Weapon of Blood (26 page)

“Son of a…” 
Norwood blinked and stared at the spot where the wizard had disappeared. 
“Marvelous!  Now I’m going to have an even harder time getting to sleep
tonight.”

Chapter
XVI

T
his day
is going from bad to worse
, thought
Mya as she entered the dingy office.  She’d never liked this room.  The bare
wooden walls and drab stick furnishings seemed to suck all the color out of the
bright sunny day outside.  Lamps on the walls barely lit the space to the
brightness of a rainy day.  Of course, it was inside a warehouse, and Youtrin’s
warehouse to boot, so she didn’t expect elegance.  In fact, the gloom matched
her mood, which wasn’t made any better by Neera’s attempt at congeniality.

“You’re dressed festively today, Mya.”

“It’s a beautiful spring day outside,
Neera.”  She took a seat at the table.  “If I wore anything less
festive
,
I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

After last night’s soul-crushing misery,
she had hoped a bright color might lighten her mood, but with Lad’s ultimatum,
the beautiful spring day only seemed to mock her.  She could feel his solid
presence behind her, the heat that radiated from his body warming her back like
the summer sun.  How cold it would feel when he was gone…

He’s leaving me
!

Mya forced her panic aside, struggling
through the rising maelstrom of emotions that threatened to pull her down into
darkness.  If the other masters detected her mood, they would think she feared
them, and fear to an assassin was like blood to a shark.  They would eat her
alive.

Focus!  Here and now are all that
matter!

Forcing her voice into a calm, bantering
tone, she smiled at Neera.  “In this neighborhood that gown of yours is like an
invitation to get robbed.  Don’t you ever find that it draws unwanted
attention?”

“When people look at me, Mya, they see a
rich, successful woman, which is precisely the image I want to project.  What
image are
you
trying to project?”  Neera smiled back, but something
poisonous lurked beneath the superficial pleasantry.

Strange
, Mya thought.
Neera’s usually the least abrasive
of the other masters
.

“Well, we’re all here, so let’s begin. 
Gentlemen, if you please.”

Horice and Youtrin, who had been talking
quietly in the corner, approached.  The Master Blade claimed the seat across
from Mya.  Youtrin scowled and cracked his huge knuckles, then took the only
empty seat, to Mya’s right.  Patrice, silent and beautiful, sat between Neera
and Horice.

Neera looked each of her fellow masters
in the eye before beginning.  “The Twailin Assassins Guild is at a crossroads. 
All of us, or nearly all,” she glanced sidelong at Mya, her rheumy eyes sharp
as daggers, “received quite a dressing down from the Grandmaster’s
representative last quarter about fallen revenues.  Personally, I never want to
experience such a humiliation again.  But revenues continue to fall.  We
must
change how we operate.  I see two paths we can take: we must either cooperate,
or elect a guildmaster.”

A surge of adrenalin ignited Mya’s
nerves.  Her skin tingled as if her tattoos were writhing.  Once again, the
specter of the Grandfather loomed over her, his blades parting her flesh as he
laughed at her pain.

Never again.

It had been barely a week since she’d
received the Grandmaster’s letter.  Since then, she had deliberately refused to
deal with the issue.  She knew that eventually she would have to decide what to
do, but not yet.  Even if she had sent an immediate response, it wouldn’t have
reached Tsing yet, so he couldn’t be disappointed by her silence.  She still
had time.  But now this…

“Cooperation isn’t working.”  Horice’s
hard, angry voice wrenched her attention back to the present, stretching her
nerves so taut she thought they might snap.

The bastard who just sent people to
kill me has the gall to say that cooperation isn’t working?
  Mya fantasized about putting a dagger between his
eyes to quell his scowl. 
Do it!
the voice of her temper screamed in her
mind. 
He deserves it!  You could do it! You could kill them all before any
of them could stop you!  Then you’d be safe!  Then it wouldn’t matter if Lad
left you.  You’d be safe!

Mya’s fingers twitched, itching for her
dagger.  She clenched her fist in frustration.  It wasn’t true.  She
could
kill them, but it wouldn’t make her safe.  As the only surviving master, it
would only precipitate her promotion to guildmaster.  And it wouldn’t make up
for losing Lad.

“It’s no mystery why we don’t cooperate,”
Patrice said.  “None of us has all the resources we need to function properly,
we don’t trust each other, and we won’t share power.”

“When Saliez was guildmaster, we
exchanged expertise much more readily.”  Neera shot a significant glance at Mya
that raised the Master Hunter’s hackles.

Feigning indifference, she
shrugged.  “I’ve always been willing to cooperate.  If you remember, I was the
one who suggested we could function without a guildmaster.  My Hunters are
always available to you, if you just agree to my terms…”

“Your terms!”  Youtrin sneered.  “How are
my people supposed to enforce compliance without violence?  All your crap about
public
opinion
!”

He deserves a knife in the brain, too.

“We need a new leader!”

Horice’s pronouncement caught Mya’s
attention quicker than the sound of a sword being drawn would have.  Panic
threatened again, and she turned an incredulous gaze on her peers.

