by P. T. Hylton
CHAPTER ONE - NOW
Lily entered through the cellar, making her way into her target’s home with only the dim light of her lamp to guide her. It was a dangerous and potentially obvious move, but it was the best point of access.
Working with Zane these past two weeks had been…strange. She was no longer his apprentice. Well, maybe legally she was, but she’d passed the Ferox Society placement exam. She wasn’t his equal, either, though. Zane was one of only four assassins in the Ferox Society, the elite in a field of the elite. When Lily did speak her vows in two weeks’ time, she’d be placed in a location in need of a ferox, but not too demanding for someone untested. A smallish hamlet, most likely. She was at the bottom of the ladder and it would take her years to work her way up and truly become Zane’s equal.
There was another way, of course. A shortcut at least one of Zane’s previous apprentices had attempted but failed. An apprentice who kills her mentor can take his place. Lily would never do that, of course. The Ferox Society was a cut-throat organization. Her time in the Academy had hardened her, and her time apprenticing under Zane had hardened her further. She wasn’t the girl she’d once been. She was a killer. Well, technically that wasn’t true. She’d never killed—not yet—but she was confident she’d be able to do so when the time came, and not miss a night of sleep because of it.
But killing Zane…she wasn’t that hard. Though she sometimes liked to imagine how she’d do it, just as a mental exercise, and she had an idea or two she was almost certain could get the slip on him. Not that she’d ever use them. No, a couple weeks from now, she’d ship off to some out-of-the-way place to begin her career, and Zane would be part of her past. A fond, if slightly intimidating, memory.
Until then, she was in this awkward place. Not Zane’s apprentice. More like his understudy.
She just hoped they could finish this Irving Farns thing before she had to leave. She’d been with him when Albert Graze hired Zane, and she intended to be with him when they finished this once and for all.
And what a last job it would be! If they pulled it off. She’d seen Zane do some things she would have thought impossible—killing Irving Farns not least among them—but this was a whole different level. What they were about to attempt…it gave her chills just thinking about it. But not chills of fear. Or, so she told herself.
Lily moved slowly through the dank basement. She shielded her tiny lamp with her left hand as she crept forward. It was just enough light to allow her to make out the vague shapes of the objects around her, but not in any detail.
Her skin was quickly wet in the hot, humid cellar and she felt like she was breathing water with the air. The dank smell of the place crawled up her nose and into her mouth, leaving a bitter, mossy taste in its wake.
Her feet squished slightly in the damp mud floor as she walked and made tiny popping sounds as she pulled them free. She cringed with each step. Not because of the noise but because of the tracks she was undoubtedly leaving. This was supposed to be a silent job, one where the owner of the home wouldn’t know she’d been here at all even after she was gone. Little chance of that with these footprints.
Ah well. That was a problem for later tonight. She’d have to cross through this basement three more times, and there were plenty of other obstacles to worry about before she could think about that one.
She was here to temporarily relieve the target of a shimmer. For Zane’s plan to work, they needed valid papers. Unfortunately for them, the papers they needed had to be validated by a government official. The government official needed to apply a very specific illusion to their papers. Which left them two problems.
One, the only shimmers that could apply the appropriate illusion were in the hands of a few government officials who had been selected specifically for their perceived inability to be bribed.
Two, even if they had the shimmer, it was delicate and difficult to use. It took months of study to learn how to apply the proper illusion. This was all by design, of course, so that even if the shimmer fell into the wrong hands, it would be extremely difficult to forge the documents.
Zane had taken care of the second problem. Lily was tasked with taking care of the first.
She made her way up the stairs to the house, taking each step slowly, walking on the edges where they would be less likely to creak. Halfway to the top, she extinguished her lamp and shoved it into her satchel. There was just enough light coming through the crack under the door to guide her.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she rested her ear against the door and waited, taking long, slow breaths, and listening.
Lily had it on good authority the owner of this house, one Harrison Oliver, would almost certainly be drunk at this hour. He was drunk at most hours, which was why Zane and Lily had selected him as the target. He should be asleep in his study, which would make slipping in and out of the house a fairly simple task.
She waited another two minutes, hearing nothing through the door. She’d hoped to hear the rumble of the man’s snore, but that was a bit much to ask. She eased the door open, doing it slowly enough to allow her eyes to adjust to the light pouring through the widening gap.
What she saw when she opened the door was so unexpected she stood frozen for a moment, unable to react.
She was looking at the parlor. Expensive furniture filled the room and soft light came from the beautifully designed oil lamps in each of the four corners. Under the faint smell of the lamps, there was the sharp tang of another scent. Lily was almost certain it was blood.
A small table sat in the center of the room. From the marble pawns, rooks, and knights scattered across the floor, Lily knew it was a chess table. But the most startling thing of all was the two men seated on either side of the table. They were dressed in loose, black clothing, the style some of the more pretentious and less practical ferox wore on the job. They were both staring at her, eyes wide and mouths agape.
The man on the right was huge, and his excess fat poured over the armrests of his chair. The other man had a face that looked like it had seen the business end of a mace at some point. Lily instantly thought of them as Big and Ugly.
