Brent Weeks - Way of Shadows

“How about we start again,” Master Blint said quietly. “You speak as if I’m the best wetboy in the city, and I’ll speak as if there’s a chance this side of hell that I’ll take the job.”

The tension sat thick in the upstairs room of the inn. Lord General Brant Agon wasn’t pleased, but he took a breath, ran a hand through his gray hair, and said, “Why does faking a suicide cost fifteen hundred gold?”

“A properly staged suicide takes months,” Master Blint said. “Depending upon the deader’s history. If I’m after a known melancholic, that can be shortened to six weeks. If he’s tried to suicide before, it can be as little as a week. I gain access in one way or another and administer special concoctions.”

Azoth was trying to pay attention, but there was something about being back in his old clothes that made the illusions of the last weeks come crashing down. Kylar was gone—and not because Azoth was following orders and pretending to be Azoth. Kylar had been a mask of confidence. It had fooled Logan, and it had fooled Azoth for a little while, but the mask had fallen away. He was Azoth. He was weak. He didn’t understand what he was doing here, or why, and he was scared.

Blint continued, not so much as glancing at him, “The deader becomes depressed, withdrawn, suspicious. Symptoms gradually worsen. Then maybe a favorite pet dies. The target is already peevish and paranoid, and soon he lashes out at his friends. The friends who visit—at least those who take refreshment—grow irritable while they are with the deader. They quarrel. They stop visiting. Sometimes the target writes the note himself. Sometimes he even commits the suicide himself, though I monitor that closely to make sure he chooses an appropriate method for the effect desired. When given proper time, no one suspects anything but self-murder. The family itself will often hush up the details, and scatter what little evidence there is.”

“By the High King’s beard, is such a thing possible?” the lord general asked.

“Possible? Yes. Difficult? Very. It takes a considerable number of carefully mixed poisons—do you know that everyone reacts differently to poisons?—and a huge amount of my time. If a forged note is required, the target’s correspondence and journals are analyzed so that not only the handwriting, but also the writing style and even certain choices of wording are identical.” Durzo smiled wolfishly. “Assassination is an art, milord, and I am the city’s most accomplished artist.”

“How many men have you killed?” the lord general asked.

“Suffice it to say I’m never idle.”

The man fiddled with his beard and continued looking through the handbill Master Blint had given him, obviously unsettled. “May I ask about others, Master Blint?” he said, suddenly respectful.

“I prefer that you only inquire about those deaths you’re seriously considering,” Master Blint said.

“Why is that?”

“I value secrets very highly, as I must. So I don’t like to discuss my methodology. And, to be honest, knowing too much tends to frighten those who employ me. I had a client some time ago who was very proud of his defenses. He asked me how I’d fulfill a contract on him. He irritated me, so I told him.

“Afterward, he tried to hire another wetboy to kill me. He was turned down by every professional in Cenaria. He ended up hiring an amateur.”

“You give yourself the status of a legend,” the lord general said, his thin face pinching.

Of course Durzo Blint was a legend! Who would hire him if they didn’t know that? At the same time, hearing Master Blint speak of his trade to a noble—to someone like Count Drake—was eerie. It was like Azoth’s two worlds were being pressed uncomfortably close to each other, and he could feel the noble’s awe in himself.

In the guild, Durzo Blint had been a legend because he had power, because people were afraid of him, and he never had to be afraid of anyone. That was what had drawn Azoth to him. But this noble was awed for different reasons. To him, Durzo Blint was a creature of the night. He was a man who could come violate those things he held dear. He undermined all of what the lord general had thought safe. The man didn’t look afraid; he looked disgusted.

“I’m not suggesting that I terrify every wetboy in the city.” Master Blint smiled. “The fact is that we professionals are, if not a close group, at least a small one. We’re colleagues, some of us even friends. The second wetboy he went to was Scarred Wrable—”

“I’ve heard of him,” Brant Agon said. “Apparently the second best assassin in the city.”

“Wetboy,” Blint corrected. “And a friend of mine. He told me what this client was doing. After that—well, if a military metaphor works better for you—it would be like trying a small raid on a city that was expecting it instead of an unsuspecting city. In the second case it might work, in the first it’s suicide.”

“I see,” the lord general said. He paused for a moment, apparently surprised Master Blint knew who he was, then suddenly grinned, “And you’re a tactician, too.”

“How so?”

“You haven’t had many contracts taken out on you since you started telling that story, have you?”

Master Blint smiled broadly. These were two men, Azoth saw, who understood each other. “Not a one. After all, diplomacy is an extension of warfare,” Blint said.

“We usually say that warfare is an extension of diplomacy,” Brant Agon said. “But I think I agree with you. I once found myself outnumbered and forced to hold a position against the Lae’knaught for two days to wait for reinforcements. I had some captives, so I put them in a vulnerable position and told their guards we would receive reinforcements at dawn. During the fighting, the prisoners were allowed to get free and promptly told their superiors the news. The Lae’knaught army was so disheartened that they held back until we had been reinforced. That diplomacy saved our lives. Which brings us back to the matter at hand,” the lord general said. “I need some diplomacy that’s not on this list of yours. I’m afraid I’ve not been completely forthright with you, Master Blint,” the lord general said. “I’m here for the king.”

Master Blint’s face went suddenly devoid of emotion.

“I understand that by telling you that, we might lose the man who provided me with your name. But the king deems this to be worth risking the lives of both a contact and one of his ministers—namely, myself.”

“You haven’t done anything foolish like surround the building with soldiers, have you?” Master Blint asked.

“Nothing of the kind. I’m here alone.”

“Then you’ve made one wise choice today.”

“More than one. We’ve chosen you, Master Blint. And I’ve chosen to be honest with you, which I hope you appreciate.

“As you know, the king’s wealthy, but not politically or militarily strong. That’s a bitter pill, but it’s not news. Our kings haven’t been strong for a hundred years. Aleine Gunder wishes to change that. But in addition to internal struggles of which you no doubt know more than I’d care to learn, the king has recently learned of some rather devious plots to steal vast sums of money not only from the treasury, but—in a multitude of schemes—also from almost every nobleman in the country. The idea being, we think, that Cenaria becomes so impoverished that we’ll be unable to maintain an army.”

“Sounds like a lot of money to steal without anybody noticing,” Master Blint said.

“The Chancellor of the Exchequer has noticed—he’s the one arranging it. But no one else has noticed, yet. The schemes are little short of brilliant. The plot won’t even ripen for six or ten years. Men are being placed in key positions and have as yet have done nothing wrong. There’s more, much more, but you don’t need to know it.”