The Third Eye Initiative (28 page)

Next he made his way to Cornock’s room. Decided that he really didn’t like the man, Tsaeris slit his throat instead of using poisons. He held his hand firmly against the
man’s mouth, muffling any sound, as he tore his throat open with his knife. The man took a few minutes to die, and then Tsaeris moved on.

Tsaeris had to pick a lock to get into Halbert’s cabin, but the lock was basic and Tsaeris had it opened with his picks faster than most men could have with a key. He crept silently to the side of the sleeping captain and removed a long needle.

He closed the captain’s door softly as he left the room. Moving silently so as not to alert those crewmen still alive on deck, Tsaeris found the cargos hold. The lock was no more difficult to open than the one on the captain’s door.

Inside there was a large cage. He could hear muffled sobs and whispered voices coming from inside. A single torch sat in a bracket on the wall. The cage was full of children. Orc children, to be more specific, and an adult male and female who were obviously charged with looking after the young. This ship was a notorious slave runner and the Initiative had decided to shut it down.

“Do you speak Common?” Tsaeris asked in a whisper.

“
Yes,” the adult male replied.

“
Good. I’m going to open the cage. You need to keep the children quiet. There are still men alive on deck.”

             
The Orc nodded, obviously not wanting to argue with a man who was freeing them. Tsaeris opened the cage. He ushered the Orcs out, and bid them to follow him. The adult Orcs did a good job keeping the children silent. When they reached the staircase leading to the deck, Tsaeris held up his hand to stop the Orcs.

“
Wait here. I’m going to take care of the men on deck. Don’t come out until I come back for you. Understand?” Tsaeris said. The Orc male and female nodded.

Tsaeris crept up the stairs and opened the door to the deck. He closed it behind him. Silently, he approached one of the crewmen from behind. As quickly as he could, he reached out, gripped a hand over the man’s mouth, and slit his throat.

“What the hell...” a voice said from behind him. Tsaeris cursed. “He killed him!”

Tsaeris spun to face the crewman, who was quickly joined by the other two. Tsaeris could hear the anchor chain unwinding, and the
helmsman was joining his crew mates as well. All four men held swords.

“
You’re dead, you little freak!” one of the crewmen yelled.

The sailors attacked together. Tsaeris dodged two sword blades,
and then leaped backwards. He needed as much space between himself and his assailants as possible.

“
Stop!” Tsaeris cried out, holding his hands out in front of him. The men hesitated for just a second, but it was enough.

Tsaeris whipped his arms downwards, and two metal
balls fell out of his sleeves, their pins pulling off on his fingers as they fell. They rolled towards the sailors, and popped in an eruption of shrapnel and flame. Two of them went down immediately to lie screaming on the deck. The other two were burned badly but stayed on their feet. Tsaeris removed a handful of tiny impact explosives from his pocket and threw them at the feet of the other two sailors. The explosions were not enough to injure the men, but they recoiled in fear.

Tsaeris wasted no time and charged the men with a dagger in hand. He stabbed one of the men hard in the neck,
and then quickly spun to face the other. The man was coming at him with a sword still in hand, but was limping. Tsaeris threw his dagger in the air and caught it by the tip. He feigned throwing it at the sailor, who flinched and cringed. Tsaeris laughed, and then pretended to throw it again. The man swung his sword wildly, trying to deflect the dagger which was still in Tsaeris’ hand. Tsaeris waited until the man stopped swinging, and then threw the dagger for real. It caught the man in his right eye, and blood erupted from the wound. The man fell back to the deck, and lay very still.

The sailors were all dead. Tsaeris moved to the door leading below decks and opened it. He beckoned for the
Orcs to follow, and led them to a lifeboat. It took only a few moments to load all of the children into the boat. Tsaeris removed a vial and a pouch from his coat, undressed and threw his clothes and a cloak he had removed from one of the dead crewman into the boat as well. The Orcs seemed shocked upon seeing his many scars

“
I’ll lower you down. I have to set fire to the ship. Row out a ways towards shore, and then wait for me. I’m counting on you picking me up when I jump into the water.”

“
Don’t worry. We’ll be waiting,” the Orc man assured.

