Imperial Assassin (21 page)

He latched the left hand shutter open and looked inside. Through the window, Reynik could see that the room inside was empty and the internal door was shut. Within a few seconds, he had opened
the window. He was in.

Reynik swung silently inside, drawing the remaining free rope into the room with him. He took a quick look around to memorise the layout of the furniture, then, wedging the loose rope on the
window ledge between the shutter and the window, he shut everything behind him. The sudden drop in noise level was marked. With the wind and rain shut out, the silence in the house was profound.
Had anyone heard the increase in storm noise as he had opened the window? He could hear no signs of movement, but that could be because men were waiting for him on the other side of the door.

Cat-like, he crept through the dark room to the door. If Femke’s information were accurate, then when he left this room, Lord Lacedian’s bedroom would be to his left, two doors along
the upper hallway on the right hand side. He found the door by touch and then paused to listen – still no sound. Reynik drew the knife from his back holster. With extreme care to avoid making
any noise, he squeezed the door handle to the open position.

A single torch burned in its bracket at the top of the stairs to his right. The orange flicker chased shadows with leaping tongues that weaved and danced their stuttering patterns. Reynik peered
cautiously around the door at the landing area. A shadowy figure not two paces away caused his breath to catch in his throat. It took only a moment to realise it was an empty suit of armour. His
breath released in a silent sigh. There was no sign of anyone else about.

The door creaked slightly as he inched it open far enough for him to squeeze through. He paused again, his breath catching in his throat at the sound, but nothing stirred. Having got inside,
could it really be this easy?

Working hard to move as Devarusso had taught him, light-footed and stealthy, Reynik slipped along the upper hallway to the door to Lord Lacedian’s bedroom. The next few seconds would be
crucial. He must not allow the old fellow to attract attention to his presence.

Even as he placed his hand on the door handle, a low growl sounded inside Lacedian’s room. Reynik froze. The growl was not that of a human. It sounded like a large dog. Was it a pet? Did
Lacedian sleep with a guard dog in his room? If so, the hit had just increased in difficulty.

Reynik backed away silently from the door and the growling subsided. ‘Damn!’ he thought. ‘What do I do now?’

Femke had known nothing of dogs in the house, or she would have mentioned it. The Lord obviously knew someone was out to kill him and had taken extra precautions. The additions to his house
guards had made that much obvious, but the use of dogs was not something Femke and Reynik had anticipated.

‘If I were Lacedian, and I knew someone was coming to kill me, would I sleep in my own room? Unlikely. So where would I sleep?’ he thought, looking back and forth nervously along the
upper landing. ‘I would certainly leave a trap in my normal room – hence the dog, but would I even sleep in my own house? Probably not – but Lacedian is. I’m sure he’s
here somewhere. He came in. I didn’t see him leave. He
must
be here, but where?’

Time was running out. Turning back towards the top of the staircase, Reynik noticed the trail of footprints he was leaving on the carpet. Not surprisingly, the wet moss from the roofs he had
traversed had caught in the tread of his boots. The upper hall carpet was pale beige and his tracks were painfully obvious. He had to move swiftly.

Reynik peered over the gallery banister to the lower hallway. A guard was sitting at the base of the stairs. He looked bored, and not very alert. Reynik moved away from the banister rail and
edged along the upper hall until he was as far as he could get without potentially exposing his presence to the guard at the foot of the stairs. He needed to cross the top of the stairs, but he was
not sure how best to do it without drawing attention to himself. His mind raced through the possibilities, but before he had come to any conclusions, the front door to the house opened and two of
the guards who had been patrolling outside stepped into the hallway.

The distraction was perfect. He raced across the top of the stairs, stooping to avoid casting a long shadow as he passed the bracketed torch. None of the guards noticed the movement. The two
from outside were too busy shaking water from their cloaks and complaining about the weather. The one seated at the base of the stairs was watching them.

There were three doors on this side of the landing. Femke had drawn the layout of the house for him. If he remembered correctly, the middle of the three was the most likely, as it led to the
guest suite. Lacedian was an older man. By Reynik’s reasoning, the Lord would not give up comforts unnecessarily. Reynik did not pause. Knife in hand, he tried the door. The noise of the
chatting guards masked any slight sound he made.

The door would not budge. What now? It looked as though Lacedian had barred the door from the inside. This was getting more and more difficult. Should he give up and try to make the hit
somewhere away from his home?

Suddenly, an idea began to form. He could still make the hit, but getting away afterwards might prove a bit more troublesome than he had originally hoped. The guards were all still chatting away
in the lower hall, so Reynik darted back across the top of the stairway. Again he managed it without being seen. Sliding silently back along to the room where he had entered through the window, he
cracked open the door and slipped back inside, pulling the door to behind him.

His memory of the room did not fail him. By touch, he found the wall torch nearest to the door. A flint and steel hung on a string beneath the wall bracket. Some noise was inevitable, but he was
far enough from the guards that he did not expect to be heard.

Reynik lit the torch. The scratch of the flint on the steel sounded loud in the quiet of the room, but the instant shower of sparks fell just right, lighting the torch at the first attempt.
Taking the torch from the bracket, Reynik fanned the flame of the torch until it had a good hold and then moved to inspect the furniture. A nicely upholstered chaise longue appeared perfect for his
purpose. He held the torch to one end of the seat, working the flame back and forth across its width until the whole end was burning with a substantial flame. Smoke belched from it, quickly filling
the upper half of the room with a thick black cloud. This presented a new danger, but Reynik was committed to his impromptu plan now.

