The Agent (23 page)

It could be that he had them all stationed inside and were waiting to spring a trap for the assassin. His fear spiked at a sound rapidly approaching, but it was just a light shower striking the cobblestones as the wind pushed the clouds and the rain they carried his direction.

Creeping ivy climbed up the latticework to the second floor window along the walls to each side of the columned porch. Aniston considered the absurdity of the design from a tactical standpoint as it all but posted a sign giving directions to any would-be thief. 

Aniston squatted next to the ivy and listened for a full minute before grabbing onto the foliage and climbing up the side. He dropped lightly over the rail to the second floor balcony spanning the entire front of the home and hunched next to the shuttered window. He slipped a small mirror attached to a metal rod between the shutters and peered inside.

A lamp turned down until it was little more than a glowing ember cast just enough light in the room for him to make out the lump of a sleeping form. It was the master bedroom, and Lord Torin’s wife had died two years ago, so Aniston thought it safe to assume that it was his target occupying the bed.

He slowly opened the shutters, tripped the latch securing the windows, and waited for a lull in the breeze before opening them. He used the bulk of his body to block the opening as best he could to prevent an errant gust from rousing the sleeping man and stepped lightly to the floor. Closing the window behind him, Aniston drew his sword and crept toward the bed.

“I wondered when you would come to kill me,” a voice spoke from the dark corner of the large chamber.

Aniston spun toward the voice, his sword held defensively out before him.

“Be a good lad and turn up the lamp on my nightstand. I would like to see the face of my executioner.”

Given that Aniston could not see the speaker but was obviously visible to him, he sidestepped to the nightstand and turned up the wick, never once taking his eyes off the shadows. Light flooded into the room and revealed an older man sitting in a chair pushed deep into the corner of the room. He held no weapon that Aniston could see and sat calmly with a sort of resigned smile on his face.

“You knew I was coming?” Aniston asked.

“I started expecting you when some of my compatriots began dying, some in not so mysterious ways,” Lord Torin replied.

“Why stay here then? Where are your guards?”

“As to the latter, I gave most of them the evenings off. I did not want one of them to cross your path accidentally while in the course of your duty. Most have families, and they should not suffer for my misdeeds. As to the former question, I suppose some part of me thinks to atone for those aforementioned sins.” He studied Aniston for a moment. “You have the look of an agent, albeit a rather young one. Am I right?”

Aniston shook his head. “Not exactly. I washed out just before graduating.”

“Something tells me there is a deeper story there, but we are not here to share stories, are we? I assume Evelyn sent you.”

Aniston did not reply.

Lord Torin brushed the air with his hand. “It doesn’t matter. Whether you she sent you or not, you are obviously working on her behalf. Poor child.”

The older man stood and walked to the four-poster bed. Aniston shuffled to the side, maintaining his distance and keeping his sword leveled. Lord Torin gripped one of the bedposts, twisted off the upper half, and laid it onto the bed. From inside the hollow cavity, he retrieved a tightly rolled bundle of papers.

“I was an agent before getting into politics. I was just an analyst, not the field agent you are, or obviously would have been, but I was good at my job. I think even The Guild forgot about that.” He set the bundle of papers on the nightstand.

Aniston glanced at documents. “What are those?”

“Those are the meticulous records I have kept over the years. They detail every bribe, request, and proposition anyone ever made to me or those I personally witnessed.”

“Why are you giving them to me?”

“As I said, I wish to make some small atonement for my crimes.”

“That’s it? You expect Evelyn to grant you clemency if she ever becomes the power on the throne?”

The old man smiled. “No, I expect nor desire any such thing, but I would ask a boon of you.”

“What is it?”

“Kill me cleanly and with dignity. Grant me that small measure of courtesy for my years of loyal service before I became what I am today.”

Aniston let the tip of his sword dip. “If you condemn your actions enough that you are willing to die for it, why support The Guild in the first place?”