Tsaeris used the crank to lower the lifeboat into the water,
and then went below deck to retrieve a torch. He climbed the mast and set fire to the sails. He scattered a variety of flammable powders and liquids around the deck. Before long the ship was engulfed in flame and Tsaeris was swimming towards the lifeboat. As soon as the Orcs pulled him into the boat, he used the crewman's cloak to dry himself as best he could, and then wrapped it around himself. The water had been cold and he was freezing.

The
Orcs rowed the ship to shore. When they reached land, Tsaeris discarded the cloak and dressed in his own dry clothes, then helped the Orcs get the children out of the boat. When they were finished, he tossed the coin purse that Halbert had given him to the Orc male.

“
Good luck to you,” Tsaeris said, and then turned towards the forest to make his way to the road. He could hear the Orcs calling out their thanks at his retreating back.

The walk back to
The City took Tsaeris about two hours. He was lucky that the ship had been moving so slowly. By the time he returned home, dawn was only an hour or two away. He collapsed in his bed, exhausted.

It felt like he had just gotten to sleep when he heard somebody say his name. He opened his eye and groaned. Somebody had lit a few candles.

“Get up, boy,” It was Elias.

“
Go away,” Tsaeris replied irritably.

“
Get up now, or I’ll drag you out of bed,” Elias said, then paused. “Something’s happened.”

Tsaeris sighed, and crawled out of bed. He walked over to
his water basin in the corner of the room, splashed some cold water onto his face and rubbed his eye.

“
Is it bad?” Tsaeris asked after a moment.

“
It’s bad,” Elias replied.

Tsaeris nodded.
“Alright, let’s go.”

Doctor Tyrier Sydarin stood in the center of Market square. Before him sat a statue of a hammer and anvil, with the words ‘
For Our Friends’ etched in the worn stone, a memorial for the lives lost at the Dwarven Arms Fair four years past. Tyrier took a moment to remember his beloved son Jarod, who had been among those lost that day. The statue had long since been defaced with ink and cracked by people who felt they were above it all, and who cared little for the feelings of others. What had once been a proud and pure symbol of shared loss and pain had become, like everything else in this city, a corrupted shadow of its former glory.

Once again that monument for the lost had become a parody of what it had stood for. At the base of the monument lay three bodies. Their blood smeared over the words of memorial, drops of blood stills pursuing a slow and silent journey from the words to the base of the statue.

              A crowd of citizens circled the monument, kept at a distance by The City Watch. Watch Commander Isaac had knocked on Tyrier’s door earlier that morning to have him examine the bodies. Tyrier was a well-known and respected doctor, and the watch often came to him when they needed a medical point of view for a crime. Most deaths in The City were a result of a mugging or a fight, and seldom did they require any serious investigation. These bodies were different.

Tyrier did a quick examination of the corpses. The first was a young man named Allec. His head had been beaten i
n by what was probably a hammer, and his hands were missing all of their fingers. He had liked to play dice, and had a girlfriend named Mora. The second was another young man named Brian. He was eviscerated and by the expression frozen on his face, it was clear he had been alive when his guts were torn out. He had been a good musician, and Tyrier had often listened to him play his flute which dangled from his belt, stained in red. The third was a young woman named Kelly. Her eyes had been cut out while she lived, and bruises around her throat indicated that she had been choked to death. She had always had a bright smile, and loved to tell stories.

All three of them had been Third Eye Initiative novices. Men and woman not yet sixteen years of age, Tyrier had known them well, and had cared for each of them
when they were hurt or sick. He had watched them grow from young recruits into budding agents. Now they were gone, and would fade into memories of those who knew them and obscurity to the faces in the crowd when their interest finally waned.

On the face of the memorial
there was a sentence written in the blood of the victims. It was in the language of the dwarves. Greyloke nock armark, nai hic arn nargott.

Gravelock is real, and he is terrible.

A city watchman approached Allec’s body, and removed his coin purse. Tyrier glared at him, but the watchman simply shrugged and smiled. He removed the coin purse of Brian and Kelly as well. When he reached for Brian’s flute, Tyrier caught his arm by the wrist.

