Weapon of Blood (41 page)

“I am, Master.”  The Enforcer’s wrist
twitched and a musical chime sounded.

“Do you think you can enforce a secure
area around the
Tap and Kettle
?”

“Secure from what, Master?”

“From everything.  You’ll let no
racketeers, thugs, or thieves from our or any other organization near the inn.”

“I can do that, Master.  I can’t keep the
Royal Guard off their doorstep, but I can keep ’em safe from the likes of us.”

“Make sure you do.  Take up your ring and
put it on.”

“Thank you, Master.”  Jingles snatched up
the ring and thrust it on his finger, as if afraid Lad might rescind the order
if he delayed.

Another cocky bastard
, Mya thought,
but one who knows how to follow
orders
.

“All right, then.  You’re all the masters
of your factions.”  Lad placed his palms on the table and pushed himself up
from the chair.  “I’m your new guildmaster.  I’ll be unlike your previous one,
if any of you remember the Grandfather.”

Mya saw Sereth and Jingles twitch.  They
both had known the Grandfather all too well.

“I’m also going to make some drastic
changes in the way this guild operates.”

The new masters shifted uncomfortably at
the pronouncement.  Mya fought to remain still, wondering what changes were in
store.  Lad hadn’t spoken with her of his plans, keeping her at arm’s length as
he established his control over the guild.

“As of today, we’re doing away with our
protection racketeering.  It’s brutal, inefficient, and fosters too much
animosity.  Costs in bribes to the City Guard nearly exceed revenues, and
hatred from the general populace hurts profits elsewhere.  Instead, we’ll
provide
real
protection from the Thieves Guild racketeers who’ve been
trying to move into our territories.”

“Will we charge for the protection,
Master?” Jingles asked, obviously taken aback by the orders.

“If the business is in our territory,
no.  If we’re approached by a business outside our territory, we’ll negotiate
rates.  Is there a problem, Jingles?”

“No problem, Master, but it’ll hurt
revenues.”

“What we lose in protection monies should
be made up with increased revenues from our other businesses.  When business
owners feel safe, they feel free to expand.  Prostitution, gambling,
information gathering, hunting, and contract killings will all continue as
before, but everything will be approved by me personally.  The distribution of
black lotus and other illicit substances are controlled by the Thieves Guild,
and we will
not
be pushing into those areas.  If they try to take over
or shake down businesses in our territories, we’ll respond appropriately, but
again, those responses will be approved by me and me alone.  Is that
understood?”

The masters all nodded and muttered,
“Yes, Master.”

“Good.  One last item.”  Lad paused and
fixed them all with a hard, cold stare that shivered Mya’s spine.  “You’ll
cooperate between divisions, or I’ll find new masters to replace you.  Is that
clear?”

The nodding this time was more vigorous,
their assurances clear and precise.

“May I ask a question…Master?”

Lad’s eyes snapped to Mya’s, and he
cocked his head at her, a gesture she hadn’t seen in days.  She missed the old
Lad.  “Ask.”

She chose her words carefully, wary of
offending him in front of the new masters.  “The changes you plan to implement
are unprecedented.  There may be repercussions.  What news do you wish to send
to the Grandmaster?”

“Send a message that the Twailin guild has
a new guildmaster.  That’s all he needs to know.  If he gets his cut, there
won’t be any repercussions.”

“Very good, Master,” she said aloud,
though she thought,
You’re not thinking like an assassin, Lad
. 
There
will most certainly be repercussions.
  Despite her foreboding, she couldn’t
help but be thankful that it wouldn’t be
her
facing the Grandmaster.

Lad raked them all with his gaze.  “I’ll
conduct business out of the
Golden Cockerel
until I find a place of my
own to work from.  As our first order of business, we’re going to find out who
murdered my wife.”

The new masters stared at Lad in shock,
their discomfort plain to see.  Knowing Lad, Mya had suspected that this order
was coming, and had already started her own investigation, but she understood the
consternation of the others.  As a rule, guild resources were not used to
conduct personal business, and this was
very
personal business.

This won’t go over well with the rank
and file either
, she thought,
watching shock evolve into resentment on the four masters’ faces.

Though new to their jobs, they had been
guild members for many more years than Lad.  In their eyes, he was a
tool—wielded first by the Grandfather, then by Mya—not a peer who had
progressed up through the ranks of the guild by means of skill and effort.  Lad
was lethal, of that there was no doubt, but he was not a proper guild
assassin.  And now he presumed to be their master.

Lad seemed not to notice anything amiss
with his subordinates, and continued with his directives.  “I’ll pass on
information and orders as needed.  Otherwise, you know your jobs.  Do them. 
Cooperate with each other, and execute my commands.  If I find that any of you
are plotting behind my back, skimming funds, or flouting my orders, you’ll
never see the blade that ends your life.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” they said.

