Sprite left the squad as soon as the assembly order was given, travelling alone and away from the main roads. There had always been an understanding she would join Flint’s collection of assassins when the time came. Nominally a soldier, her skills extended to targeted killing if required, and she enjoyed the solitude those missions brought, although this would be different, as she would be working with others.
Flint warned that Dolory Pyce had a troop of Templeguard headed north, looking to sniff out anything untoward. Dolory Pyce was renowned for thoroughness, which meant hidden watchers would accompany the main force of Templeguard. Sprite evaded notice, and now she edged her way through the Rattle as dusk settled.
Having grown up on these very streets, she knew all about its dangers after dark. It was unlikely any would recognise her. Staying beneath notice had been a lesson harshly taught and quickly learned long before she fell into the army. In the eyes of those she grew up around, she was just another orphan fallen prey to the Rattle’s prodigious appetite. As far as she was concerned, she’d survived, and that was enough.
The Rattle never changed. Even though she’d been out of the city for over two years, its twists and turns were ingrained into her mind. Since entering the city, she’d pulled her cowl down. Peripheral vision was the first line of defence on these streets; that wider field of vision was worth the risk of recognition.
Dusk was when the down and the destitute sought cover, a place of relative safety where they could hunker down in the cold and damp in the hope they would be left alone until morning. It wasn’t fair, but self-preservation came before all else in this corner of the city.
She turned into yet another claustrophobic alley - the city loomed over her after so long in the open hills - and heard a familiar desperate cry. It held a forlorn timbre, as though its owner had no hope of being answered.
Sprite’s steps slowed as childhood memories, once drowned in the depths of a troubled soul, threatened to bubble to the surface, slowly stoking her anger. She strode towards the cry, eyes burning with emerald hate as she plunged into the shadows. Plenty had changed since she escaped the Rattle; self-preservation came easy now, and it was too long since her knives had tasted blood.
She unsheathed the blades as she twisted around a corner. Her knife felt warm, as if in anticipation of slaking its thirst. The woman standing at the entrance to the hovel spun and gasped before Sprite opened her throat with a vicious slash. She crumpled to the ground, her eyes frozen in surprise.
Two hulking figures emerged from the rickety structure. Their eyes dropped to the dead woman, then they frowned at one another. The Rattle was littered with men like these two, able to keep their heads above the murky water by virtue of being bigger than most. Their faces were alike, though that was likely down to a lifetime of fighting than a shared ancestry. Both carried truncheons, though Sprite knew they would also be carrying knives in case things got really nasty.
‘You just killed our wages,’ the one on the right grumbled.
‘You have a quarrel with Shella?’ The other asked.
Sprite made no reply. These two didn’t need to know her motivations.
‘You got any coin on you?’ The first man asked. ‘You pay us what we’re owed and maybe we go easy on you, only bust you up a little for the inconvenience.’
‘Yeah, and maybe we don’t tell everyone you butchered Shella like a pig. Pretty price on your head once that becomes news, I reckon,’ added the second man.
Sprite flicked gore from her knife and balanced her weight, ready for the attack. ‘Just thank Tumult I have somewhere to be tonight, otherwise I would do this slowly.’
The first man lunged, truncheon raised, and she let him within striking distance, before ducking under the swing and spinning around. Off-balance, he had no chance to defend himself as she slashed at the back of his knee. A satisfying pop bounced off the walls of the alley as tendons severed and the leg collapsed. She whirled to face his partner, reversed the grip on both knives and jammed them crudely into his thighs, scoring along the bones as she stared into his eyes and watched horror set in.
She stood over her victims, ignoring their screams as she circled them. Their cries for help turned to desperate pleas for mercy. Crouching, she neatly disabled the joints at shoulders and elbows with a few flicks of her blade. The man with the ruined knee vomited, the other passed out. She shook her head in disgust, retrieving a truncheon from the floor. Teeth broke as she shoved the truncheon into the conscious man’s mouth. The scream turned to a gagging sound as she pushed the truncheon into his throat. She adored the look on a person’s face when they realised they were going to die. She felt his attempt to scream vibrate through her hand. His left arm twitched, unresponsive to his wishes. Sprite hovered inches from his face, awaiting the moment at which the struggle ceased, the surrender to the inevitable. The soul just moments from Droll’s cloying embrace. She watched with morbid fascination as he accepted his fate, just heartbeats before the body sagged.
She cleaned her knives and gloves on his clothes and calmly walked away. If the other man awoke in time to survive, then good for him. Or maybe not.
Sprite looked inside the hovel to see a man clutching a woman and two children with the sunken eyes of starvation. She tossed them a copper; any more would see them killed within a day.
Without looking back, she walked east, her appetite satiated for now.
Ostensibly abandoned, the former temple to Ompic was large enough to house the entire party of assassins with room to spare. Given assassins’ tendency to detest the company of others, Sprite thought Flint had chosen well. She approached after midnight as instructed to avoid unwanted attention.