Ugly, who looked to be slightly older than his compatriot, was holding something in his right hand. A small stone that glowed faintly. The shimmer.
Nothing like having your robbery interrupted by other robbers.
And there was something else. A man lay on the ground in a pool of blood, his dead eyes looking straight at Lily. She’d never met Harrison Oliver and had only the vaguest of descriptions to go by, but she felt safe in assuming the body on the floor was his.
Lily’s mind raced. These two men—two ferox?—did not look like the types to be trifled with. Evidently they’d already killed once tonight. And they were here for the shimmer, same as her. If they took it, finding it again would be difficult. She had faith that Zane would do it eventually, but by the time he did, she’d be finding lost cats and pocket watches in some second-rate town on the far side of the country. She wanted to see this plan through. It terrified her, yes, but she wanted to see it through. She’d never get another opportunity to go where they were going.
She needed to get that shimmer, and she needed to get it now.
The only thing Lily had going for her was they’d probably expected her even less than she’d expected them. And that was what gave her the edge to recover from her shock a moment before they did.
Lily sprinted toward them. She focused on the man with the shimmer, throwing a quick, left-handed jab into his face as she reached him. Before he could recover, she slashed at his right arm with her sword. He let out a tiny yelp and opened his hand, letting the shimmer fall to the table. Lily scooped it up and turned toward the other man.
Decision time. Battle or retreat?
She noticed the size of the other man again. His hands were the size of Cornish hens, and he had a belly that hung over his pants like an un-tucked shirt. He was fat, yes, but also huge. She’d never fought a
man that big before, and she was sorely tempted to try. But time was of the essence here, and the big man would likely have trouble catching her.
Retreat, then.
She thought for a split second about going for the front door, but then had a mental image of herself staggering from room to room, trying to locate the exit while opening doors to closets and bedrooms, with Big and Ugly stalking behind her.
She turned and sprinted down the steps into the cellar.
As she reached the bottom, she heard a voice upstairs say, “Just keep her in sight and I’ll do the rest.”
With the light from the open door, she could clearly see the things that had only been vague shapes under the light of her small lamp. This cellar was some kind of mushroom garden. A strange, twisted part of Lily wanted to stop and inspect them; she’d always been fascinated by mushrooms. But the curious part of Lily couldn’t compete with the professional, survive-the-night side of her, so she kept running.
She dashed up the steps at the other end of the cellar and out the door to the alley behind the house. She wove into the street, not thinking about which direction she was going, just running, taking a random path through the winding streets that she hoped would be difficult to follow.
It was a quiet night. Even her light footfalls echoed through the streets. Would Big and Ugly be able to hear them and track her down?
She took one more turn, slipped into an alley, crawled into the deepest shadow she saw, and waited, letting her breath even out and her heart slow.
She felt the shimmer clutched in her right hand, and she resisted the urge to open her fingers to look at it. She couldn’t risk exposing the glow the thing gave off. A bit of light was coming from between her fingers even now. The light had looked dim in the bright parlor, but now, in this dark alley, it would appear much brighter.
After a few moments, she heard the fast approach of footsteps, and a male voice said, “I told you to keep her in sight!”
Then a lower voice, Big, she assumed, said, “I tried! Did you see how fast she moved? Like chasing a cat.”
As they argued, Lily slowly and carefully slipped out the other end of the alley and started down the street. A moment later she felt a hand on her shoulder.
She spun, and a gasped as she saw Big and Ugly standing under a street lamp behind her, easy smiles on their faces.
How…then she got it. More shimmers. They’d made it sound like their voices were coming from somewhere they weren’t. Lily silently cursed herself for falling for such a basic ruse. If only she’d stayed in the alley, she’d have lost them. They’d have moved on, likely using their shimmer each block or so to try to ferret her out.
The right arm of Ugly’s shirt was stained red with blood. His right eye looked a bit puffy, too.
“That wasn’t nice,” he said.
Big took a step toward her. He was holding a dagger with a serrated edge, and he angled it so she was sure to see it. “Come with us. We need to have a little chat.”
Lily licked her lips nervously. They had spread out, now, cornering her against the wall. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said. “You want to talk? Talk.”
Big raised the dagger higher, as if she hadn’t seen it before. “You don’t understand. You are coming with us.”
Lily let out a little chuckle. “I’m supposed to believe you’re less likely to hurt me if I follow you somewhere private? That’s not happening.”
Big glanced at Ugly, an incredulous look on his face, as if he couldn’t believe this woman would dare refuse his demand.
Ugly shrugged and said, “What is it? Two in the morning? No one’s going to help you here, either. Not if we want to hurt you. Good news for you is we don’t. We just need that shimmer back.” He held out his hand, palm up.
Zane had taught Lily there were a few places on the human body people seemed to think of as part of what makes them them. Damaging those places could make a great psychological impact, thus gaining the attacker an advantage. The face, especially the eyes. The groin. The throat. And the hands.
