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The assassin moved with deadly purpose down the lane.
Ülhard was silent. The capital city of Svanfeld did not truly sleep for long, but Nicolas Klavbert, the youngest established assassin in the milieu of its underworld, never failed to choose the opportune time to carry out his deadly work.
Here, in one of the nouveau-rich suburbs outside the limits of the northern city’s white marble walls, the silence was deep enough to be eerie. Isolated street-lamps did very little to illuminate the shadows. Nico was dressed to match them: not in black, but in patchy shades of grey that rendered him virtually invisible whenever he stood still. A floppy hat typically worn by labourers in the city obscured half his forehead, covering his light blond hair. The rest of his face was shadowed by the growth of a new beard. Men of Svanfeld, even those who lived in the city, set great store by their luxuriant beards; not only did growing one help Nico to fit in and remain unremarkable, but it also made him look a bit older than he really was, a good move when you wanted hardened men to take you seriously. Nico was only twenty-two, but anyone who had hired him could attest to his skill.
This past year, he had become indisputably better. Nico paused for a moment, getting his bearings, looking up to the palatial mansion where his victim dwelt. As he set off, he knew that his partner, a lithe young man known as Benjamin Fisher, or more commonly just Fish, was somewhere off in the shadows, watching his back.
He had not seen so much as a fleeting shadow, heard not even the slightest whisper to suggest that another person was abroad tonight. That was as it should be: Nico was good at moving secretly, but Fish was a master none could match. Shorter even than many women, he was built to be light and fast, and to move like an acrobat. Nico, on the other hand, had always been tall, and was now starting to shed the adolescent leanness that had usually put him in good stead for his job. Another year or two, and he would look more like a mercenary soldier than an assassin. He might be better served hiring out his sword for honest fighting...
Nico shoved that thought to the back of his mind, along with every single other repressed desire, and focused on the matter at hand. It was no different from any other job: a man too arrogant to flee the city, too short-sighted to guess that his fellow Guildmasters were plotting to have him killed.
There were only two guardsmen at the gates of the mansion. Hired thugs more than anything else, Nico thought. Does he believe that these will save him? The two of them were deep in conversation with each other, and did not notice as Nico crept stealthily along the high wide wall that ringed the grounds. He crouched beneath the branches of a bushy evergreen that grew alongside the wall, waiting.
Fish arrived just in time, as usual. Down the far end of the gardens, somewhere amongst the manicured shrubbery and fallow flowerbeds, a twig cracked. The two guards looked up briefly, and one shook his head. They fell back into conversation.
Nico could only just make out the figure of his partner, a shadow that moved through the bushes into the wavering light cast by the moon as it passed through wisps of cloud. His knees began to ache from crouching down, and silently he shifted his position, frowning.
Down in the garden, Fish deliberately trod on a stick again, this time allowing the guards to turn and see him. One of them pointed and exclaimed, and the other went after the shadow. Fish took off immediately, flitting through the shrubbery.
Nico watched for at least ten more minutes as they played cat-and-mouse amongst the shrubbery, the guard clumsy and Fish much too good at this. Eventually, the guard remaining at the gate left his post as well. Nico waited a few more minutes, watching as his partner led both guards off in the direction of the ornamental stream that flowed through the grounds. Then he jumped lightly from the wall, landing with his weight spread evenly, a trick he had learned recently from Fish.
The assassin sauntered towards the silent house, unhooking the grapnel at his belt and winding out the long rope attached to it. The garden was so quiet that he could hear the snores of his victim echoing from the back of the house.
Several nights of reconnaissance had confirmed that Martin Erdmann, master of the Guild of Apothecaries, had taken to sleeping alone in the master bedroom of his house, wooden shutters closed securely inside windows of bubbly glass. Nico knew that Erdmann had sent his wife and children to his estate in the country, and he had to pause to admire the boldness of the man, just a little. But it will make no difference.
Nico would never have agreed to harm the man’s family. There were some hells that were too low for even him to contemplate sinking in, some lines that were too hard to cross. Nico believed that he had never killed anyone who was truly innocent. The politics and backstabbings of the Guilds flew above his head, but men who held power like Erdmann’s had never gotten it with clean hands. Nico had known this long before he came to the city, back when he had been an orphan boy out in the foothills on the northern side of the Svanlyn mountains. Svanfeld might be ruled in name by a king, but it was the Guildmasters who held the true power in the country. Nico had never seen the king nor any other member of the royal family in his entire life, but the Guilds were everywhere, buying and selling, brokering labour, building silos and factories, stockpiling gems and herbs and corn, guarding the villages from raiders and slavers with their private armies.
Nico was not as silent as he would have liked as he secured the grapnel on the mansion roof and swung up to the shuttered window; he was definitely getting heavier, more muscular, shedding his youth. One day soon, you must find a different profession, he told himself. His lambskin boots scraped against the window-sill with a soft sound. The snoring from within did not falter.
Nico took a deep breath, braced himself against the wall, and swung inwards, shielding himself with the steel vambrace and pauldron he wore on his wrist and shoulder. The thick cloudy glass shattered, and the wooden shutters were thrown open with a violent crash. The Guildsman sat up in bed, yelling.
