Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“Stop thinking with your cohorts,” chided Sorgrad.

“I don’t think this will be something the Emperor can risk being linked with,” Ryshad said slowly. “He came out of last summer’s confusion well enough placed but the Sieurs of the leading Houses will still be watching him for any excessive independence.” Temar’s unexpected arrival had seriously disrupted the complex game of checks and balances that the princes of Toremal played among themselves and the Emperor had had to walk a fine line between keeping them in check or seeing them turn on him instead of D’Alsennin.

“Overlord or not, Tadriol rules with the Sieurs’ consent. They won’t be overly reassured to see him killing people who irritate him out of hand. ” Halice rubbed a thoughtful finger round the wide neck of the flagon she held. It made a soft squeaking noise. “Anyway, the back of a knife makes a neater job of cracking an egg than a rock the size of your head.”

“A knife’s what you want,” said ’Gren with relish. “A raiding party to cut the bastard’s throat for him will settle this nonsense.”

“Get the drop on them and hit them hard, you can kill pretty much anyone,” Sorgrad stated firmly before grinning suddenly. “Why do you suppose your noblemen spend so much money on sworn men and mercenaries?”

“Assassination?” Temar looked startled. “That’s hardly honourable.”

Guinalle opened her mouth but shut it again without speaking.

“We’re mercenaries,” Halice pointed out mildly. “Honourable doesn’t pay, as a rule.”

“It would be an execution,” Ryshad corrected Temar sternly. “That man has lives without number to pay for, even if other hands swung the blades at his command.”

“Parrail,” snapped Halice with sudden anger.

“Geris,” I said shortly.

“Aiten.” Ryshad’s nostrils flared as he struggled to contain the rage and sorrow that I knew always lurked in some locked corner of his thoughts. Aiten had been his friend for many years, sworn to D’Olbriot, at Ryshad’s side as they hunted whoever had left the House’s young esquire for dead. We’d all but escaped the islands of the Elietimm when Ilkehan’s enchantments had stolen away his mind, setting him to kill us all. I brushed a kiss across Ryshad’s forehead and felt his arms tighten around my waist. In those intense conversations lovers keep for the midnight hours of troubled nights, Ryshad had told me he’d vowed revenge, for the sake of the oaths they’d shared.

I wouldn’t try talking him out of it, not when I owed Ilkehan a full measure of vengeance for leaving me the only one with the chance to kill poor Aiten before he became the death of the rest of us. Could I wash that blood off my hands with Ilkehan’s own? “What of the missing artefacts? Could Ilkehan hold them?”

Guinalle looked stricken. I recalled what Halice had told me of her Equinox and Solstice visits to the Edisgesset cavern, her anguished prayers as she burned incense to Arimelin at the altar she’d had set there.

“Quite possibly.” Usara looked thoughtful. “And we surely want to restore those last few, now that the danger you saved them from is past.” He smiled at Guinalle but, as always, she was too racked with remorse over their present predicament to credit herself with saving these people from bloody death hands in the distant past.

If ’Sar’s words didn’t strike a chord with Guinalle, they certainly did with Ryshad. “We’ll only be visiting his own practices on the man,” he said forcefully. “He kills by stealth to serve his own ends, heedless of the innocent. Justice will weight our actions against his in Raeponin’s balance.”

“The man’s crimes would condemn him in any court from Toremal to the capital of Solura,” Shiv said perfunctorily. “How do you propose administering this summary justice?”

Ryshad and I looked at him and saw the mage already knew what we were thinking.

“We’re the only ones who know the layout of his keep,” I pointed out reluctantly.

“You’re the only mage who’s been there, who can translocate us all,” added Ryshad with an apologetic glance at Pered. The artist set his square jaw, pale beneath his freckles, but didn’t speak.

“Then we’re coming too.” Sorgrad’s tone brooked no argument. He jabbed a finger at Ryshad. “You’re not taking our girl there into some enchanter’s snake pit without us to back her up.”

“No Chosen man ever made a good assassin.” ’Gren took a blithe swig from his bottle. ”Too much honour in you, but that’s your problem. Me, I don’t care who I kill.”

“So I’ve heard,” replied Ryshad blandly.

Sorgrad gave him another measuring look before addressing himself to Temar. “We owe this Ilkehan for the Mountain dead that Eresken’s plots and deceit piled up.” He grinned, predatory. “What say we just walk in there, saying we met Eresken last summer, offering some new alliance? We could cut out Ilkehan’s heart and be done inside half a day.”

“You’ve no interest in getting out alive?” Halice set her flagon on the table with a sharp smack. “If—”

“No,” said Ryshad firmly. “If we’re going to do this, it just takes the handful of us. Any more and we might as well send a fleet blowing horns and flying flags.”

“You’ll still have Muredarch to deal with,” I pointed out to Halice. “He’s hardly going to throw up his hands just because his pet enchanters lose their master all of a sudden.”

“I cannot take on these pirates without your help, Halice,” Temar said hastily.

“We can deal with them in short order as long as there’s no threat of Artifice.” She looked a little mollified. “Will killing this Ilkehan knock out those three enchanters?”

“Guinalle?” Usara’s gaze hadn’t left her.

“I think so.” The noblewoman looked up and continued with studied neutrality. “If his death is public, certainly public knowledge and widely known as fast as possible. A shameful death, something grotesque or humiliating, that will undercut all the awe he inspires.” Her voice was cold. “His power is founded on fear rather than any true devotion so his death will leave his adepts on little better than shifting sand.”

Ryshad raised an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. I’d been thinking more of sticking a poisoned dagger in the bastard’s back and discreetly running away.

“Shall we cut his head off?” Sorgrad and ’Gren on the other hand were swapping bottles and ideas with conspiratorial glee. “Stick it on a pike for all his folk to see?”

“From everything we know, Ilkehan holds some preeminent position among the Elietimm clans.” Usara was looking thoughtful again. “If we can knock him off the top of the tree, that might well leave the rest of them more interested in squabbling over the spoils than attacking us.”

“Especially once we’ve made it plain taking on Kellarin leaves you so very nastily dead,” Sorgrad agreed with relish.

“Men like Ilkehan keep tight hold on power by cutting down any poppies growing taller than the rest,” said Ryshad slowly.

“Which is a coin with two sides.” I saw the potential weakness in Ilkehan’s armour as plainly as Ryshad. “With Kramisak and Eresken dead, he has no obvious successor.”

“Certainly not if we kill these three here.” Temar looked determined.

“I’ll settle for a likely pay-off, not hold out for bonuses. Killing Ilkehan should leave Muredarch’s enchanters leaderless and that should buy us enough time to deal with the rest of the scum.” Halice looked at Guinalle who nodded reluctant confirmation.

I handed the wine back to Ryshad. “We saw his soldiers fighting those people in the brown liveries again.”

“That other mob who snuck about over here, stealing things and ransacking shrines.” Ryshad pursed speculative lips. “We never did find out what they were about, did we?”