The Archon's Assassin (2 page)

“But he’d know,” Ilesa said to Plaguewind. “Shadrak. If fat boy’s got access to this warehouse, and now he’s gone over to the other side, then…”

She trailed off when she recognized Plaguewind’s nodding for a conceited, “all part of the plan.”

Albert was grinning like the cat that got the proverbial. “He’s no fool. They’ve been following me for days, waiting to see what I do.”

“So it’s a trap,” Ilesa said, her sword already halfway from its scabbard.

Plaguewind stopped her with a sharp look. “For Shadrak, not for us.”

The rumble of voices came from outside, muffled by the steel door Albert had closed just in time.

“Don’t worry about them,” Albert said. “No one sets foot in here save Shadrak and my successor.”

“Who is?” Ilesa said.

Albert sniggered and looked to Plaguewind, but the master had stiffened. Had he sensed something? Or was it just the thrill of being so close to what he had planned?

“Buck Fargin, I imagine,” Albert said. “A nauseating little toe-rag who’s destined to one day lord it over the unified guilds of New Jerusalem.”

“Was,” Plaguewind said, almost absently. “
Was
destined.”

“Naturally,” Albert said. “Until your own stupendous ascension. My point is, there’s no way that flaccid little prick is going to risk his scrawny neck coming here in the middle of a guild war. So—”

“Shadrak will come,” Ilesa said. Her breathing quickened, and she licked her lips. Was this the moment she finally got to see Shadrak the Unseen? His name was whispered everywhere. It was common knowledge he had the run of the Night Hawks and had moved in on all the other major guilds, save for the Dybbuks and Koort Morrow’s outfit. Master Plaguewind still had a tight grip, largely on account of the fear his sorcery engendered. They might be a bunch of thieving, backstabbing cutthroats, but the Dybbuks were far from ripe for the taking.

Albert was nodding enthusiastically, but Plaguewind was all business. He had gathered the men together and spoke quietly with each in turn. They all produced glass bottles and started to uncork them.

“Why doesn’t he wait?” Ilesa thought aloud. “Why not starve us out?”

“Because of the other secret I haven’t shared with you,” Plaguewind said, coming back over. “One of several, actually.”

Albert’s grin was starting to get up Ilesa’s nose. She’d half a mind to punch him. “But fat boy knows, clearly.”

“We planned it together,” Plaguewind said. “No one knows Shadrak like Albert. No one knows his operations better, either. This… battle over the docks is nothing but a ruse. Oh, they’ve pushed us back, and we’ve lost a lot of men, but it’ll be worth it.”

“It’s a diversion?” Ilesa said. “You always were a devious bastard.” He’d beaten her at chess more times than she’d care to remember; even cheated on occasion, she was sure of it.

“Albert’s given us the locations of every Night Hawk stronghouse in the city. You wondered why I hadn’t been around much these past few days. Well, it’s because we’ve been to meeting after meeting, shoring up a last-ditch alliance to stop Shadrak from taking absolute control. While our forces have been clashing in the docks, and we made our way here, hundreds of assassins have been moving in on Night Hawk positions. But that’s not all. Albert knows Shadrak. Knows what he looks like, where he stays. Chances are, we won’t have to use those potions the men have, but it’s always good to have insurance.”

“You mean, he could already be dead?”

Albert nodded like a mad man, but Plaguewind lifted his glassy eyes and looked slowly around the shadows collecting in the corners of the warehouse.

“What’s in those bottles, anyway?” Ilesa said. “What potions?”

Plaguewind’s head snapped round. “Albert is friends with—”

“Associate,” Albert said. “An
associate
of.”

“Magwitch the Meddler,” Plaguewind said.

“The mad mage?” Magwitch was the crazy the Senate used for all their security. His talents were legendary, but hardly anyone could afford his services. Many a guild master had tried coercion, but the magical backlash was enough to persuade them never to try again.

The men were taking up positions all around the warehouse, each with nothing but a bottle in hand. Ilesa strode over to one, snatched the bottle from him and read the label.

“Global Tech? Isn’t that Sektis Gandaw’s old company?”

Histories were already being written, since the Technocrat had been brought down, and his plot to unweave all of creation had been thwarted. Quintus Quincy’s was the only one she’d heard, badly declaimed at the Dog’s Head, but there’d been just enough Earth history in among the bad poetry to keep it interesting.

