by Joe Jackson
“It makes sense, though,” Kari muttered. She shrugged. “I guess we’ll get it all sorted out when we meet with Black.”
The guards at the gateway to the stable square didn’t halt them or even question them, since virtually anyone was welcome to stay the night at an inn located outside the city proper. They did, however, direct Kari and Eli to a special stable reserved for the flying mounts, to keep them separate from the horse population. Kari made sure to let the stable master know that the griffons were on loan from Earl Lajere, and he assured her that they received the Earl’s griffons fairly often and would tend to them carefully. The truth of his words was evident when he not only handled them expertly, but even called the mounts by name as he put them into neighboring stalls.
Kari and Eli hardly made it halfway to the inn before they were approached by a human flanked by two rir guards. The human was dressed in a black suit with a white, buttoned-up shirt covered partially by a vest with several gold chains draped across its front. He wore a wide-brimmed hat of a matching color, and wire-framed spectacles over a clean-shaven, angular face. Curiously, he was completely unarmed, which explained the presence of the guards: two chain-armored terra-rir males who wore tabards depicting the city’s standard: a black heart on a red field. The human’s black boots kicked up bits of mud from the earlier rains as he approached and came to a stop before them.
“You are Lady Karian Vanador?” the human asked, though he lacked the accent common to the south. His accent was closer to that of the northern heartlands around the city of Gnarr.
“Sword of the Heavens, by Zalkar’s grace,” she completed in answer.
“I am Marshal Saracht, and I am in charge of Earl Southwick’s guards and the security of the city of Barcon. Who is your companion?” he prompted. “I trust you are aware that Lord Black does not allow half-demons in his city.”
Kari gestured toward the half-corlyps. “This is Elias Sorivar, I’ve deputized him to help me with Lord Black’s request,” she answered, and noted that the marshal seemed quite surprised. “I know Lord Black normally doesn’t like half-demons in the city – your guards have tried to deny me access before because they thought I was half demon – but with the importance of my work here, I think Lord Black can make an exception.”
The human said nothing, merely casting his appraising stare over the two for a minute before he nodded toward Kari. “Well, that will be for him to decide,” the marshal said. “For the time being, I will allow Mr. Sorivar to accompany us to Lord Black’s tower.”
Eli shrugged, and rather than make any sort of fuss with a man who had little power to make a decision on the situation, Kari simply fell into step with the marshal and his guards. They passed through the double portcullis and into the city proper with no delay while being escorted by the marshal, though Kari noted there was a fairly heavy complement of guards. She assumed it was due to the season, when people making pilgrimages to the holy city would become more common again after the deep winter. Eli followed along, and Kari saw that the half-corlyps was checking the alleys and the shadows warily, the same way Aeligos would.
The trip to Black’s tower was not a long one, and Kari recalled the last time she had walked these streets. Barcon still looked much the same to her on the inside, and the feeling she’d had that it was a hungry beast waiting to devour her gradually subsided. She viewed the city’s interior in a slightly more positive light after living in DarkWind for several years. While she much preferred the city of DarkWind, she reminded herself that it, too, had a resident assassin’s guild. She had seen its darker parts, and she was well aware that it had many of the same problems that Barcon did. She trusted the Duke of Brunswick more – due in no small part to his being Jason Bosimar’s father – though the more she thought on his inability or lack of desire to root out the Blood Order, she wasn’t sure how much better than Earl Southwick he really was. Ultimately, it didn’t matter: she would never live in Barcon, and she honestly felt sorry for many of those who did, whether by choice or not.
The marshal escorted Kari and Eli into the Earl’s ebon tower, and the two guards posted outside saluted him respectfully. The inside was spacious even with its rounded architecture, and it was immediately apparent that Kaelin Black was very wealthy. The interior of the tower was white rather than black, and the walls were plastered over so the cracks and seams in the stonework were completely hidden. The ground floor was decorated heavily with expensive hand-woven rugs, tapestries, and paintings, and there were a few bookshelves with reading material for those waiting to see the Earl. The furniture was all polished mahogany, another testament to both the Earl’s wealth and his fine taste in luxuries. The marshal gestured for Kari and Eli to take seats near the fireplace to drive out the chill, and Kari stared curiously at the painting of Kaelin Black that sat on the mantle.
