Assassins' Dawn (55 page)

(Somewhere, a shout in a voice he knew, the cough of the sting, and a shrill cry of pain.)

McWilms forced himself to move as if the shield still constricted him, waiting for the man’s next thrust. When it came, the Hoorka suddenly leapt aside and around the lethargic attack, moving at his opponent. Echoes of Ulthane Gyll’s old teachings:
In a real fight, don’t
go
for half-measures or worry about etiquette or technique. Do what you need to do and worry about style later. And kill, don’t wound.
McWilms felt the cut in his side tear further, felt the throbbing of his leg as he bowled into the man. Grunting, he slammed the dagger into the man’s chest. He wrenched it back out, sheathed it again under the ribcage, thrusting up. The vibrofoil slid from nerveless fingers, the body went slack under him. McWilms let him crumple to the floor.

“Jeriad?”

At the sound of his name, McWilms glanced back at the doorway. Serita Iduna stood there, the sting now in her hands, the other woman—moaning—sitting against the wall, holding an arm that dangled at a wrong angle. “Ric,” she said. With the sting, she gestured behind McWilms. He did not like the look of her face.

He turned. D’Mannberg was on the floor, the nightcloak tangled around his large frame. There was a stillness about him that made McWilms’s throat constrict, his breath catch. He hurried over to him, glancing at Vasella. The victim was still alive. Dark eyes stared back at McWilms. “I’ll deal with you in a moment, bastard,” the Hoorka said, and went to his kin-father.

He grasped d’Mannberg’s shoulder, turning him. The vibrofoil had come from behind, cleanly. There was very little blood. “Ric?” he said, knowing there would be no answer. D’Mannberg’s light eyes stared at nothing. With a guttural curse, McWilms brought the eyelids down. He made the star of She of the Five over him.

“How is he, Jeriad? I’ve the relay for the flitter. It can be here in two minutes. Less.” Serita’s voice was full of her concern.

He glanced at her, still kneeling. His face was stony, his voice did not sound like his own. “Call the flitter, but tell them they don’t need to rush.” Then: “Oh,
damn!”
His voice caught on the word, almost breaking.

Serita’s shoulders sagged with sudden grief, the sting wavering in her hands. McWilms shook his head at her. “Later, kin-sister. We’ll mourn him later.” There was a wavering in his sight. He felt weak, fatigued. He nearly stumbled when he rose to go to Vasella. He cleared his throat, blinked quickly.

“You don’t deserve the quickness I’m code-bound to give you, Vasella. You’re lassari shit that doesn’t deserve the rights of guild-kin, and I hope the Hag gnaws at your soul for the rest of eternity.”

“Do you talk all your victims to death, Hoorka?” The man’s eyes were clouded with pain, his fingers knotted into fists against the hurt. Blood had pooled beneath him, seeping into the wooden floor. “Tell your master Vingi that I’ll be waiting for him.”

“The Li-Gallant isn’t Hoorka’s master.” McWilms didn’t bother to deny that it was Vingi’s contract they worked—it would have fooled no one, and he was too tired. He wanted to sit down, wanted to weep. “We’ll be the weapons in anyone’s hands.”

Vasella laughed. It was a hoarse, phlegm-loud rasp of sound. “Tell that to the lassari and low kin the Li-Gallant beats down.” The man paused, coughed once more, bringing up bile. “Tell it to the ones he kills with your blades.”

A sudden heat of anger filled McWilms, turning his sorrow to ash. Ric’s death, Elzbet’s wounds, the cowardly attack, and Vasella’s taunts: all goaded him.
“Bastard!”
He kicked the prone man, nearly falling as he did so. The soft thud of his boot was surprisingly loud. Vasella howled, the lassari woman sobbed in sympathy.

“Jeriad!”
Serita shouted. “Stop it, man! Kill him and end this Hag-damned contract, but don’t torture him. You’re Hoorka, kin-brother. Remember our code.”

“Damn
the code,” he replied. “The code and our frigging broken equipment killed Ric, didn’t it?” He swung around to face her. The hall seemed to sway slowly around him. “Look what it’s gotten us. Insults from scum like Vasella.”

“You just feed the misconceptions of those like him, Jeriad.” Her voice was soft, pleading. “I know how you feel, Jeriad. Ric was
my
friend, too, and a lover as well. And he wouldn’t want this from you. You foul his memory.”

