The Silent Blade Read online

  He ducked a clumsy, panicked swipe and stepped into the man’s guard, grabbing his head in both hands. He gave a savage twist, and there was an audible pop as the guard’s neck broke.

  Aaron caught him before he could fall, lowering him gently to the ground. The longer he could keep those inside unaware of what was happening the better. The night’s silence was split with a loud crash, and he snapped his head around in time to see the first man stumbling through the brothel’s doorway. The man fell sprawling in the entrance, hacking and choking, his fingers clawing at his ruined throat.

  So much for stealth. Aaron drew his sword and rushed past the dying man. Inside, at the bar, three men were turning on their bar stools to look at what had caused the sound. They were obviously drunk, slowed by it, and none of them managed to draw their blades before he was on them, cutting them down.

  When he’d finished, he turned to the room at large and was surprised to find it mostly empty save for a table of four men who all seemed to be passed out. Three of them sat reclined in their chairs, their heads lolling, the fourth’s head lay on the table, buried in his arms. Judging by the sharp, acrid smoke filling the air, the fools must have been high on tamarang. He looked at them, shaking his head in disgust. He’d be doing them a favor, really. Those who became addicted to tamarang died slow, painful deaths as the herb ate at their insides. He turned to the only other person in the room, a too-skinny, dark-haired young girl who stood behind the bar. At a guess, he would have put her at no older than sixteen. Her face was pale, and she stared at him with wide, frightened eyes.

  “I’d get down and stay down if I were you,” he said, and she collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, vanishing behind the bar.

  Aaron stared after her for a minute then, satisfied, he stalked to the men at the table. None of them so much as stirred a finger as the blade went in and, when he was finished, he felt a strong urge to wash his hands. Instead, he went back to the girl at the bar, looking over to see her cowering against it, her arms pulled tight around her knees in a protective ball. “I’m looking for a man named Lucius.”

  The girl’s mouth trembled, but she pointed an unsteady hand at the stairs, “S-s-second door. On the right.”

  “Thanks. Stay down here—you’ll be okay.”

  He took the stairs quickly, knowing it was only a matter of time before the rest of Hale’s men—and there would be plenty—finished amusing themselves with the goods on offer and decided to go back out to the common room. So far he’d been relying only on luck and the element of surprise, but finding a bunch of his friends dead would have a way of putting a man on edge.

  He came to the door, put his ear to it. Feigned screams of ecstasy from inside, a woman. A man, too, cursing and grunting and not feigned in the slightest. He tried the door knob and found it locked. He stepped back and glanced down the hallway once more, assuring himself it was still empty. Then he took two steps and kicked at the door where the latch was.

  The wood of the door was cheap, halfway rotten. Probably, he thought, a place like this, they spend their money on beds and sheets, not doors and locks. The latch snapped easily and the door flew open, slamming against the inside wall. He stepped inside, swinging it shut behind him.

  There was a man and a woman’s shout of surprise—both real this time—and he spun toward the sound. A candle burned on the room’s nightstand and by the light of it he could see a plain-faced girl straddling a familiar man with a pinched, weasel face and greasy black hair. They were both naked, their eyes wide with shock. He pointed the sword at them, “Another scream like that, and you’re dead.”

  “W-w-what the fuck?” The naked man said. He threw the girl off him, and she hit the floor with a gasp of pain. The man moved, going for a knife on the nightstand, and Aaron took a step forward, putting the tip of his blade at the man’s throat.

  “Lucius,” he said, “Good to see you.”

  The man stared at him in confusion for several seconds then his eyes grew wide with surprise, “A-Aaron?” He said, “you’re supposed to be—“

  “Dead? Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps telling me.”

  “Do you have a-any idea who owns this place?” Lucius said, his breath coming fast now, his beady eyes searching for a way out, “This is Hale’s brothel. He’ll kill you.”