He sat on the edge of the bed with a rueful smile. “They are a clever bunch. It starts out small, usually a few favors that grow so gradually you don’t even notice until they are wrapped around your heart like a tumor. You aren’t even sure when you committed your first act of treason, but they do, and they use it against you to commit more until you are one day helping depose and assassinate the King. It’s like boiling a frog. If you increase the heat slowly enough, the dumb bugger doesn’t even know it’s dying until it’s too late.”

“You didn’t know they were going to kill Remiel and his family?”

“I knew. I even helped in some small ways. I knew Remiel had to die. There just wasn’t any other way to get what they wanted. Their brutality toward the Queen and little Marcus was something of a shock. I expected that they would become prisoners in the castle, much as I suspect Evelyn is now. There was no need to kill them, especially in such a ghastly manner. I think that is what broke me out of the spell their money and support put me under.”

Aniston sheathed his sword, strode over to the nightstand, and tucked the rolled sheaf of papers inside his coat. “I won’t kill you, Lord Torin. I have lost too much of my appetite to kill a contrite man, but I cannot guarantee that Evelyn will be nearly as forgiving.”

Monte lowered his head and nodded at the floor. “Of course not. I await her judgment, although I suspect she will have to act swiftly lest someone else beat her to it. I ensured my death the moment I chose to break from The Guild. It is the fate awaiting all traitors, and I have managed to twice damn myself.”

As Aniston climbed back out of the window and down the trellis, he wondered if any of the other men he had killed over the last few weeks were equally remorseful. Would they too have tried to redeem themselves in some way had he given them the chance?

The answer was most assuredly no, but their attempts at doing so would have been as pointless as his guilt-laden ponderings. Neither he nor they could change what they had done. They could only pray that they found some sort of absolution in the eyes of God when their day of judgment came.

The drizzle built into a steady downpour. It was going to be a miserable walk back to the palace. Lightning arced somewhere above, causing the shadows to come to life. With each brilliant flash, the shadows danced across the ground, along the walls, and stabbed out at him like vengeful denizens of the dark. Another bolt streaked across the sky, and shadows leapt from every lamppost, sign, and building.

It took a fraction of a second for his brain to register that one shadow still moved after the lightning winked out of existence. Fire erupted down his leg when the knife plunged into his thigh. The limb collapsed, spilling him onto the glistening street. He did not try to arrest his fall, instead turning it into a roll to put some distance between him and his attacker.

Aniston used his uninjured leg to force himself to stand and drew his sword. Lightning flashed and revealed the face of his attacker. He was a burly man of perhaps sixty years. A thick, salt and pepper beard covered a broad, almost wild-looking face. He held a heavy hunting knife in one hand and drew a quillon dagger with the other.

“What did old Lord Torin tell you, boy?”

Aniston looked for a way to escape, but with his leg barely able to bear weight, his prospects of outrunning the man were nonexistent.

“Not gonna tell me, are you?” Dragoslav said. “Don’t matter. He’ll tell me everything. They always tell me everything.”

“You’re Zeegers.”

“I am. Who are you working for? Is it the Free Traders? The loyalists? Maybe it’s the Queen herself?” He cocked his head and grinned. “That’s it, isn’t it?” He laughed. “I bet you’re the one who cuckoled that idiot Gordon! Well, at least you got one hell of a legacy before you died.”

Aniston twitched his sword. “It is a long way from threats to death, Zeegers.”

“It ain’t so far. Not with me. You got maybe two minutes before you bleed out, but then I’ve never been the patient sort.”

Dragoslav approached almost casually, his blades held in a light grip. Aniston stepped back, dragging his injured leg and slashing with his sword. Dragoslav easily deflected the stroke with his quillon dagger, not bothering to attempt to strike back with the hunting knife.

Aniston’s only advantage was the greater reach of his sword, but that would not keep him alive for long. He continued to hobble backward and felt the ground sloping upward beneath his feet. He was backing up the enormous Crown Bridge as it arced over the Tenant River. It was not an actual river but a canal created long ago by digging an expansive channel through the heart of the city, lining it with massive slabs of quarried stone, and diverting some of the water from the Tenant River proper that wound its way around the outer border of the capital.