He threw the torch into the corner of the room, where it set light to a rug. The room would be an inferno within the next few minutes. The chaise longue was not as heavy as Reynik had
anticipated, but having not shut the door completely, it did not matter. He picked it up by the end that was not alight and charged the door, using the flaming piece of furniture as a battering
ram. The crash as he smashed the door open certainly drew attention from the guards, but they did not have more than a second to react before the burning piece of furniture launched over the
gallery side and descended like a flaming meteor at the guard seated at the base of the stairs.

‘FIRE! FIRE!’ Reynik yelled at the top of his voice, drawing a knife with each hand.

‘What in Shand’s name!’

The guard at the base of the stairwell had managed to dive out of the way of the incoming missile, but the impact scattered burning pieces of wood all over the lower hallway.

‘Put out that fire. Quick, before the whole place goes up. Jarron, Dakreas, get upstairs and kill him before he torches the entire house,’ ordered another voice.

There was the sound of running feet and the dog in Lord Lacedian’s bedroom started barking at the top of its voice. Footsteps also sounded on the stairs. Reynik impaled both knives point
down in the banister rail, turned and grabbed the nearby suit of armour. Surprisingly, it was heavier than the chaise longue, but he managed to heave it over the banister rail. The resulting
clatter, yells and cursing yielded exactly the result he had been hoping for. On the other side of the upper landing, the door handle moved.

‘FIRE! FIRE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!’ Reynik yelled again, determined to encourage Lacedian out into the open.

It worked. Reynik snatched his knives from where he had stuck them in the wooden banister rail and was perfectly poised as Lord Lacedian’s door opened and the old Lord looked out
tentatively to see what was going on. The throw was longer than Reynik would have liked, but it was a clean shot. He took it, hurling the blade with all his strength. The blade flew straight and
true, burying itself in the old Lord’s chest before he had a chance to react. The image of the old man’s shocked face burned into his retinas. It was a moment Reynik would never forget:
a moment that would leave a stain on his soul that he knew could never be totally cleansed.

Reynik did not wait around. It was all about getting away now. He turned and ran back into the smoke-filled room, retching at the wave of nausea that gripped his gut. It was easy to blame the
smoke for emptying the contents of his stomach on the floor, but he could not deny the truth. What he had just done was wrong – terribly, irrevocably wrong. Every fibre of his body knew it.
Nobody would ever know the truth of how much this mission was costing him. All anyone else would see was the killer – the man who had first killed Lord Kempten, and now Lord Lacedian.

Crouching to stay below the worst of the smoke, he realised that the torch had now set light to the floorboards. Unless someone got the fire under control soon, the entire house would go up in
flames very quickly.

He raced across to the window and opened it. His hands were shaking as he grabbed the rope from the window ledge. He kicked open the shutters. The wind slammed them shut again, but he had broken
the latch. He shouldered the shutters apart, climbed out through the window, and proceeded to descend the rope hand over hand as far as it went. His gloves gave him extra purchase on the
water-soaked rope, for which he was very grateful.

From what he could see below him, all the guards were now inside the building, either dealing with the fire in the hallway or looking for him. His stomach threatened to heave again, but he
fought the sensation by tipping his head back and allowing the rain to wash over him for a moment. The feeling of the rain battering against his face was strangely cleansing.

He looked down. The ground was about two body lengths drop from the end of the rope. He let go, landing lightly and drawing another knife as he launched into a sprint away from the house.

The dark night closed around him as he ran, the thick curtain of rain adding a further veil of concealment. There was no sign of immediate pursuit, but he did not slow just yet. Around the first
corner, Reynik shucked off his pack and dropped it into a dark, shadowy alleyway. He did not want to be caught by the militia carrying such equipment.

He began running again, taking his pre-planned escape route through the side streets and alleys until he had put a good distance between him and his victim. At least he had only had to kill his
target, he thought, grateful for this mercy. The assignment would have been many times worse if he had been forced to kill one of the innocent guards. Lord Lacedian had been proved a traitor. That
fact did give some small consolation for his actions.

Reynik prayed the men fighting the fire would have enough sense to save themselves if the blaze became too fierce. The elements were on their side to contain the fire. The torrential rain would
have a cooling effect, though he doubted it would be enough without some swift and positive fire fighting from within the building.

Despite the pouring rain damping down the smell, Reynik realised that he probably stank of smoke. Having inhaled a fair amount of the acrid stuff, he could not smell anything, but the odour of
burning was sure to be creating a miasma around him that could prove incriminating. He needed to change and dispose of his clothes quickly.

Where would be the best place to go? A slight sound in the alleyway behind him gave an instant of warning. His knife was already in his hand as he spun to face the person behind him.

‘Hold! I don’t want a fight. I only want to talk,’ said a man’s voice from the shadows of the alley.

‘Who are you, and what do you want to talk about?’ Reynik replied calmly, his stance perfectly balanced for maximum flexibility.

‘Names are not important. I bring a message from the Guildmaster of the Guild of Assassins. He offers you a simple choice. You can apply for membership of the Guild, or he will have you
killed.’

‘That’s it?’ Reynik asked, fighting to keep all emotion from his voice. ‘What if I apply for membership of the Guild and am not accepted?’

‘Then you won’t leave the Guild alive.’

‘Doesn’t sound like much of a choice to me.’

‘It isn’t meant to.’

Reynik paused for a moment, as if considering what he should do. Inside, his heart was racing. It was all working perfectly. The man in the alleyway would lead him to the
Guild. Once accepted, he would be able to give the location of their headquarters to the Emperor and the Guild would be wiped out for ever. The sticking point was the ‘once accepted’.
Would he be accepted? How would they decide if he were acceptable to join? Did they suspect what he was really trying to do?