Now, in the dead of night, they convened in the altar room. The ceiling was intact, which couldn’t be said for many of the sleeping chambers. She lounged against a side wall, watching her fellow killers, as they in turn watched her. They had all been chosen for this task; there were no volunteers. Sprite was sure more would have been recruited initially, and those who now shared the room with her had survived the process of natural selection. Even now, a silent competition ensued, with sharp glances and displays of aloofness. A good number were sharpening and cleaning myriad deadly weapons that didn’t require attention. She sighed, conveying how tiresome she found such posturing. Assassins were particular in their nature, the apparent supreme self-confidence was the thinnest of facades, easily shattered once faced with someone more deadly.
She smiled as she sensed the smouldering frustration born from her refusal to enter their game, choosing to remain an unknown quantity. They could take their game and shove it up Vidocan’s burnished backside. She wasn’t an assassin; she was a soldier, and they could make what they would of that.
The silence intensified as Flint entered, dressed in fitted charcoal and black cloth and leather. He moved stiffly, as though he’d taken a blow to the ribs. It would have been well-hidden, had he not been in a room of killers trained to notice weakness. Sprite had seen him sauntering around the mining village and taken an instant dislike to the man, regardless of whether he was a member of the Council. The deference paid him by the others in the room, however, told her none present could match him. Who, then, had bested him?
He moved to the altar.
Of course. Where else? Time to preach, I suppose.
‘You know why you’re here, so I won’t bother with the pre-amble. Adenne’s Night is in two days. That’s when we strike. All the twelve noble houses will host their own celebrations after the formal gathering in the King’s Concourse. Take your positions early, bide your time. You’ll operate in twelve units of three. Leave none alive. Men, women, children. Any blood relatives. The cleansing is to be absolute. Any questions? Good.
‘We have support arriving tomorrow to keep watch on the rooftops. Word will reach you if there is any untoward activity, but if you encounter any resistance, disengage where possible. Discretion is important above all else. Are we understood? No egos. If I catch word of any unsanctioned killings, I guarantee you an excruciating death.’
Sprite stopped listening to Flint’s hubris. She knew why she was here, and she’d do her bit. It was a noble cause to cut out the rotten heart of the city and step into its place. She wished she could believe it would work, but as far as she could tell, the rot in the city spread far beyond the noble families. True change would only come when people began putting others before themselves and the world was too hard a place for that. She was here to prove the world could bite back.
The unit leaders gathered in close around Flint for further briefing. Sprite leaned her head back against the pitted stone wall and waited. She had no desire to lead. Amongst her squad in the army, her role was to watch the backs of the others, to pull them out of the shit when things went wrong. Adenne’s night would be no different. No matter how well Flint thought he’d organised the operation, there was only one certainty: Something would go wrong. As ever, she’d be there to pick up the pieces.
Almost a bell later, a thick-limbed, grizzled man approached her with a fox-faced woman whose features would have been pretty if it weren’t for the scars that gave her a perpetual frown. The man squatted in front of her, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to expose sinewy forearms barely visible beneath a layer of tattoos. ‘You Sprite?’
She nodded. ‘That’s me.’
He grunted in acknowledgement. ‘I’m Karth. This is Lerra. Looks like we’re to be a unit. Take it that’s not going to cause any problems.’ He flexed his right hand into a fist, the knuckles cracking.
Sprite sighed and shook her head. ‘What do I need to know?’
‘Ain’t seen you around before.’
‘That’s probably a good thing. Now, what do I need to know?’
He splayed a drawing of the Dyenvor estate before her on the floor. ‘You’re on lookout. Here.’ He pointed to a niche on the inside of the perimeter wall. ‘Leave the killing to us.’
Ah. You two have worked together before. Can’t trust the outsider, might get under your feet. Fine.
She fixed a cold look on Karth. ‘Okay. Then we’re done.’
He railed at the curt dismissal. A huge hand shot out to grab her. She met it with her knife, thrusting it into Karth’s outstretched palm. She felt a stab of satisfaction as the point met its target, the slight resistance as it punched between the bones of his hand before emerging out through the other side. Heads swivelled as a pained grunt escaped Karth’s throat. She resisted the temptation to twist, to open the wound and score along the bones, instead withdrawing the blade.
‘I’m sure Flint will pay for his pet to be healed,’ she said flatly.
She stood, sensing a slight flinch from Lerra. Sneering at the woman, she glided from the altar room, eager for the cold embrace of the solitude awaiting in her chambers.
Patron’s Park was closed after dark, the park rangers dutifully locking blackened iron gates at sundown. They rounded up the waifs and strays seeking natural shelter offered by trees or rock formations. With the park nestled against the Noble Quarter, the rangers were necessarily effective, the green, wooded expanse a perfect, silent sanctuary as night’s shroud descended.
The park was vast, however. As good as the rangers were, there was no way they could patrol the entire perimeter fence. Someone with the ability to remain deathly quiet could slip over the man-height railings. And so it was that Flint found himself on Bambrana’s Way, following the sinuous wave of the park’s northern edge before it widened into Greywater Crescent and wound its way north towards the river.
