A Dance of Chaos: Book 6 of Shadowdance (6 page)

But given Thren’s sour mood, and the two’s secluded location, a bit of fun seemed like a fine idea.

“If you can’t decide, I’ll take the girl so neither of you have her first,” he said, leaving the road. The two men snapped their heads about, glaring. The one on the left reached for a blade but didn’t draw it yet.

“This one’s paid for,” said the man on the right. He was handsome enough, with long dark hair, and Thren knew he could have found himself a pretty lass by lingering around the various taverns throughout the city. No, he wanted the violence. Glancing down, he saw the woman did indeed still breathe. By the end of things, Thren doubted she would. His instincts told him the man wanted her to do a bit of screaming first. The other man, however, was ugly enough it’d take a stunning personality for a woman to overlook. Given the way he kept leering down at the unconscious whore, Thren found that highly unlikely.

“Have you now?” Thren asked. “Mind if I ask your lady friend if you’re telling the truth?”

They both drew their weapons, the ugly one purposefully pulling down his shirt to reveal the four-pointed star tattooed onto his neck. As if that would intimidate him.

“Get lost if you want to live,” the man said.

Thren held his hands out wide, making it seem as if he were unarmed.

“Come make me,” he said, grinning.

The ugly one acted first, pulling a dirk from his belt and slashing at Thren’s face. Such a simple, basic attack, one a child might use if handed a blade. Thren leaned back, the edge just barely missing his nose, and then shot forward, grabbing the man’s arm with his right hand and ramming down on it with his left elbow. The man screamed. Bone snapped. Twisting his arm, Thren elbowed the man in the face, splattering blood from his shattered nose. A kick to the groin weakened his stance, allowing Thren to pull the ugly one to the side, shoving him in the way of his companion’s desperate thrust of his short sword.

A scream punctuated the blade’s entry to the man’s belly, coupled with Thren’s mocking laughter.

He violently shoved the dying man into the other. Entangled and unable to pull free his blade, the man let it go and drew a dagger instead. Again Thren held his hands out, showing himself unarmed.

“You can still run,” he said.

“You’ll just stab me in the back.”

Thren grinned.

“You’re right.”

The frightened man suddenly leaped forward, trying to shove the dagger into Thren’s chest. In a single smooth motion, Thren drew his short sword from his waist, parried aside the thrust, and then buried his blade in the man’s chest. Momentum carried him forward, pushing the tip out his back. The man let out a gasp, blood gushing from his mouth. Smile fading, Thren twisted the blade, then kicked the dead man off it. Cleaning the blood on the man’s shirt, he looked to the prostitute. The woman was awake, a dazed look on her face, no doubt the lingering effects of the blow that had knocked her out. Thren knelt before her, helping her to sit up against the wall of the whorehouse.

“Thank you,” she muttered, causing Thren to shake his head.

“Do you serve him loyally?” he asked her.

The woman frowned, and she held her head as she grimaced against a wave of pain.

“I don’t … what do you mean?”

Thren pulled a slender dagger from his belt and pressed it against the soft skin of her neck. Her eyes widened, her confusion replaced with fear.

“Muzien,” he told her. “The Darkhand bastard. Do you serve him loyally?”

Hardness overtook her features, a toughness earned by the life she led.

“I lie about how much I earn,” she said. “Why else would I be out here instead of inside?”

Thren smiled, and he put away the dagger.

“This city needs more like you,” he said. “Have a pleasant night, milady.”

He dipped his head in respect and then returned to the road. The woman glared, not that he cared. Saving her had been for amusement, and nothing more. A pleasant diversion before a meeting he could only wish would be as pleasant, or as productive. When it came to Deathmask and his Ash Guild, the only consistency was in knowing he’d leave annoyed and in a foul mood. Still, in a city so thoroughly conquered by the Darkhand, any ally could mean the difference between life and death.

Digging his hands into the pockets of his coat, he lowered his head, put his gaze to the ground, and hurried toward his destination. Into the wealthy eastern district of Veldaren he went, gradually drifting south. At one point every towering home, with its sharp rooftop and fenced property lines, had belonged to his Spider Guild. The owners had delivered a small but consistent sum each month to keep their homes free of fire and vandalism. Now only a single marking dominated them all, the symbol of the Sun carved into stone tiles. To many they were signs of allegiance, but to Thren they carried a far more dire meaning. They were signs of death, and while the Sun might have been carved into them, it was the Spider who controlled their fate.

