Weapon of Blood (21 page)

The scream dredged up a memory of the
Tap
and Kettle
store room.  The sight of four thugs threatening Wiggen and
Forbish, Wiggen’s wail of terror as a man’s dagger rested against her throat,
her dress torn, tears soaking her cheeks.

Lad moved.

He caught the man’s fist before the blow
fell and jerked two fingers out of joint.  The man yelped and dropped the
woman, swinging toward Lad with a roundhouse blow.  Lad watched the fist come
at him, ducked under it and planted a careful punch into the brute’s solar
plexus.

Nerve clusters are targets of
incapacitation when killing is to be avoided.  Remember!

Lad didn’t want to kill the man, just
dissuade him, and his blow struck true.  A spray of air and spittle left the
man’s mouth, but there was muscle under the fat, and he was stronger than he looked. 
His hand reached for his belt and came up with a pitted dagger.

“You picked the wrong fight, boy.”

“No, I didn’t.”  Lad stood easily within
reach of the dagger.  “Now walk away, or I’ll break more of your fingers.”

The thrust came at him with surprising
speed and accuracy, but for Lad it moved like the flow of syrup on a cold
morning.  Grasping the man’s wrist, Lad pirouetted around the thrust, and drove
an elbow into the same spot he’d punched a moment before, harder this time. 
The man bent double with the blow, gasping feebly.  Lad took the dagger away,
cast it aside, and broke two more fingers.  As the brute emitted a wheezing
yelp, Lad twisted the man’s mangled hand behind his back.

“Now walk away while you still can!”  Lad
shoved him toward the street, and was pleased when the man kept going, glaring
back and holding his two injured hands over his stomach.

After the man rounded the corner, Lad
turned to the sodden bundle of skirts behind him.  “Are you all right?”

“I…think so.”  The woman sniffed wetly,
and wiped blood from her face with the back of her hand.  “Bastard would have
killed me over a couple a’ coins.  Thank you, sir.”  She held out a hand.  “A
hand up, if you please.”

Lad reached out.  “I don’t think he—”

The puff of air from a blowgun sounded
from overhead and behind, barely louder than the hiss of rain.

Displacement is the only defense
against a concealed missile attack.  Remember!

Lad leapt and twisted, moving every
portion of his body out of its former position in a desperate attempt to dodge
the dart.  He heard the missile strike flesh and waited for the pain to
indicate where it had hit.  If he reacted quickly, he might be able to cut the
dart out with the thug’s dagger and draw out the poison before it killed him.

But there was no pain.

The woman at his feet gasped, blinked up
at him, and collapsed.

Lad flattened himself against the wall
and listened, wary of another shot.  The patter of feet across the rooftop grew
more distant by the second.  Should he chase after the fleeing assailant?  No,
he should care for the woman.  Looking down into the dead, open eyes staring up
at him, he felt as if he’d been the one punched in the stomach.  No amount of
care could bring the woman back.  The dart intended for him had hit her instead.

Kneeling beside her, Lad located the dart
deep in the flesh of her throat.  The fletching, oily black and trimmed at a
steep angle, showed dark against her pale skin, though the shaft was completely
embedded.  The poison had been swift and, he hoped, painless.  A wave of guilt
washed over him, and he clenched his fists in frustration.

Some savior I am.  If I had just
passed by, she might be bruised, but she’d be alive.

The least he could do was take her body
someplace dry where the constables would find her before the rats did.  He owed
her that much.  But as he bent to pick her up, her arm fell flat on the
cobbles, and he caught a glint of light on metal.

He froze, and slowly turned her hand palm
up.

The faint light that stretched into the
alley from the street gleamed on a ring that encircled her finger, a long,
grooved needle extending from the underside.  This was the hand she had reached
up to him, the one he’d been about to take.  He examined the needle closely and
saw the dark stain in the groove.  He bent low to sniff it, but the rain masked
the scent.  He touched the side of the needle with one finger, then touched the
finger to his tongue.  It had an oily, rancid flavor that piqued recognition
from his early training.  Poison certainly, a lethal venom.  He spat, rinsed
his mouth with rain water, and spat again.

“She was trying to kill me.”

The fear in his own voice sounded strange
to Lad.  He had heard it often in others, but never his own.  He had fallen
prey to this very same trick once before, when Mya had captured him for the
Grandfather.  Envenomed rings were not an uncommon method of assassination, but
he had missed the warning signs, had trusted a stranger in distress.  He’d been
inches from taking that hand, inches from death.

Wiggen…  Lissa…

He had promised to be careful, assured
Wiggen that he was in no serious danger, that it was Mya they were after.  Lad
had become accustomed to watching out for her, not himself.  He had not been
thinking like an assassin.

And the assailant from above had been no
assailant after all, but his savior.

“Who?”

That was just one of the questions for
which he had no answers.  Who was the dead woman?  He examined her face
closely, but drew a blank.  He thought of the man whose fingers he’d broken,
and drew another blank.  He didn’t know all Mya’s people, much less all the
assassins in the other guild factions.  Who had sent them?  Who wanted him
dead?  Who had saved his life?

Lad looked up to the place from where his
savior had shot.

Had this been an attempt by one of Mya’s
enemies to remove him, thus clearing the way to get to her?  Was Mya even
involved?  She
had
seemed eager to get him to leave for home.  Lad
didn’t like this train of thought, but he had to follow it through.  Would Mya
have him killed for his curiosity about Vonlith’s murder?  Had her watchers
spotted him at Norwood’s house, and Mya drawn the wrong conclusion?  Or had she
sent the stealthy marksman who saved his life?  The potential answers were even
more troublesome than the questions.

