Weapon of Blood (18 page)

“Does that give you any ideas?”

Lad snapped from his thoughts back to
Norwood.  “I’m afraid, Captain, that the list of suspects could be very long.”

“Then it’s my turn again.”  Norwood
shifted his stance, and his line of questions.  “Why are so many people dying
south of the river?”

“There’s some squabbling going on within
the Assassins Guild.  The guild has no guildmaster, and the factions are vying
for supremacy.  Our…competition is trying to move in with the disruption, which
has added to the violence.”

“I don’t suppose you’d name the leaders
of these factions so I can stop the violence.”

“Sorry, Captain.  The violence will stop only
when the factions learn to cooperate, or they appoint a new guildmaster.  It’s
that simple.  Now, I have to go.”

“Wait!”  Norwood held up a stalling
hand.  “Can I ask you one more thing?”

Lad saw no reason to deny the request. 
“You can ask, but I may not answer.”

“How in the Nine Hells did you get in
here?  I have the best locks money can buy on all my doors and windows, and a
guard dog on the back porch.”

Lad smiled, though he knew Norwood
couldn’t see his face.  “I came through the attic, Captain.  No place is
impregnable to a sufficiently skilled and determined…”—
assassin. Remember!
 
The words of his trainers were always with him, burned into his mind, but that
wasn’t something Norwood needed to know—“…person, Captain.  And that’s one
thing that worries me about Vonlith’s death.  Whoever put a dagger in his brain
was very skilled indeed.”

“As skilled as you?”

“No one’s as skilled as me,” he said
without a hint of hubris.  “That’s what worries me.  Now turn around please.”

Norwood obeyed, turning slowly, and Lad
saw him tense.

“Sleep well, Captain.”  Lad took careful
hold of Norwood’s neck, pressing his fingers down on the arteries that supplied
blood to the brain.  The captain had only enough time to reach up and grab Lad’s
wrists before he went suddenly and completely limp.  The unconsciousness would
only last a few seconds, but it wouldn’t hurt him, and gave Lad enough time to
slip through the door, down the hall, and out the attic window.  Though the
conversation had been enlightening, he still had too many questions and too few
answers.  But he knew where to look next.

Mya
…

Chapter
XII

T
hanks for
cleaning things up, Pax.”  Mya flashed the innkeeper a smile as she sat down to
her breakfast.  She’d come home the previous evening to find her quarters
completely straightened up; fresh, crisp linens covered the bed, her robe had
been washed and hung up, and every shard of broken glass had been removed from
the sparring room.  She felt guilty when she considered all the time and effort
Paxal must have put into cleaning up the mess.  Who knew what he thought—bloody
glass and all—but she trusted him never to mention it to anyone.  “I’m afraid
things got a little…out of hand the other night.”

“Nothing to fret about, Miss Mya.”  He
shrugged, his round face utterly placid.  “Every kettle’s got to blow off a
little steam now and then.”

She chuckled.  “Seriously, though, I
appreciate your devotion.  You know that.”

“I know, Miss Mya.”  He shifted,
obviously uncomfortable with her praise.  “You want the mirrors replaced?”

“I don’t think so, Pax.  Having that many
mirrors was making me vain.  The one in the bathing chamber’s enough for now.”

“Very good, then.”  He turned to go. 
“I’ll send Dee in.”

“Thanks.”  She shook her head in calm
wonder. 
If only I had a hundred of him.

Mya was well into her breakfast and
second cup of blackbrew when a knock announced Dee’s arrival.  As usual, he
bore a stack of correspondence, though he looked more rested today.

Maybe Moirin found someone else
.

The report from the team she’d assigned
to keep an eye on Captain Norwood lay on top of the stack of papers.   She read
eagerly, interested to see if Norwood had made any progress in the search for
Vonlith’s killer, though she certainly wasn’t going to tell Lad everything she
learned.

Damn him anyway!
  He had driven her crazy yesterday with his ceaseless
questions about the runemage.  It made her want to slit Norwood’s throat for
visiting the
Tap and Kettle
and bringing Vonlith’s death to Lad’s
attention.

Reading the report, however, she was
encouraged at how mundane the captain’s routine had been yesterday.  The day-crew
noted the times at which he left his home, arrived at work, ate lunch with two
colleagues at a nearby eatery, including the benign subjects of their
conversation, and so on.  She scanned the list of his afternoon meetings. 
Though she didn’t have eyes inside the captain’s office, and couldn’t know who
he spoke with or what they discussed, nothing hinted that the Royal Guard was
anything but in the dark about the murder.

Mya flipped to the next page, the night-crew’s
report.  The captain had arrived home at dusk.  A light in a front second-story
window had stayed on until nearly midnight, followed by one in the third-story
rear windows, which was shortly after doused.

The next few lines brought her up short. 

Just before dawn, Norwood had come out of
his front door fully dressed and stood in the street, looking up at a square
hole in the wall under the eaves above the highest center window.  The other
houses in the row all had louvered grates in the same spot.  None of her
Hunters had noticed the missing grate the evening before.  Though his coach
arrived at the usual hour, Norwood had delayed going to his office at the Royal
Guard headquarters until after workmen had arrived to replace the missing grate
with iron bars.

Godsdamnit! 
Fury rose in Mya, and she fought to maintain a
disinterested mien in front of Dee.  Someone had visited Norwood last night,
and evaded her Hunters in doing so.

Lad…  It had to be.

She couldn’t think of anyone else capable
of such a feat, but even he wouldn’t be dumb enough to threaten Norwood, would
he? 
Or
—she felt a chill on the back of her neck—
did he have another
motive for a late night visit?
If Lad suspected her of killing Vonlith,
would he give her name to Norwood?

