Jon Sprunk - Shadows son

Caim drew one of his knives. "Mathias?"

He crossed the room on quiet steps. The suite consisted of several interconnected chambers. Caim parted a curtain of blue silk dividing the front room from the living areas. A short corridor gave entrance to three archways. The doorway at the end was blocked by another curtain.

Caim went down the corridor on the balls of his feet, knees bent. The floorboards flexed under his weight, but did not squeak. He peeked into the side archways as he passed. The left led to a spacious kitchen. Everything appeared in order, from the pristine marble countertops to the copper pans and utensils lined up over a big iron stove. The right arch opened into a private salon. There was a small desk shoved into a corner, its surface piled with loose papers, pens, ink jars, and ledger books.

Caim moved to the last doorway and pushed aside the curtain. He paused a moment for his eyes to adjust. This room was the darkest of all, the windows not only shaded but covered by heavy curtains. A massive canopy bed, large enough for three adults, rested on the far side of the room. Two shapes nestled under the diaphanous awning.

"Mat." He let his voice rise from a whisper. "It's Caim. I need to talk to you."

The shapes on the bed did not stir. Caim eased the other suete from its sheath and circled around to the side of the bed. He watched the dark corners of the room for movement. His ears strained, but there was only the whisper of his own footsteps as he stepped across the carpet.

He stopped at the bedside. Two bodies stared up at the ceiling with dull, blank eyes. Lyell had been one of Mat's favorite pretties. He looked like a doll, pale, with long blond hair fanned around his head like waves of beaten gold. Someone had opened a second smile across his throat with a narrow blade, very sharp. Dark lines of blood were encrusted on his chest. Caim doubted the youth had wakened until the last throes of death were upon him.

Mathias lay beside his paramour. Even in death his bulk was impressive. His slick hair was mussed in disarray. His throat was uncut. Instead, a bloody hole gaped between his breasts. The edges of the wound were tinged with black discolorations. Caim didn't need to check to know Mat's heart had been removed. It was just like the Esquiline Hill job.

Caim stood motionless. Death was an old companion to him, but his hands shook as he looked down on the man he had known and worked with for six years. He gripped the hilts of his knives until his palms hurt. Stay in control. He took a deep breath as he catalogued every detail of the scene. The boy had likely been killed first, and quietly. Mathias hadn't awakened until he was already dead. That gave the killer as much time as he needed to do his grisly work. The sheets were drenched in blood, but there wasn't a drop on the carpet.

Caim went to a window and peered through the curtains. A grille of stout iron bars secured the entry. There were no signs of forcing. The killer must have entered from the front. He was good, a professional. That shortened the list of suspects considerably. Most hired killers were elevated street thugs with more muscles than brains. Only a handful achieved the level of skill it took to enter a locked room and kill without rousing the neighbors. There were a few who could have done this, and most of them worked for Mathias. Sadly, this sort of thing had probably been overdue. Men who murdered for a living came in two categories. One type killed for the money; it was a job for them, the same as hauling crates on the docks or sweeping out stables. The other type was a completely different animal. They took pleasure in their work, deriving some sort of twisted satisfaction that Caim had never been able to fathom; but he had ridden with men in his early days out west who would take their time with a kill, making it last while they watched with sick smiles.

In Mat's line of work, he dealt with both types of killers. Had dealt with them. It had only been a matter of time before one of them came after him, because of a perceived slight or a disagreement over money, but Caim didn't believe this was a coincidence. It wasn't a random murder. It was meant for someone to see, and Caim had a suspicion that someone was him.

A footstep from the hall shook Caim from his thoughts. He cocked his arm for an underhand throw even before he finished turning. He held the action as the outline of a tall, mop-haired man filled the doorway. The bartender stood stock-still with a wooden platter in his hand. The smells of fried eggs and bacon cut through the stale air.

"Mr. Finneus?"

"Dead." Caim lowered his knife. "Sometime in the night. Did anyone come up here last night except Mathias and the boy?"

The bartender shrugged. The tray rose and fell with his shoulders. "I don't know. Olaf was working last night. He went home."

"Go back downstairs and send someone to fetch the law. Don't mention I was here. Understand?"

After a long look at the bed, the bartender turned and shuffled back down the hallway. Caim waited until the apartment door closed. He looked down at his dead friend. You were a good man, Mat, and a good friend. You never did me wrong.

Not the most elegant of eulogies, but those were the best words Caim could come up with. Hell, they were the best words he could say about anyone.

He left via the back stairs and ducked out the kitchen. The streets were filling up as the denizens of Low Town left their homes to begin another day, none of them realizing that one of their own had been lost during the night. Most wouldn't care if they knew. That was the sad truth of it. Like him, Mathias had been a product of society's underbelly, a crea ture both loathed and feared even though he served a necessary function. Caim had come to terms with that realization a long time ago. He hoped Mathias had as well.

Despite the rising warmth of the day, he pulled his cloak tighter around his body. The hood hid his face from view. A mix of emotions roiled inside him over Mat's murder: sadness, regret, perhaps a touch of guilt, but anger burned hotter than all else. Anger at whoever had killed his friend, at himself, at Mathias for leaving him when he needed answers. The game continued, and he was falling farther behind. Worse, he was running out of sources of information. The girl was the key. He only hoped she knew something worthwhile.

Otherwise, he might have to take Kit's advice.

From the rooftop across the alleyway from the Three Maids, Levictus worked his knife as he watched his target depart. White-gray wings fluttered in his hands.

With the fat man's blood still wet on his blade, he had waited here while the city awoke to the new day. He had taken no joy in extinguishing the death merchant's life, nor that of the elder on Esquiline Hill. They were simply tasks consigned to him by his master. Ordinary tasks, as mundane as cleaning a pair of boots or beating a mattress. Over the past decade and a half he had given up on the idea of finding a challenge worthy of his talents.

Until now.

He tightened his grip, and tiny talons scrabbled inside his fist as he considered the man below. This one might prove entertaining. Vassili was growing more arrogant and demanding by the day; treachery dripped from his every word. If not for the power he wielded through the Elector Council, Levictus would have left him long ago. But his family's souls cried out for vengeance. Through the long years, he had utilized his sorcery to track down those who had tortured and murdered them. He had dragged Inquestor agents by the dozens out to the forgotten sanctuaries beyond the city walls and given them over to the dark powers of the nether realms. Yet his thirst for vengeance would not be slaked while the initiator of the pogroms, the man who had devised the doctrine of bigotry that had resulted in the death of thousands of innocents and then ridden the tide of bloodshed and torture to the very pinnacle of his order, yet lived. The prelate of the True Church. Until Benevolence himself lay dead at his feet, Levictus would not stop. All that he had done, it meant nothing if he did not accomplish that.