Night's Haunting (17 page)

"The ambush will turn into a battle, and I will not risk our most capable members going toe-to-toe with Vos soldiers. You are better operating from the shadows. You know that."

Heinrich frowned. "I was thinking more of the rewards from the mission. There are a lot of thieves getting rich right now, while the assassins are kept on a chain."

"I thought that might be more to the point. I trust you have informed the others that there will be plenty of opportunities for everyone soon enough?"

"Of course."

"Any talk about splitting and starting an assassins' guild?"

They had entered Ring Street, the thoroughfare that joined the Five Markets and ringed the imposing Citadel. They turned off the busy road and headed for quieter streets.

"No. Not that I have heard of, anyway," Heinrich said. "I wouldn't worry too much about that. Business was always good under your employment, and we all trust that you will steer us back on course."

"There will be some hard work for the assassins before that happens," Elaine said. "Hard, unpaid work."

"I think, after their recent inactivity, your people will happily take it," Heinrich said, smiling. "They will see it as a point of pride, and a chance to refine their skills. What did you have in mind?"

"The chief point of discussion in the next council meeting. So long as the attack on the silver train is at least a marginal success, we'll see what effect it has on the Vos forces in the city."

"And then?"

A wolfish look crossed Elaine's features. "Let's just say that if the assassins start tracking Vos officials and military leaders, I don't believe their time will be wasted."

"Sounds like war." Heinrich did not seem unhappy with the idea.

"That is what I am trying to avoid, as I am not sure even our assassins could survive a war with Vos. However, a few blades in the dark, a poisoning here or drowning there, might just make the Empire's position here untenable. We avert war and win by default."

"What if that is not enough?"

"Then, so long as we survive, we keep fighting. I'll not be driven from this city."

Heinrich shrugged. "You'll need to find some way to finance our people in the long term. Their loyalty to you is firm at the moment, but it may not last, especially if they start dying."

Nodding grimly, Elaine stopped as they came to a junction where the narrow road joined Lantern Street, a livelier part of the city that was home to many of the permanent traders and craftsmen's workshops. She turned her head to one side slightly as Heinrich leaned over and kissed her cheek.

Turning on her heel, Elaine retraced her steps, thinking hard as she went. The news from Heinrich was encouraging, and she felt she had at least some time with the rest of the assassins. Unlike most of the rogues in the thieves' guild who might engage in the odd murder for silver, her killers were true professionals. They knew when they needed to act, and when they should lie low.

She glanced up to see a woman approaching her from the other end of the street. Elaine found herself unnerved to see the woman walking straight towards her, eyes fixed on hers.

Dropping a hand down to her stomach, Elaine brushed the pommel of the short knife she had concealed under her tunic, and slowed her pace, looking to the alleys she passed and the few passers-by behind her. She suddenly felt very exposed, and wondered if an ambush was about to be sprung.

The woman continued her approach, her pace not slackening in the slightest as she stalked forwards. Elaine saw she was around her own age, with dark hair tied up behind her head. She wore a tunic of black leather, with unusual metal discs woven into the fabric, each dulled so as not to catch the sun. What arrested her attention, though, was the woman's eyes, beautifully wide but almost black as she stared back. Elaine was sure she had seen the woman before.

As they moved to within a few yards of one another, Elaine whipped her knife out from under her tunic, keeping the blade down at her side, but in clear view of the other woman. The only response was a smile as the woman cupped a hand and then thrust it at Elaine, as if she were throwing something.

Elaine had barely started to dodge when she was blasted off her feet by a moving wall of air.

The thieves had scattered long before Turnitia had come into sight as they walked back along the coastal road. Wendric and Ambrose had taken the bulk of them in a wide loop around the city, beyond the sight of its walls. There were numerous ways into the city that avoided the two main gates in the east and north walls, from storm drains to overflow pipes leading straight to the sewers. The thieves' guild had long since mapped them all, and they had been a staple of smuggling franchises until Vos had strangled illicit trade in the city.