In the heart of night, every noise was amplified. He could hear the frantic rustle of a rat scurrying along a drain; the scratch of claws on bark as a squirrel darted up a tree trunk. He placed gloved hands on top of the railings and drew himself up, before dropping onto a patch of soft earth on the other side, his landing muted. Within a heartbeat, he slunk behind the cover of foliage. Even though the city slept under the dim glow of lantern light, the hawk-eyed rangers would be on to him at the merest hint of a silhouette.
Flint wove his way from cover to cover, towards the arranged location, ruing the uncertainty involved in what he was about to do. At the core of the assassin’s methods was tipping chance in one’s favour. ‘Ten parts preparation, one part action,’ his mentor would cite to him daily. Yet he felt Tumult’s breath on his neck tonight; nudging this way and that, creating her signature chaotic maelstrom. He had mulled long and hard over the wisdom of this meeting. He was meticulous by nature, following every possible sequence of events to its outcome before acting upon the most prosperous. Tonight, he had to act before the answers revealed themselves.
The man he was due to meet would have no problem accessing the park, even if his method of entry was likely to be rather different from Flint’s. Bribery was rife in Caran, and the rangers weren’t immune, especially to noble coin. He peered around the trunk of an oak, a hundred paces from the meeting place. The night revealed the tall, thin profile of Adrinn Welk.
Knowing there was no danger of the rangers interrupting, Flint stepped out from behind the oak, and took a deep breath as he let himself be seen. Welk slowly swung around to observe.
Flint approached with a deliberate, languid swagger. He could find a crossbow quarrel buried in his torso at any moment, but he thought it unlikely. Men like Adrinn Welk reached the upper echelons of society by balancing ruthlessness and opportunity. Thus, Flint deemed himself to be reasonably safe, for now.
Well into his fifth decade, Welk had never been a handsome man. Tall and thin, with a hunched posture, he always appeared to be looming over someone or something. The hooked nose was too big for his face by far. There were no straight lines with Welk.
Dark eyes regarded Flint, the narrow mouth upturned in a slight smirk. ‘Hmmm, I’d thought you dead.’ Welk turned, moving towards a statue of Bambrana, the Patron of Dusk, running a hand over its mix of rough and smooth surfaces. ‘Curious meeting place. Do you seek to confound me with some clever message? No, you know enough to avoid such silliness.’ He paused, the smirk growing into a ghastly smile. ‘A trade, I assume. Information for… what, exactly?’
‘You’re a cynical man, Master Welk.’
Welk sneered down at him. ‘My boy, you may be an excellent killer, but I guarantee you are a poor negotiator compared to me. Your feigned deference won’t wash.’
Flint sighed. ‘Fine. I came here to warn you. Leave the city.’
Welk laughed, his shoulders shaking. ‘Just like that, yes? Adrinn Welk, one of the most powerful men in Caran, gone.’ His eyes narrowed on Flint and his voice lowered. ‘Who?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Can’t? Or won’t?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘No. I assume you’re here because you expect you can enhance the terms of your contract. A counter-offer is what you seek, then.’
Flint shook his head. ‘No. Even if I did, it would be futile. Another would simply step into my shoes. Of lesser aptitude to be sure, but still likely to succeed.’
‘I grow tired of this dance,’ snapped Welk. ‘Who holds the contract?’
‘There is no contract.’
‘Fool. There’s always a contract.’
‘Okay, Welk. Here it is, plain as day. No feigned deference. No hidden motives. There is no contract. Believe it or not, this is bigger than you, bigger than your upstart House. Bigger than me. Someone, something, is coming for you. And it will never stop. Do you understand me? Never. If you don’t flee the city, you’re as good as dead. If you run, well, you have a fighting chance, but even then, I make no guarantees.’
Flint observed Welk’s breathing quicken, saw the set of his shoulders stiffen. Flint stood ready to drop to the ground, sure that Welk was on the verge of ordering his hidden watchers to fire.
‘Very well. Your warning is noted,’ Welk said.
Flint nodded. ‘Don’t do anything to inflame the situation. Just leave. You can’t beat this.’
To his credit, Welk’s stare didn’t waver, yet the man seethed with tightly wound anger. ‘Don’t be a fool, boy. You know I’ll try to beat it.’
‘I guess I do. You have until Adenne’s Night. When we come for you… be elsewhere.’
Welk paced slowly in front of him, silently simmering. ‘Why did you come?’
‘You really don’t understand, do you?’
‘Enlighten me.’
Flint touched the malformed skin running from the corners of his mouth to his ears. The blade had bitten deep.
‘My looks abandoned me that night. But my life did not. I have you to thank for that. I realise you had ulterior motives, that you sought to buy my loyalty with supposed kindness. Even so, there is your reason.’
‘Ah, my investment reaps a further, unexpected dividend. So be it.’
With that, the older man turned and stalked away, leaving Flint alone on the hilltop with only Bambrana’s statuesque form for company. He removed his gloves, feeling across his grotesque cheeks, and snorted. He hadn’t really expected gratitude from a man such as Adrinn Welk, but the bastard was worth keeping alive. Regardless of how things panned out on Adenne’s Night, Welk offered coin and protection should either or both be required. He’d done his part; now it was up to Welk. If he was at his estate tomorrow, Flint would have to open the man’s throat.