Dragoslav darted in; slapping Aniston’s thrust out wide with his dagger. Inside Aniston’s reach, he jabbed the hunting knife toward his gut. Aniston stepped back and sucked in his stomach, but he was too slow. He felt the blade pierce his flesh. His hasty dodge saved him from an immediately mortal wound, but his leg collapsed, and he once again found himself on the ground.

Aniston shuffled backward, scooting on his hands and backside. Dragoslav walked after him with slow, measured steps, leering and enjoying the fear Aniston wore on his face. Aniston felt his back butt up against something solid. He used the stone bridge railing to help hoist himself back to his feet.

“Nowhere to go now, boy.”

Aniston glanced over the rail to the roiling water below. The canal was normally shallow and sedate, but the rain had fueled it into a swift flow.

“There’s one place left to go, Zeegers, and I’ll be waiting for you when you get there. See you in hell.”

Aniston rolled over the railing. He was weightless for a second that seemed to drag on as he plummeted the thirty feet to the water below. He hit the water at a less than optimal angle and felt his left knee blow out and the bones in his lower leg break. He reached the stones beneath the torrent an instant later and held onto consciousness just long enough to experience the agony of his right femur snapping like a twig.

The impact drove what little air he had in his lungs out of his mouth in a gurgling scream of bubbles. He bounced along the bottom of the canal as the current carried his body downstream. With his last vestiges of strength and coherence, Aniston used his arms to claw his way to the surface. He gasped in a lungful of the sweetest air he had ever experienced.

The current carried him toward a bend in the canal, and he forced his arms to move. Aniston’s dazed strokes looked more as if he was trying to slap out a fire than swim, but he inched closer to the shore. He felt a surge of hope when his useless legs dragged on the rocky bed below the water. His hands found purchase a minute later, and he crawled onto the shore just far enough to rest his head out of the water.

Aniston rolled onto his back, his head lying on the stones lining the canal as his legs bobbed in the water. He lacked the strength to pull himself any higher. If it continued to rain, the water level would likely rise and carry him away. It was now a contest to see if he would drown or bleed to death.

Lightning flashed, and he stared up into a hooded face as it looked down at him.

“I warned you that Garran Holt would be the instrument of your demise.”

Aniston fought to place the voice and focus through his fading vision to capture the speaker’s face. “Dean Kelsey?”

Of all the faces he expected to see on his deathbed, Dean Kelsey’s had not been one of them. He shuddered, closed his eyes, and let the blackness take him.

CHAPTER 24

Adam opened his eyes and clamped them back shut when the sun assaulted them. He parted the lids to slits and let them adjust to the intrusive light before opening them further. He propped himself onto his elbows and found Garran tending a small campfire.

“Where are we?” Adam asked in a raspy voice.

“Afternoon, Sunshine,” Garran answered far too chipperly. “We’re about half a day’s ride into Opatia.”

“How’d we get here?”

“I tied you into the saddle last night…well, very early this morning. You raised quite a ruckus, so I figured it would be best if we lit out before true morning.”

Adam licked his lips and tried to chase the dryness from his mouth with his tongue. “Ugh, I feel awful.”

“You look as though you just licked a beggar’s ass,” Garran responded with a laugh.

“Why don’t you look as terrible you usually do?”

“I kept it pretty tame last night. I figured I should stay sober and look after you so you didn’t get into too much trouble.”

“Thanks. I guess it is best that I don’t drink. I definitely do not have the stomach or the head for it.”

Garran bobbed his head from side to side. “Well…I may have helped you along just a bit.”

Adam pushed himself into a sitting position. “You did what?”

“I know how uptight you are, so I put something in your drink to help you grow a pair.”

“You drugged me?” Adam shouted, too angry to notice the pain it caused his throbbing head. “Garran, I have taken vows to live a life of peace and to treat my body as if it was a holy vessel. You defiled me with whatever vile toxin you put in my drink! I have put up with a lot of abysmal behavior from you, but this is by far the worst thing you have done since we met.”

“Shows what you know. That isn’t even the worst thing I did last night.” Garran scoffed. “There you go again, underestimating me.”

