“Sir, I really must insist—” The butler’s hand shifted toward the back of his jacket.
A dagger appeared at Jamesly’s throat. Sereth had drawn it so fast that the steel seemed to have materialized in his hand. The assassin scraped the edge of the blade along Jamesly’s neck until it rested under his jaw.
Sereth’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a sneer. “Go ahead. Insist.”
“Sereth, please!” Throwing caution to the wind, Kiesha stepped forward, her hands open and unthreatening. “Just relax. I’ll get Hensen for you, but you barging in here with steel in your hand isn’t going to get you what you want.”
“Oh? And how do you know that?” Without moving his blade from Jamesly’s throat, he reached around and confiscated the dagger sheathed beneath the butler’s jacket. Flipping it in his hand, he aimed it at Kiesha. “Maybe I don’t want what you think I want.”
Kiesha froze. She had little doubt that he could bury the blade in her throat with a flick of his wrist. Was he really so desperate that he would kill her? He had to know what would happen to his wife if he did. She took a deep breath and girded her nerve.
“Killing Master Hensen’s butler, or even me for that matter, is not going to get you Jinny back, Sereth! If you want to talk to Hensen, you’re going to have to give up your weapons. He won’t speak to you if you’re armed.”
“Wanna bet on that?”
“I don’t—”
Sereth moved.
Before Kiesha could gasp, he snatched her wrist and jerked her into a hard embrace, a blade resting against her neck. His other dagger stood out from Jamesly’s right shoulder, buried hilt-deep. The butler staggered back with a grunt.
“I think he’ll talk to me now.”
“Sereth!” She grasped his wrist with her free hand, but couldn’t pull the knife from her throat. Cold steel scored her flesh when she swallowed. Her other hand throbbed, clutched so tightly in his grasp that she thought her bones might snap.
Jamesly drew a second dagger from beneath his coat. He ignored the blade in his shoulder, though his right arm hung limp. “Let her go!”
“Go piss up a rope, Jamesly.” Sereth’s grip and stance remained firm. “One step and I cut her throat, then I draw this pig sticker at my hip and put it in your eye.”
“Jamesly, don’t!” Kiesha swallowed her fear. She had never thought that Sereth would go this far to get Jinny back. Even though he hadn’t slit Jamesly’s throat when he easily could have, he’d already crossed the line. He was desperate enough to risk his life, and probably wouldn’t balk at taking hers. But she wasn’t about to give up yet. “Just pull the bell rope for Hensen, and—”
“I give the orders here, Kiesha, not you.” Sereth’s grip on her wrist tightened even more, pain lancing up her arm as the bones ground together. “Touch a rope, Jamesly, and it’ll be the last thing you ever touch. Drop the blade and get face down on the floor. Now!”
“Do it!” Kiesha ordered. She didn’t want Jamesly to die on her behalf.
“I can’t lay flat with your knife in my shoulder,” Jamesly complained.
“Pull it out then, but drop the other first.”
Steel thumped to the carpet. Jamesly hissed in pain as he pulled the knife from his shoulder and dropped the blade. A dark red stain began to soak through his immaculate white jacket. Ripping a pocket off his shirt, he pressed it into the wound to staunch the bleeding.
“On the floor!”
Jamesly knelt, then lay flat.
“Good. Now, hands behind your back.”
Sereth snaked a leg around Kiesha’s and flipped her down onto the floor next to the hapless butler, twisting her arm and pinning her wrist between her shoulder blades with his knee. She could barely breathe, and thought her shoulder might pop out of the socket. A bloody dagger lay only inches from her face, but she knew she’d die if she tried to reach it. Jamesly grunted, and she heard cloth ripping, but couldn’t turn her head to see. Finally, the pressure on her back eased, and Sereth jerked her to her feet, his knife back at her throat. Jamesly lay with his forearms tied together behind his back, a jacket sleeve serving as a gag.
“Sereth, please.” Kiesha gasped in pain as he pulled her arm back behind her, locked in his iron grip. She grasped his other wrist with her free hand, trying to keep the knife from her neck, but she couldn’t budge him. Gods, he’s strong! “This isn’t the way!”
