Borsen’s stopped pedaling the machine. He swallowed hard and she saw that he was blinking rapidly, determined not to cry.
“He and Ifor have gone after an assassin that Therbalt has sent after all of us,” he said, his voice harsh with strain. “Someone terrible. A freak, not like the assassins here. Someone who likes to torture people.”
Katrin shuddered and closed her hand around Borsen’s. He squeezed back hard, keeping his eyes on the work before him. She hated hearing such things, but knew she had to.
“Kaymar is very good at what he does,” she said, trying to sound confident.
“So is the man he’s after,” Borsen answered between clenched teeth. “He’s almost as good as Uncle was. Kaymar’s going to have to get very close, because the only way to catch him is to… play his freak games with him.”
“I hate this!” Katrin burst out fiercely, her eyes burning with fury. “I hate this!” Then she saw that Borsen was shivering with emotion and hugged his head against her. He put his arms around her waist and started to cry. Her rage fell away and the need to comfort him took over.
“It’s going to be all right,” she whispered. “Kaymar’s smart. He’ll come back.” She tried to sound confident and calm, but failed. Two small, hot tears ran down her face. Several sobs hitched in her throat.
“Here you are – oh dear.” Menders’ voice startled them. In a moment his arms were around them both.
“My poor children,” he said gently. He held them as they shuddered with stifled sobs and squeezed their eyes closed. He almost told them to go ahead and let it out, but they both wanted so badly to be grown up these days that he let them deal with the emotional storm in their own way.
When they regained their composure, he sat Katrin in Tomar’s chair and looked at them.
“It seems you both know what Kaymar is planning to do,” he sighed.
“I heard him and Ifor talking about it when I went to show them something,” Borsen said forthrightly. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. It was an accident. I didn’t intend to tell anyone else, but… well…”
“We have all been under far too much pressure,” Menders replied, patting Borsen’s shoulder. “We wanted to spare you both the news, but that was probably not the thing to do. As you become adults, you will find that there are hard times like this when the ones we love are threatened. And there are hard decisions too, based on duty, loyalty, and sacrifice. Kaymar is our best and when he succeeds, our present troubles will be at an end. He has also promised me that he will not sacrifice himself. This is not a suicide mission.”
“But he’s going to have to…” Borsen blurted. Then his eyes slewed around to Katrin and he looked like he wished he’d bitten his tongue off.
One look at Katrin told Menders that she knew what that meant as well. It was inevitable that the children’s voracious reading would expose them to the wider world and darker facets of human nature. He did not discourage this and had left the more ‘adult’ section of the locked bookcase open for some time. It was important that both Katrin and Borsen not grow up entirely naive.
“Sometimes subterfuge is part of Kaymar’s work. Hopefully he will be able to eliminate this assassin before he has to get into a compromising situation. Ifor is with him and will help him. They are at their best when together,” Menders answered.
“But what if this freak hurts him?” Borsen asked, his words coming out with effort. “Or kills him?” Katrin could see his hands were shaking. He started wringing them, which meant he was very upset. He adored Kaymar, almost as much as he loved Menders.
“I’ve known Kaymar since he was not much older than you,” Menders explained reassuringly. “Motivation is important for an assassin. Kaymar is doing this out of love, for both of you, for all of us. That is what will give him the edge in the situation. Those of us who take on positions of service to Mordania know that we might risk the ultimate sacrifice. We do it so that we can make the world a better place. That is what being in service is about.”
Menders rose and held out his hands to them.
“Now, my dears, I think it’s time we went outside,” he said. “You’ve been caged up in here for far too long. I know for certain that any threat to us is far from here today. The patrol has just passed. I think a jaunt around the garden would be perfectly safe.”
Outside, Katrin found the world had changed. She had peeped through her shutters a time or two and seen glimpses of springtime, but the windows had been sealed when the world was still white. Now it was full of color! She immediately buried her nose in a cluster of roses. Borsen made a beeline to the herb beds and broke off several sprigs, rubbing them between his fingers and inhaling ecstatically.
