Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Arc 5: Chapter 9: The Assassin

I knew where Emma had gone, or at least had a strong suspicion. She had a favorite spot along the harbor, where she could look out over the bay without being disturbed during the late hours. With Qoth watching her back and her own talents to protect her, I hadn’t minded the regular outings.

Careless. I’d known there was a risk of retaliation against us. From the Priory, from the court, from Yith. No more sleeping in humble shacks after tonight, I promised myself. We’d move back into the castle, get strong stone walls between us and our enemies.

You have enemies in the castle too, I reminded myself as I limped along, every step sending a freshly intense spike of agony up my thigh. The knee had already swollen with a hideous bruise.

I’d figure it out later. For now, the night still held danger.

Fog rolled in as the night aged and cooler air settled, gathering thick over the water and rising up over the streets in a languid tide. It emerged from the waters below like the reaching fingers of some ghoulish horde, shrouding the sheer drops down into the lapping waters of the Riven. I knew where the docks were by the creaking of timber to my left. To my right, the city sprawl unfolded over this outer isle. The fog hadn’t yet become thick enough to shroud the Corpse Moon glaring down from the sky.

By the feeling around my ribs, blood had already soaked through my bandages. The pain had lessened, but the wound still bled, enough to be worried about it. I focused my attention on my surroundings, pushing my thoughts outside myself.

It was quiet here. I could hear the ghosts dogging my steps more clearly, as the sea fog gave them something to congeal forms from. They taunted me as I moved, wounded and anxious, toward my destination.

“She’s already dead!” The shades cackled.

“Had her throat cut just like that old widower, her body dumped into the bay. You’ll find it a week hence, bloated and eaten by fish.”

“Now she’s gone off to lead them to you.”

“Shouldn’t have trusted!”

“Not the blood wench. Not anyone.”

They formed around me like sinuous eels with ghastly human faces, grinning with empty, toothless mouths.

“They’ll all betray you!”

“Leave you.”

“Die for your failures.”

I ignored them, those disquiet spirits which had kept me company for most of a decade now. I knew they were treacherous, and twisted even honest words into something poisonous.

Catrin had been the one to warn me of the attackers, anyway. I glanced up at what light I had left. The lesser moon didn’t provide much, and it would vanish before long if all this thickened up.

Where had Catrin gone? What was her plan?

I heard a distant sound. A wooden rattle. I stopped, and the ghosts scattered with a chorus of giggles, like children caught in a prank. I glared into the mist, my night vision useless for piercing it. Another round of clicking echoes came, this time from a narrow street to my right.

The same creature, or a second one moving to flank me? How many were left, and why hadn’t they all gone into the house?

Bodyguards, I realized. If the puppeteer, the real assassin, was competent, then they would keep one or two nearby to protect themself.

Click, clack. From behind me now. I tightened my grip on my axe, feeling one of its hard little burs dig into my palm. One squeeze, and I’d give the cursed branch enough blood to grow in size. A risk with what I’d already lost, but the Marions were deadly at close range. I might need the reach.

Clack. Click-clack-clack.

Click.

That last sound wasn’t a wooden limb shifting. I spun and swung just as the crossbow fired, striking the bolt out of the air. I barely even heard the sharp punching sound of it firing through my own grunt, or the crack of split wood as I hit it. The shot came from so close that it all happened at nearly the same instant.

The bolt fell in two smoking pieces to either side of me. A dark shape flitted into an alley and out of my sight, the sound of a tinny laugh chasing it.

Bastards.

I took a step forward, meaning to chase the thing, then froze as something scraped over the tiles of the roof above.

A trap. There was one above me. I had the realization after it had already dropped.

A piercing, metallic shriek disturbed the night. I felt a shiver in the world — no other way to describe the use of violent Art — and a molten missile slammed into the murderous doll right before it landed on me, pinning it against the side of the building. It hung there for a moment, the ornate spear stuck through it wreathed in scarlet lambency, before the phantasm broke and the Marion tumbled to the ground in a limp, twitching mound at my feet.

I stared at it a moment, my heart thumping, knowing I’d probably just come very close to death. It came as a numb realization, considering how many times I’d nearly died in the last half hour.

