A Clash of Shadows (5 page)

Nothing. She sensed nothing here but the normal aroma of normal life. Either she was fumbling terribly or they were in the wrong place.

She got up and walked to the bedroom.

Focus, Katja. Focus.

Katja grasped the handle and turned it. The hinges squealed a bit and Katja resorted to lifting the door a bit to cause less friction. She opened a crack wide enough to slip through and then knelt on the floor to be less visible.

She looked at the bed and saw faint outlines of people beneath the blankets. Two mounds, moving slightly in rhythm to the breathing. The room was utterly normal for what Katja expected from the servants of a rich man and they slept like babes.

It was a strange thought that circumstances would be no different whether these people were connected to the Brotherhood or not. The demon scum looked like anyone else. Until one started turning rocks over and peeking beneath them.

The final part
, Katja thought and tried to reach the half-trance state again. Doing it again and again was a drain on mental stamina. But she had to get used to it. She had to
learn
.

She felt the shadow of pain in her chest, heard a scream and smelled and tasted blood. She gasped and fought to separate herself from the past. A murder had been committed in this room, many years before. The deed stank of anger and shame and fear and grief. But it was all human. She detected nothing supernatural here.

Well, so be it.

Katja returned and couldn’t help but touch her chest to reassure herself it didn’t contain a knife blade.

Best get moving.

Katja turned around and bumped her elbow on a candlestick. It fell of
f
the stand and Katja managed to dart her palm out beneath it at the last moment. She looked back. The mounds were still breathing calmly.

She wanted to hit herself in the head but couldn’t risk the noise.

Come on now! Focus, Katja!

She carefully returned the candlestick and exited the room. She closed the door in the same way she had opened it and went up the stairs on all fours.

Serdra waited exactly where she had been.

“Well?” the woman whispered.

“I sense nothing here,” Katja said. “The spell wasn’t cast here. We must search elsewhere.”

“Are you sure?”

Katja looked at her mentor for a moment before crossing her arms.

“Yes,” she said a bit harshly. “I am sure,” she stated, despite feeling a hint of doubt. She wanted to be right. She wanted to be capable on her own.

Serdra was silent and utterly still and the doubt became worry.

“I sense nothing either,” she then said. “Let us go to the council hall.”

Katja again got to go first. She gave the wire to Serdra, made sure no one was outside, made her way down the wall and hurried into the darkest shadows. Serdra closed the window shutter and then followed her down. And then they continued.

The warm up was over. Now they would sneak into the most dangerous place in Amerstan. The killer being there wasn’t a certainty. This mission could be a total waste of time. But somehow Katja suspect
ed
the answers awaited them in the council hall, beyond armed guards and sturdy walls.

Now this would get truly risky.

5.

They had watched the hall from a distance many times and discussed how best to break into it. It was the most secure building in the land after all, with much to learn from it. But they had never actually done it. Such an endeavour wasn’t something Serdra was willing to embark on needlessly.

They had agreed that the sewer was probably the easiest way, but that the stench clinging to them afterwards would be a liability once inside. The sewer would be best reserved as an emergency escape route.

They knelt side by side in an alley right by the wall surrounding the council hall lawn and awaited their chance. The night was quiet enough for them to hear the rattling of armour over some distance and they waited for it to fade into the north east.

The council hall guards were probably the most dangerous men in the city. They were better armed, better trained, better paid, more respected and were simply generally happier than the watchmen who ambled along the streets with drooping eyelids. However, they rarely had anything to do and Katja understood they greeted trespassers with vicious glee. She understood that feeling just fine but had no particular desire to be the subject of it.

The rattling faded out and Serdra quietly counted to ten before touching her shoulder.

Katja headed across the street, pressed her foot into the wall surrounding the lawn and yanked herself up. She grasped the edge and Serdra came and pushed at her soles. Katja ascended the wall noiselessly, peeked down into the botanical garden surrounding the hall itself and then reached down to help Serdra up.

“All clear,” Katja whispered and Serdra nodded and pointed down into the garden. Katja briefly reassured herself that she was in the right place and then dropped down. She landed softly between two bushes and walked stooped along them into the garden. Serdra would remain behind to distract the guards if something went wrong. If Katja made it silently she would follow.

One of the benefits of the guards’ discipline was the predictability of their routes night after night. Katja knew that if she hurried she would have plenty of time to get all the way, but then they would probably have to wait for two other guards passing by before Serdra could dare pass.