“Magwitch has a stock of them. Says they used them to win wars on Earth. One swig of that stuff and a man will grow twice as strong, twice as fast, and twice as aggressive,” Albert said. “Well, I may be selling it a bit short. Ten times would be more accurate.”

“Gandaw used magic? But I thought—”

“Science,” Albert said. “And quite the science at that. I’ve had a good look at them, being something of a chemist myself, and I have to say—”

A shadow descended behind Plaguewind. Ilesa opened her mouth to warn him, but thunder cracked, and she averted her eyes from a blinding flash.

Silvery motes lit up around Plaguewind in a sphere—his magical ward.

The shadow landed lightly on the floor of the warehouse. Not a shadow, a cloak, fanned out like the wings of a bat. The hood fell back to reveal a face as white as bone. Pink eyes took in everything in the warehouse in a single sweep. In the same instant, Ilesa registered every detail, like it was burned forever into her mind: Small. Barely the height of a child. Shaven head, the stubble white; box beard, pallid hands, each of them gripping… a wand? One was smoking, the other coming to bear on Plaguewind’s sparking shield. It boomed, and the shield flashed argent and fizzled out.

“My eyes!” Plaguewind cried, hands flying to his mask. “My eyes!”

The other weapon bucked and roared, and this time Plaguewind screamed as he pitched to the floor, clutching his thigh.

“Now you see me,” the assassin said, as he leveled both weapons at Plaguewind’s head. “Now you—”

“Potions!” Plaguewind cried. He groped at the air, blinking frantically, and clearly seeing nothing. “Now!”

The men knocked back the contents of their bottles without hesitating.

The assassin turned one of his weapons on Albert, kept the other covering Plaguewind.

“Shadrak…” Albert said, holding up his hands.

One of the men clutched his throat and keeled over, his bottle smashing as it hit the floor.

Plaguewind gasped. “What’s happening? What—?”

Another man collapsed, and another, until all ten Dybbuks fell amid the shower of breaking glass.

Shadrak dropped his aim on Albert. “Good boy,” he said.

Albert let out a huff and made a show of mopping his brow with his handkerchief. “Anyone would think you didn’t trust me.”

“You…” Plaguewind said, trying to locate him by the sound of his voice. “You betrayed me.”

Albert shrugged and set about folding his handkerchief with great precision.

“Ilesa?” Plaguewind turned his mask, trying to find her. The slump of his shoulders told her he knew it was over. “Change,” he said. “Change!”

Into what? A rat, like the last time she’d shifted? A snake? That was all she’d achieved under his instruction. In Portis, she’d managed a mermaid to please Davy, and there was that one time that wasn’t under her control. A wolf-man like she’d become then could have ripped out Shadrak’s throat, but—she eyed the weapons that were once more both pointing at Plaguewind—even then, she’d have to get close enough.

First, one weapon fired, then the other. Plaguewind slammed back against the floor, bright blood blossoming from his shoulder and guts. He tried to stem the flow with his fingers, even as Shadrak advanced to stand over him.

“Change, you shogging bitch!” Plaguewind croaked, looking around blindly. “Help me!”

“I can’t,” Ilesa mouthed, no sound coming out. She wanted to tell him she would if she could.

Shadrak turned his pink eyes her way and put a booted foot on Plaguewind’s throat. “Mustn’t forget the bint now, must we?” he said. “Shame for you, darling, is that you saw me. Imagine the shogging inconvenience if I had to change my moniker. Can’t go round being called Shadrak the Seen, now, can I?”

A shiver ran through Ilesa’s body, and she swayed as if she were aboard a ship on a stormy sea. She heard the boom of Shadrak’s weapon, winced against the pain, but felt nothing.

“Shog!” Shadrak yelled. Suddenly, he seemed a giant, looming over her. “Where’d she go?”

She’d scuttled halfway across the floor before she realized she’d changed without knowing it.

Not a rat. Not a snake. Something even more appropriate, she thought as she found a crack in the wall and crawled through it.

A cockroach.

Plaguewind cried out once more, a plea that turned into a wail and was cut off by a final resonant boom.

BENEATH THE BASILICA

City of Aeterna, Latia, Earth

T
he fat orderly’s eyes glinted above his gray face-mask. He curled his gloved fingers around the ratchet handle and gave it another turn.

Shader stiffened and winced. Every nerve in his body screamed. Tendons and ligaments were stretched to breaking point. His left knee popped, and then he screamed, too.