I turned toward the sound of clicking boots as a figure stepped out of the fog. She wore a jacket against the night chill, her yellow scarf, and had her sword concealed in a bundle of hemp held in her right hand. Blood, still shining subtly with aura, dripped from a cut on her left palm.

“You’re alright,” I said, feeling a knot of tension in me loosen at the realization.

“Of course,” Emma agreed with an arched eyebrow. “I was just on my way back when Catrin found me. Is this the part where you lecture me about going out without telling you?”

Normally, her flippant tone would have angered me. Now, I just felt too glad to see her unharmed, and too worried for Catrin, to be bothered about it.

“It probably saved your life,” I said. “Where’s Cat?”

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“No clue,” Emma said, flicking some loose beads of blood off her fingers. “I thought she was you at first, with that cloak. She said something about ‘going hunting.’”

As if on cue, sounds emerged from a nearby alley. We both turned toward it, on guard. I raised my axe, and Emma flicked a spatter of bloody drops onto the ground, ready to transform them into more screeching spears.

From the deep shadows within the alley, a small man tumbled out. He was shorter than Emma, bent and wrinkled with age, with a pair of spectacles askew on a long nose. He wore simple clothes like any shopkeep, and looked like nothing so much as the owner of some inviting little store. He fell to his knees in front of us, his nose crooked and bleeding, already swelling with a purpling bruise.

Catrin stepped out from behind him, still engulfed in my cloak. A pale finger emerged from within it to point at the small man.

“I think this is our man. I caught him in an empty house nearby.”

I studied the unassuming figure. He held his broken nose, hunching on the street to look smaller, and I think he might have been on the verge of tears. The glasses enlarging his eyes, and the fringe of white hair ringing his skull, gave him an almost comically perplexed look, as though he couldn’t understand why he’d been attacked and dragged here.

He didn’t look much like an assassin. Then again, the best rarely do.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Catrin’s red eyes glinted from the shadow of my cloak’s pointed cowl. “The house had two of those puppets guarding it, and he had some setup there. It was like a miniature stage.”

“Probably the channel for his Art,” Emma noted.

I nodded. Most sorcery is like that, in truth, requiring intense ritual, time, and material through which to channel the emanations of one’s soul. It’s costly and easy to ruin, but it lets an adept perform far more complex magic than simply manifesting spectral weapons, as Emma and I did.

“I didn’t realize you could take other people through your shadows,” I said to Catrin.

She scoffed. “If I couldn’t, I’d be naked every time I came out. Still, it’s not exactly pleasant for anyone else. Take a good look at him.”

I did. The old puppeteer shivered violently, and not just from fear. His skin had a blue tinge, his teeth were chattering, and a gray, filmy substance clung to his skin.

She uses the Wend to travel through shadows, I realized. Not a hospitable path either, at least to mortals.

Of course she did. Why hadn’t I guessed that? It was practically the same method Qoth used.

I knelt by the man. “Who are you?”

He had pale green eyes, frosted with age. They danced about, not focusing on anything. He seemed so scared and helpless, but he’d also just tried to kill me and two people I cared about. I didn’t feel much sympathy just then.

“Speak,” I said in a quiet, calm voice. “Why don’t we start with your name.”

The old man’s flitting eyes went to me. He started to speak in a tremulous voice. “I’m dead anyway. I know who you are.”

He had liver spots on his hands, and didn’t seem like he’d been in good health even before Catrin had broken his nose and dragged him between the cracks in reality.

“If I turn you over to the Fulgurkeep,” I said, “they’ll spend half a month torturing you, then hang you. Answer my questions, and you might get out of this alive.”

The man’s eyes finally focused, but the fear didn’t leave them. Panic had started to settle on him.

Something felt off. His gaze kept going in every direction except to me.

He’s not afraid of me, I realized.

The eerie cackle of wooden limbs echoed down the street. In a flash I spun, putting myself between the sound and Catrin, who stood closest, and who might look like me from a distance with her disguise.

The Marion perched on a roof half a block down fired its crossbow. The bolt flitted through the air, far enough away I caught its glint in a beam of moonlight breaking through the clouds. I lifted my axe, using the broad blade as a shield.