Something about him looked different in the painting, though Kari couldn’t quite put her finger on it. He was no more or less handsome – and he was definitely handsome, much as Kari was loathe to admit it – and even the different attire in the painting – a white tunic with black trousers – didn’t account for the difference. It was more the expression on his face: he looked somehow younger in the painting, but it wasn’t the smoothness of his features that made it appear so. All Kari could think was that there seemed to be less on his mind as he was depicted, and the ease of spirit showed through in what she would’ve almost characterized as a smile and a posture that spoke of contentment. Black had come across as obnoxious and grizzled when she’d met him, and he didn’t seem happy regardless of the wealth or power he possessed. Kari wondered what had changed.
The room was quiet once Marshal Saracht disappeared up the staircase that wound up the outer wall, and Kari turned to Eli. “Did you and your friends ever do any work down here in Barcon?” she asked.
“You mean did we work for or with Kaelin Black at any point?” he returned, and then shook his head. “No. We passed through the city a time or two - which was a feat, given they don't like my kind - but once we started working for your Order full-time, like I said, we generally avoided getting wrapped up in politics. Bosimar was very careful to keep us out of politics: we had enough issues to deal with without having this baron or that earl decide they either wanted to conscript us or ban us from their cities.”
“So if you had to guess, any idea why the assassin might be drawing me down here?” she asked, and she gave Eli a couple of minutes to think on it. Eli may not have been an assassin, but he worked within a guild, which meant he might have some insight into the why of a kill’s location. She let turned her attention toward some of the other artwork while she awaited his response. A couple of carved ivory pieces caught her eye: they were unlike anything she’d seen before, and were inscribed with a symbolic writing unfamiliar to her. She wondered if they were from either the wolf-like luranar or the kwarrasti of Terrassia’s southeastern badlands. She was pretty sure they weren’t czarikk, so barring tribal peoples on some of the other continents, she couldn’t think of who else might’ve made them.
“Hard to say,” Eli said at last, drawing Kari’s gaze back to him. “I wasn’t an assassin, just an enforcer, which means I was more or less just a guard and a thug. So I wasn’t privy to most of what really went on in the Clans. I have to wonder if the Black Dragon Society might be working with or through this succubus of yours to strike a blow at Black. Maybe they’re hoping to manipulate you into killing Black so that his blood is on the Order and not on them, and then any claim to the Earl’s position will have more validity.”
“I hate subtle demons,” Kari muttered, and Eli laughed. “I prefer the ones that just come at you screaming and spitting and trying to tear you limb from limb.”
“Maybe the last two hundred years have taught them that they need a better strategy to kill someone like you,” he quipped, and Kari chuckled.
They turned their heads back toward the stairs and the quiet bootsteps of the marshal that preceded his re
turn. As the human appeared on the steps, he gestured for the guests to follow him, and Kari and Eli rose and ascended in his wake. The steps were steep and narrow, making them somewhat difficult to ascend, but they allowed for more room at each of the tower’s levels. The second and third floors were closed off with polished, carved wooden doors, and when they arrived at the tower’s fourth floor, Marshal Saracht knocked twice before opening the door. He gestured the guests into the room, and closed the door behind them without entering.
If the ground floor suggested Kaelin Black was wealthy, his office on the tower’s top floor screamed it. From the very moment Kari’s feet touched upon the soft fur of the carpet and her eyes took in its color and pattern that suggested both wolf and bear, her senses reeled at the sheer amount of wealth the room boasted. Where the ground floor was filled with treasured curiosities and works of art, Black’s office was a stockpile of artifacts and priceless antiquities. On every painstakingly carved or crafted piece of furniture sat relics from the farthest reaches of the world and its past, and over the upper floor’s fireplace was a painting of Garra Ktarra so lifelike that Kari had to wonder if it was from the second century.