“What did you do?” Adam asked, his voice low and threatening.

“Wrong question.”

“What the hell is the right question?”

Garran pointed at Adam with the stick he was using to poke a burning log. “What did you do?”

Adam leapt to his feet, his hands clenched into fists. “What did you do, you sonofabitch?”

“Well, I guess you priests don’t take vows against being a potty mouth.”

“What. Did. You. Do?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“I recall beating a man half to death. Everything after that is a haze thanks to the drugs you put in me!”

“So you wouldn’t remember doing something like—oh, I don’t know, getting laid?”

“I did what?” Adam advanced, his fists clenched so tightly they shook, his face contorted in barely suppressed fury. He shook his head. “No, you’re lying.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

“What part matters most, the actual act or your perception of it?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You said that, even though I was beyond coherency, I was responsible for any wrong doing that might arise from one of my sexual encounters. Well, now you are the one who may have committed a sexual act with no memory, so who’s at fault now?”

“You! You are at fault!”

“How is it my fault?”

“You drugged me!”

“Your prick, your problem. That pretty much sums up your previous argument.”

Adam’s heart pounded in his chest, and it felt as though someone was squeezing the air from his lungs. “I need you to tell me the truth. Did I have sex with a woman or not?”

Garran looked askance. “Who said anything about a woman?”

“Garran, if there was some kind of farm animal involved, I swear to God…”

“I would never do anything like that. I know how uptight you are about your vows. I found a loophole…in another hole. That’s better right?”

“No, it’s not better! It is worse! It is so much worse!”

“I don’t know why you are getting so upset. A lot of people pay up to a laborer’s annual income for a high-class bender.”

“Are you even capable of telling the truth? Your moral turpitude aside, where would you get that kind money? I thought we were nearly broke?”

Garran laughed. “We are. No, all the only bender around here looked like a lumberjack in a dress.”

Adam roared and punched Garran in the face. Garran took two steps back and wiped the blood oozing from his split lip.

“Well, look who woke up this morning with her big girl panties on. You want to have a go at me?”

Garran advanced with a series of quick jabs. Adam responded by blocking and deflecting them with smooth, swooping motions of his arms that would have looked comical had they not been so effective. So focused was Garran on breaking through Adam’s defenses, he failed to notice Adam’s foot before it connected with his face.

Garran stumbled back and clamped a hand to the bruise quickly spreading across his cheek. “What the hell was that? I thought you priests were pacifists?”

“We are! Ka-Rugh is supposed to be an exercise used to align physical and spiritual balance, but right now, the only thing that is going to bring balance to my heart and mind is kicking your ass!”

“Bring it on, Buttercup!” Garran shouted and charged.

Adam ducked low, grabbed Garran by the wrist, and flipped him over his back onto the ground. Garran groaned and rolled to feet, his fists held before him. He threw a quick series of jabs, darted inside Adam’s whirling defense, and wrapped his hands around his throat.

Adam brought his hands up between Garran’s arms and threw them out wide, breaking his hold. He retaliated with several quick blows to Garran’s midriff, bent forward until his head nearly touched the ground, and hit Garran in the face with a kick that snaked over his back.

Garran stumbled back, dazed. Adam leapt into the air and kicked him in the chest with both feet, sending him flying back to land hard in the dirt. Garran held his hands over his chest and stomach and groaned.

Garran got to his feet and stumbled away. “Sneaky damn priest! You win this this time.”

“What the hell is wrong with you, Garran?” Adam shouted after him. “Every time I start to think you are something other than a degenerate scoundrel, you do something horrible!”

“Yeah, that seems to be a recurring theme for me.”

“God I hate you sometimes!”

Garran nodded. “Me too, kid, me too.”

Garran staggered back to the campfire, slumped to the ground, and stared up at the sky. Adam watched him as he tried to make sense of Garran’s behavior. He stuck his hands down the front of his pants, pulled it back out, and sniffed his fingers.

Adam sat down on a log near the fire. “Why didn’t you transcend?”

Garran turned his head to look at Adam. “What?”

“Why didn’t you transcend? There is no way I could have beaten you if you had.”

