Tallis rose, twisting the weapon to grind the wood further apart. The warforged struggled to stay on its feet. The wound would have been fatal to a living man within seconds. That the construct could stand at all was testament to its strength.
Tallis was never sure if warforged could feel pain the same way living people did. He’d only known a few during the war, and none were particularly verbose. Reversing his weapon again, Tallis brought the hammer’s head down against the construct’s helmlike head. With the loud ringing that followed, he looked around to see if anyone had heard.
Still, it surprised Tallis to find a warforged employed by Arend ir’Montevik. Normally Cultists of the Blood of Vol had little use for constructs. Why bother, when their clerics could raise the dead to do their bidding? He had expected only ir’Montevik himself and maybe that musclebound goon of his to be here.
Tallis peered through the glass door and the narrow slit between the curtains to a darkened bedroom with wisplight from a common room beyond spilling in.
The door was unlocked. He slipped into the room, quietly closing the door behind him and keeping to the wall as he approached the opposite exit. He gave the room a cursory examination-it appeared empty of the scrolls he was after. He slipped his enchanted lenses in a pocket. He paused to listen to the voices in the next room.
The laughter of children startled him. It sounded like a whole family!
Tallis froze, reassessing the situation. As far as he knew, Arend didn’t have children. Haedrun would have told him if the nobleman had brought family with him to Korth. So what was this?
“Papa,” said the voice of a child. “It’s cold here!” The boy’s voice was merry, despite his words, and carried a sleight foreign accent. He heard a man chuckle. Surely not Arend! The man had no sense of humor.
Another voice joined the conversation, the assertive voice of a mother. “Rennet, take this blanket. Gamnon, you really should make a fire.”
Gamnon! Tallis’s stomach clenched. This was not Arend’s family. This was a mistake. His instinct had been right-ir’Montevik wouldn’t have owned a warforged. Could he possibly have chosen the wrong floor?
No. Impossible. He turned back to the balcony.
A figure appeared in the room behind him, slipping through the balcony door just as he had. Veiled head to foot in black wrappings, the intruder was lithe and tall. Tallis caught the gleam of metal gauntlets beneath the linen, but he couldn’t see any eyes exposed. From its supple form, he guessed it was a woman, perhaps a professional like himself? She was weaponless.
Surprised by this development, he instinctively adopted a defensive stance with his weapon held up.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
The shrouded figure strode gracefully past him as though she hadn’t heard him at all. Steel blades, as long and slender as rapiers, appeared in each of her mailed fists. Whether an act of magic or mere sleight of hand, the weapons looked real enough.
“Stand down!” Tallis said, hoping to halt the intruder as well as alert the family to the danger.
The shrouded figure did not heed him.
“Who dares?” came a furious voice in the next room.
Responding to the alarm, a well-dressed steward appeared in the doorway with a half-drawn blade of his own. The cloth-wrapped intruder thrust both rapiers into the man’s torso-one in his stomach, the other near his collar-making not even a grunt in the motion. Sputtering blood, the steward toppled. The intruder stepped into the room beyond without hesitation.
Then came the screams.
Sergeant Bratta took the spiral stairs three at a time until he reached the final landing. He was in excellent physical shape, but the Last War hadn’t trained soldiers to climb stairs as much as sprint across battlefields. Behind him two more Lions followed, laboring for breath. The silent wards had revealed the presence of intruders on the thirty-fourth floor. Not surprisingly, in the midst of the crisis, the tower’s only lift had become disabled. Typical civilian device, unreliable in times of need.
He found the doors already breached, apparently forced open by the White Lions who’d been stationed outside the ambassador’s door. The light in the common room came from a single everbright lantern affixed to a low table, but it had been knocked sideways and the glass was spattered with blood. A casual glance at the room revealed the fate of the soldiers. Three good men dead, as well as the civilians.
“Sovereigns!” Rage welled within him at the sight. The Lions behind him fanned out, ready to act on his command.
The only man left standing within wore a black outfit vaguely reminiscent of an army uniform, but it was slashed and torn. He was dark-haired, lathered in sweat, and holding some kind of pick. The man stood half in shadow, staring at the carnage mutely. He looked familiar, but Bratta couldn’t think of how he knew this man.
“Drop the weapon!” Bratta said, aiming his crossbow.
The murderer looked up. “No, you don’t under-”
“Not another word until I say so. Drop the weapon!”
The man broke into a run and dived into an adjoining room, faster than he looked. Bratta ran after him. When he stepped into the master bedroom, he saw the silhouette of the murderer retreating onto the balcony. Bratta raised his crossbow and loosed, feeling grim satisfaction when his target grunted in pain.
But the bolt didn’t bring the man down. As Bratta and his men rushed to follow, he saw the murderer grasp the railing’s edge and swing his body over and disappear from view.
“What in Khyber-”
On the balcony, Bratta nearly stumbled over the fallen hulk of a warforged and slipped on the blood at his feet. His subordinate dropped his axe in favor of the bow, staring over the edge in an attempt to sight down their target.
“He’s a cursed wizard!” the private said. Bratta glared as the killer landed in a blur on the roof of an adjacent tower, clear across the wide gap. It seemed as if he had flown from the balcony below.
The soldier drew back his bowstring and released, but the arrow snapped against one of the tower’s parapets. Bratta loaded his crossbow as fast as he could and loosed a second bolt at the man as he disappeared into the darkness. Then he was gone.
“Sergeant,” the bowman said, looking over the balcony’s edge to the wisplit street below. “There’s another body down there. I think it’s the ambassador’s.”
Chapter TWO
Sul, the 8th of Sypheros, 998 YK
“Shadow, hide me,” Zzar hissed in his native tongue, calling to his god among the Dark Six. He preferred to hunt in secret, waiting for his quarry to come to him.
The sun had risen only two bells ago, but already there were so many people to choose from. Zzar remembered, for just that moment, his home in the Howling Peaks and the wing of fools he’d left behind. Let them scour the mountains for the tiny scalefolk and the occasional lost explorer. Let them scratch at rocks when there was no sport left!
But not Zzar, no.
The humans who’d survived Zzar’s attack that day had offered him a new life. “Come to our city, Sharn,” they bade, speaking in perfect Terran and pointing to where the sun perished each day. “We can give you sport of a different kind. We can give you silver, esteem, and the fear you deserve.”
Zzar had humored them, quit the mountains of his birth, and indulged in the sights, smells, and tastes of this city-where another wing took him in. The humans gave him silver for his hunting skills and promised him more if he was fast about it. During the sunless hours the towers looked like a great cluster of stalagmites, pitted with glowing lights and webbed together with bridges for the flightless. It was oddly beautiful at such times. During the sun-lit hours, the city was dazzling and painful to his eyes, but he was already growing accustomed. Even so, he much preferred the hunts that took him to the highest districts, where there were more places to sit and watch and fewer prying eyes. Where it was a little more like home.