“What is the way, then, Kiesha? I’ve tried talking. I’ve tried begging!” He frogmarched her to the stairs. “Now I’m going to try a simple trade: you for my wife. Either I get Jinny tonight, or you die, and I see how many pieces of your boss I have to cut off before he sees things my way. Now, where is he?”
“He’s in bed.” Alone, I hope. The hostess from The Overlook had attended a small dinner party that evening. Kiesha didn’t know if she had stayed. “Third floor, to the left.”
“Let’s go wake him.” He pushed her up the stairs without releasing his hold. She had to climb or fall, so she climbed. “Feel free to scream…once.”
“I won’t scream, Sereth, but I tell you, this won’t work! Hensen won’t trade your wife for me.”
“Then your future’s not looking very bright, is it? Move!”
They reached the third floor without incident or any more conversation. Kiesha, however, was anything but idle in thought. Sereth was a professional killer, with the strength and skill of a lifetime of training. If she provoked him, he’d slash her throat without a second thought. To survive this, she had to distract him and break free, divest him of the knife, or incapacitate him…before he could cut her throat.
None of those seemed likely to succeed.
At the third floor, Sereth pushed her toward the double doors at the end of the hall. Twisting Kiesha to one side, he smashed the latch with his boot heel. As splinters flew from the dead bolt, he thrust her to the fore and strode into Hensen’s bedroom.
The woman’s scream was truly spectacular.
By the time Kiesha’s ears stopped ringing, Hensen had lifted his hysterical paramour from his lap and flung her aside. Fortunately for her, the bed was wide enough for six, and she landed in a rumple of silk sheets and pillows. Hensen rolled off the far side of the bed and leapt up with a short dueling sword in his hand. Considering his nudity and state of arousal, the blade seemed the lesser of two weapons.
“Sereth! What a surprise!”
To Kiesha’s consternation, Hensen dropped the sword onto the bed and casually tugged his robe off the wall hook. His smile looked genuine, and he seemed unperturbed to have his lovemaking interrupted by an assassin holding his assistant hostage. He turned to his lover where she cowered against the headboard, clutching the sheets to her breast.
“Relax my dear. This won’t take a moment, and then we’ll get back to where we were.” With the robe secured about his waist, he retrieved the sword and addressed the interloper. “Now, Sereth, I assume you barged in here for a reason. Did you want something specific? Did you bring my assistant along in hopes that we could have a foursome?”
“Shut your filthy mouth and bring me my wife!” Sereth pushed Kiesha forward, sidestepping to put the wall at his back.
“Your dear Jinny is no longer here, Sereth.” Hensen used the tip of his sword to clean a fingernail.
Kiesha gaped at his blithe lie, but remained perfectly still in Sereth’s grasp.
“You really should learn not to betray your intentions with impotent threats. The moment Kiesha told me you planned to tell your master of our arrangement, I had your wife moved to a new, albeit slightly less comfortable, location. I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree, my boy.”
“Then you better bring her here, or I’ll stain your pretty carpet with this whore’s blood!”
Hensen’s benign smile fell and his eyes narrowed, belying his casual tone. “Let me explain exactly what will happen if you murder my assistant, Sereth. Even if you manage to kill me, which would be truly foolish of you, since I alon
e can free your wife from her captivity, the nice men holding Jinny will receive notice. They will then open a sealed envelope that contains explicit instructions as to just how your dear wife is to be brutalized. If she survives, they’ll then sell her to a slave merchant who makes regular deliveries to the ogre tribes inhabiting the Forendell Pass region. You do know that the emperor signed a treaty with their chieftain that ensures peace between our peoples as long as a certain number of slaves are delivered every month, don’t you? It seems they use them up rather quickly.”
Kiesha marveled at the ease with which her father lied. She would have believed him herself if she didn’t know that Jinny was actually only a hundred feet from where they stood, probably fast asleep in her plush feather bed. Even Hensen’s lover’s scream wouldn’t have disturbed her, since her father had contracted a wizard to place a simple spell of silence upon the room. Jinny could no more hear noise from outside, than the neighbors could hear her cries for freedom.
“You think you can take me, old man?”