  “And here we were getting along so well,” Aaron said, keeping his sword on Lucius’s throat as he drug the room’s only chair beside the bed and sat down. “Here’s the thing, Lucius. I’ve got a couple of questions for you, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to forego the pleasantries. You see, I don’t think I’ve got more than a minute or two before one of your friends finds the presents I left downstairs or comes to investigate what the shout was about. Which means that you don’t have more than a minute or two. So please don’t waste my time—I won’t ask you twice. Are we clear?”

  Lucius swallowed hard, nodding.

  “Good,” Aaron said, “I’m glad we’ve got that settled. Now, tell me. Where can I find Grinner?”

  The man’s brow creased in confusion. It hadn’t been the question he’d been expecting, “I … that is … I don’t know.”

  “I told you, Lucius,” Aaron said, leaning in so that the sword drew a tiny bead of crimson on the man’s throat, “don’t waste my time.”

  Lucius tried to recoil, but the headboard of the bed left him nowhere to go, and he held up shaky hands, “No p-p-please, man. Honest, Silent, I don’t know where he is. Nobody does. Shit the bastard’s men don’t even know where to find him.”

  “You better give me something better than that, Lucius,” Aaron said, “and quickly. Unless you’re not any good to me. If that’s the case—“

  “No, no, wait. Just wait, man, okay?” Lucius said, stumbling over the words in his haste, “I didn’t say that, okay, did I? Sure, sure, of course I help you. After all, we go way back. Look, what about uh … shit. It’s hard to think with that damned sword at my throat, okay?”

  “Be harder to think with it in your throat, don’t you think?”

  “Alright, man, alright, just relax.” Lucius said, staring down the length of steel, “Okay, hold on. I can’t help you find Grinner himself, man—I just can’t okay? No one can. But I can help you find his man, that fat creepy bastard, the one always wears a suit.”

  “Claude?”

  “Yeah, man. Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Keep talking. Where is he now?”

  “Shit, man, I don’t—“

  Aaron shot a glance at the door. Nobody there. Yet. He leaned forward, moving the sword forward just a bit. “Where?”

  “Easy, easy, with that thing, damnit. He’s probably at home, okay? In bed or doing whatever weird shit he gets up to. Man’s got a house not far from here, okay? Only a few blocks. Down on Marian street, third house on the right past the bridge. Got a fucking red door, okay? You can’t miss it.”

  Marian street. Named after the goddess Mariana, goddess of vengeance and retribution. A good sign or a bad one? “Good. Now, I’m going to leave, but—“ Aaron caught movement out of the corner of his eye and spun in time to see the woman coming forward, lunging forward, a knife held in two white-knuckled hands. He jerked to the side, out of the chair.

  Surprised by his sudden movement, the woman tripped, stumbling, and the knife drove into Lucius’s thigh. The man howled in pain and shock, and Aaron winced. Someone would definitely check that—that was not the scream of a man getting what he paid for in a brothel. What he deserved, maybe, but not what he paid for. The woman was frozen, staring at the blood pumping from the naked man’s thigh in shock. Aaron gave her a shove, and she let out a surprised yell of her own as she went tumbling over the bed.

  “See you around, Lucius.” Then he was out of the room and running. A door opened on the second floor as he made the top of the stairs, but he didn’t turn to see who it was, leaping down the stairs three and four at a time. He was out the door and in the street when the shouts of fear and con
fusion erupted from inside the brothel. He glanced around the street and hurried toward a nearby alley. A sound, something whistling in the air, and he grunted, stumbling as something tore into his left arm. He barely managed to catch himself on the wall of the alleyway, and he looked down, shocked to find an arrow sticking out of the meat of his arm.

  He spun back to look at the brothel. The bar girl stood in the circle of light spilling into the street, holding a crossbow. The weapon looked big and unwieldy in her small hands. Still, unwieldy or not, she was loading another bolt even as he watched, and her aim had proved too damned accurate the first time. What you get for being soft, you damned fool, he cursed himself, and then he was running again, around the corner and disappearing into the night.