Eiren saw them and came across the garden.
“Isn’t the sun wonderful!” she said, kissing them both. “Some more of this will bring the roses back to your cheeks.”
Katrin turned her face up to the sun and smiled. Making the world a better place, she thought. To enjoy days like this.
***
Kaymar drew his razor across the skin of his cheek carefully, leaving a long slash. Blood beaded like rubies along the silver edge of the sharp metal. For some time now he’d carefully cut and marked himself, to have frequent fresh wounds like a practicing masochist would.
“Not on the face, Kip,” Ifor sighed, coming in with dinner for them both, seeing the bleeding slash on Kaymar’s cheek.
“It’ll heal clean,” Kaymar replied, rinsing the wound. “You worry too much.”
“My job,” Ifor grunted heavily, putting the food on the table of their very seedy tavern room.
“I’ll tell people it’s a dueling scar,” Kaymar grinned. He dropped his pants, picked up a riding crop and viciously whacked himself on the rear several times, leaving a trail of welts on top of injuries from days ago. Ifor looked on silently, regretting Kaymar’s ability – and sometime need – to harm himself. He didn’t understand it, but he accepted it. He looked away briefly as Kaymar began to use sandpaper on his wrists, to make marks like manacles left.
“Leave off, come eat,” Ifor ordered, keeping his back turned. He hated this process, necessary though it was.
“DeLarco is still at The Rooster,” he remarked as they started their meal. “I saw him as I went by.”
“Well he would be, wouldn’t he?” Kaymar replied. The Rooster was a grotty tavern that catered to those with DeLarco’s proclivities. There were several such establishments nearby. Kaymar wondered, when this was all over, if a series of selective fires might not do the city of Erdhan a measure of good. “It’s his home away from home.”
Kaymar knew DeLarco had noticed him during the times he had loitered around The Rooster’s barroom, though the assassin had not made any advances yet. DeLarco had also not gone into hiding, so it was fairly certain he had no idea who Kaymar was. Kaymar had tinted his fair hair dark brown as a precaution.
“I think I have enough wounds,” he said, shifting on his very sore bottom. Ifor handed over a pillow from the bed. He shuffled it under his backside with relief.
“What do you think about tomorrow night?” Kaymar flinched as Ifor froze for a moment and then put his fork down carefully.
“His place or here?” Ifor asked.
“His. Anyone that full of himself has things written down,” Kaymar answered. “He’d have his writings with him. Once we finish him, we might be able to gather up information that would be valuable.”
“Good.” Ifor returned his attention to his dinner. The room was silent for several minutes.
“Thank you,” Kaymar said softly.
Ifor nodded. Then he looked up at Kaymar with tenderness in his face.
“If you’re going to do a nude scene, make sure your disguise is complete,” Ifor smiled. “The moment you take your clothes off, you’ll give yourself away.”
Kaymar stared at him for a moment and then laughed aloud for the first time in many days. He started to rise, to get his hair dye and make sure that all h
air on his body matched the dyed brown on his head.
Ifor stopped him, putting a hand on his damaged wrist.
“Have your dinner first. There’s time yet,” he said softly.
***
“I don’t care for preliminaries,” DeLarco said, rattling through a drawer and extracting various implements that Kaymar was all too familiar with. “Strip off. Fast.”
The man likes to get down to business, Kaymar thought as he unbuttoned his shirt. For all DeLarco’s haste, he was showing all the apparent impassivity of a surgeon or dentist about to go to work. Despite his revulsion toward the Surelian assassin, Kaymar also felt a peculiar fascination. Elegant face, refined posture, but the façade of outward elegance slipped all too easily, revealing stony menace and deliberate cruelty.
Kaymar slowed his undressing, making sure that Ifor had time to get into position. He had no desire to be completely on his own with this man.
DeLarco was frightening – even to Kaymar, who frightened most people. The Surelian assassin had ice water in his veins; there was little, if any, humanity in him. He’d already hurt Kaymar several times between the tavern and this room. There was no finesse in his sadism, none of the sophisticated role play that Kaymar had known in the past. He simply swung fists, pinched, twisted and gouged, bent fingers backward, smashed his prey into brick walls. There was nothing remotely sexual about his assaults. He existed to inflict pain.