“I might surprise you.” Hensen flourished his sword with a leer toward the terrified woman in his bed. “Many are surprised at my…prowess.”
The double-entendre passed by the hapless woman without recognition. Too scared or too stupid, Kiesha wondered.
“Regardless of whether I can take you, I’m sure my house guards can.” As if on cue, the rumble of boots on the stairs reached them. “So you see, Sereth, despite the hostage you hold, you wield no real power here. I can get a new assistant in a week, a new carpet in less, and nothing you can do will save your sweet wife.”
Kiesha felt a familiar wrench of pain in her heart. Does he really care so little for my life? His own daughter?
The house guards arrived with a clatter of steel. Four wielded swords, and two raised crossbows, all of them aimed at Sereth. Kiesha felt her captor shift his stance—just the distraction she needed. She dropped her hand away from Sereth’s wrist, let her head loll forward in the semblance of a faint, and folded her knees. If he didn’t cut her throat out of hand, this might work.
Sereth staggered with her weight, and pulled the dagger slightly away from her neck.
Now!
Kiesha reached back to Sereth’s crotch, grasped the soft bulge of his testicles, and pulled down hard. At the same moment, she flung her head sharply back into the bridge of his nose.
The blade scored her neck before falling from his limp fingers to the carpet. Sereth collapsed to his knees. A wheezing moan escaped his bloody lips as he toppled over, both hands clutching his crotch. The guards charged, blades raised, but Kiesha stood her ground.
“Stop! We need him alive!” The wound on her neck stung as she probed it with her fingers. Though bloody, it was only superficial. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“She’s quite right. We do need him alive.” Hensen sheathed his sword, and reached for a dark wine bottle nestled in a silver ice bucket beside the bed. As if nothing untoward had happened, he poured fizzing pale wine into a pair of crystal flutes and handed one to the woman in his bed. She took it with a shaking hand and downed it in one gulp. As Hensen sipped the wine, he glanced over and frowned at Kiesha. “You’re bleeding on the rug, my dear.”
Kiesha stared at him for a heartbeat before recovering her composure. “Sorry, sir.” She pressed the collar of her robe to the gash as the guards disarmed the hapless assassin and lifted him to his feet. “What do you want done with Sereth?”
Hensen pursed his lips. “Disarm him and take him home. I think he’s learned his lesson.”
“Very good, sir.” Kiesha nodded to the guards, and they dragged Sereth out of the room. She paused at the door. “Anything else, sir?”
“Mmm.” Hensen downed his wine and loosened the tie to his robe, his attention returning his paramour. “Yes. Have Sereth’s wife moved in the morning. Someplace secure, but comfortable.” He shrugged out of the robe, utterly unconcerned by his daughter’s presence, and evidently undiminished in his ardor. “Now, my dear, where were we?”
Kiesha closed the mutilated door behind her and descended to her own room. I can get a new assistant in a week… Her stomach knotted with cold loathing as she slammed her bedroom door and examined her wound in the mirror. It was just a scratch. A dab of ointment and a bandage, and it would heal without a scar. The emotional wound, however, ran deeper.
Her hands shook as she opened a drawer beside her bed and withdrew a small bottle of spiced rum she kept there for nights when she couldn’t sleep. She wrenched the cork free and took a long pull of the sweet liquor. The burn dissolved the lump in her throat and justified the tears that leapt to her eyes. Breathing deep, she willed her heart to stop pounding.
“Would a simple ‘Thank you’ have been too much to ask, you bastard?”
“Insomnia, Captain Norwood?”
“What the—”
The captain of the Royal Guard reacted with a soldier’s reflexes, reaching for the sword that stood beside his bed and jerking it from its scabbard. His eyes scanned the darkness and centered upon Lad. Shrouded in shadow in the farthest corner of the captain’s bedroom, he should have been all but invisible. The faint glow of his eyes must have given him away, but that didn’t matter. He was just glad Norwood had finally come up to bed. Two hours sitting in the light evening breeze that wafted through the open window had tested Lad’s patience. Staying focused was so much harder than it used to be.