  About halfway to the house Lucius had indicated, Aaron stopped in the shadows of an alleyway, his senses alert for sounds of pursuit. He waited several minutes but the street remained empty, so he went over his options, wondered why he hadn’t killed Lucius, why he hadn’t killed the girl. The girl had shot him with a crossbow, could have killed him if not for the night, the darkness. And Lucius … he’d as much as told the man where he was going. How long before he told Hale? He didn’t think that Hale would make a move on the house of Grinner’s second in command—such a thing would cause a war. It was one thing to have the occasional assassination or theft, but an all-out war wouldn’t be beneficial for either. No, Hale probably wouldn’t send his men to attack Claude’s house, but that wouldn’t stop them from waiting in the street nearby and taking Aaron when he left. Or, he thought, if you don’t get your ass in motion, they’ll take you before you even get inside.

  His only hope was that, for the next hour or so, Lucius would be thinking more about the hole in his leg than telling his boss what had happened. Aaron gritted his teeth and pushed the arrow through his arm, strangling a scream that threatened to rise up in the back of his throat.

  He half-leaned, half-collapsed against the alley wall, fighting down the sudden urge to vomit. He took several slow, ragged breaths, rubbed his hand over suddenly blurry eyes. When his vision cleared he tore off a piece of the new shirt Celes had given him—gods, he was going through shirts today—and wrapped the arm, hissing as he pulled the bandage tight. He gave himself another minute to get his breathing under control. Then he stepped out of the alleyway and started down the street. As he walked, he looked back from time to time but, for now at least, the street remained empty.

  It wasn’t long before he made it to the spot Lucius had indicated. The first thing he noticed was the silence. The night was quiet, absent even of the common pleas and moans of the beggars that seemed to lurk on every street corner in the Downs. But it wasn’t just the silence that bothered him—it was the stillness. The houses stood dark, no candles or lanterns burning within. No drunken man shouted at his wife, no unfortunate victim screamed or begged for help. There was only the silence and the stillness, only the sound of the wind in his ears, and the steady rhythm of his boots on the cobbled road.

  He knew instinctively that the houses were empty. It was a feel they had, the feel of homes long abandoned, not homes anymore, not really, only the shells of them. It gave him a strange, disconcerting feeling, as if he might be the only man left alive in the world. Then, a realization struck him, and he was relieved to find that strange, disconnected feeling fading. Of course the houses would be empty. If Lucius was correct, Claude’s home was about halfway down the street, a modest dwelling that looked no different than any of the others. Aaron had heard stories of Claude’s depraved forms of entertainment—as all the denizens of the Downs had. It was no surprise, then, that those who’d once lived on the street had moved. Or died, he thought, there’s always that.

  He frowned, studying the distant house. No guards in sight, only the desolate houses, watching him from either end of the street, grim specters in the darkness. But the guards were there, alright. A man like Claude wouldn’t go unprotected. If Aaron’s life had taught him anything it was that, in the world, but even more so in the Downs themselves, things were rarely what they appeared.

  He started down the street again, letting his feet begin to drag, adopting a purposeless shuffle, the way a man might walk if he’d drank one too many mugs of ale. A subtle thing, not overdoing it, letting his head loll from side to side, his upper body sway uncertainly with each step.

  He made his way past Claude’s house, his gaze wandering back and forth in what he hoped appeared to be the aimless, purposeless glances of a man deep in his cups. And there it was. An alleyway opposite the house, a man, dressed in black, his eyes barely visible in the darkness. Aaron stumbled to a halt for long enough to let out a loud belch, noting as he did the curtains of one of the houses beside Claude’s shift subtly. Then he continued past until the house was out of sight. He turned down an alleyway, out of sight of the road, and his steps became purposeful once more.

  At least two guards keeping watch and plenty more within the house itself, that was certain. He hurried through the streets, working his way back and behind the man in the alleyway and sliding the knife from his boot as he did, concealing it against his arm.

  The guard was alert, ready. Aaron had barely taken a step down the alley when the man spun, something—Aaron was damnably sure it was a crossbow, given his luck of late—held in his hands. “Who’s that?”

  Aaron judged the distance, knowing it was too far and then, praying that the darkness would conceal him, “Ah, shit, man. Don’t be such a bitch. Claude’s got me patrolling, alright?” he said, moving closer, “Just checking to make sure everything’s good out here. Hate to think you were gettin’ bored.”