Sitting at the far end of the room was a brooding creature unable to appreciate the beauty or the vastness of the wealth before it. He sat behind a sprawling desk, with one leg crossed atop the other, a cigar perched carefully in one hand while he looked out the massive window. Kari came to a stop before the desk and awaited Black’s attention and his permission to sit, and she saw a stark contrast to the obnoxious half-demon who had come to DarkWind seeking aid. He looked now like a man who truly needed it, as though the events of the past few weeks had piled an incalculable sense of helplessness upon him and he was unable to mask it behind his typical bravado. A short sigh escaped him before he took a puff from his cigar, blew the smoke considerately away from his guests, and placed it aside so he could rise to his feet.
He fixed Kari with one of the coldest stares she could ever remember encountering, and the look he gave Eli when his gaze swept over the half-corlyps was a hair shy of homicidal. “What do you want?” he grumbled at the demonhunter.
“I’m here, just as you requested,” Kari said after a moment of surprise. She gestured toward Eli and added, “I’ve brought Eli along to…”
“As I requested?” Lord Black interrupted. “What game do you play, Vanador? I do not make a habit of inviting demonhunters to my city.”
Kari was definitely caught off-guard, and she put her hands on her hips to be near the hilts of her scimitars if it turned out Aeligos was more correct than she thought. She knew their previous encounter hadn’t ended warmly, but there was something in Black’s expression that said he wasn’t even going to wait to spring the trap Aeligos had suspected. The massive serilian-rir’s eyes swung to Eli every now and then as if he could barely contain the desire to throw the half-corlyps out of his city quite literally. Kaelin Black was about the same size as Serenjols, if a bit less muscular, but there was none of the protectiveness or gentle nature that marked Kari’s brother-in-law in the noble. At the same time, however, that anger and hatred that seemed to boil just below the surface was carefully held in check, and he hardly moved but to blink as the long, silent moments accrued.
Kari started to speak, stopped herself, and tried to make sure she took a more tactful approach in light of the danger that she could practically feel playing across her skin. “Lord Black, you came to the campus of my Order just over two weeks ago, asking for our aid with an assassin…,” she started, but she trailed off when he cocked his head and fixed her with a questioning gaze.
“I came to the Order?” he asked venomously. “You must be joking. I’d sooner ask the Black Dragon Society for help.” He held Kari’s gaze for several long, silent moments, and his expression practically dared her to speak. He straightened out then, paced around his desk to the door, and opened it. “Everett! Get up here.”
The marshal’s hastened, booted footsteps shortly preceded his appearance, and Black closed the door behind the marshal as he joined the gathering. Kaelin Black returned to his position behind the desk and gestured toward Kari. “This demonhunter says I went to DarkWind a couple of weeks ago to ask for her Order’s help with an assassin,” he said evenly.
Marshal Saracht beheld Kari curiously, but after a moment he met his lord’s stare and nodded his head. “BlackWing,” he said simply.
“You think he could pull that off?” Black returned. “Things are worse than I’d thought.”
“What do you mean?” Kari interjected, though she suspected she already knew.
The marshal turned to her. “Lord Black didn’t go to DarkWind to ask for help; you must have met BlackWing posing as my lord,” he explained. When he finished, he glanced to Kaelin Black, who nodded ever so slightly. The marshal continued, “We do indeed have a problem with an assassin in the city, but we didn’t send for help. We believed it was some plot by the Black Dragon Society, but if BlackWing went to you for help, then perhaps they are having issues with this same killer. What details did BlackWing provide when you met with him?”
“So you really aren’t BlackWing?” Kari asked the Earl. Eli let forth a small sound, and Kari realized that was probably the worst thing she could’ve said at that moment.
The lord of the city looked up and away, blowing out an exasperated sigh before he fixed that cold gaze upon her again. “And you people wonder why I hate dealing with you,” he spat. “Of course I’m not BlackWing. He’s been trying to take over my city with that damned Black Dragon Society of his for decades. Your Order conveniently does nothing to help with it, but now look: he comes to you, posing as me, and convinces you to stick your noses where they don’t belong effortlessly.”