“Good.  Now go to work.  Mya, stay here. 
I need to talk to you.”

“Yes, Master.”  She stood quietly while
the others filed out.

After the door closed, Lad sat and poured
himself a cup of blackbrew.  Someone else might not have noticed, but Mya saw
the faint tremor in the hand that held the pot, and wondered if he’d slept
since Wiggen’s death.  She longed to say something, a comforting word, but knew
it would only earn her grief.

The Lad she knew—the man who had walked beside
her for five years, who talked and argued with her, who risked his life every
day for her—didn’t live behind those hard eyes.  This stone-cold guildmaster
she didn’t know at all…and she was his slave.  Mya suppressed a shiver of the
kind of fear she hadn’t experienced since she last stood before the
Grandfather.

Lad took his time, sipping blackbrew and
perusing the documents laid out in front of him, before addressing her.  “What
do you think of the new masters?”

Mya remembered asking him similar
questions after innumerable meetings, but dared not remind him.  “Sereth is the
best of them, though he’ll work in his own best interest.  Jingles will do his
job.  Enola fears you enough to never cross you.  Bemrin might be a problem;
he’s too full of himself.”

“That’s just about what I thought.”  Lad fell
silent, staring down at the papers on the table.

Mya tried not to fidget.  Finally he
spoke.

“I need to ask you a question, Mya, and I
want you to answer truthfully.”

“Of course.  You can ask me anything.”

He looked at her, locking her with his
gaze as he rose and walked around the table, stopping only when their faces
were barely a hand’s-breadth apart, so close she could feel the heat of his
body, smell his scent.  Mya struggled to control her breathing and still her
nerves.

“Did you have anything to do with
Wiggen’s death?”

Terror ripped through her.

Never could she let him know that she
had, indeed, wondered over the years whether, if Wiggen died, he might turn to
Mya for comfort.  This was not the Lad she loved.  This Lad would kill her in
an instant if he suspected her of having anything to do with Wiggen’s death. 
And with the guildmaster’s ring on his finger, even her magic wouldn’t save
her.  His pitiless eyes studied her like a bug under a magnifying glass, and
the death lurking within them would be hers if she answered wrong.

Mya swallowed her fear and met his gaze
unwaveringly.  “I did not.  Why would I do that?”

“I remembered your offer to help me with
my…marital problems, and it occurred to me that you might think that if Wiggen
was dead, you could get what you wanted.”

Mya gaped.  She remembered her offer all
too well, and now realized that Lad thought all she ever wanted was casual sex. 
He has no idea how I feel about him.
  For an instant, she considered
telling him, but knew the admission could end her life.  Instead, she adopted
the cynical air that substituted for emotion and said, “And run the risk of you
finding out what I’d done?  I’m not stupid, Lad.”

“No, you’re not.”

Mya thought she saw a flicker of relief
in his eyes before he turned away and began to pace, limping ever-so-slightly. 
She knew his wounds must be killing him; she’d been there when they cut out the
crossbow bolts.  She’d suggested that a healing potion would ease his pain, and
he’d told her to shut up.

“If I ever find out that you were
involved, I’ll personally remove every single one of your tattoos, and we’ll
see how well their magic protects you.  Do you understand?”

She’d never heard a threat like that from
him, but one look at his face told her that he was serious.  Deadly serious. 
“I understand, but…”

“But what?”  He pinned her with his
eyes.  Though still hard, Mya saw a hint of something more there. 
Pain. 
Guilt.  Loss.  Need?

“But…if you need someone, I’m here for
you.”  She knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left her
lips.

Lad’s reaction struck like a bolt of
lightning.

“The only person I
need
, Mya, is
the person who killed my wife!  There will never be anything between us but
business, so get used to it.  You work for me.  You do as I say.  Your life is
mine to spend!  Do you
get
that?”

“Yes.”  Mya dropped her gaze, kicking
herself for her own stupid sentimentality.  She was a slave and an assassin. 
Slaves couldn’t afford sentiment.  Assassins didn’t love.  “My life is yours to
spend…Master.”

Epilogue

C
rimson robes
swirled in the morning sunlight streaming through the high, gilded windows. 
The two bodyguards standing beside the breakfast table tensed, but their charge
waved a hand in a casual dismissal.  Hoseph approached, bowed low, and waited.

The Grandmaster took a bite of kippered
herring and washed it down with steaming blackbrew.  “You bring news?”

“I do, Master.”   Trepidation shadowed
Hoseph’s eyes.  “The Twailin guild has been reorganized.  They have a new
guildmaster and four new masters.”

