City of Light & Shadow

by Ian Whates

  Dewar studied the big man's approach. It wasn't blind, it wasn't mindless. Mitch clearly knew a thing or two about fighting. But then so did Dewar. The thug had produced a club from somewhere – a crude baton of polished wood. Not as sophisticated as a razzer's puncheon, perhaps, but it still meant he had the advantage of reach over Dewar's knife.

  The assassin crouched, both hands before him, his right hand holding the knife ahead of the left, which was ready to hold, deflect, defend.

  With a quick roll of the arm, Mitch attempted a swipe at Dewar's blade with his club, but the assassin was ready for that, twisting the knife out of the way and attempting a strike of his own as the arm sailed past. He missed. Dewar danced a few steps further back. Mitch advanced, following him warily, but the assassin had counted on that. His steps back were a feint. As soon as he completed the second Dewar sprang forward, taking the enforcer by surprise and instantly stepping inside the natural striking arc of the club. His right arm drove the knife into Mitch's exposed side while his left hand grappled to hold off the arm wielding the baton. He struck a second time and a third, quick piston-like blows, before Mitch managed to swat him aside.

  Dewar rode the force of the blow, disengaging but staying on his feet and, most importantly, keeping hold of the knife.

  The big man was standing awkwardly now with his free hand pressed to his injured side, blood leaking between his fingers. He was hurting and injured, probably severely.

  "Your employer's dead, Mitch." Dewar nodded towards the livid red stain that marked one wall; a smear that led down to the pimp's lifeless body. "You're badly hurt. What's the point in fighting on? Let's both walk away from this while we still can, and you go and get yourself stitched up."

  The look in the enforcer's eye told Dewar that it was never going to happen. For Mitch, the fight had turned personal. Understandable, the assassin supposed, after someone had punctured your side several times with a dagger.

  Mitch was evidently a man of few words. "Breck you!" he growled, before straightening and lumbering forward again.

  That was a mistake. He must have realised it as soon as Dewar did. His movements were hampered, made clumsy by the severe wounds. He didn't quite stagger but gave every impression that he might be about to at any second. Dewar easily avoided the crude swing of the club. He skipped aside as the roundhouse sweep whistled past him, to move behind Mitch and draw his blade across the enforcer's throat, all in one movement and without breaking stride. Dewar kept walking towards the mouth of the alley, not bothering to look back. His ears reported the choking gasps of Mitch's final breaths and then the sound of something heavy dropping to the ground.

  Despite his best efforts at avoidance, his tunic was speckled with blood. Hardly ideal for keeping a low profile. He exited the alley and headed towards his lodgings for a fresh change of clothes and to review his plans for the evening.

  It would have taken a man of rare paranoia to keep a constant watch on the street, but Dewar wasn't about to take any chances, so he walked past the herbalist's shop just once, paying no more attention to the target building than to any of the others around it. He saw all he needed to. Two storeys; the shop at ground level, living quarters above, probably a cellar as well – a fairly typical arrangement for Deliia. The building stood at the end of a small terrace, with a narrow road to one side. The upper storey projected out to overhang the road slightly, while the roof was tiled and gently pitched.

  He turned the corner and sauntered along the side road, climbing up a slight incline in the process. A small back yard was protected by a shoulder-high fence. No indication of any dogs, which was hardly a guarantee. The upper storey boasted a single window on this side; narrow, but he could still get through it if need be. Unfortunately, it stared straight into the matching window of the house opposite. Too exposed. He rejected the window as a potential entry point, which left only the back door.

  Breaking in at ground level carried its own risks, so timing was going to be crucial; but that door was his best option. Decision made, he continued on his way, already rehearsing the moves in his mind.

  • • • •

  The situation was far from ideal. His current strategy had been formulated in a hurry and Dewar hated half-baked schemes. All his professional life he'd relied on meticulous planning and precise execution. Before his exile he had been a senior member of the Twelve – the secretive society dedicated to assassination which acted as counterbalance to imperial ambition and had been an integral part of the Misted Isles' system of government for centuries. In those days such discipline had come as naturally to him as breathing.

  He was fast coming to the conclusion that the years spent hiding in Thaiburley had seen his standards slip. His former self would have been dismayed at the slipshod strategy he had formulated. Still, there was no point in ruing spirits that had already escaped the bottle. All he could do was deal with the situation as it stood. He should perhaps be grateful for this opportunity and treat it as a dry run. This undertaking had highlighted weaknesses that he couldn't afford once he reached the Misted Isles. It gave him the chance to tighten things up so that there would be no errors once the endgame began.

  The girl was due to arrive any moment, so this was his last chance to review preparations and satisfy himself that he hadn't overlooked anything. He did so quickly and could see no better alternatives. The flat but broad rucksack now hugging his back contained all the tools he was likely to need.