  The man grunted, the crossbow relaxing in his hands, “Shit, I’ll take bored. Better than being in there, listening to that poor bastard’s screams. Had to hear that shit anymore, I’d probably lose my fucking mind.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said, thinking, only ten feet more, maybe less, “Well, what are you gonna do? The man’s got his tastes.”

  The guard must have heard something he didn’t like in Aaron’s tone. He shifted, and the crossbow came up again, “Hey, what did you say your name was? They just checked on me less than an hour ago, and it don’t seem I remember Claude taking on any new—“

  Aaron was on him before he finished talking. He knocked the crossbow aside just in time, and the bolt shattered against the cobbled street, a clap of thunder in the near silence. The guard recoiled, perhaps meaning to run, but Aaron rushed into him, slamming him against the wall of the alley. Before the man could react, Aaron grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head back, pulling his knife across the guard’s throat. Blood fountained out, spilling over his borrowed clothes, and Aaron clapped a hand over the man’s mouth, holding on grimly as his struggles grew weaker and then stopped altogether. Panting with the effort and from the brief but intense struggle, Aaron lowered the man down until he sat propped against the alley wall, his head sagging over his ruined throat.

  Gasping, his left arm throbbing in pain, Aaron rested against the wall of the alley and fought to get his ragged breathing under control. Damned fool, he cursed himself, you got in a hurry, and you nearly got killed for your trouble. He wondered of what his old master would say if he saw him now but thought he knew well enough. Darrell had never been short on lessons, after all. Recklessness and desperation will kill a man quicker than any blade. Knowledge and patience—these are a swordsman’s greatest weapons. It had been one of the man’s favorite lessons, most often after Aaron had lost his temper during a training session, forgetting what he’d learned in his anger and getting plenty of fresh bruises for his trouble.

  Reckless and desperate. Well, Aaron was both of those now and no help for it. He would worry about knowledge and patience later, after he got his mother’s necklace back. If, of course, he was still alive to worry about anything. For now, he could only count on speed and surprise, neither of which would aid him should someone happen by and find the dead man in the alley before
he was finished with his business.

  He levered himself off the alley wall, wiped his blade clean on the dead man’s tunic, and started back to the house where he’d saw the curtain move in a shuffling run. He came at it from the side, staying in a low crouch beneath the windows as he worked his way around the perimeter of the house. He could hear the muffled sound of voices from inside but was unable to make out the words.

  Slowly, carefully, he crept around the house’s edge until he was on the side nearest the one Lucius had indicated. He waited, listening for any signs of someone inside watching it. Hearing nothing, he lifted his head up enough to peer into the window. He looked in on what appeared to be a small bedroom. The blankets on the bed were in disarray, indicating recent use but, for now, at least, the room was empty. Before he could second guess himself, he turned and dashed across the empty space between the two houses, expecting at any moment to hear the sounds of alarm. None came, and he made it to the back of Claude’s home, out of view of anyone who might take a look out of the other house’s windows. He knelt down, leaning against the house’s wooden wall, and gave his hammering heart a moment to slow.

  The muffled sound of a scream broke the silence, and he tensed, shooting glances around him in the darkness. No men appeared with swords drawn, crossbows fixed, and, in another moment, he realized that the scream had been coming from inside Claude’s home, not from the guard station. Taking slow deep breaths and fighting down the urge to run, he made his way around the back of the house, searching for any door or window that he could use to gain entry. He’d made it halfway around the side of the house when he grew convinced that there was no door or window on this side, and he cursed himself for a fool. Knowledge and patience. He could hear the old man’s chiding voice as clearly as if he’d been standing right beside him.

  Aaron had been in such a hurry that he hadn’t studied the layout of the house like he should have, had been so wrapped up in getting his mother’s necklace back that he hadn’t spared the time he needed to do a thorough reconnaissance of the place. He’d been in a hurry, and he’d been careless, both mistakes that were worth a man’s life in a place like the Downs. How long before someone found the dead man? An hour? Less?