The journey along the coastal road, in the company of the remaining jubilant thieves, had been an amiable way of passing an afternoon. Though loaded down with heavy coins, even the wounded thief, his left arm strung across his chest with a makeshift sling, was laughing. They were giddy with their success, and while Lucius kept quiet himself, he enjoyed listening to their plans on how they were going to spend their fortunes. Even the hilly terrain through which they travelled did nothing to dampen their spirits, though every few paces one thief or another would stop to shift his sack from one shoulder to the other.

"Going to set me up a dozen new franchises," one said. "Maybe something at the docks, corner all trade coming in by sea."

"Investing in the future, then?"

"Aye, only sensible thing to do."

"Well, in that case I think I'll get myself a new sword. One of those Allantian-forged jobs, perfect balance, they say."

"That's for the future?"

"Sure, I'll need it for when we go for the next silver train!"

"You would be better off investing in a pony and cart, so we don't have to tip so much into the sea. What about you, Alfred, what are you going to do with your money?"

There was a long pause. "I think, on balance," the thief Alfred said, "that I'll take three rooms at the Red Lion, and invite every whore, troubadour and gambler to join me. Oh, and make sure Myrklar never runs out of wine. Think I'll get through this little lot within a month or so, then I'll be ready for more work."

His plans were met with stunned silence, until he turned and winked at the rest of them. They all laughed then, though Lucius was still not sure Alfred was completely joking. He just hoped they would all have the sense to keep their heads down for the next few weeks. Any sudden appearance of huge quantities of cash would lead even the dullest Vos sergeant straight to a guilty thief, once the raid on the silver train became common knowledge.

"Hey, what's going on there?" one thief asked.

The walls of Turnitia had come into view as they mounted the rise, and Lucius' gaze was drawn straight to the thin columns of smoke rising from the centre of the city. He frowned. The smoke was too thick to come from a blacksmith's, and there was too much for it to be an isolated house fire.

"Looks like it's near the Citadel," said one thief.

"A riot, you think?" Alfred asked.

Lucius shook his head. "I can't see the Vos guard tolerating angry crowds long enough for them to light more than one or two fires. It looks like a battle is going on."

That subdued the thieves, though their eyes lit up when Lucius slung his own sack of silver from his back and bade them share the load between them. Telling them to get back into the city through less obvious routes as planned, he jogged ahead, wanting to see what had happened within the city.

It took him nearly an hour to reach the northern city gates. They were wide open, as was usual during the day, but completely untended. Hesitantly, fearing a trap, he approached the gates and peered inside, half expecting to see ranks of Vos soldiers beyond, spears and crossbows levelled at him as he entered. There was nothing. As he passed under the high stone arch of the gatehouse, Lucius began to pick up speed, looking anxiously for anyone that could tell him what had happened. Every street near the gatehouse was deserted, with the windows of many of the buildings shuttered or barred. He made his way towards the centre of the city, heading for Ring Street and the Citadel.

The northernmost of the Five Markets looked like a battleground, and Lucius wondered if he had missed a sneak attack from some secret army of Pontaine, come to claim the city from the Empire.

On Ring Street, three houses blazed, pouring black smoke into the afternoon sky, the columns streaking across the huge azure sphere of Kerberos. The dead lay everywhere on the cobbles of the marketplace, their bodies looking as if they had been picked up by some giant and then dashed on the ground. Limbs and heads lay at unnatural angles, while some were impaled on the smashed remains of vendors' stalls. He could not see a single wound on any that looked as though it was made by a weapon.

He walked across the marketplace stunned, unable to believe what he was seeing, and he was not alone. Others stumbled over bodies as if in a daze. Every now and again, someone would cry out as they recognised a loved one, falling to their knees beside a body.

