The Binder's Game (The Sighted Assassin Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  As I crossed, I saw a distant figure as nothing more than a shadow. I wasn’t accustomed to moving slower than others, especially across the rooftops. Since coming to Eban, I considered this my domain.

  The person dropped to the ground.

  I ran forward. If I missed them now, they would disappear down the street and could reach anywhere in the city, especially given the festival. They would disappear into the crowd.

  And, I realized, they probably already had.

  When I reached the roof where they’d disappeared, I looked down. Dozens of people were in the street, all dressed in their festival clothing. In my dark cloak and pants, I would stand out rather than fading into the shadows as I preferred.

  I’d lost them.

  21

  Before returning to the Brite Pot, I stopped at the spot of the street side attack on Talia. These attacks were connected, but how? The one along the street had been designed to draw her away, and the men surrounding her hadn’t attempted to kill her, not until I showed up and started taking them down. Had they wanted to capture her?

  Then what about the attack in the Brite Pot? Why kill one of her women?

  None of it made any sense.

  The alley where I’d found Talia was empty. It had only been an hour since we were here, but already it had been cleaned of any sign that the attack had taken place. Not only were the bodies gone, but even the blood appeared faded, covered by dirt.

  Someone had been through here and intentionally scrubbed the evidence.

  We should have taken time to search the bodies, but now it was too late.

  I was accustomed to attackers after me, but this time they had not been. They had been after Talia, as had whoever had been in the tavern.

  I took to the rooftop again, making my way above the street, struggling to make sense of the connections. Eban could be a violent city—that was the reason I had so much success here—but what I’d seen lately exceeded even the norm.

  All of it started after Carth had come to the city.

  I crouched, staring down at the street, considering what I knew. Orly wanted access to the Binders, the network of spies Carth had throughout Eban, and claimed her nothing more than a slaver when he sent me after her. Women had been injured in the city, dozens of them, and I had assumed that to be Orly’s work to draw Carth out. What if that assumption was wrong?

  Both attempted to play me, to use me against the other. Carth positioned me in such a way that women wouldn’t be harmed, thinking that Orly feared me. Orly used me to remove Natash, as well as whatever connection he had to the city guard. The result was that he had gained even more power without having to do anything.

  And Talia had nearly died.

  I hadn’t learned why she had been attacked, only that she said it had nothing to do with Natash. As much as I wanted to trust her, I wasn’t sure that I could. I also knew I couldn’t sit by if Talia were in danger, like she had been tonight.

  That was tied to the rest of it, but how?

  Could the ledger from Benahg’s compound have anything to do with it? That was the reason Carth had used me. Possibly it was unrelated, but after everything else, I didn’t know.

  Chances were good that Talia wouldn’t tell me anything. She had loyalty to Carth, and I respected that. But I needed answers, and I needed to understand what I might be missing. There were ways I could discover what I didn’t know, but only one that had a real chance for answers.

  As I made my way above the rooftops, it didn’t surprise me to learn that I was followed.

  The only other person I’d found as comfortable as me along the slate roofs of Eban was Carth. She moved with an unnatural grace, and I suspected that I had yet to see the full extent of her skills. When I realized that I was followed, I found a flat section of roof and waited.

  It didn’t take long for her to appear. She made a point of making some noise as she approached. When Carth chose, she could move in absolute silence. That she made any noise was meant as a warning to me, her way of giving notice.

  I tried not to take offense at that, but then, I doubt I would have noticed her otherwise.

  “Galen of Elaeavn,” she said, appearing out of the darkness.

  I squeezed the darts in my palm, biting back the first response that came to mind. I was no more of Elaeavn than she was, not any longer. “Carth of C’than,” I said.

  She smiled and stepped close enough that I could smell the sharp scent on her breath so much like scallot powder. I still didn’t know if she had scallot, but her enhanced senses made it possible.

  “Why do you search for me?” she asked.

  “How do you know that I search for you?”

  “You are not as stealthy as you think. You have many gifts, but that is not one of them.”

  I circled around her, and she made no effort to move. I didn’t threaten her, and I didn’t think there was much of anything that would, but I needed to move. The activity tonight had left me on edge.

  “Do you know what happened tonight?” I asked.

  “Do you?”

  I sniffed. “You wanted to know why I search for you. That’s the reason.”

  “Which part? Where you return to the estate of a dead man, or when you attack a dozen men in an alley?”

  I thought that she couldn’t surprise me, but I had been wrong. Either Carth had been following me, or her informants had already passed word to her about what I’d been up to tonight. Either was possible.

  “I suppose you want to know why,” I said.

  Carth barely tipped her head. “You wish to understand why you went after Natash. You blame your friend, when she had nothing to do with your decision.”

  “You led me to believe that he had attacked her.”

  “And you always take what you hear at face value? That is not the Galen of Elaeavn I had been led to know.”

  I started to say something, but bit back my response. With assignments, I usually made a point to verify facts before attacking. That was part of the reason Orly didn’t like to hire me. But once I chose a job, I had few rivals in Eban.