  Seffy met him as arranged. She looked nervous, and he wondered how close she'd come to not returning at all despite the potential reward. He smiled reassuringly and handed over the money for the berry juice, the same sum as before.

  Dewar went first, hurrying past the shop with his head down – who but a burglar or mugger would loiter in the shadows after dark? He turned into the side road and paused after a few steps, crouching to fiddle with his boot, as if dealing with a loose buckle or perhaps a stone that had worked its way inside to trouble his tender foot.

  A moment later he heard rather than saw Seffy approach, her clipped footfalls sounding loud in the still of the evening. Three knocks, a slight pause, and the door creaked open. A man's voice bade her enter. As soon as he heard the door close again Dewar moved, vaulting the fence and crossing quickly to the back of the house. He stood for a moment, back pressed to the wall, waiting to see if his intrusion had been noticed. No sign of a reaction, so he sidled along the wall to the door, conscious of how vulnerable he was to a casual glance out the window by anyone in the house opposite. The lock proved to be a decent one but nothing special. He had it sprung in seconds and slipped inside the dim interior of the house.

  He was in a small room – an ante room, rest room, preparation room, kitchen; he neither knew nor cared. Two voices reached him through the open door leading to the larger room beyond – presumably the shop proper: Seffy's and that of a man.

  Dewar moved with calm efficiency, crouching and slipping off the rucksack. When it came to distance killing his weapon of choice would always be the kairuken – such an elegant instrument, its razor sharp discs equally as deadly as a crossbow bolt and far quicker to reload. However, he was nothing if not adaptable. He removed the two elements from his bag, deftly fitting and securing the bow-section to the stock, careful to make no noise. He was operating in near darkness, but that was no hindrance. He had practiced this manoeuvre many times blindfolded, so the dim light filtering in from the shop was a bonus. Ideally, he would have liked to have completed the assembly before setting out, but that would have made the weapon awkward to carry and too obvious.

  He finished in under a minute, the resultant bow by no means the largest or most powerful he'd ever used but it would still pack a punch within the confines of a room and was unerringly accurate. A good weapon.

  He cocked the bow but didn't load it yet, though he did take out three bolts before stashing the bag against the wall beside the door. Only then did he continue forward, crouching low as he entered t
he main area of the shop. During the short time it had taken him to assemble the bow he'd continued to listen with half an ear to the two voices, which had grown ever more strident: the man's aggressively so, the woman's defensive. There was something naggingly familiar about the man's. Dewar was certain he'd heard it before, further justifying his caution in not approaching the herbalist directly. The name Kraisch was unfamiliar to him, but, as he well knew, names were malleable things and easily changed.

  His view of the shop's interior was blocked by a solid counter, which made sense – his entry point being via what was clearly a back room, not accessible to the public. This was both a blessing and a hindrance. It hid his approach even more effectively than the darkness would have done, but at the same time prevented him from getting a sense of the room's layout and assessing with any certainty how many people were present.

  The quickest way to remedy that was to raise his head carefully and peer over the top of the counter, but he resisted the temptation. Movement at that sort of height was too likely to be spotted, being close to the natural eye line of anyone standing in the room's interior. So instead he moved to the end of the counter and peered around its edge. Slow movement this close to the ground was far less likely to be spotted.

  From his slightly skewed vantage point Dewar could see three people. A single lamp illuminated the scene, its low position on a shelf casting long shadows, creating a surreal form of shadow play enacted against the wall behind the principles in exaggerated gestures and movements.

  The assassin's gaze was drawn first to Seffy. She was being held by a much larger man, both of her arms gripped in his ham-sized fists. In front of her was another, shorter man, his back to the assassin.

  "I told you, I don't know!" Seffy was whining now. Either she really was a consummate actress or this wasn't acting. Dewar suspected the latter and couldn't blame her. For all she knew at this point he'd sent her in here to die.

  "Come, come," the shorter man said. "The story of your poor sick mum, all very touching, I'm sure, but a complete fabrication, no?"

  Dewar froze. He'd been right. He did know that voice. He'd been unable to place it earlier but, hearing it more clearly and now that he was able to match voice with phraseology and to the stance and build of the speaker, he recognised who this was all too well. He didn't need to see the man's face, he could picture it still: heavily lidded eyes, slightly sagging jowl that invariably leant the man a hangdog expression, receding hairline, and ears that jutted out… Prosman the Poisoner. So this was what had become of him. Not a member of the Twelve as such, but Prosman had been very much a part of the organisation, supplying tailored poisons for the assassins' every need. His downfall had been unexpected and swift. He'd perpetrated some indiscretion or other – Dewar never had been privy to the details – and had disappeared overnight. This was about a year before Dewar's own misfortune. No one spoke of his fate and it was assumed he'd been quietly killed, but evidently not; he'd merely relocated to Deliia and reinvented himself as Kraisch the herbalist. Hardly the most opaque of disguises, but effective enough it seemed, because he was still here and evidently thriving.