His hand brushed the amulet around his neck through his shirt, felt its presence. It was both comforting and terrifying having it there. Terrifying, for a single touch coupled with a single word could level all of Veldaren to the ground. Comforting, for he was the one who possessed it, and no one else.

At last he arrived at the tall iron fence that surrounded the cemetery. When Thren had made his initial rounds through the city, trying to take account of all the changes that had occurred in his absence, he’d gone to the Ash Guild’s former headquarters. While he was there, one of the guild’s few members, Veliana, had spotted him. She’d said nothing, only hurled him a note tied to a dagger:
Roseborn Cemetery, Gemcroft tomb
, it’d said. Thren passed by that cemetery now, looking for any who might be watching from windows or rooftops. When he saw none, he abruptly turned around and dashed through the open gates. The soft dirt sank beneath his feet as he hurried toward the larger crypts in the heart of the cemetery. He went to one in particular, and as he entered the tomb marked with the Gemcroft family name, it put a smile on his face.

“First I try to kill you when you’re but a little girl, and then I keep you alive while in the guise of my son,” he said, thinking back to mostly better times, and his interactions with Alyssa Gemcroft. “At least you kept things interesting. More than I can say for your father.”

A childish notion of vandalizing Maynard’s coffin came to him, and he dismissed it with a shake of his head. Thren’s scheming had brought about the Bloody Kensgold and the attack on Maynard’s mansion that had driven an arrow through his chest. To mock him in death, after killing him in life, was beneath Thren.

But not, apparently, beneath Deathmask.

The coffins were placed into holes carved into the stone walls, the names of their owners cut into tiles and then nailed above them. When Thren came upon Maynard’s, he found the coffin open and removed from its hole. Maynard’s body, a desiccated corpse that was mostly bones, hair, and a thin black layer of what had once been flesh and organs, stood in the center of his open coffin. One hand was above his head, the other curled before him as if clutching a dancing partner. Without a sound, Maynard’s corpse dipped to one side, turned, dipped again. Thren watched, baffled, torn between amusement and disgust. Maynard Gemcroft was dancing, quite slowly and poorly, in his own grave.

“Like what I’ve done with the place?” asked Deathmask, appearing from the deeper darkness of the crypt. The man wore dark-red robes, his usual gray mask and cloud of ash missing. It’d been a year since they last met. How much older the man looked, and how tired, was shocking. Even his dark skin appeared paler than usual, and his long black hair was stringy and wet.

“You have a strange sense of entertainment,” Thren said, gesturing to the dancing corpse. “I didn’t know you held animosity toward Maynard.”

“Oh, him?” asked Deathmask. “No, no animosity. His corpse was the freshest, that’s all. These are the things one does to pass the time when forced into hiding for far too long.”

“I’d say there’s a simple enough solution to that,” Thren said. “Stop hiding.”

Deathmask leaned against the stone wall, and he laughed.

“Ever the blunt, simple one,” he said. “Of course you’d never hide. So proud, so mighty. Except you don’t appear to be wearing the cloak of the Spider. Why’s that, Thren? Is it because, perhaps, you know it’d be suicide to openly flaunt your opposition to the Darkhand? But surely that’s not it. That’d make your mocking my hiding both arrogant and hypocritical, something you’ve
never
been in your sordid history.”

“I have little patience for sarcasm,” Thren said.

“And I for pointless pride. If you wish for us to talk, then let’s talk, but keep your comments to yourself if you won’t acknowledge reality. I know more about the state of this city than you do, and trust me, it isn’t pretty.”

Thren had to hold back his grin.

Oh, I know one secret you don’t
, he thought, arms crossed over his chest, fingers casually brushing the hidden amulet.

“Very well,” Thren said. “I sought you out for a reason, one you can likely guess. I seek an alliance between us, one that shall last until Muzien hangs from the city wall by his entrails.”

“A noble pursuit,” Deathmask said, drumming his fingers atop another coffin. “But I fail to see how you will help me. What exactly do you bring to such an alliance?”