Not my most subtle moment, Nico reflected, but there was no way he was going to try and kill the man in the city in broad daylight, with city guards crawling everywhere, and he was not going to try and enter a house via the chimney again. Erdmann kept no servants in his mansion save a very deaf old woman who slept in a detached cottage. You can yell all you want, no one is around to hear.
He swung feet-first through the window, landing lightly on the floor and recovering in just a moment. There was glass everywhere, and the Guildsman was out of bed. He took one look at Nico and ran for the door. He was nowhere near fast enough.
Nico’s dagger flashed silver in his hand. It was over in a matter of seconds, the Guildsman sprawled on the floor, choking in a pool of his own blood. Nico took some time to make sure that he was dead, wiping the blade of his silver-edged dagger on the man’s nightshirt. The rasping gasps died slowly away, and the twitching hands came to rest. Nico checked for any movement of breath, double-checked the man’s pulse, and turned away in satisfaction.
Back in the gloom of the garden, Fish came sidling up as Nico was securing his rope and grapnel on his belt again. The chestnut-skinned youth had not even broken a sweat. His imp’s face with its too-large nose was lit up with its usual crooked grin. His curly coffee-brown hair flopped over his forehead, his golden eyes amber-dark in the light of the moon.
“What did you do with the guards?” Nico asked softly.
“I didn’t kill them.” Fish brushed the dishevelled curls out of his face. “I led them to believe I jumped in the stream to escape. They’ll probably be coming back this way soon.”
“In that case, we had better leave.”
The pair wound their way back through the silent yard, skirted the stone wall, and were swallowed up by the forest that grew around the northwestern walls of the city. Nico let out a silent sigh, relieved of the tension that had gripped him. It was all over. Another job, another death, another day. He looked over at Fish. The boy’s face was briefly lit up by a sliver of moonlight, and suddenly Nico ached to take him into his arms, to kiss him roughly on the lips, push him into the undergrowth and have him, for the first time, right there and then...
But the moment passed, as it always did, and Nico settled for putting his arm around the boy’s shoulders, drawing him into a hug. Perhaps he squeezed him a little too tightly; perhaps his cheeks were stained with a little more colour than usual. But Fish did not notice, as he never had before.
“Am I mistaken, or is this the biggest fish we’ve hooked so far?” he asked eagerly.
“You’re right.” Nico put his longings away, even as his arm remained over Fish’s shoulders. “We might not have to work for half a year after this.”
“I suppose this is why you chose this line of work in the first place.” The boy’s smile was dazzling, even in the uncertain light of the forest path.
“Oh, I wanted to be an honest mercenary, once,” Nico said lightly. “But for anyone to take you on as a trainee, you need good references. The chances of a penniless boy from the sticks being able to get the contacts...”
“Are not good,” Fish agreed grimly.
“So the streets trained me instead.” Nico considered asking Fish where he had gotten so good at slaughter and subterfuge, but Fish had never answered him before, only shrugged and diverted the question. There were secrets in Fish’s past that were locked away from everyone, even Nico, and part of what made their partnership so easy was that Nico respected that. After all, there were things he would never tell Fish...
By the time they reached the Smuggler’s Gate, a secret entrance in the city wall that allowed people of their ilk to come and go as they pleased, Nico was sombre again, his elation subsiding. It was only battle-lust, he told himself; like any kind of warrior, he found himself joyful to have survived another encounter which could have killed him. It was the same as simply wanting a woman...
But simply wanting a woman did not dredge up the same mixture of fear and guilt and self-hatred in Nico’s gut. It did not remind him of the mountains, and the fresh-faced orphan boy who had dreamed of being a wandering hero, taking only jobs that benefitted the downtrodden and punished the evil.
Nico would have given almost anything to be that innocent orphan boy again. To have made different choices. To have been less trusting of the adults around him...
“You’re quiet tonight,” Fish remarked, and Nico only shrugged, not knowing what to say.
“I’m getting older,” he said at last. “I barely made it through that window, Fish. Next time, you’re going to be the one climbing up walls. I’m done with it.”
“You should buy a gun. No need to get close, then.” Fish’s tone was mocking. Nico snorted.
“And bring down the whole damn neighbourhood on us? Do you know how loud those things are?”
Fish’s reciprocating laugh was intoxicating. Nico followed him to the tiny loft apartment they shared in Schooner Street, and did not once let go of his shoulder. The cold sneaked between the linked warmth of their bodies, an insidious icy breeze creeping through the city like a mountain lynx on the prowl.
The weather had been like this the night he had met Fish at that tavern brawl in the Black Ass. That was over a year ago, Nico realized. But when had he started to covertly admire his partner from afar? When had the physical touch grown so natural between the two of them? When had he started to become infatuated with Fish?
These questions were pointless. The boy had walked into Nico’s life unasked for, unannounced, and yet fitted into it so securely that Nico could not imagine relinquishing his company, despite the discomposure he often felt around him. Four years ago, before events had set him on his way to the bloody path he now trod, Nico might have welcomed these feelings. Back in the mountains, he’d never been shy about loving whomever he loved, be it boy or girl, but that was before.
He did not, could not, desire anything more from Fish than friendship. No matter what his unruly longings traitorously whispered to him.
There was a fleck of the apothecary’s blood still on the hand that rested on Fish’s shoulder. Nico moved it reflexively, not wanting to stain the boy’s clothes. It would wash off easily enough.