It was a massacre, indiscriminate killing on a scale he had only seen performed by the worst mercenary companies operating in the Anclas Territories. The broken bodies of Vos soldiers were scattered all over the cobbles, most near the sealed gates of the Citadel. However, many more of the dead were ordinary men and women, the life blasted out of their corpses. With a shock, Lucius realised that many children were among the dead, covered by the bodies of their mothers or fathers as if they had tried, in vain, to shield them from attack. There were a hundred or more dead in the market.

He walked past the wreckage of one stall, its bright green awning now a tattered sheet flapping in the breeze. The wood used to build the stall was little more than jagged splinters, mixed with the broken crockery the stall had sold. Seated on the ground next to the ruin, Lucius saw an aged woman, her long silver hair shielding her eyes from the devastation surrounding them.

She sat, motionless, staring into nothingness, one hand on the twisted body of a man of similar age. His dead gaze was fixed on the sky, his neck broken.

Crouching down by the woman, Lucius gently took her hand.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, but received no response. He moved so he was crouching directly in her field of vision, and carefully brushed her hair to one side, before repeating the question.

She did not stir for several seconds. When she looked up at him there was fear in her face.

"I will not harm you," he said softly. "Are you injured?"

Slowly, she shook her head. "I'm fine," she said simply. She was silent for a moment more, then added, "Pietre threw me behind the stall. Then he died."

Lucius looked around the market. The scene was being repeated all over, with survivors emerging from the wreckage, aided by those who had ventured to the scene of the battle. The gates of the Citadel opened enough to let a squad of Vos guards through, and they immediately set to work, dragging the bodies of fallen soldiers into the fortress. Only then did Lucius notice that the walls of the Citadel themselves had sustained damage. Great gouges had been torn into the stonework, as if by a powerful siege engine. Mystified, he turned back to the woman.

"What happened here?"

"She said she had come for everyone Vos-born," the woman said after a moment's hesitation. "Then she started attacking the soldiers."

"Who?"

"Some people started cheering at first, seeing the soldiers thrown around like rag dolls. But when she ran out of soldiers, she turned on everyone else. She just... broke them. Threw them into the stalls, the buildings, each other."

"Lady, who did this?"

"Pietre wanted to run, but I was frozen where I stood. Too scared to move. He saw what she was doing, as she killed everyone she could see. He saw her come towards us, and got me out of the way. Then she... she..."

Lucius grasped the woman by her shoulders, shaking her slightly to bring her attention back to him.

"Please, you must tell me," he said. "Who was it?" He knew the answer before the woman spoke.

"Some maddened wizard, some rogue mage. Said she wanted to destroy everything Vos-built and Vos-born. Cloaked in darkness, she was."

Dropping his own gaze to the ground, Lucius sighed uselessly, trying to find some course through the disaster.

"Why did she leave?"

"I don't know," the woman answered bleakly. "I don't think there was anyone left to kill."

Squeezing the woman's hand slightly before he stood, Lucius turned and walked slowly away. He had heard Adrianna's threats, of course, but it staggered him to think she had done this to so many innocent people. She was ferociously dedicated to the Shadowmages and their loose guild, and he could well believe that she would cheerfully slay every Vos soldier and official if it would make them leave the city, but he had never thought she was capable of this level of destruction.

As he left the marketplace, he turned to look at the scene of the massacre. The other troubling thought was that Adrianna was more powerful than he had suspected. Lucius remembered his confrontation with her outside his old home, and how he felt she could easily best him if angered. He had had no idea how true that was. The magnitude of the magics she must have controlled to destroy so much was astounding. He had begun to think he was starting to make progress in the Shadowmage's art, but he was no more than a novice. Adrianna's power and talent were far beyond his own.

Turning into a short dead end of an alley, Lucius leaned against the wall of a small brewing house for support as he gathered his thoughts. He knew exactly what he had to do next, but he feared the confrontation.

Taking a deep, ragged breath, he summoned the threads of magic to his will, shaping them into a quiet clarion call that would find Adrianna and let her know where he was. He felt the magical chimes radiate away from him, and he turned to leave the alley, wanting to find a more discreet place to meet.