Zane had also taught her to carry a number of knives hidden on her person, including a small one up each sleeve.
Lily sighed, as if defeated. As she did, she flicked her left wrist just so, releasing the knife and letting it slip into her waiting grasp. She brought her left hand up, and quickly down again, stabbing the blade into Ugly’s open palm.
The man howled in pain and surprise, instinctively pulling the hand toward himself, likely causing further damage.
She wrenched the knife from his palm, and a spurt of blood, looking black in the dim light, followed after it. She spun toward Big, not playing now, not taking any chances, and whipped the knife at him. She looked just long enough to make sure it stuck in his eyeball, then she turned and fled.
No games. No hiding and waiting to see if she could trick them. They were injured and she wasn’t. If she ran, she would be free of them.
So she ran, and she didn’t stop running until she reached the home of Beth Farns.
CHAPTER TWO
Zane hated waiting.
That wasn’t exactly true. He was a man of exquisite patience. His job demanded it. He often times had to wait hours, hidden in some-out-of-the-way place until his quarry moved into the perfect position. He’d once waited outside the secret home of Irving Farns for three hours, doing nothing but observing the lack of activity in the house until he was confident enough to move in for the final confrontation with the famed abditus.
And now here he was sitting the living room of Irving Farns’ only daughter. He usually took pleasure in life’s strange little ironies. Not this time. The tension hung thick in the air, and he got the sense the young Ms. Farns was perpetually teetering on the edge of losing control and attacking him.
While he didn’t mind the kind of waiting that was inherent to the job of a ferox, he had a difficult time with the type of waiting he was doing tonight. Waiting for someone else to complete their job successfully so he could move on to the next phase of his.
He trusted Lily, at least as far as a paranoid assassin was capable of trusting anyone, but he was still having a difficult time thinking of her as a full-fledged ferox. He’d been her mentor for two years, and his job had been to prepare her, yes, but to prepare her safely and at a logical pace. Tonight, he found himself fighting the urge to take to the streets, to observe her from the shadows as she entered the home of Harrison Oliver and retrieved the shimmer. But he couldn’t. He had to wean himself off such things. In two weeks, she would be gone to set up shop as a ferox herself, and she’d be far outside his protection. The best he could hope for after that was a letter every once in a while. He knew even that wasn’t likely. She’d become paranoid soon enough, as all ferox did, and she’d slowly cut off communication with him. It was the natural way of things. It had been that way with his previous apprentices, the ones who didn’t try to kill him, anyway. And he’d dealt with it. So why was he having such a difficult time accepting it this time around?
There was another man in the room with Beth and Zane. Saul Franklin was the person who would make possible what they were doing tonight. And he was being paid handsomely for his efforts.
Zane noticed Beth was staring with a slightly different tenor of hatred than usual. “What is it?” he asked her.
Her lips were a thin red line. She opened her mouth just wide enough to let the words out when she spoke. “I want to go with you.”
“That’s not necessary,” Zane said. The last thing he needed was her tagging along. There was enough danger where they were going without having to protect his back from her knife.
“Perhaps not,” Beth said. “But I’ve been there before. And I’m considered your employer in this matter, am I not? And I am telling you, I wish to accompany you on the job.”
In general, Zane hated contracts. In the rare event that his clients asked for them, he refused, and he showed them the door if they insisted. It was partly because the law
was slanted so far in the client’s favor in contractual disputes. If there was a contract, he could be taken to court if he didn’t complete the job to the client’s satisfaction. Or even made to reveal trade secrets. But the other part of it was he liked to set his own terms. He wanted the option of walking away if the job didn’t feel right. He made that clear to his clients upfront. Having a contract would reduce at least some of his flexibility in that regard.
But this was the rare instance where having a contract would actually work in his favor.
“Ms. Farns,” he said, “our contract is clear in this matter. I carry out the job as I see fit. And the way I see fit is to have you wait here for our safe return.”
The woman’s face reddened slightly. “Fine. Just remember what else our contract says.”
He remembered. That’s why he was here. The contract specified he was required to either locate and deliver the magical device Irving Farns created behind the Blue Wall, or he must return the thorn Beth had given him and pay a hefty fee.
He had no problem paying the fee, but the thorn was another matter. Faraday, the deceased former King’s Sword, had destroyed it during their mission to kill Charles Danum. So there was no thorn to return. Zane was forced to deliver the mysterious magical device.
It was a terrible contract, and Zane would never have signed it had he not been so desperate. But he knew the courts wouldn’t accept that as an excuse. If he didn’t deliver he would lose his position in the Ferox Society, best case scenario. Worst case, if Beth pressed the matter, he’d go to prison for his breach of contract. And he knew Beth Farns would press the matter to the fullest extent of the law.
“There’s Dursten to consider,” Beth said. “If you locate him, he’d be much more likely to talk to me than you.”
Zane nodded, trying to remain patient. This woman had been through a lot. And a large portion of her problems had been caused by Zane.
“Making people talk is part of my job. Believe me when I tell you, coming along is not worth the risk. The elvish ghetto is different than when you were a child.”