“I bring my name, my reputation, and all who would seek to overthrow Muzien and return to the better days of old.”

“Ah yes, those better days…” Deathmask ceased drumming and instead began to pace back and forth beside the dancing corpse. “That’s the tricky point, Thren. You see, the past few years have been rather lean for most. You may remember the glory days during the height of the war with the Trifect, but what’s going to stick in the minds of any you try to recruit will be the recent years of peace you forged, and the dwindling coin that entered each of their hands.”

Thren did his best to ignore Maynard’s rotted skeleton, instead meeting Deathmask’s mismatched eyes and doing what he could to convey his conviction and determination. It was cold down there in the tomb, and he wanted their conversation over as fast as possible.

“We promise them an overthrowing of the old agreement,” Thren said. “The destruction of the Watcher, and an end to all truces. Together we can bring anarchy back to Veldaren, and in its chaos, we will thrive.”

Deathmask grinned.

“Now you have my attention. Muzien’s men from the west are worthless to us. They worship him as a god, and I’ve learned to just leave the fanatics be. But the members who once belonged to the Wolf Guild, the Spider Guild, the Shadow and the Serpent? They’re the ones who can be persuaded to turn. That’s the tricky part, Thren. We have to convince them we can make a difference. We have to make them believe Muzien can be killed.”

Thren thought of the many training sessions he’d had with his former master. He had never once won any spar, any competition. Deep down, he wondered if the elf actually could be beaten, but he kept those cowardly words to himself.

“He can be killed,” he said instead. “But it won’t be easy. What is it you suggest?”

Deathmask put a hand on Maynard’s corpse and whispered something Thren could not make out. The corpse turned, bowed to Deathmask, and then changed dances so that it swayed from side to side, arms limp, head rolling.

“Killing Muzien will be impossible until we strip him of his followers,” Deathmask said. “But there are other ways to show he isn’t the inhuman god he’s made himself out to be. His second-in-command, a man named Ridley, would be a fine example. Capture him, execute him in a very public, very gruesome manner, and we’ll have made our point.”

Thren drew his sword, and before Deathmask could react, he lopped off Maynard’s head. To his disgust, the corpse continued to dance, even with the head lying behind it in the coffin.

“Make it stop,” he said, sheathing his blade. “I’m tired of looking at it.”

“If you insist.”

Instead of seeming bothered by the demand, Deathmask only looked amused. He snapped his fingers, and the body collapsed instantly.

“If we kill Ridley, we’ll make our opposition known,” Thren said. “He won’t take kindly to it. I’ve heard what Muzien did in the marketplace a few weeks back. If he thinks he’s losing the city, what will stop him from performing a similar spectacle?”

Deathmask’s grin spread wider.

“That’s the point,” he said. “I
want
him to try another spectacle. When he does such things, he’s elevating himself above us mere mortals to declare himself superior. If we knock him down at that exact moment, if we toss egg on his face and mud on his clothes, it’ll show the entire city that Muzien isn’t perfect. He can be mocked. He can be stopped. He can be killed. After that, we let this city descend into anarchy. We’ll set fire to the businesses most loyal to Muzien, we’ll burn down the buildings where his men sleep, and we’ll execute anyone willing to wear the pointed star. Chaos, Thren, it all comes down to chaos. Make it terrible enough, and even the king will realize he has to make a choice. When it comes to who he fears most, you or Muzien, well…”

“If forced to make a choice, the king will act against the elf instead of me,” Thren said. “In the end, I’m human, and Muzien’s not. That alone will suffice. But what you’re suggesting is going to take more men than we have. How do we recruit without giving ourselves away, or bringing in traitors who will turn us over to Muzien?”

“We do it by being careful, and selective,” Deathmask said. “And I have already made an … unusual ally, whose name I’d rather keep to myself for now. This ally alone grants us many men who know how to use the sharp end of a sword. The question is, what of you, Thren? Is there someone you trust to aid you in taking down that blasted elf?”

Thren thought of the various members of his guild, and he shook his head remembering how one of his most trusted, Martin, had likely turned on him within a day of his return to Veldaren. No, there was no one he could trust without doubt. He’d led by fear, and now that Muzien ruled, there was no way he could inspire fear so thoroughly that the Darkhand held no sway.