“
Four
new masters?”  The
Grandmaster raised an eyebrow and put down his cup.  “What in the Nine Hells
happened, Hoseph?”

“Grandmaster, it seems that the original
guildmaster’s ring was never destroyed after Saliez’s death.  The other masters
discovered this, accused Mya of deception, and went to war.  They lost.”

“And Master Hunter Mya won?”  In a flash,
he understood.  “She wore the ring all along?  Ha!  No wonder she beat them.”

“Not exactly, Grandmaster.  Master Hunter
Mya did not wear the guildmaster’s ring.  Her bodyguard wears it.”

“The
weapon
wears the ring?  How
can that be?  Did Mya order him to put it on?  Is she running the guild by
proxy?”

“It’s possible, but that doesn’t seem to
be the case.  All our sources tell us that the weapon is not constrained by his
original enchantments as everyone surmised.”  Hoseph shrugged.  “In fact, he
seems to be much more human that we’d been led to believe.  He evidently has free
will, emotions, and even a family.”

“A family?”

Hoseph nodded.  “It’s rather complicated,
Grandmaster.  The masters kidnapped the weapon’s daughter in an attempt to
persuade him to betray Mya.  The plan backfired.  By all accounts, Master
Hunter Mya and the weapon slaughtered the four masters and a number of their
underlings to rescue the child.  Our Thieves Guild operative was watching, and discovered
that the weapon’s
wife
wore the guildmaster’s ring.  She made a judgment
call and killed the woman, knowing your desire to have Mya as Twailin
guildmaster.”

“But Mya didn’t put it on.”

“No,” Hoseph conceded.  “Apparently the
weapon claimed it for himself.”

“Well!”  The Grandmaster picked up his
blackbrew and sipped.  “At least that eliminates the threat of him not being
bound by a blood contract.  He can’t touch me now.”

“Yes, Master, but he’s acting…strangely.”

The Grandmaster frowned.  “Strangely
how?”

“He’s eliminated the guild’s protection
racketeering entirely, and is hiring out his Enforcers as security to whoever
desires it.  It’s difficult to see what these changes may bring in the future,
but our revenue collectors will be making their rounds in a few weeks, and
we’ll be able to make a preliminary assessment then.”

“Hmph.”  He picked up his cup and downed
the contents.  “Well, if revenues are up, we’ll allow him to continue his
experiment.  Send him a letter requesting that he attend to me at his earliest
convenience, my standard meeting with a new guildmaster.”

Hoseph hesitated, and the Grandmaster
snapped, “What’s wrong?”

“There may be a problem.”

“With what?”

“With the new guildmaster.  He seeks to
discover who murdered his wife.”

As the Grandmaster’s grasped Hoseph’s
implication, the blackbrew suddenly felt like acid in his stomach.  “And if he
discovers who did it, the trail could lead back to us…to me.”

“Yes, Grandmaster.”

This did not bode well.

“We must strive to make sure that doesn’t
happen.  Even though he wears a guildmaster’s ring, there are other ways he
might be dangerous.”

“My thoughts exactly, Grandmaster.”

“In fact, make that your highest
priority.  Use whatever resources you deem necessary, but keep him from tracing
anything back to me, even if it means eliminating our operatives in Tsing.  And
delay our meeting until we have more information about him and can assess the
threat he might pose.  Two months, say."

Hoseph nodded his assent.  “Yes, Grandmaster.”

“Good.  Now let me finish my breakfast in
peace."

“Your servant, Grandmaster.”   Hoseph
bowed low and turned to leave.

A thought occurred to the Grandmaster,
and he raised a forestalling finger.  “One question.”

Hoseph turned back and bowed again. 
“Yes, Grandmaster?”

“Does this new guildmaster have a name?”

“Of a sort.  He calls himself Lad.”

“Lad?” 
Curious
, he thought,
wondering how that came about.  It didn’t really matter.  “How difficult would
it be to eliminate him?”

“Many have tried, and all have failed.”

“Well, see if any of his newly appointed
masters might be susceptible to corruption.   We need eyes in that camp.  They
can’t harm him, but they might be able to provide the opportunity for another.”

“Yes, Grandmaster.”

Crimson robes swirled again as Hoseph bowed
and took his leave.  The Grandmaster turned back to his breakfast, but found
his appetite gone.  Instead, a rank taste fouled his mouth.  Impatiently, he
plucked the crystal goblet from the table and swallowed the last of the tangy
juice.  Absently snapping to his servants for a refill, Tynean Tsing II,
Emperor of Tsing, leaned back and gazed at the ring of obsidian and gold on his
finger, murder, as always, foremost on his mind.