McWilms wanted to shout back at her, but the weariness had returned, worse this time. His leg seemed to be on fire, his side gigged him whenever he breathed. The hallway wouldn’t stay still. His hand threatened to lose its grip on his dagger, and he clenched harder, closing his eyes for a moment. He took a breath; pain lanced him. Serita was staring at him, concerned. He shook his head, glancing down at Vasella again.

“Sirrah Vasella, your life is claimed by Hag Death. I can make your way easy, if you prefer. The blade or a capsule: the choice is yours.” McWilms forced himself into the role of the aloof Hoorka once more, a distillation of cold neutrality caring only for the contract and guild-kin. His voice was stiff with ritual. Vasella, huddled in a fetal position below him, simply grimaced.

“Do it however you want, Hoorka. Whichever way gives you the most pleasure.” Vasella coughed again. His eyes closed. “Just end it.” He spat, bright red.

McWilms nodded. He knelt before the man, but his leg betrayed him. He staggered, bracing himself with his right hand. Serita came over to him, but he shrugged her hands away from him. Scowling, he steadied himself. His dagger flicked out, came back running blood. Vasella gasped, then was still. McWilms let his weapon drop. He sagged.

“Jeriad, you’re hurt.” Serita’s strong hands gave him support.

“I’ll be fine. Get the flitter here, let the woman go, and take Vasella’s body to the Li-Gallant. Just let me rest a moment first.”

He blinked. The hallway danced about him. It seemed to be getting darker, but he could keep his eyes open no longer to see why.

•   •   •

“They all look good from here, Gyll. That’s the trouble. You can’t see the filth until you get close and stick your nose in it.”

Gyll turned from the port where Neweden’s reflected glare snuffed out stars. One of the world’s two moons, Gulltopp, leered around the curve of the world like a small child over the shoulder of its mother. Sleipnir, Gulltopp’s companion, rode between Neweden and
Goshawk
, Gyll’s ship. Its curve filled the bottom of his view. Gyll found the scene entrancing enough, but he smiled back at Helgin. “And you smell the stench already, neh?”

The Motsognir Dwarf was perched on the leather seat of Gyll’s floater, petting Gyll’s bumblewort. The animal purred satisfaction as Helgin leaned back and put bare feet on the desk in front of him. The ship’s gravity was set to OldinHome norm—the movement stirred flimsies set there. The paper moved sluggishly, as if under water, rising and settling slowly. One of Helgin’s hands stroked the bumblewort’s furred shell, the other played in his thick, long beard. “If you could open the port, stick your head outside, and take a good whiff, you’d lose that delightful dinner we just had. And I’d have to assign someone to clean the side.”

“If I could do all that, they’d have to rewrite all the physics texts in existence, Helgin. That scenario’s utterly impossible.”

“What’s impossible is the thought that I’ve been crazy enough to be talked into coming back to Neweden. I didn’t like it here the first time, and I doubt that eight standards have improved the place at all.”

Gyll laughed, Helgin frowned. The dwarf’s thick fingers pressed too hard on the wort’s shell. It mewled a protest. Gyll turned back to his contemplation. “It’s my homeworld, Helgin. FitzEvard Oldin is interested enough in it, and so am I.” Gyll stared at the planet, giving names to the places he could glimpse below the ragged cloud cover. Neweden’s main continent faced them, and he searched for the once-familiar landmarks, following the path of the largest river through haze to where he knew the city of Sterka lay, then south to the mountains. There: that was where the caverns of Underasgard hollowed the earth. Hoorka-lair.

“Lots of memories?”

“Yah, a few.” Gyll spoke to the port.

“Sentimentality is a disease, Gyll,” Helgin grumbled behind him. The Motsognir shifted to move the wort from his lap and scratched at his beard. “It eats into you and turns your mind to cold oatmeal. It can make you think that a shrieking harridan is the woman of your dreams just because she once let you into her pants. I never let sentiment interfere with my feelings.”

“You keep telling me you don’t
have
feelings,” Gyll replied mildly. He gazed at the slow ballet of planet and moons.

Helgin’s feet thumped the deck. “I lied.” It seemed he was going to expound at length, drawing himself up to his full height of a little over a meter and striding toward Gyll, but the holotank chimed. Both men turned. “Yah?” Gyll said.

The holotank sparked into life—the figure of Gyll’s aide, Fischer, bowed to them through greenish sparks that gradually faded. The aide was dressed in the plain, loose clothing of the Oldin-Hoorka. “Sula,” he said, addressing Gyll by his title, “there’s a transmission from Diplo Center. The Regent d’Embry would like to speak with you.”

“In a moment, Fischer. I’ll call you. Give her the stall while I settle myself first. Off.”