Katja entered a clearing designed as a meeting place for good summer days, where people could sit on circled stone benches and argue about politics. The cover wasn’t as good here as she hurried over to the neatly trimmed trees that formed a semicircle fence about the clearing and carefully forced her way between the bottom branches.

And there was the downspout. It went all the way up to the roof, four floors and twelve metres above. The main problem with it was the bush surrounding it. It would crackle loudly if one fell into it from some height.

Katja took up position three metres from the bush and nervously bounced her knee up and down. She knew she mustn’t waste too much time gathering courage, but she also had to get this right.

She took a breath, held it and did the run-up. She leapt over the bush and hit the downspout. She pressed her palms on each side and managed to hold herself up long enough to lock her thighs about it as well. There was virtually no grip on the downspout. She had to use the strength she’d built up with so much effort.

Katja began to hoist herself up as if climbing a tree trunk. She focused on keeping her breathing steady and in rhythm with the climbing. Her muscles had started complaining by the time she passed a sturdy window latch on the second floor. Keeping her grip and yanking herself upward, step by step, was ever more of a strain.

Onwards, onwards, onwards.

The third floor slid lazily by. The next window was two metres away to the left and there were no handholds in between. She could easily have jumped the distance on the ground. Up here it was like a ravine.

Onwards, onwards, onwards!

The strain had long since turned into pain and Katja fought through it, got
angry
at it to harness that energy.

Finally she arrived at the fourth floor balcony. It was only a metre away, on her right.

One metre in one direction and twelve in the other
, Katja thought, and then squeezed her eyes shut over having done so.

She clamped her thighs around the downspout with all her strength and forced herself to release her hands. Her legs turned out to still have enough strength to keep her up and she turned her head to the balcony.

I have to cross. There is nothing for it.

Katja held her breath, clenched her stomach and leaned for the balcony. Her hands grasped the edge, the thighs detached from the downspout and dangled in the air twelve metres over the ground. Katja grunted and pulled herself up. She let herself drop over the rail and lay there on her back and breathed heavily for a few moments. Then she began rubbing sore muscles until she again heard the rattling of mail on the ground.

Katja lay still and silent as a mouse and waited for the men to continue their round. Then she crawled to the balcony door and tried the handle. Their suspicion was confirmed. No one bothered locking a fourth floor balcony door.

Soon she began hearing sounds of climbing approach. Serdra moved up significantly faster than her. Of course she did.

Serdra bounced nimbly over the railing and knelt by her student. They crept into the hallway and Katja closed the door behind them.

Asking about the insides of the council hall had been a simple matter. The state treasury was in the basement. The ground floor was mostly open to citizens who had business with the government and it housed facilities for minor officials, the headquarters of the city guard and the staff dining hall.

The second floor was more restricted and housed the government chambers as well as the chancellor’s office. The third one was mostly living quarters and the fourth held the state archives.

Aron Vogn’s chambers had been
on the third floor. They would need to get there, examine the place, decide and execute the next step and then exit as quietly as they had entered.

No lights burned here. Most of the security was on the ground floor, the general assumption being that ne’er-do-wells would be stopped before ever getting so high up.

Katja went to the stairs leading down and stopped there. A light could be glimpsed on the floor below. Katja looked at her mentor in search of some observation. She saw nothing on the darkened face and so made her way down the steps.

The only sounds were snores coming down one hallway and distant footsteps. They belonged to someone walking slowly and limply. A guard on a boring detail.

Katja signalled Serdra to hold. The footsteps approached and soon a man in a guard’s uniform was walking along the hallway. Katja retreated a bit further up into darkness, but the man just sighed and continued on to the second floor. Katja waited a bit and then signalled to continue.

She felt it as soon as she set foot on the floor. Something had happened here. Sorcery had left its rough, black mark on this place. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder at Serdra. The woman had probably sensed it before she had.

Katja made her way towards the source. The sixth sense made it easy.

The few lamps hanging on the walls illuminated tapestries not new or fancy enough to grace the two lower floors, but still prettier than most things Katja was used to.

It was strange to go through the most important place she had seen in this fashion. Like a common thief, but with a good purpose. Regardless, they would have to use violence if discovered. Serdra had stressed as much no few times.

Katja crept along a side way and walked a brief distance before arriving at a door. Here were Aron Vogn’s chambers. She grasped the handle softly and opened the door.

