then abruptly transformed into a scream as Chien lunged from her position beneath the bed, knife slashing across the assassin’s ankles.
Vaelin cast the blankets to the right as he surged fully clothed from the bed, sword in hand, the covering entangling the second attacker. “I need him alive,” he reminded Chien, glancing down to see her wrapping her arms around the other assassin’s neck, legs encircling his waist as he writhed and bucked, still shouting in pain. The man was clad entirely in black cotton, features concealed behind a leather mask.
Vaelin turned away, spinning aside as the assassin’s comrade, having divested himself of the encumbering blanket, leapt forward, the faint edge of a black-bladed knife glittering as he brought it up and down. Vaelin’s sword flicked out, the edge catching the knife blade before sliding along the metal to meet the guard. Twisting his wrist, Vaelin sent the knife spinning into the dark. Its owner hissed in mingled fear and rage. The latter evidently outweighing the former for instead of taking the wiser course and attempting to flee, he drew a second knife from the small of his back before promptly stiffening in death as Vaelin’s sword point slipped between his ribs, piercing lung and heart with expert precision.
“No, you pig-fucker!”
Chien had released her hold on the first assassin and torn away his mask, one hand fisted in his sparse hair, the other on his chin as she shook him. His slack, bleached features showed no response, and Vaelin quickly divined that his body possessed no more life than a doll.
“Poison?” he asked, crouching at Chien’s side.
She prised the man’s jaw apart, revealing intact teeth and none of the bloody froth that would usually accompany a self-administered toxin. “No sign,” Chien said, leaning closer for a sniff and shaking her head. “It was strange. He struggled, then I felt the beat of his heart stop. It didn’t slow first, it just stopped.”
“Let’s see if he brought any more-talkative friends,” Vaelin told her, rising and stepping out in the courtyard. He found Nortah and Alum flanking the fountain with weapons in hand. Ellese crouched in the doorway to the room where they had secluded Ahm Lin and Erlin, an arrow nocked to her bow and features tensed by the effects of being rudely woken from a drink-induced sleep. She bore it without complaint, however, and the grip on her weapons was firm.
“No other guests tonight, brother,” Nortah mused, scanning the rooftops edging the courtyard. “They don’t know you very well, only sending two.”
“No . . .” Ahm Lin said, appearing at Ellese’s shoulder. The mason’s eyes were half-closed and his head tilted at an angle, as if straining to hear a distant call. “No that’s not it. This”—he gestured at the body visible through Vaelin’s doorway—“was just mischief, a distraction.”
“From what?” Nortah asked.
Ahm Lin’s forehead creased in concentration. “The Red Scouts,” he said, eyes snapping open. “They’re the true target . . . or, one of them is. The song is loud tonight, but imprecise.”
“Sehmon,” Ellese said with a poorly concealed note of alarm. Vaelin had ordered the outlaw to scale the courtyard wall and make his way across the mansion rooftop to the barracks in order to warn Sho Tsai of the possibility of an impending attack. That had been more than an hour ago and neither the captain nor any of the Red Scouts had yet appeared.
“Stay here,” Vaelin told Ellese, pointing to Ahm Lin and Erlin and adding, “guard them,” as she began to voice a protest. Gesturing for the others to follow he moved to the door, tearing it open to step over the bodies of the two guards lying outside, then sprinting along the corridor.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Vaelin counted another dozen slain guards littering the tiled courtyard that separated the governor’s mansion from the squat, two-storey structure that comprised the barracks. Each soldier had been pierced through the neck by a crossbow bolt or slashed across the throat from ear to ear. The tumult of combat grew loud as they drew nearer, finding the corpses of more black-clad assassins amongst the pile of dead soldiers crowding the entrance. Vaelin picked out two red-armoured bodies amongst the pile and drew some comfort from the fact that they had at least had time to arm themselves before the attack. It appeared young Sehmon may have arrived in time.
Leaping over the bodies, he found the interior mostly in darkness apart from the glow of a few fallen lanterns,