Villains by Necessity (33 page)

"What are you up to, Sam?" asked Arcie. Sam had a birthmark on his shoulder, the size of a coin and starshaped, Arcie noted. This too was ink-stained. Oddly, none of the assassin's numerous scars intersected it.

"It should be obvious. I'm dyeing my clothes," stated Sam, dipping a blue scarf into the bowl and then squeez ing the moisture out of it, spreading it out to dry next to a pair of leather gloves. His other clothes, Arcie noticed, had been patched, and the patches were dark and wet.

The much-abused black cloak had been hemmed neatly, and now looked something more along the lines of a patchwork quilt. Arcie shook his head in amusement.

"Well, as long as ye're having a fun time," he said, and with a final grin backed out of the room and left the as sassin to his work. %%%A few more splotches and Sam was done. He spread the clothes in front of the open window so the cool night air would dry them. Rummaging among his accoutre ments, he unearthed a small hand mirror used for dis tracting people and signaling other assassins. He checked his reflection. He did need a shave. He'd done what he could to maintain his appearance on the trail; Kaylana's presence was a wonderful incentive, but only so much could be done with little time and cold water. The first and last time he'd tried to grow a beard had been back in the wild days of his teenage years. He'd planned to use his beard as a place to store blowgun needles and such, but when his stubble finally had grown long enough to distinguish, he'd discovered to his horror that it was a brilliant red-gold, pitifully sparse, and downy soft. He'd tried the soot and grease on it, the same mixture he used on his hair, but then everything he'd tried to eat had tasted of rancid butter and chimneys. He'd finally shaved it off with a dagger.

His hair was a mess. He palmed a dagger off the bed side table and trimmed the longer locks. Then he debated a long moment, his eyes resting on the bowl of ink and water mixture. He rubbed the birthmark on his shoulder as was his occasional habit. That birthmark had always annoyed him, because he could just barely see it out of the corner of his eye. It was also a distinctive sort of iden tification his assassin training distrusted, and he kept try ing unconsciously to wipe it away. His hair, too, was distinctive, and most unfitting for an assassin. But he could fix that.

A short while later, a dark-haired assassin treated him self to a thorough wash with clean water and soap and a good shave, then donned his now-dry clothing. Black leg gings, tucked into black leather boots, black silk shirt, black tunic, black cloak draped elegantly over the shoul ders, clipped with an ebony pin. Finally, a snug pair of black leather gloves, and a black silk scarf wound ex pertly around face and head until only his eyes, glinting dark hazel, showed. Into the sleeves went the sections of %%%blowgun, dagger down the right shoulderstrap, dagger in left hip pocket, dagger in right calf innerstrap, folded tiger-claws clipped onto back of belt, garrote tucked into chest pocket, set of needles in right cuff, set in collar, vial of poison tucked into fold of cloth behind ear, yet more blades and more items. At last, as night deepened about the dreamy town of Martogon, a midnight figure slipped from an upstairs window and slid silently down the wall like an onyx raindrop.

Sam wasn't hunting tonight. He was merely enjoying being what he was, a predator, with the flow of night as his territory. He clung to the shadows and moved without a sound, enjoying the way people would walk right past him, so close he could hear their hearts beating, and never even notice him.

He stopped once and saw himself in the large window of an empty store. He paused to admire his full-length reflection, slim, sleek, deadly. He was missing something though, the touch of richness and glamour. He thought for a moment, and then reached around and found the pouch with Valerie's amulet in it. He weighed it in his hand, considering. At last puckishness overcame caution.

He slipped the gold chain with its large, heavy stone from the pouch and hung it around his neck. It rested on his tunic like a deep black eye, or a hole in the world. He admired his reflection again, pleased with the utter black of the stone and the faintest glint of gold on the chain, and then slipped away into the night of the city.

He slid up to the top of a high block of flats and ran along the rooftops with the ease of a cat. It was glory, glory and pure joy, freedom to do as he pleased, free to kill, free to live, free to hunt as he chose and was born to do, as the brilliant fire in his blood sang. And because he was free to do so, he did not. In silence, he stalked passersby in the street, people about their business in their homes as he watched from windows, men and women chatting as they dismantled their stalls in the common outdoor market. He stalked, but nothing more; crept up to them, to where an instant of movement could have %%%meant a sudden death in the twilight, but then darted away in a joyous invisibility. Never had he felt so at one with the darkness, never before had the shadows welcomed him with such graceful ease.