Here it was. This was the place. The feeling wasn’t very strong, but given the circumstances it could only mean one thing.

She walked to the centre of the floor and Serdra followed and closed the door.

In spite of the darkness the room was clearly quite nice, if a bit disorderly. Perhaps the man’s relatives had already come for his most notable possessions.

“Look,” Serdra said.

Katja sat on the floor and opened her perception.

This ability of hers was strange and often uncomfortable, terrifying and distracting. But it gave her a near-unique view of the world, it was useful and it was her most notable feature as a Redcloak. She had to learn to love it as much as she did the strain of the exercises.

Many things had transpired here. This building was almost as old as the city wall itself and this room had seen all sorts of events. Katja felt grief and for an instant saw relatives gathering belonging
s
. But the event that called to her, that drew attention like a flaming pyre, was two days old.

A serving girl entered with a broom. She was in her twenties, with pale brown hair, a slender body and a small face. She put the broom down and struggled to pull a chest in front of the door without noise. It would hold back people trying to get in and she could claim to have been sweeping the spot it stood on.

She knelt by the bed and produced a circular sheet of paper, a piece of cloth and a small knife from beneath her dress. She arranged all this on the bed and then picked up one of the worn, old slippers by the end of it and placed it on the sheet.

The woman took a moment to achieve total concentration and a mental grip on the forces that had been her birthright. Her inheritance.

Then she took the keen little knife and cut her forearm. She didn’t flinch, just stared at the thin trickle of blood as it ran down the pale arm and gathered in her palm. Blood had power, especially when given willingly.

She said the first word in a language no human being had come up with and dipped an index finger in the blood pool. She continued whispered incomprehensible words; terrible words that sent ripples through the Divide and drew power from the Underworld as she wrote runes on the sheet.

Her handiwork was precise and elegant. It would have been pretty if it hadn’t woken more ill power with every stroke and every whispered word.

The runes formed a circle around the shoe like a garrotte, themselves almost whispering about terror, death and agony.

The woman with the thin limbs and small face finished the final stroke and spoke the last word. The power hung in the room and in her symbols and eyes. Then she spoke the name of Aron Vogn with cold harshness and the power was released.

The curse was activated.

The serving girl placed the shoe exactly as it had been and then bandaged her cut with the cloth. If anyone inquired making up a story would be child’s play. Next she folded the sheet twice and hid it in her clothes. Then she calmly swept the floor, pushed the chest back into place and left.

“Serving girl,” Katja muttered as she crawled back to the present. She was a bit surprised at the darkness around them before remembering it was night.

Serdra watched her, waiting for information.

“She came to sweep. Used...” Katja shook her head. “She used a slipper. As a link.” She pointed at the shoes though they weren’t visible in the dark.

“A good choice,” Serdra said. “Can you find her?”

“I...” Katja thought. “I didn’t get a name or anything like that. But I can recognise her face.”

Serdra was silent. Katja seized the chance to strain her ears. There was still nothing to hear in the building.

“A Brotherhood agent will make every effort to have private quarters, preferably with an open fire to destroy evidence. One
can
of course do so under people’s noses, but that would be the perfect situation a good agent would try to achieve.”

“So we start by looking into small cribs?”

“Yes.”

Serdra fell silent again.

“So what do we do, Katja?”

Tests, tests, tests
, Katja thought.

“Weee,” Katja said, drawing the word out, “should...” She stopped. “Ideally we should interrogate her about who sent her and why, but these aren’t ideal circumstances for that. However, we are in a good situation to kill her. And we don’t know whether she intends more murders, or what.”

Katja pondered some more. They were in a dangerous place and would possibly never know which decision had been the correct one.

“Isn’t it best to cut weed immediately?” she said. “Since we have the chance?”

Katja suspected Serdra’s ensuing silence was meant to test her belief in her own words.

“It would be good, yes,” the woman then said. “It’s always good to eliminate a member of the Brotherhood. But this is a perilous situation and we badly need information on what is going on. Let us find her first and find out enough that she can be easily grabbed later on.”

“As soon as possible then, I assume.”

“Yes. As soon as possible. And if that doesn’t turn out to be an option I expect we will repeat this break-in and kill her in bed.”

“Fair enough.”

“Still, keep your knife at the ready,” Serdra said. “She mustn’t survive finding out about us.”

Returning to the hallway wasn’t easy on the nerves. There had been some comfort in entering a room no one was likely to look into. Now the game began again.