“
Not the flute,” Tyrier said. His voice had been clam, but there was a slight undertone of threat. The watchman looked like he was about to argue with the big man, but seemed to decide against it. Without a word, the watchman returned to join his fellows. Tyrier shook his head in disgust as the watchmen began dividing up their spoils. Gently, almost tenderly, Tyrier removed the flute from Brian’s body and placed it in the pocket of his coat.

Tyrier turned to scan the crowd. He wasn’t surprised to see several agents there, including Elias and Tsaeris. Elias gave him a slight nod. Tyrier was relieved to see that the agents were doing a good job containing themselves in the face of the tragedy. Third Eye novices were the cubs of the pack, and the agents were protective of their young
. For most of those men and women, the Initiative was the only family they have ever had, and to see their novices targeted and killed like this would be hard for some of them to bear. Tyrier knew that Elias’ presence in the crowd had a calming influence on the agents. If the novices were the young of the pact, then Elias was the alpha.

Tyrier didn’t bother wasting his time trying to figure out who had been behind this. There was simply no evidence beyond the bodies and the words on the monument. Obviously the killer was aware of the Third Eye Initiative, but that didn’t make things any clearer. The Third Eye Initiative was a behemoth of an organization.

Tyrier looked down to the bodies of the novices again. As unidentified victims, the watch had nobody to contact. In these cases the bodies were usually thrown into a landfill, or taken to the industrial district and tossed into an incinerator. These kids deserved better than that. Tyrier walked over to the watch sergeant, who took over the duty of overseeing the scene after Commander Isaac had left to attend other matters. He was a young, cocky-looking man with black hair and a thick black mustache.

“
I need these bodies taken to my clinic,” Tyrier informed him.

“
What for?” The watchman asked, his tone instantly condescending.

“
To be examined further,” Tyrier replied.

“
Why don’t you just finish telling us how they died, so we can get rid of them. They’re nobodies. Just stamp your damn paper.”

“
Listen,
boy.
I didn’t ask you. I told you. I’m not stamping a damn thing until I’ve had time to examine these bodies properly. Just because you don’t like to do your job, don’t assume that everyone else is as lazy and useless as yourself.”

“
Now listen here...” the watchman began before Tyrier interrupted.

“
No, you listen. Do what I said, or I will take you by the ear right in front of your men, and drag you to Watch Commander Isaac so you can explain to him why your job is just too much work to be bothered with.”

The watch sergeant’s face contorted in anger, and his hand moved in the direction of his sword. Tyrier grabbed his wrist roughly, squeezing it hard. He could feel the steel of the bracer starting to bend inward.

“If you draw on me, son, I will tear your arm from its socket. I’m going to tell you this one last time.” Tyrier squeezed even harder, and the watchman’s face began to twist in pain as the bracer began digging into his flesh. “Bring the bodies to my clinic.”

He let go of the man’s wrist, and the watchman stared at him for a moment. Tyrier met his eyes with a stone glare. The watchman cursed,
and then turned to his men.

“
Get these bodies to the Doctors clinic,” he ordered. “And get that crowd moving.”

Tyrier stayed to oversee the handling of the bodies,
and then accompanied the watchmen to his clinic. He wheeled several small beds into his examination room, and had the watchmen gently lay the bodies on them.

When they were gone, he left the examination room and headed to his office. He removed a flask from the drawer of his desk, and three small glasses. Tyrier didn’t usually drink this early in the morning, but he felt the need for it today. He poured whiskey from the flask into the glasses until they were about a third full. He had only just finished pouring the drinks when the expected knock sounded on his door.

“Come in,” he called.

The door to his office opened and Elias and Tsaeris entered. He motioned them to sit in the two chairs in front of his desk, and slid them each a glass of whiskey. They accepted the drinks, and the men lifted their glasses in the air for a moment in a silent tribute to the fallen novices, before taking a drink.

“What can you tell me?” Elias asked.

“
Not much. Allec had his fingers cut off, then was bludgeoned with a hammer. Brian had his guts ripped out, and Kelly was blinded, and strangled.”

“
Was the girl raped?”

“
No.” Tyrier took a sip of his whiskey. “No, this wasn’t a sexual crime. It wasn’t for money either, as the three weren’t robbed until the good men of The City Watch showed up.”

“
Three novices dead and a message about Gravelock. This was obviously personal,” Tsaeris offered.