As he ducked around a corner and stopped to catch his breath in silence, words drifted down to his ears and froze his delight cold.

"Please, don't, I want to go home..." a voice, female, young and unfamiliar, pleading. Answered by another, rough, male, heavy, slurred with drink.

"Yeah, we'll let you go home, after we've had a bit of fun ... you like a bit of fun, girlie?" A hoarse laugh.

"No! Stop it! Let go!" A scuffle.

"Quit that, girlie, you know you want it," slurred the voice. A slap, a male snarl, and a much louder slap, a female cry of pain and fear.

"Stop! No! Help!"

The night stirred the air where Sam had been. He leaped straight up, catlike, and alighted on a window ledge. This building must be the headquarters of the town guard, grown fat and sleepy in these days of Light ... Sam knew the type well. His brain was full of old cold anger, the fire flickering in his blood, his personal anger that was darker and colder than he ever met assignments with. The window was open. He ducked in without a sound, sprinted silently down a hall, glancing in the rooms as he flitted past. Empty, empty, barracks, storeroom ...

In this, six burly men drunk to the point of aggressiveness, in guard's uniforms. They didn't see him, he moved too fast. The last one, at the end of the hall, door closed, sounds of scuffle and sobbing. Sam went through the door without slowing down, and leaped through the air, crashing into a heavy, strong human guard, stinking of sweat and drink, who roared in surprise. A flit of someone in a blue dress ran screaming out the door as assassin and guard fell to the floor. A lantern fell over and extinguished, plunging the room into shadow. A dagger flashed like Sam's white teeth bared in fury, and blood fountained. The guard's death throes tossed the %%%slim assassin away; he landed on his feet, looking for exits as boots pounded in the hall and angry voices came closer. Damn it, windows too small, no other doors, one door leading only into path of danger ... only place to hide was under a large bed. No choice. He slipped into the dusty darkness beneath like a weasel going to earth.

Under the bed it was stuffy, dusty, and cramped ... but it was also very, very dark. The unlit room was a mass of blackness, and the tiny space beneath the heavy bed was in deep shadow. He crouched in the space beneath, nervous, shaking with the afterglow of adrenalin that followed a kill and tried his best to become invisible.

Thieves and assassins share a set of skills that facilitates their business. The wearing of dark clothing, a certain way of walking, a certain way of breathing, and even a certain way of thinking combine to allow one to seem to disappear into the shadows of a scene, not so much invisible as unnoticeable, a protective camouflage with roots older and stranger than most knew. Sam had been using this skill consistently this night, and on nights past, when he walked unnoticed through busy streets.

Huddled in the darkness, Sam felt cool flatness against his chest. Valerie's amulet must've slipped down inside his tunic, against his skin. Sam ignored it and concentrated on feeling the depth of the shadows around him, stilling himself to their stillness, willing his dark-garbed clothing to melt into the darkness of the absence of light.

Feet drummed into the room, loud voices called for a lantern.

Sam was silent, breathing in soft slow breaths, shaking stilled, lost in forcing himself deeper and deeper into the darkness. An assassin was a match for any man, Sam judged he was a match for any three or four with surprise and terrain in his favor, but six in a room with only one exit was suicide. A strange cold tingle swept up his chest as his will pulled at the shadows, suddenly finding them of a strangely pliable softness, wrapping deeper and deeper around him, ever more at one with the blackness under the bed... his mind swirled, drifting into the shadows, %%%into instincts he'd never known he had, into magic and ancient knowledge, his thoughts moving in strange patterns like the blending of shadows, deeper, stronger.

Then suddenly he saw the way the shadow was, and without thinking, moved through it, like a dive into cool water, even as strong hands gripped the edge of the bed...