Lad dropped the dead woman’s wrist and
considered his options.

He dismissed the perverse desire to drag
the corpse back to the
Golden Cockerel
and dump it on Mya’s dinner
table, though the action might finally rattle the truth out of her.  He
considered taking the dart and asking around to see if he could discover the
owner, then thought about taking the ring for the same reason.  Neither course
seemed likely to yield success.  Though part of their faction, Lad was not a
Hunter trained in tracking down information.  He couldn’t show the dart and
ring to Mya in case she was involved, and he certainly couldn’t ask the other
masters.

Turning on his heel, Lad left the woman
where she lay.  At the mouth of the alley, he looked both ways in the vain hope
of spotting the man who had undoubtedly been her accomplice, but the street was
empty.  Should he hide and watch the corpse in the hope that he would return
for her? 
No
.  His years among assassins had taught him that they didn’t
work that way.  Returning to the scene of a crime was a sure way to get killed.

So Lad did what he did best; he vanished
into the night.

He ran through the rain-streaked streets
flat out, so fast that nobody could have followed him.  He leapt to balconies,
scaled drain pipes, and hurtled from rooftop to rooftop until he knew with
absolute certainty that no stalker, no watcher,
no one
, could have
tracked him.  Then he dropped to street level and melted into the shadows to
make his careful way home to his wife and daughter.

On the way, Lad girded his fears and
considered his options.  He could wait no longer; he had to
do
something.  He would not risk losing all he had gained.  He had never known
love or a family until he came to Twailin, and now that he had them, he didn’t
know how he had lived without.  He wanted to watch his daughter grow up.  He
wanted to be with Wiggen.  He wanted to be the best father and husband he could
be, but to do that, he had to stay alive.  And if things continued as they
were, he would end up like the woman tonight, in an alley, stone-cold dead.

“Wiggen?”  The whisper invaded her
dreams, her wonderful, quiet, peaceful dreams.

Sleep…just a few more minutes…please.

“Wiggen?”  A warm hand settled on her
shoulder.

“Just a few more minutes…please.”

“It’s not morning yet, Wig.  I need to
talk to you.”

She rolled over, still half asleep, and
blinked at her husband.  His beautiful, slightly luminous eyes shone in the
dark.  “Lad?  Can’t it wait until morning?”

“I don’t think so, Wiggen.  It’s
important.  Someone tried to kill me tonight.”

“You mean someone tried to kill Mya?” 
She settled back onto her pillow and closed her eyes.  “Sometimes
I’d
like to kill Mya…”

“They didn’t try to kill Mya, Wiggen. 
They tried to kill me…and they almost succeeded.”

Wiggen lurched up, fully awake.  “What? 
Who?”  She reached for the lamp and turned it up.  Lad sat on the side of the
bed, looking as strong and beautiful as always, except for the lines around his
eyes and mouth.  There was a look there that unnerved her, and it took her a
moment to realize why; she had seen many emotions in his face, but never such
fear.

“I don’t know who she was, but it was
very professional, and nearly successful.  If not for some…someone else, I’d
probably have died.”

“Oh, gods!”  She flung her arms around
him, and felt his encircle her.  She had always felt safe here, wrapped in his
strength, his body so warm against hers, the beat of his heart so powerful it
overwhelmed the pounding of her own.  The thought of losing him stabbed like a
knife.  “Gods, I hate this, Lad!  I hate it!”

“I hate it, too, Wig.  That’s why I woke
you.  We need to make a decision.”

“Decision?”  She released him and wiped
the sudden tears from her eyes.  “What decision?”

“First let me tell you what’s happening.”

“Okay.”

Wiggen sat and listened to every detail,
all his suppositions, his fears, his theories of who and why and how.  By the
time he finished, her lip was clenched between her teeth to keep from screaming
and waking the baby.  She tried to calm her mind as Lad had taught her so long
ago, and felt the panic subside, but it was a thin veneer.  Someone had tried
to take him from her.

“Mya is involved, but I don’t know how. 
I thought that she might have tried to have me killed tonight, but it doesn’t
make sense.  If she wanted me dead, she could have done it herself a dozen
times.”

“What?  How could she kill you?”

“A pat on the back with a poisoned ring. 
Poison slipped into my food.  Any number of ways.”  Wiggen’s shock must have
shown on her face, for Lad’s features suddenly flushed with guilt.  He pressed
a hand to her cheek and said, “I’m sorry, Wiggen.”

“I don’t understand.  Why would Mya want
to kill you?  You keep her safe!”

He shook his head.  “The more I think
about it, the more I think it’s
not
her.  It’s not in her best interest
to kill me.  But I still don’t trust her.  I know she’s being evasive about
Vonlith’s murder.”

“Maybe
she
killed him.”  Wiggen
had never met Mya, but that didn’t keep her from loathing the woman.  If not
for Mya, Lad would be working at the inn, sitting down to meals with his
family, and slipping into bed with her at a decent hour every night.  But Mya
had extracted a promise from Lad to protect her, and Lad was too honest to
break his word.  Wiggen knew that the same couldn’t be said about Mya; Lad’s
stories of her deceptions and intrigues made her head whirl.  It wouldn’t
surprise Wiggen in the slightest to discover that Mya had murdered the
runemage.