  And I hadn’t followed my usual process when it came to Natash. After Talia had been injured, I had simply rushed after him, perhaps spurred by what Carth had told me, or by unspoken feelings I had for Talia. Either way, I hadn’t really needed much of a push.

  “Then I assume you know what happened to Talia tonight?”

  For the first time, Carth’s expression changed. Usually she wore a serene expression, but that faded, if only briefly. “I understand that you helped your friend.”

  “That’s all you’ll tell me?” I asked. “That I helped my friend? What would have happened had I not found her? What would have happened had I not wandered that way?”

  “She is well trained,” Carth said.

  “I’m sure that she is, but against a dozen? They didn’t want to kill her,” I told Carth. “Had that been their goal, they wouldn’t have needed so many, would they? They wanted to capture her.” I stopped my pacing and faced Carth. “Did they think to use her to get to you?”

  Carth’s mouth pinched briefly into a thin line. “It’s a good thing they didn’t reach her, isn’t it?”

  The comment left me wondering if Carth had somehow intended for me to find Talia. Was I still getting used by her? As much as I wanted to be out of her games, and as far from the Binders as possible, I found myself drawn in, didn’t I?

  “What about the Brite Pot?”

  “What of it?”

  “There was an attack. Isabelle, one of the cooks, was killed while we were there. Another person…” I trailed off, realizing that I still didn’t know if it was a man or a woman who had taken off out the window and lost me on the rooftops.

  “What other person?” Carth asked.

  “I didn’t see.”

  Carth turned and looked north. “That place should have been protected,” Carth said. “With Talia, and with you…”

  “What do you mean, w
ith me?”

  Carth started away, loping easily across the roofs.

  I followed, running hard to keep up. I didn’t think she was using me this time, but I didn’t really know, and decided that it probably didn’t matter. When it came to Talia, even after what they’d put me through, I would do what I needed to help her.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” I asked as we ran.

  She shook her head once.

  “But you knew about the attack on Talia.”

  “You think that Orly is the only one interested in gaining access to the Binders?”

  I sniffed. “The only one in Eban foolish enough to go after you.”

  She nodded as she leaped between buildings. When I landed next to her, she said, “Perhaps in Eban.”

  My heart flipped. “The other attackers aren’t from Eban?”

  Carth glanced over to me. “You have trained under one of the most skilled assassins of our time, and you question what happens outside of this city? You may have lived in Elaeavn, but you are not as naïve as her people.”

  As she ran, I wondered what she meant. Isander alluded to a dangerous society of assassins, but I’d never seen evidence of anyone approaching his skill—now mine as well—though I had remained in Eban since leaving Isander. There was something for me, he had claimed, and once I found it, then I could move on to the next step in my education. Even leaving him, I still had much I would learn. But I hadn’t seen anything that would make me believe there were assassins with the same training I possessed.

  Other than Carth. I didn’t yet know what else she was capable of, but did not think that she was an assassin. She served her people, the Binders, in her way. That I didn’t know what that was meant that she could use me until I did.

  “Who do you mean?” I asked.

  “Pray that I’m wrong,” was all she said.

  We continued running, jumping from roof to roof, all while I struggled to keep up with her. I had thought that I moved quickly along the roofs, but Carth was surefooted in a different way than I could even begin to approach.

  When we reached the Brite Pot, she hesitated, smelling at the air before diving through the open window I had chased the assassin through. I followed her, moving with most of the speed that she managed, and came to my feet in the room, not certain what to expect.

  It was empty.

  Carth trailed her finger along the ground and brought it to her nose. “You said Talia was here,” she said.

  “She was. We followed the attacker into this room,” I answered. I didn’t know where Talia had gone.

  Carth tipped her head and her eyes narrowed a moment, as if she heard something I could not. I wondered if that were the case. There were people in my homeland with enhanced hearing, much like my enhanced Sight. We called them Listeners. The face Carth made as she focused made me think of them.

  It also made me think back to the last time I had been in Elaeavn. I’d been away from the city for nearly a decade, time I’d spent learning a different skill. There, I had been apprenticed to a healer, a woman of considerable skill, and would have plied a legitimate trade had I remained.

  But the Great Watcher had other plans for me.

  “I’m going to see where Talia went,” I said.

  Carth shook her head, pulling her focus back to me. “Do not bother, Galen of Elaeavn.”

  “You don’t want to see why someone attacked here?”

  “You won’t find her here.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  Carth met my eyes. Few did. There was something about looking into the deep green eyes of someone from Elaeavn that intimidated most. Orly always managed to meet my eyes, but within Eban, he was one of the few who did. Carth had never appeared intimidated by me, and I suspected that she’d met many others from Elaeavn.

  “It was to have been safe here,” she said.

  “It?” I asked, getting frustrated by my lack of information. Was Carth using me again? I wouldn’t be the piece in whatever game she played here in Eban, regardless of how much I agreed with what I’d seen of her.