“Please, Captain. I only came to ask a few questions, as before, but if you don’t put down that sword, I may be forced to hurt you taking it away.”
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you can’t just break into my home whenever you feel like asking me questions!”
“Why not?”
The frank question seemed to take the wind out of the captain’s sails. The tip of the sword drooped, but he didn’t put it down. Frankly, Lad didn’t care if Norwood was upset. He only cared about the information he could provide.
“I’m willing to trade information with you as I have in the past, Captain. I don’t want to hurt you, but that sword in your hand only makes this conversation more dangerous. Dangerous for you, not me.”
“Cocky bastard!” Norwood propped the sword against his night table, then sat rigid on the edge of the bed.
“I never boast, Captain. Believe what I tell you, for your own good.” Lad withdrew from his pocket the glass vial that contained the black dart and tossed it onto the bed beside the captain. “My first question is: where did you come by a dart like this one?”
“I’ll have to strike a light.”
“The lamp next to you will do, but keep it low.” Lad pulled the hood of his cloak down to hide his face as Norwood struck a match and lit the lamp. The warm orange glow illuminated the captain, but didn’t penetrate the shadows.
Norwood squinted at the vial in the lamplight, and his eyebrows arched. “We found five darts like this at the site of a mass killing in a courtyard east of Fiveway Fountain.”
“Five?” Lad failed to stifle his surprise. “How—”
“My turn,” Norwood insisted as he held up the vial. “Where did you find this dart?”
“The same courtyard. Where specifically did you find them?”
“Lodged in the necks of five corpses scattered around the courtyard. Were you there?”
Lad’s mind whirled. Wiggen’s murderer had also killed five assassins during the battle. Why?
“Were you there?”
Lad focused on Norwood again, and answered slowly. “Yes, I was there.”
“Whoever fired them knew what he was doing. The poison was—”
“White scorpion venom,” Lad finished.
Silence reigned for a long moment before Norwood asked, “What the hell happened in that courtyard?”
Lad saw no reason not to give Norwood the truth. “I told you before that the factions of the Assassins Guild were fighting amongst themselves.”
“Yes.”
“They
fought it out in that courtyard. The matter has been resolved. I’m sure you’ve noticed that violence around the city has eased off.”
“I’ve noticed.” Norwood frowned and shrugged. “I guess I can’t complain when assassins kill assassins. That explains the other dart, too.”
Lad sat bolt upright. “What other dart?”
“We found the first one a couple of weeks ago, over in Westmarket. Same type of dart, same method of attack, a shot to the neck from above. Two constables found a dead woman in an alley. They thought it was just another prostitute until they tried to move the body. She had a poisoned ring on her finger, and one of them grabbed it accidentally. He died in seconds.”
Norwood’s recitation hit Lad like a thunderbolt. He pictured the ring, its grooved needle dark-stained with poison. The woman had been trying to kill him, but instead had died with a black dart in her neck. The memory ignited a startling realization. The assassin who saved my life that night also killed Wiggen. That doesn’t make sense!
After his near brush with death, Lad and Mya hypothesized that the Grandmaster sent someone to protect Lad so that he could, in turn, protect Mya until she assumed the guildmaster position. That the same protector had killed assassins during the Fiveway Fountain battle fit well into that theory. But if that was so, why was Wiggen killed? She posed no threat to either him or Mya. She was only there to protect Lissa because she wore the—
Guildmaster’s ring. Lad clenched his fist on the ring on his finger. Could the Grandmaster have ordered Wiggen’s death? Impossible! No one knew she wore the ring except me. I gave it to her to protect her. Would she still be alive if… Guilt washed over Lad like a scalding tide.
“The poison on the ring was different from that in the darts.” Norwood’s voice startled Lad out of his musing. “It was very unusual. Something from a tropical fish. We haven’t been able to trace its purchase or even find any shop that carries it.”
“A tropical fish?” Lad knew of several toxins from tropical fish. A rare toxin might help him discover who sent the woman to kill him, and might even lead to the identity of his savior, Wiggen’s killer. He wasn’t about to discount any potential lead. “Do you remember the name of it?”
Weapon of Vengeance (Weapon of Flesh Trilogy) Page 9