“Does any one of you
really
want
to work under another Saliez?  The man was a nightmare!”

“He made
you
Master Hunter!”
Patrice shot back, her full lips set in a tight pucker.

“Right after he allowed Master Targus to
be killed when he could have prevented his death with a single word!  He
murdered him on a
whim
!  He killed his own valet right in front of me,
for the gods’ sake!”

“He had…strange predilections, but—”

“The man was a sadistic freak!  Did any
of you see the torture chamber beneath that keep of his?  I did.  I felt his
blades part my flesh for no reason other than to lay me out as bait for a
trap!”

The masters stared at her in shock.  They
undoubtedly had knowledge of Saliez’s perversions, but apparently no personal
experience. 
Lucky you
, she thought as she looked around from face to
face.  Mya caught a spasm of sympathy on the face of Horice’s bodyguard.  She
thought it curious until she remembered that Sereth, too, had worked directly
with Saliez. 
He knows
…

“None of us is Saliez,” Neera countered.

“Power can change people, Neera.” 
Gods
know it’s changed me.
  Mya could easily see how the woman could become
another Saliez.  Her elixirs had made her aged yet ageless, as Saliez’s runic
tattoos had done, and cruelty aplenty lurked behind the woman’s ancient eyes. 
“I don’t relish the thought of calling
you
Grandmother.”

“I did
not
suggest that I take the
Grandfather’s place, Mya, I merely—”

“Neera, Mya, please.”  Patrice’s calm
tone snapped Neera’s ire like a shorn thread, which caught Mya off guard.  The
Master Alchemist did not usually back down so readily.  “This bickering is
getting us nowhere, and is the
exact
reason why cooperation is an
unviable strategy.  We lack leadership.  We need a guildmaster, but who it will
be is academic until we forge a new ring.  I move that we use combined funds to
do so at our earliest convenience.”

“Seconded,” Youtrin said triumphantly.

A warm hand gripped Mya’s shoulder, and
Lad’s breath brushed her ear.  “I need to speak to you!  Now!”

Mya tensed at his touch, then immediately
became wary.  Why would Lad interrupt in the middle of this catastrophe?  Some
threat to her life?  She scanned the room and saw nothing.  Four masters, each
with a bodyguard, so eight people who could oppose them.  Not a problem; she
and Lad could kill them all in a heartbeat.  Wary of hidden assailants outside
the room, she cocked her head to listen.  No creaking boards, shuffling feet,
sounds of breathing, creaking leather…  Nothing…

“Be quiet, Lad.  We’ll talk later.”

His grip tightened on her shoulder. 
“It’s
important
, Mya!”

“I said
later
!  Now shut up!”  As
he took his hand away, she felt a tremble…his or hers, she couldn’t tell.  A
chill fell over her that wasn’t entirely due to this new insistence on a
guildmaster. 
What could frighten Lad?
  She couldn’t deal with that
right now; larger issues were in play.

Adopting a conciliatory tone, she turned
to the others.  “Forging a new ring is an unnecessary expense if we choose to
remain our own masters.”

“A motion has been put forth and
seconded.  A vote is called for.”

“Not without discussion!”  Mya looked at
the hard faces staring at her.  Any one of them could become like Saliez, and
she would be at their mercy.  She could
not
allow them to make her a
slave.

Never again!

But how could she persuade them?

Cooperation
...  This was Lad’s fault.  He had pushed her to make
the guild less violent, which had led to her falling out with the other
masters.  From there the situation had spiraled ever downwards.  Cold anger
replaced hot panic as she forcefully ordered her thoughts. 
With Lad
leaving, I can do as I damned well please.  To hell with a less brutal
Assassins Guild.  To hell with Lad and his high ideals.  To hell with
everything that doesn’t get me what
I
want!
  With new resolve and a
controlled voice, she put forth her proposal.

“Our problem stems
not
from a lack
of leadership, but from a lack of cooperation.  I agree that much of it is my
fault.  My Hunters have more diverse skills, so I’ve enjoyed relative success,
and haven’t fully recognized the adverse impact on the rest of you.”

Eyebrows raised around the table.  This
was a Mya they had never met.  But she wasn’t done yet.

“To show my willingness to cooperate,
I’ll offer
each
of you the services of one of my senior journeymen and
all those under them to use as you see fit, with no preconditions and no cost.”

“Even if I use them to enforce my
protection racket?” Youtrin asked, his expression disbelieving.  “What about
your terms?”

“Forget my terms.  Use them however you
wish!  Dress them up as doxies and parade them into the Duke’s Palace for all I
care.”

“What do you want for this new-found
cooperation?”  Horice’s suspicion was thick enough to spread on toast.

“What do I
want
?”  Mya gave him a
short, hard laugh.  “I’ve already
told
you.  It’s not what I want, it’s
what I
don’t
want, and that is someone leering over my shoulder and
dictating my every move.  We were slaves under Saliez.  We’re free now.  Do you
want to forge your own gold and obsidian shackles and hand them over to a new
master?  I
don’t
!”