“Would you rather I leave?” Kari asked evenly, growing irritated. “I came here to protect the people of your city, not to listen to you complain about my Order. And I assure you, he didn’t convince me to come here ‘effortlessly.’”
The anger cracked finally, and Kari almost breathed a sigh of relief when the massive serilian-rir half-smiled and let out a brief chuckle. “You’ve got spirit in you,” he said.
“You’ve no idea,” Eli muttered, but he went silent again when Black glared at him.
The Earl sat down at last, and he gestured for his two ‘guests’ to do the same. The marshal moved around to stand beside Black’s chair, and they both waited for Kari to answer the marshal’s question. Black picked up his cigar and put it back between his teeth, and Kari stared at him, wondering how he and BlackWing could be nearly identical if they weren’t the same person. He seemed quite certain and genuine about the issues he was having with BlackWing, but Kari wasn’t so naïve as to think it couldn’t just be an elaborate deception. She’d seen Aeligos clean out his siblings while playing poker enough times to know that a good actor could sell nearly any performance.
“Tell me something first,” Kari ventured after some thought. “Who is BlackWing?”
The marshal began to speak but the Earl stopped him with a raised hand. Kaelin Black took a puff from his cigar, sat back, crossed one leg over the other, and then blew the smoke up toward the ceiling, away from his guests. “Quite frankly, Lady Vanador, I’ve long suspected he may be exactly what the name of the society he took over would suggest: a black dragon posing as a half-demon. Or rather, posing as me.”
“A black dragon?” Kari repeated with some surprise. “But you don’t really know anything about him other than his assumed name?”
“That is correct,” the Earl returned. “He’s like a ghost, appearing and disappearing at will. He’ll be active for months but then disappear, sometimes for days, other times for a year or more. But the effects of his work tend to ripple through my city long after he fades back into the darkness, and every time he makes an appearance, his damnable Black Dragon Society becomes so much more of an issue. This habit of periods of activity followed by long absences is why I’ve come to suspect he may be a dra
gon: it would fit with what little I know about them. We’ve been trying to capture him for decades but have had no success whatsoever. I’ve long suspected that BlackWing may be only one guise, and that he assumes several different forms that make finding him nearly impossible.”
“And he’s been fighting against you for how long?” she pushed.
Black gave that some thought, and Kari’s gaze followed his when he spared the marshal a short glance. Marshal Saracht appeared to be in his forties at the most, though Kari suspected early to mid-thirties was more likely. In such a case, she assumed it meant BlackWing had been around longer than the marshal had been alive. As she awaited the Earl’s response, Kari turned back to him and looked him over a bit more. She noted that he was wearing a white tunic and black trousers similar to those in the painting she’d seen downstairs. She was sure he was far too canny to be seen wearing the same armor as whoever she’d met in DarkWind had, if this were indeed some elaborate ploy, but he otherwise looked exactly like the man who’d asked her Order for help, right down to the baleful black eyes. While the Earl thought it was a black dragon impersonating him, the level of perfection made Kari wonder if it was a doppelganger. Doppelgangers were exceedingly rare creatures that possessed the ability to perfectly mimic their victims, but they typically killed those they impersonated.
“I’d have to say close to sixty years now,” Black answered at last, but then he waved a finger in the air as if calculating. “Well, fifty-seven to be exact. Yes, I remember, it wasn’t long after the turn of the century: I was up in DarkWind meeting with Alexander Bosimar, who was the Duke of Brunswick at the time. One night, while we were passing the time indulging in a game of chess and a fine aged bourbon, we were attacked by some underworld assassin, though it wasn’t a succubus like the one we’re dealing with now. We killed it – Alexander was a fine duelist, as is his son, and as was his grandson – and, since there were no subsequent attacks, we were satisfied that the matter was closed. But then I remember on the return trip, I passed near Talon Rock, and this gnoll shaman came and told me that a shadow was closing in over me and my county. I ignored her as mad at the time.”