“
The Gravelock myth is fairly standard in The City, not just with the Initiative. But the fact that they were novices definitely indicates an inside job,” Elias said.

“
Could it be one of the guilds?” Tsaeris asked. “Hell, as much as they fear us, the drug cartels and thief guilds have no reason to love us. Maybe one of them has decided to take a stand.”

“
Maybe. But I don’t think so,” Elias said. “Like I said, the Gravelock myth is one that seeps into all walks of life, and tends to be a personal superstition. The thief guilds and the drug cartels have their own Gravelock myths. The fact that the myth was attached to those bodies points to it being one of us.”

“
Could it be a former agent, then?” Tsaeris asked.

Elias gave him a meaningful look.
“There are no former agents.”

“
Ah, all dead. Gotcha,” Tsaeris replied.

“
This brings us to a delicate subject,” Tyrier said. “Who do we trust? If we’re certain it was an agent, that doesn’t narrow the suspects down by much. Who handles the investigation?”

“
It has to be handled by agents who we know for a fact can be trusted,” Elias began. “To be honest, I think I’ll keep this in the family for the moment. Who can we really trust, outside this room? This killer could just as easily be multiple agents as one.”

“
Sounds good to me,” Tsaeris said.

“
Alright. Tsaeris and I are off to go interrogate the mentors of those novices. Let me know if you find anything else on the bodies,” Elias said, standing up.

“
I will. Also,” Tyrier reached into his pocket and removed the flute. “Clean this off and see to it that Brian’s brother gets it.” He handed the flute to Elias

“
I will,” Elias replied. Elias and Tsaeris finished their whiskeys in large gulps, and then left the clinic.

Tyrier finished his own whiskey, and headed to his examination room. He hadn’t found any useful evidence when he had first examined the bodies, but he would try again. In the serenity of his clinic he knew he could work more thoroughly than on the streets.

He was disturbed. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the Initiative. He couldn’t believe that an agent, or more than one, had turned traitor. Worse, they killed novices. Kids. Tsaeris had his own novice now, the young Aedrus. The job of mentoring Aedrus had been offered to Tyrier, but he had declined and suggested Tsaeris instead. He had felt that Aedrus’ light hearted nature would be a good influence on his violent and often emotionally distant nephew. Tyrier hoped Tsaeris was keeping a good eye on the boy. Tyrier chuckled inwardly at his unintended joke, remembering that Tsaeris didn’t have an eye to spare.

Tyrier had been friends with Aedrus’ father and had known the boy since he was born. And it had been Tyrier himself who had taken the orphaned boy into the Initiative. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if something bad happened to him while he was still a novice and under their protection.

Tyrier let out a heavy sigh, then cursed under his breath. He stared down at the bodies of the unfortunate novices, and knew he would wait to complete a more thorough examination. His heart just wasn’t in it. The idea of cutting into those novices, kids all of them, unsettled his usually unshakable stomach. He knew it was selfish and that the best thing he could do for them was to help find their killer, but he couldn’t bring himself to continue his work. His brow tightened as he felt the sorrow finally reach his eyes, and he angrily wiped at the gathering moisture. What was wrong with him? He had examined many bodies in his time, many of them the remains of friends. One had been his son.

For the first time in his life, he thought he might be getting too old for this. Was it finally happening? Were his strong shoulders finally beginning to bend under the
weight of all this death and pain? He hated the thought, but he couldn’t ignore it. He felt like he was letting everyone down.

Tyrier was suddenly surprised to discover that he was stroking Kelly’s hair, as if to comfort the dead girl. He pulled his hand away, and stared at it in shock. Then his pain and sadness vanished, replaced by rage. Rage at the killer, rage at himself, rage for everything good and pure that this accursed city had claimed. He growled, and over turned a table filled
with the vials and instruments of his trade. The vials shattered on the floor, and the wood of the table splintered at the force of the strong man’s anger. A hard kick sent the door of the room flying from its frame.

The world disappeared for Tyrier, and when it finally returned his clinic was nearly in ruin. It was like a powerful storm had suddenly passed through the confines of the structure, leaving destruction in
its wake.

The good doctor collapsed to his knees, his fists in large angry balls, and his regrets
lying across his shoulders like a shroud.

He was too old for this.