Her own words came back to her:
There
is no one in the world who wouldn’t betray someone with the right incentive, my
friend
.

What might induce him to betray her?  Had
he already?  The questions made her mind spin.  She tossed the report
negligently to the table and addressed Dee calmly.

“Draft a response to Journeyman Toki
assigned to watch Captain Norwood.  Continue surveillance and report
everything, I repeat,
everything
that occurs.  And tell her, good work.”

“Got it.”  Dee’s pen scratched across the
parchment like a cockroach on a hot skillet.  “That’s all?”

“For now.”  She took a sip of blackbrew
and reached for the next letter, but her mind lingered on the question in her
mind.

Has he betrayed me?  I’ve got to keep
an eye on him.

That wouldn’t be an easy task without him
detecting her.  But more than that, she somehow felt that she was wrong to
suspect him.  He had risked his life to save hers many times these last five
years.
 

He doesn’t trust me.  He admitted as
much.

Mya buried her worries by attacking both
the pile of correspondence and her breakfast with a vengeance, but try as she
might, she couldn’t shake the fear that her friend—her
best
friend—might
have betrayed her.

“It’s useless.”  Neera’s voice shook with
rage as she dropped a beautifully wrought ring of obsidian and gold onto the
table.  “The spells to enchant the new guildmaster’s ring have failed.”

Every eye in the room stared at the
ring.  Sereth remembered an identical one on the hand of the Grandfather, and he
didn’t like the fear that memory evoked in him.  Neera’s anger was met with
confusion, disbelief and contempt from her fellow masters.

“I don’t understand.”  Horice had never
tried to hide his dislike for Neera, and the disdain in his voice now showed
it.  “You told us that forging the new ring would take several weeks.  It’s
only been four days, and now you’re telling us it doesn’t work?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,
Horice.”  Neera’s lip lifted from her potion-stained teeth in a contemptuous
sneer.  “Crafting the physical ring took three days.  Casting the enchantments
would have taken several weeks more.  However, the very first spell Master
Ronquin attempted to cast on the ring failed.”

“So you’re saying that the wizard who has
been forging guild rings for sixty years, with no difficulty whatsoever,
suddenly finds himself incompetent?”

“No, Horice.  I am saying that the
enchantment failed because, as you know, the Twailin guildmaster’s ring, like
all
our rings, is unique.  The enchantments are very specific, and can only
function in one place at a time.  This ensures that copies cannot be made to render
someone outside the guild invulnerable to our assassins.”

“So the original guildmaster’s ring…” 
Patrice’s voice trailed off, and Sereth watched understanding dawn on the
masters’ faces.

“…was never destroyed!”  The back of
Horice’s neck flushed red with rage.  “Mya
lied
to us!”

“Not only that, but she wears the
guildmaster’s ring.”  Neera pulled her lustrous robes close about her, a cocoon
of shimmering satin, and sat down.  “The enchantments only function when the
ring surrounds living flesh, and enchanting a new ring would only be impeded by
a functioning original, so she
must
wear it.  The question is: what do
we do now?”

“Kill the traitorous bitch, of course.”

Sereth struggled to keep from rolling his
eyes.  Horice’s solution to every problem was to kill someone.  He didn’t have
a subtle bone in his body.  The other masters didn’t bother hiding their
reactions to the Master Blade’s suggestion.

“As your recent
failure
exemplifies, killing Mya is not as easy as you make it sound, Horice.”

“At least now we know
why
our team
failed,” he countered with a glare at the Master Alchemist.  “No Twailin guild
assassin can attack Mya if she’s wearing the guildmaster’s ring.”

“But our people did attack her!” Youtrin
insisted.  “Just because your Blades got themselves killed…”

Horice’s hand drifted to the hilt of his
rapier, and Sereth prepared himself.  If his master did something stupid, he
had no recourse but to try to save his life.

“Stop it!”  Patrice’s command caught
everyone by surprise.  Usually the least vocal of the masters, her comely
features were now set in hard lines.  “We need to deal in facts, not emotions. 
First, you have all said that you watched Mya command her bodyguard to destroy
the old guildmaster’s ring, and that this man was magically compelled to obey. 
Is this correct?”

The three nodded, and Patrice continued.

“Second, a new ring cannot be enchanted
because the old one was
not
destroyed and is presumably on someone’s
finger.  How can we explain the discrepancy?”

“Mya is nothing if not cunning.”  The
contempt in Neera’s tone had mutated into a kind of twisted admiration.  She
drew a ragged breath and coughed.  Her face went suddenly ashen, and she
gestured to her bodyguard as she continued.  “
She
was the one who
suggested we do without a guildmaster, and at our behest she commanded her
bodyguard to destroy the ring.”  Her bodyguard took up one of the two bottles
of wine that Youtrin had provided, drew the cork, and filled her glass.  “We
didn’t see it destroyed, but foolishly assumed the task had been done when she
produced a lump of melted gold and shattered obsidian.”  Neera’s hand hovered
over the wine for a moment, and a silvery powder drifted from her fingers into
the crimson pool.  Her hand trembled as she stirred the mixture with one
claw-like fingernail and lifted the glass to sip.  Color flushed to her wan
features and her next breath came easier.  “All she had to do was countermand
the order after we had left, and take the ring for herself.”

“All right.  Next: at the last meeting
she attended, Mya wore her master’s ring.  Can she wear both her master’s ring
and
the guildmaster’s ring at the same time?”