But the bolt hadn’t been for me. It zipped past, close enough I felt a brush of air across my face. It struck its target with a meaty snap of impact.

The body of the puppeteer hit the street with a quiet thump even as the archer vanished from sight.

“Shit!” Catrin barked, having not seen the bolt as I had. Emma said something, a more eloquent invective, even as I scanned the building for more threats.

There were none. I turned and knelt by the man, putting a hand to his neck, then spat out a curse. Dead. His eyes were glassy as poor Rudy’s had been. The bolt had struck just under his ear.

His own puppet had killed him. Had he put that compulsion into his own creations?

No. He’d been terrified at the end, and not of me. What was going on here?

“Are there more?” Catrin asked. She and Emma had both crouched, using my mass a shield. I didn’t take offense, considering I wore steel.

I focused. Some Marions were simply puppeted by arcane techniques, but these had seemed very alive and independent. With disquiet spirits trapped in those shells, it was possible I could sense them if they were nearby, same as any demon or wraith.

Should have done this before, I thought as I explored the surrounds with my aura. I’d been too worked up from the violence at the house, and too worried about Emma. Ser Maxim would have berated me for hastiness. I’d become less reliant on my paladin senses since coming to the capital, dulled as they were by the metropolis. But the fog, the city, the lapping waves, and creaking docks around me weren’t unlike the rustling of a deep wood.

Putting myself in that mindset, I reached out with my aura to feel at the nightscape around us. I did that for several minutes before drawing in a deep breath and turning to my companions. “I think they’re gone.” Looking to Emma I said, “We’re going back to the house. Grab everything you can carry.”

Emma nodded, slamming her blade back into its scabbard as she stood. “And then?”

“And then…” I tapped my axe on one shoulder, thinking. Where was safe? What was the right move?

The Backroad? No, that would be the same as announcing to every professional killer in Garihelm that I was spooked. Neither did I particularly trust the Keeper’s protection, not after he’d dispatched Catrin to seduce and steal secrets from me. I trusted her, but not her master.

No right answer, so I chose the one with least risk. “And then, we’re going to the palace. I need to report this, and I don’t want to be out in the city any longer than I need to. We’ll take the streets. Don’t want to get caught on the boat if there’s another attempt.”

Maybe someone in the palace was behind this, but they wouldn’t try anything blatant within its walls. Emma started moving without complaint. I began to follow, but noticed Catrin lingering. I stepped up to her side.

“I’m not giving the cloak back until I get some clothes,” she told me pointedly. “You can look as much as you want another time.”

“That’s not what I—”

I trailed off, knowing she was deflecting with her usual coquettish humor. “What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t recognize him,” Catrin said, her eyes fixed on the corpse. “I felt sure I would. Lot of professional killers use the Backroad.”

“I doubt all of them do,” I said. “He could be anyone. I’ll do some investigating.”

The small, frail looking body had started to form a growing pool of blood, red leaking into the seams in the stone. Catrin stared at it with a fixed attention, her eyes gleaming like a beast’s from within my cloak’s cowl.

I watched her take a step forward, a bare foot emerging from the red folds of the cloak to almost touch the pool of blood. She froze, licked her lips, then carefully backed away.

“We should go,” I said, thinking it best to draw her attention away from the corpse just then. Then in a lighter voice I said, “I do need my cloak back.”

Strange, I thought. It had reacted violently to anyone else touching it before, but the Briar cloak seemed passive on the dhampir. Did that have to do with Renuart Kross wounding it in Rose Malin, or something about her?

Catrin’s voice came with its usual edge of teasing humor. “Only if you promise to let me wear it again.”

My throat went dry at the sight of her fanged grin. “I’ll… think about it. Let’s get back to the house for now. Emma and I need to pack up.”

“And you need to stitch up that wound,” Catrin said. “I can smell it. It’s… distracting.”

I nodded. “You should get back to your inn. It’ll be safer there.”

I’d take her with me to the palace, and dare anyone to so much as raise an eyebrow, but the gargoyles wouldn’t let her within sight of it. They were very vigilant against the undead, more than most any other threat. Besides, better she stay clear of me. For the time being, I would get Emma and I behind solid fortifications.

Then, when the sun rose, I would start trying to find out who had attempted to kill me.