  “It no longer matters. What matters is finding her.”

  My heart fluttered. “Talia?”

  Carth nodded.

  “She was here,” I said, but I already knew that something was wrong. Had she still been here, she wouldn’t have disappeared completely, would she? She would have known when Carth appeared.

  I started out of the room, not caring whether Carth followed, and raced down the back steps and into the kitchen. Isabelle still lay where I’d last seen her, the blood along the floor spreading onto the stones.

  Carth followed and paused long enough to check Isabelle’s pockets, plucking something from within her dress that I had overlooked, and shifted her bodice to cover her breasts again.

  “I tried,” I said.

  Carth nodded. “I know that you would.”

  At the door leading into the tavern, I paused. The noise and the music that had been there when I left were muted. No voices were on the other side, as if the attack in the kitchen had sent everyone away. The silence bothered me as much as the earlier attack.

  I glanced at Carth. “Be ready.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I always am, Galen of Elaeavn.”

  Then I opened the door.

  22

  I don’t know what I expected to find within the tavern, but it was empty.

  But not entirely. There was a particular odor to brutal fighting, one that you become accustomed to when healing, but I’d lost the nose and stomach for it in the time I’d trained as an assassin. It was the stink of men dying with their bellies split open, and that of blood. The stink might be here, but that was it. No sign of bodies or of the fighting that led to the smell. There was nothing.

  Only the lutist still sat, playing his instrument. He shivered as he did, and the wispy strains coming from his instrument were shaky. Dried blood covered his face, and at first I thought it was his, but that much blood loss would have killed him.

  When he saw me, his eyes widened and then flickered toward the door.

  I spun, surveying everything as I did, but didn’t see anything moving.

  Carth walked slowly, each step careful as she wove through the tavern.

  “What happened?” I whispered. “Where is everyone?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “How?”

  She shook her head. “This is what happens when the outside comes to Eban.”

  I searched for signs of Talia but found none. “Where are they?”

  “They will have taken them.”

  “Why? What kind of game is this, Carth?”

  She glanced at me and shook her head. “This is no game, Galen of Elaeavn.”

  No game. Not like the game of Tsatsun that she’d claimed I was a part of, and not like the dicing Orly played. If this wasn’t a part of it, then it was something worse.

  I had started to turn toward Carth when a flicker of motion separated from the shadows near the door. I hadn’t seen it before, and had I not been searching for Talia, I doubted that I would have seen it now.

  I flicked a dart toward the figure, but it missed. Another dart also missed, almost as if the man vanished as I threw. There were rumors of men from Elaeavn with such an ability, but I’d never seen it.

  Carth jumped. There was no other word to describe it.

  She moved faster than I could track. A sword slipped free of her scabbard with a soft whisper and she landed, swinging. The other figure faded, reappearing briefly to attack. Carth swung and spun, each step faster than I could have imagined.

  She didn’t move to kill, I realized. Had she wanted, I had little doubt that Carth would have managed to overwhelm the other person.

  As I watched, I realized that the other figure had a soft swirl of color around them. In the weak light of the tavern, that was significant—and noticeable.

  It shimmered a moment before the figure faded.

  Making certain
to choose a coxberry dart, I waited until I saw the swirl of color—the only real way I had of seeing the figure—and flicked it. The dart struck true.

  Carth spun toward me. “You should not have done that, Galen of Elaeavn. Now we will not know—”

  “Coxberry,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”

  She shot me an appraising look. “Not your terad?”

  I held out my hand with the darts. “Not terad. Not that one, at least.”

  She pulled a length of chain from her pocket and wrapped it around the fallen man’s wrists, binding them together. Only then did she begin to search him, reaching carefully into his pockets and pulling out a collection of knives and a small book. She pocketed this.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “Someone of little importance.”

  I snorted. “Seems he is important enough if you wanted to keep him alive.” I left her to approach the lutist. When the man had fallen, he’d finally stopped playing. “What happened here?” I asked.

  He shook his head and his hands trembled, barely able to hang onto his lute. “They came.”

  “I see that,” I said.

  He looked up. When he saw my eyes, he flinched.

  I took the lute from him and turned it from side to side. Talia used him somehow, and I expected the instrument to also serve as a weapon of some sort, but there was nothing to it that looked unusual. I handed the lute back to him and he took it, his hands getting steadier. “Where is Talia?”

  “I don’t know where they took her,” he said. He slipped from his stool and stood looking around the tavern and letting out a shaky breath. “They… they killed the others, those who remained. I tried… I tried to get them out…”

  “How many were there?” I asked. This was different than what I had seen in the alley outside the tavern when I first found Talia, especially with the strange man that Carth had captured.

  “Only a few,” he said. “They came in… and they attacked… they attacked quickly. They took her.”

  Looking over at Carth, I frowned. “Tell me, Carth,” I said, “how is it that this one,” I motioned to the fallen man she had restrained, “managed to test you.”