“Finally,” the thin one said, like he’d just won a wager.

The chains holding Shader’s wrists to the top of the rack pinched so tight his fingers were numb. The loops of rope cinching his ankles cut to the bone, but he could no longer feel the trickling ooze of blood from the lesions. He was naked, his clothes dumped somewhere on the floor along with his Liber.

The Templum’s reverence for its holy scriptures apparently didn’t extend to the dungeons of the Holy Judiciary—at least not since the death of Ipsissimus Theodore. Exemptus Silvanus had succeeded him shortly after the Battle of the Homestead, and the Ancient World catacombs beneath Luminary Tajen’s Basilica had been converted into cells and torture chambers.

The mere thought that such a place existed in Nousia was a contradiction as unpalatable as the one that used to define Shader, when he’d been unable to choose between the Monas and the sword.

But he had chosen, eventually; and for the Templum, the timing couldn’t have been worse. The Sahulian armies of Emperor Hagalle were at the door, and Nousia needed knights, not pacifists.

“I’ll tell the investigator,” the thin one said—it was the only way to distinguish between them, what with their uniform gray overalls, linen coifs, and gauze masks. Their appearance was designed to unnerve the impenitent. Shader knew that from the seminary, where they’d touched upon heresy and how to deal with it. Render the torturers inhuman, and beyond appeal. Hope gave a man strength, and so everything down to the last detail was engineered to evoke despair.

As the thin one slid back the bolts on the iron door and went running for his master, the fat one stepped away from the ratchet handle, eased up his mask, and took a long pull on a waterskin.

Shader’s lips were cracked, his throat parched. How long since they’d dragged him from his bed?

“Ready to see sense, then?” the orderly said, pulling his mask back down and re-stoppering his waterskin. “Glad I could be of service.”

Shader rolled his head away. It was the only movement he could make; maybe the only one he’d ever be able to make. Even if they slackened off the tension, even if they let him go—and who had they ever let go?—he had no idea if his overstretched muscles would work again. There was only so much give in the fibers, and then they’d never contract; and the tendons, the ligaments…

Pain radiated from his left knee in pulsing waves. Only the progressive agony of the last hours made it bearable. A man could grow tolerant of a lot of things, not least of all suffering.

“See,” the orderly went on, as if he were a teacher imparting wisdom to a favorite pupil, “it’s an easy enough thing extracting a confession. Most heretics are weak-willed turncoats, and they’ll turn again with enough of the right incentive. But try to get a man to go against his conscience…” He gave a low whistle. Shader heard him amble across the room and plonk himself onto the bench they used for rest breaks. “A man like you.”

It sounded like respect in his tone. Awe, even. “Had quite a name for yourself back in the day. Mate of mine in the Elect used to harp on about Verusia, what the Seventh Horse did at Trajinot. Only wish I’d been there.”

You don’t
, Shader, thought. Even now, even compared with the torments of the dungeon, the war against the Liche Lord was the darkest of the horrors sealed away in his memory; something he never wanted to revisit. Darker even than what he’d seen beneath Sektis Gandaw’s mountain; things that would have made the Unweaving of all things seem a blessed relief.

“Then, that business in Sahul.” The orderly hawked and swilled the phlegm around. He must have remembered he had a mask covering his mouth, because he swallowed thickly and cursed. “They say the old Ipsissimus used to speak highly of you, what you done. Said they owed you. Said we all did; that we was lucky to still be alive.” He chuckled to himself. “So, cheers, mate. Just want you to know you had my respect. Shame you had to go and shog things up.”

The door creaked open, then clanged shut. Shader craned his neck to see who came in.

First was the thin orderly, who flopped down on the bench beside his colleague. They exchanged a few whispers, until the other man to enter speared them with a sharp look. There were a few moments of tense silence, then he turned his eyes on Shader.

And what eyes they were: bloodshot, to the point the sclerae were almost pink. Pink, like Shadrak’s. Ain, how he could use the assassin’s help right now. The only difference was the yellow corona around each iris—irises so dark, you couldn’t see the pupils. The man wore a white chasuble fronted with a red Nousian Monas over an ankle-length black coat. Thin, oily hair hung in unkempt strands down to his shoulders from beneath a tall hat with a broad brim. It was almost a uniform among the Judiciary’s investigators, but Shader hadn’t seen the added chasuble before. They must have saved that for special occasions.