everywhere. Golden framed art on the walls, gold statues on every possible surface, and even the curtains hanging around the bed looked to be gold cloth. There was a single lantern sitting on a table that was half shuttered, letting only a modicum of light out, and even then the whole room seemed to glow. The sight of the room made him sick to his stomach. Rune felt hot waves of anger course through him.
Yes, this man or woman, this greedy guildmaster needed to die. Right now. Rune was quite happy to make the funeral arrangements.
On silent feet, he moved towards the bed, his ears tracking the movements of guards still patrolling around the house. He had to shift one of the curtains aside in order to see his soon to be victim. The first look inside of the bed stopped him in his tracks.
It was a child.
Rune was no authority on children, but this boy seemed to be about nine or ten years old. His fair hair was tousled and sticking up in interesting directions, limbs sprawled like a puppet with all of its pins pulled from its joints. He was sound asleep, with no hint that there was a dangerous assassin looming next to his bedside.
For months now, everyone had offered different theories on what the guildmaster for Fallen Ward was like. Some had offered the opinion that they might be young. But never once had Rune heard the theory of the guildmaster being a child.
Rune really, really had no idea what to do now. Out of all the different plans he had made, out of the different scenarios that he had entertained, this had not been one of them. He drew a line at killing children, enemy or not. But at the same time, it didn’t mean that he could excuse his behavior just because this guildmaster was still a child. It did not change the fact that his decisions were destroying the world. Rune could not leave him here and go back to Goldschmidt.
In the stillness of the opulent room, Rune debated on what to do. Killing the kid was out. Leaving him in place without doing anything was simply not an option. But what did that leave him? Rune highly doubted that threatening the kid would work. He was too young to really understand the full consequences of the choices and decisions that he had been making. Simply shaking his fist at him and saying be good would not have much impact.
In that moment, Rune missed Siobhan keenly. If there was anyone that would know what to do in this confusing situation, it would be her. No matter how strange things became, Siobhan had a moral compass that always knew which direction to go in. He relied on it more often than he would admit. This was one of those moments where he direly needed it.
For a moment, he entertained the idea of leaving here and fetching Siobhan. But no, it was dangerous enough getting in here the first time. Rune did not like the idea of doing this again. As it was, just standing here debating on the right course of action was dangerous. He had perhaps fifteen more minutes to make a decision before he needed to move.
Rune went taut as a thought occurred. Why not take the problem to Siobhan? If he didn’t know what to do, and he wanted her advice, and he wasn’t willing to leave this kid here, then why not just take him to Siobhan? It seemed the simplest solution to the problem. At least short-term.
After debating it with himself back and forth, he couldn’t find any serious drawbacks to the idea. Well, it would be a little challenging hauling a child through all the attic spaces and out of the compound without being caught, but Rune had done something similar before and knew t
hat it was not impossible. He would have to gag and tie the kid up first of course. Maybe put him in a large sack to disguise him. But he was small, and Rune didn’t think he would weigh much.
Feeling good about this new plan, he went to work. Rune went on a scavenger hunt of sorts, looking for scarves or belts or something that he could use to bind the guildmaster with. There was a closet in the back corner that was stuffed to the gills and he found everything that he needed in there.
Going back to the bed, he set to work binding the child’s legs first. He half-expected the boy to wake up during this process, but apparently he was the definition of a sound sleeper. Rune managed to get his arms and legs tied without waking him up. Then, just for safety sake, he tied a gag around his mouth as well.
That was when the child guildmaster finally woke up.
The white of his eyes were visible in the dim lighting, wide with fear. Rune did not spare him any assurances or wasted breath speaking. He knocked the kid out with a sharp pinch to his neck. The kid sagged within seconds, becoming dead weight. Rune hefted him into a drawstring bag, tied it shut, and then slung him over his shoulder.
Now came the hard part.
The same method that had gotten him into the building would not get him back out again. Rune could hardly leap four feet across to another roof, carrying 70 pounds, without drawing attention to himself. Well, he could throw the kid first, then jump, but he had this vague notion that children were fragile things and throwing someone who was unconscious might be frowned on. So that option was out.
He’d have to create his own opening.
Rune took preparations first by going back up the way he’d come in, dragging his victim with him, and stuffing him through the decorative window that let out over the roof. With his sack resting on the tiles, Rune carefully closed the window behind him and looked for the pair of guards that were the least alert.
Fallen Ward (Deepwoods Saga Book 3) Page 11