A crash as heavy hands flung the bed aside, and a lantern flared at the same moment, filling the room with golden light. Shouts of victory died away in confusion as the eyes of six puzzled guards searched the room. It revealed only the gory body of their dead comrade in one corner. The man's heart had been torn out, and lay scattered in gory chunks around the room. Also ... a bed on its side, a square of dust disturbed with a blurred humanoid outline showing where someone had been. Whatever had made the outline had vanished.

Sam had Shadowslipped.

Sam fell up and landed lightly on his feet in front of a square of blackness that vanished instantly, leaving only the soft gray of a background behind. His heart pounded as he raised his head and looked about. He caught his breath in wonder.

Around him, on all sides, was a landscape of unearthly beauty. He stood in a soft gray nothingness, swirling with possibility. All around him, as far as he could see, were irregular patches of black. Some lay flat on the ground, others slanted like strange walls, some were mere slivers of black smaller than his fingernail, others were great slabs of darkness that stretched into forbidding cubes or sheets.

There were a few above him and a few below him, and, he noted in sudden surprise, some right near the area of where he stood, and these were moving! Six blobby shapes, flickering and twisting about, flat under his feet, like shadows cast by persons who were not there...

Sam realized with a flash that such was exactly what they were. Shadows, nothing more, of the six guards who had come into the room after him. Sometimes the shadows would slant up vertically, as a guard moved closer to a wall. Sam watched a moment, and marked with his eye %%%where the walls were. Then he walked through one.

It felt like nothing, and it was nothing. He stepped into one of the solid patches of blackness. At once he noticed a difference, a strange subtle feeling, like the difference between a room with an open window and one with the window closed. The shadows swirled with that same wonderful fluidity about him, but he stepped back out of the patch of darkness.

Sam's eyes were getting used to the landscape. He found he could distinguish differences in depth between the shadows. Some were a dim, shallow black ... Sam guessed they were too well-lit to be true gateways and were only dimmer possibilities of the deepest shadows.

He also noted several very dark shadows, thick and deep, like those he would have preferred to hide in, in the sunlight world.

No doubt that was the way to leave, if there was one ... just step back into the shadows and will yourself out?

The shadows seemed to be the gateway from the world he had been born into and this strange two-toned twilight world.

Two-toned twilight world ... where had he heard that before? He wondered as he looked down to where the street would be if his theory of the nature of this place was correct. There it was, a grayness where many moving shadows moved back and forth along a flat plane.

Two-toned twilight... Sam's mind had finally calmed down enough from his near escape and his sudden change of surroundings to remember an old, old song Black Fox had used to sing when he was drunk on red wine...

There is a land on the edge of night A shiver in the shadow's shade Haunted by the ones who stayed In the realm of two-toned twilight.

Taken out of time and space Lost in a deeper darken, %%%Going to another Place, Sliding as your spirits harken, Shadowslipping, Shadowslipping.

Those of the fire. those of the night Those of the blood who turn from the light Here is your safety, and here is your death, The seduction of Shadow that takes your last breath.

Black Fox had sung it in a cold, slow, eerie voice that had made the young Samalander's flesh crawl with nameless fear, and the other assassins would throw things at Black Fox and tell him to shut up. Black Fox would laugh and sing something else, and the others would return to their wine with only a faint shiver or two. There were times, long ago, when Sam was learning the trade, that he was reminded of the old song; hiding deeply in shadows, sometimes he'd felt a faint shiver on his skin, as though the shadows were something more than just dark spots in corners ... he'd put it off to superstition. And when he'd asked Miffer once about Black Fox's song, the master assassin had snorted softly. "Don't trouble your head with such things, boy. Black Fox doesn't know what he sings about, and nor does any assassin alive today. It's an old song left over from the old days, old even before the War." When Sam had pressed the matter, Miffer had said, "Well, a long time ago, there were certain folks who could sort of walk through the shadows ... like ghosts. But they grew strange, and changed. One by one they'd walk into the shadows and never come out.

So they stopped teaching it, and we're all a lot better off today. Now let's see that grapple again." And Sam had forgotten the matter... until now.

On the other side of town, Arcie was plying his dishonest trade. Easy pickings tonight, so he decided not to do anything extensive like burglary, that always made him feel a bit guilty; it seemed to upset people more than just having lost a pouch or a bracelet or two. Now, of course, he