Dannic ap Survin lives in a ruin that juts from the land right on the edge of a souring. The building is like a broken tree writ massive. Once it must have been majestic, but now it is not. It is as dead as the land around it and ap Survin and his people move through it like worms through a corpse. What roofing remains is black-dotted with missing tiles. The lower parts of the building are protected from the elements by swathes of canvas, they may have been bright once but time has weathered them grey. The stink of the souring is brutal and I wonder how anyone manages here, how they can get used to the smell of sulphur and corruption rising up from the dead yellow land. Then again, are maggots bothered by the stink of decay? I suspect not.
The derelict nature of the building is a gift to me: a myriad ways in. It would be easier, and better, to find a way in as a visitor. A village of ten tumbledown shacks is clustered around the bottom of the keep and I am sure I could find work there, a jester is always welcome. But by tomorrow I must be with Voniss so I do not have the luxury of time, nor am I in the mood to entertain.
The ap Survin guards are a motley lot, slovenly and barely capable of holding the clubs and spears they wield. I could be a whirlwind here; none would stand against me if I cut my way through this place. A dancer on the edge of the blade, my steps set out in red. But that is not what Rufra wants: a nice quiet death; a gentle passing from this world into the arms of Xus the god of death; the sort of death no one will suspect. So I will not be seen and I will leave no evidence of my passing.
It is harder when none may know.
My great mount, also named Xus, is stabled in a wood an hour’s walk away and any who check for me will find the scars of a campfire and the remains of a meal, a hollow in the grass will show where I slept—not that anyone will look. I am good at what I do, even if I no longer do it often. Swathed in black my movements are as imperceptible as the shadows which move across the land from dawn to dusk. The stones of the broken keep are steps and the corrugations of its walls provide me shelter from prying eyes as I spider up the walls. And if I draw a little magic to me to cloud any eye that may wander my way, then what of it? I tell myself I have harnessed this beast and made it serve me. I no longer hear its voice, I am it and it is me and we cannot be separated, our relationship is as complex and beautiful as the network of scars on my skin.
Up the wall, across broken tiles, hearing snippets of conversation. What to eat, who is sleeping with who, which guards can be trusted, which priests are easiest to talk to. None of it is of interest to me apart from as a way of easily pinpointing people: where they are, who remains awake at this late hour. Magic could do that too—the glow of life around me—but I use it sparingly.
I have never been here before but have met Dannic ap Survin and heard him talk, he was dull and stuck to many of the common beliefs—like the higher you are in a building the more important you are. That is probably why he stayed here rather than moving away from the souring. Such tall buildings are rare and maybe the prestige of a high building is worth the stink to him.
In through a window, flowing like smoke.
Stop.
Wait.
Listen.
Nothing.
Wait.
Listen.
Breathing.
The slow, regular breathing of a man asleep coming from a room just ahead of me. No guards, no servants. Just us. Pad down the corridor, slip in through the door, find the sleeping man.
I see you, Dannic ap Survin.
Are you a bad man? Your people do not seem unhappy, or badly treated, so you are probably not. But you are a man in the way of a higher good and I am here in service to it.
I lay my hand on the pillow by his head. His breath smells of hay and mint. He shuffles slightly in his sleep, lets a single syllable escape his lips. The name of a lover? A child? Or simply the knowledge that something is wrong and a darkness has entered his room: a darkness he has no defence against.
A tendril of black leaves my fingernail, a shiver of excitement runs through me. There is a momentary widening of my eyes. He does not wake, does not feel the magic move into his head, spread through the pulsing jelly of his brain and find what it is that keeps him alive, keeps his lungs going and his heart beating.
As easily as I would snuff out a candle I snuff out a life.
Not now, not this second. I leave a memory of magic that will tell his body to shut down when I am long gone from there.
He looks peaceful lying there, unaware that Xus the unseen now waits in a corner of his room. That his fate is already sealed.
You were not a bad man, Dannic ap Survin.
I am not sure I can say the same of myself.