DeLarco swung a fist but Kaymar managed to cringe away, letting the blow glance off his right ear. DeLarco was left-handed, something to remember.
“I said fast.” DeLarco’s inflection was even and cool. Kaymar made a show of unbuttoning his trousers and toeing off his shoes. He’d counted out the seconds. Ifor should be outside the alleyway window by now. Stupid of DeLarco to take a ground floor room.
DeLarco’s breath quickened as Kaymar’s scars were revealed.
“You’ve been around the track a few times,” the assassin said smugly, walking around Kaymar, flicking open a razor. “Some of those scars on your back must be ten years old or more.”
“Yes,” Kaymar whined, his tenor voice narrowed in the cringing tones of the perennial masochist.
“Did I say you could speak?” There was a sudden burning near Kaymar’s left kidney. DeLarco had lightly drawn the edge of the razor in a long line across his back.
Kaymar shook his head, drawing on experience to make himself shiver ecstatically. He wanted nothing more than to simply kill the bastard, but by the time he drew his weapon, the long, steel dirk-bladed pin that skewered his hair into a knot at the nape of his neck, DeLarco would have his guts on the floor. There was a sheathed knife concealed up his karzi, but that would take even more time to attain. For now he had to go along with the miserable freak – until DeLarco turned his back.
Kaymar looked at the items DeLarco had tossed on the bed, hoping to draw the assassin’s attention there. It worked, but not for long enough. DeLarco still wasn’t completely at ease or certain that Kaymar was not a threat. He wasn’t about to turn away.
“You don’t seem particularly excited,” DeLarco said, looking at Kaymar while his hand lovingly stroked the implements on the bed.
Gods, he wants me to be aroused, Kaymar moaned inwardly. I don’t think I could be if they danced Ifor and several lovely Samorsan men around in front of me naked.
“I’m slow to warm,” he sniveled.
The blow almost knocked Kaymar down. He stepped back to avoid a fall, turning away from the bed and in profile to the window. He made himself pant excitedly.
“You’ll learn to speak when I tell you to,” DeLarco said coldly, grabbing a pair of manacles from the bed. Kaymar got ready to move quickly. If his wrists were manacled he would never be able to reach his weapons. He’d have to buy himself time.
DeLarco darted in front of him, the manacles open. Kaymar moved across the room, raising a hand toward his bound hair, suddenly desperate to have a weapon in hand. As he did so, his damaged heart lurched painfully in his chest, making him freeze in his tracks.
DeLarco flung the manacles with lightning speed, striking Kaymar in the breastbone, knocking him breathless. He tumbled to the floor, curling himself away from what he knew would be a vicious attack from the Surelian assassin. His heart was whooshing desperately, every beat agonizing.
DeLarco launched himself across the room in the manacles’ wake, ripping Kaymar up from the floor like a child’s toy, swinging him into the wall with such force that Kaymar heard the plaster crack. He was thankful it wasn’t his ribs. He slumped toward the floor again, but the assassin dug a thumb into the base of his throat, hard.
“Do you think I don’t know who you are, Baronet Shvalz?” DeLarco hissed as he ground his thumb viciously against Kaymar’s windpipe. “Did you honestly think a little hair dye and some self-inflicted bruises could hide you from me?”
Grahl’s fucking teeth! Kaymar thought desperately. How long has he known? Since when? And how?
Kaymar thrashed violently until he was free, snatching the pin from his hair. DeLarco leapt at him silently, taking cuts on his hands as he tried to wrest the hardened steel dirk blade from Kaymar’s grasp.
Kaymar continually retreated, desperately fighting to keep hold of the weapon. He wasn’t as fast as DeLarco, who managed to trip him on one of their skittering transits of the room. Kaymar fell hard, feeling his breath explode out of his lungs for the second time in minutes, his heart knocking madly in his ears. DeLarco tore the pin from his hand and drove it into Kaymar’s left thigh.