  No wonder Kraisch had such an uncertain reputation in the town. Dewar never had trusted the poisoner and doubted the herbalist was much of an improvement.

  "Perhaps I've been too gentle with you," Kraisch was saying. "Perhaps you think a few sharp words and a slap or two are the only rewards that await your silence. Is that it? Well permit me to enlighten you."

  Dewar couldn't see the whole room from his current position so didn't know if there was anyone else close to the counter, out of his line of sight. He decided to risk a quick look. The guard holding Seffy might be facing this way but his vision would be limited beyond the range of the lantern. Lying flat to the ground, the assassin pushed himself out beyond the counter, seeing a single pair of feet before he drew back. One man, three targets in total.

  "On the shelves around you sit a wealth of subtle potions and elixirs," the herbalist continued.

  Dewar slid two throwing knives from their sheaths, placing them carefully on the floor beside him.

  "With them, I can escort you through the most exquisite levels of pain. Each time you think it can't possibly get any worse, it will."

  Two of the three crossbow bolts were placed carefully next to the two knives.

  "I shall pluck each and every nerve in your body, individually and in concert, composing a symphony of torment especially for you, an opus that will build gradually, by the gentlest of degrees, taking days to reach the ultimate, poignant crescendo of death. Of course, you will have been driven quite mad by this point."

  The third bolt he loaded into the still-cocked crossbow.

  "Trust me, long before the end you'll have told me everything you know about anything I might ask and will be begging for the blissful release of eternal rest."

  Dewar stretched out on his stomach, crossbow held before him.

  "And we'll start with a drop of this, your precious zyvan berry juice." The herbalist held out a small bottle, waving it in front of the terrified girl's face.

  Seffy jerked her head away. "All right, all right, I'll tell you everything," she blurted. Not that Dewar could blame her. This wasn't exactly what she'd signed up for.

  "Oh, I know you will," Kraisch assured her.

  In some ways, the man holding Seffy posed the least threat, because he already had his hands full and would take precious seconds to react in any meaningful way. At the same time, he was standing completely still directly in front of the assassin, and might try to use the girl as a shield later. While Dewar had no compunction about killing the girl, why complicate matters?

  The man stood head and shoulders above Seffy, which meant a narrow target, but the possibility of missing never even entered the assassin's mind. There is an art to using a crossbow, or rather a technique that, once learned, prevents you from using the weapon poorly. The knack lies in the ability to combine aiming and shooting in a single smooth process. Were a bowman to concentrate on taking aim first and then think about shooting as separate stages, the minute pause in switching focus from one to the other would invite a jerk of the trigger finger and increase the likelihood of slight tensing of the muscles in anticipation of the shot. Either could mean the difference between success and a near miss. A well-made crossbow was invariably accurate. Its wielder often wasn't.

  Dewar had learnt all this while still an apprentice. He took aim and fired in one seamless flow of thought and action. The bolt punched into the target's forehead between the eyes. The man was thrown backwards, taking Seffy with him. She screamed but Dewar wasn't paying attention. As soon as the bow fired he discarded the weapon and snatched up one of the throwing knives. Half rolling and half pushing himself beyond the counter, he flung the knife. Its blade sank into the throat of the man standing by the counter even as he began to react. Dewar was on his feet in an instant, snatching up the other throwing knife and charging at the startled herbalist.

  He could see Posman's podgy features now, a face that was instantly recognisable for all that it was older and even saggier.

  Dewar saw Posman's eyes widen in recognition. "King…"

  The assassin's knife buried itself to the hilt in the poisoner's chest, and the rest of the hated phrase died with the man.

  Suddenly all was still. A sparse handful of seconds had passed and three men lay dead. Not bad, if he did say so himself.

  "Wow," Seffy said, coming forward. "That was… amazing!" Her face was flushed and she was breathing deeply, the pronounced rise and fall of her chest granting her the suggestion of shape where none had been apparent before. He realised abruptly that the danger, the violence, the close brush with death, perhaps even the threat of torture, had excited and aroused her.

  "He called you 'King'," she said. "Are you some kind of royalty, an exiled prince or something?" Her voice was soft, seductive.

  Dewar said nothing, knowing there was still a job to complete
. He bent down to prise the innocent-looking and oh so costly bottle of zyvan berry juice from the dead man's fingers.

  Seffy continued her slow advance towards him, her eyes gazing into his as he straightened up. "You don't really have a medical condition, do you?"

  "No, I don't." He moved away, deliberately turning his back on her as he quickly reclaim his bow and the unused bolts, and finally the rucksack from the other side of the doorway, but she was still there when he turned around. His throat seemed tight and he felt his manhood stir in response to her suddenly very sexual presence. He tried to remember when he'd last been intimate with a woman. Before he'd set out from Thaiburley, certainly.