“Like you said, I’m kind of retarded in that regard.”

“I don’t believe you. You are as close to sober as I have ever seen you. You let me beat you. Why?”

“Maybe I thought you deserved it—or I did. Whatever.”

“I know I did not have sex with anyone last night, least of all a man.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It is what I know.”

“Then that’s all that really matters, isn’t it? Perception trumps reality. That is the basis for my argument.”

“I think the basis for your argument is to piss me off. I need you to be honest with me so I can understand you.”

“Why would you want to do something like that? I don’t even want to understand me.”

“I live my life by certain moral standards, and I need to know that beneath this shell of degeneracy resides someone I can trust and who shares at least the core of those same values. If you do not, then this is where we part ways.”

Garran sat up. “You will never succeed without me.”

Adam nodded. “You are probably right, but I would rather fail while retaining my honor and values than to succeed by sacrificing them. I know my sister shares those same values, and she loves and respects me enough that she too would rather give up this crusade than for me to do that.”

“Then you and I are two vastly different people.”

“So I have gathered. Every time you show yourself to be a true hero, you deliberately crush any achievements by acting like a complete ass. Are you insane?”

Garran shook his head as he stared up at the sky. “By definition, an insane man wouldn’t know what he was doing.”

“Then why do you put yourself and others through this?”

“Sometimes it’s easier to live up to people’s expectations than to prove them wrong.”

“So you deliberately keep people’s expectations of you as low as you can?”

“That’s what the psychological profilers said at the school.”

“But you say psychological profiling doesn’t work on you.”

“Nope, I’m far too complex a person.”

Adam released an exasperated sigh. “Let’s pretend you are studying a target who behaves just like you. How would you profile his actions? Dissect his life and motivations for me.”

“Well, I would say that he probably had a very dysfunctional home growing up. He probably had a stepfather who enjoyed using him as a whipping post to take out the frustrations of his own failures. He might have had a mother who constantly told him that he was the reason his real father left and that he should be grateful that any man bothered to stick around. I imagine it would be hard on a five-year-old boy to be told that it was his fault that his stepfather beat him and that he deserved it while she was stitching up a gash on his head from a hurled whiskey bottle or rubbing salve on the welts left by his belt buckle.

“I imagine that created deep trust issues within him. After all, if he couldn’t trust the people who should have protected him and placed his welfare above their own, then how could he trust anyone? That sort of fear causes him to keep people at a distance. He feels the need to hurt them before they get a chance to hurt him.

“The constant berating and condemnation makes him crave success while being terrified of failure, because if he tries and fails, then he will prove true everything that everyone thinks and says about him. He thinks it is better to cheat and scheme his way to success rather than to make an honest effort and risk the slightest chance of failing. At least if he is a miserable sot, then he can blame his failure on his turpitude and not because he is, at his core, the worthless human being everyone thinks he is.”

Garran shrugged. “At least that is what I would think, but I’m not one of those head physics.”

“I’m sure glad I’m not that guy,” Adam said quietly.

Garran stood and stretched. “Me too. Now, if I have properly satisfied your womanly need to gossip about the emotions of others, I feel a chill in the air and need to go meditate.”

“Meditate or medicate?”

“It’s all the same thing.”

Adam shook his head as Garran wandered toward the bushes. “Garran, I didn’t really…you know…did I?”

Garran paused and turned back around. “Someone once said that the greatest thing in life is a mystery. It is the flame that brings light to our otherwise dull and tedious existence.”

“Who said that?”

“I don’t know. Some jerk in a book.”

“Damn it, Garran! Don’t make me kick your ass again.”

Garran walked away, smiling. “You only get the first one for free. You have to earn the next.”

Garran found a boulder next to a small stream upon which to sit. He filled the bowl of his pipe with opium, clamped the stem between his teeth, and lit it with a sulfur stick, his hands trembling enough to make the simple task a challenge. He inhaled the smoke and let the drug carry away the roiling emotions battering his soul upon the rocks of his existence. His spiritual sea grew calm once again, and he closed his eyes to enjoy the momentary lull.