“Pretty playtoy for a pretty boy?” DeLarco snarled, his voice shaking with rage. “I know you have something better than this. You’re not quite the fool you seem. I know where it is too. Yes, I know you, Mister Shvalz, all too well. Of course they’d send you after me. Who else? Did you think I didn’t know? Did you forget that when you travel in my dirty little circles, for whatever reason, that you leave tracks?”
I will not have this bastard sticking his hand up my karzi, Kaymar thought furiously, forcing his protesting body to obey his will. He flipped over on his back, ignoring the agony as he tore the pin from his thigh, deafening himself to the damaged laboring of his heart. He clutched the blade, ready to stick it into whatever part of DeLarco presented itself first.
DeLarco grabbed his ankle, deftly keeping out of range of the dirk pin. He began dragging Kaymar across the splintery floor toward the nightmarish contraptions on the bed.
“Think you’re mean? Your fame is certainly undeserved, Mister Shvalz,” DeLarco grunted, hauling him along easily despite several well-placed kicks from Kaymar. The assassin grabbed a chain and swung it in a vicious arc, knocking the dirk pin from Kaymar’s hand. It tinkled gaily across the room, rattling to silence in a corner.
DeLarco loomed over Kaymar, his dark features quirked into a glaring smile.
For the first time in his professional life, Kaymar felt terror. If Ifor didn’t do something in the next few moments, DeLarco was going to kill him.
With this knowledge came a sense of calm. He found his mind working on two levels - one part bargaining desperately for his life, looking for any edge or escape, the other passively observing, thinking, ‘this bastard’s eyes have an evil gleam. They actually gleam, like something from a book! How odd.’
“I am so going to enjoy this,” DeLarco smirked, lashing the chain at Kaymar’s face.
Somehow Kaymar caught the chain as it arced toward him. His hand snatched the metal and held it. He hauled himself from the floor with it, using the leverage to vault across the room, blood coursing down his leg. Barely able to breathe, he could think only of escape.
He got to the door to find that it was locked.
He’d known that. He’d heard DeLarco lock it after they came in. He should have run to the window. Ifor was there and could have hauled him through it. Worse, the dirk pin had rolled to the opposite corner. Short of somehow removing a knife from his backside, then getting it unsheathed, he was weaponl
ess, naked and outweighed by his opponent in every way.
He was older now and time had slowed him. His heart condition betrayed him, his mind let him forget details and make deadly strategic mistakes. He’d lost his edge as an assassin and that was going to cost him his life.
“Running away? Legendary Shvalz? A coward, like all Mordanians,” DeLarco snarled, snatching up a long steel bar with a hook on one end. “I’m surprised you don’t have your big stupid friend with you, but that would require some forethought. You’re boring me, so why don’t we just finish this?”
Ifor, Kaymar thought abjectly, I didn’t expect to die today, not like this. I can’t keep running back and forth forever while this maniac chases me with his toys. My heart is going to give out. This bastard is a killing machine and he’ll carve me up like cheese and never blink an eye. I’ll never see you again, Bear.
DeLarco strode across the room, raising the steel rod so swiftly that it made a whistling sound. Kaymar readied himself, tensing every muscle to receive the blow. He had no strength to run or even to cringe.
DeLarco jerked upright, looking perplexed. His arm fell to his side, the bar dropping to the floor with a thud. The Surelian convulsed, then collapsed.
Protruding from his temple was a four inch piece of dully gleaming metal – the shaft of a small crossbow bolt.
Kaymar looked down at DeLarco. The assassin’s eyes, mildly astonished, met his before the life in them went out – but not before Kaymar kicked him in the face. To his immense pleasure, one of DeLarco’s teeth skittered away across the floor.
Ifor reached through a glassless pane, pushed back the window curtain and flicked the latch open.
“Kip, are you all right?”
“No,” Kaymar replied, looking at his injuries and his blood on the floor. “But I’ll live.”
Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series Page 72