The holotank darkened once more. Gyll glanced down at Helgin; the Motsognir was grinning under his beard. His rough voice sounded gleeful. “You see, the unpleasant memories make their first appearance. There you were, getting all misty-eyed about Good Old Neweden, and—poof! Welcome, the bitch woman of the Alliance. Might’ve thought she’d be dead by now.”

“Helgin . . .” Warningly.

The grin would not go away. “Just don’t go telling me that I didn’t warn you, Gyll. I’m going to take great pleasure in giving you the ‘I told you so’ routine. Now, I’ll simply stroll down to the pharmacy and get a Nopain tab ready for you. You’ll need it for the headache.” Helgin reached down and picked up the wort again. Then, with the rolling gait of the dwarves, he went to the door. He punched the contact on the floor with his big toe, stepped through. “Give her a kiss for me,” he said as the door shut behind him. Gyll could hear Helgin’s roar of self-amusement as the Motsognir walked away. He was singing in an off-key bass.

Gyll sat at his desk. His smile faded as he shuffled flimsies into a neat stack, swept stray acousidots into the drawer, and set the com-unit terminal to one side. He sighed deeply, closing his eyes, willing himself to relax. He straightened the sleeves of the simple cotton tunic he wore, the Family Oldin crest sewn at the breast dragging at his skin.
You’re more nervous than you should let yourself be, old man. She’s just another one of the bureaucrats that keep nagging at the Oldins, another obstacle. Look at the challenge and be calm. Calm.
Finally Gyll checked the view of the transmitter, made sure that the impression was one he wished d’Embry to see. He nodded to his camera-self in the monitor: a gray-haired, rather thin and chiseled head inclined in answer.

Not bad. Ascetic, but not too stern.
“Fischer,” he said aloud.

“Yes, Sula?”

“I’m ready now.”

The holotank seethed with aquamarine interference, then cleared. For a moment Gyll and d’Embry stared at one another, looking for the changes wrought by nearly a decade. D’Embry was still thin, still tinted at earlobes and eyelids and mouth with the bodytints (a vivid scarlet, this time) that had gone out of fashion well before Gyll ever left Neweden. She’d acquired, somehow, a dowager’s hump: it took a moment before Gyll realized that the bulge behind her shoulders was a symbiote. She was in ill health, then. The symbiote would have taken over most of the automatic functions of the body, its well-being dependent on hers; the symbiotes were stupid creatures, but possessed of a high instinct for self-preservation. Gyll wondered what it would be like—the bloodroot lancing her spine and connecting her to the parasite, always feeling just below the surface of her thoughts the presence of the creature. He’d seen symbiotes before, knew what they could do medically, but the sluglike appearance had always made him shiver with distaste. If he had to choose between the parasite and death, he wasn’t sure the symbiote would be his choice. He didn’t envy d’Embry her decision, and he wondered idly how Neweden had reacted to the blatant evasion of Hag Death.
No, that’s the old religions. Let them go, those gods infecting this world. And don’t judge so quickly, fool. You’ve made choices you’d never thought you would make, when they became necessary.

D’Embry had finished her own inspection of Gyll. She nodded as if what she saw confirmed her expectations. Her voice was as reedy as he’d remembered, but softer. “Ulthane Gyll,” she said.

He knew, he
knew
that she used his shorn title deliberately to goad him. He tried to control his expression, but the words jabbed inside. He’d walled up the pain of the day he’d left this world and Valdisa and the Hoorka, all his past, but the old title gouged a hole in that wall. It hurt.

Helgin was right. He was beginning to remember why he disliked the woman. “You told me so,” he muttered.

“Hmmm?”

“Nothing. Regent. And I’m
not
Ulthane Gyll,” he said carefully.
Tread lightly, and don’t show anger—she may only want an excuse to rescind the trade agreement.
“‘Trader,’ perhaps. Or ‘Sula.’ That’s my title among the Families.”
The bitch knows it damned well, too. That was the way I signed the request for
Goshawk
to enter Neweden orbit.

D’Embry smiled. It was a slow, surface movement of the lips and nothing else. Her voice was slow as well, careful. She seemed tired. “My apologies, Sula. My seneschal—not merely an aide, mind you; he’s to be my eventual replacement as regent . . .” She hesitated an instant, the faintest hint of a scowl crossing her mouth. Gyll wondered what in that last statement irritated her so, and how he might use it. Then she took a breath and continued. “. . . told me that you’d prefer ‘Sula,’ but we ancients sometimes slip into old habits.”