D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch (30 page)

“Search them all,” he instructed, holding up the coin, barely able to contain a smoldering rage. There was no place to direct it anyway. Certainly not at his comrades.

On each body they found a silver noble. But on one body Burge found a purse that contained a noble and a gold orb. He crooked a finger and called Garett to come look. He showed his captain the coins and pointed to the face.

“Remember him, Cap’n?” Burge asked as he turned the face to better catch the dim streetlight.

“Whisper,” Garett answered as Blossom and Rudi crouched down to look. “One of the members of the gang we met near the Slum Quarter.” He went to each of the bodies again and peered carefully at the faces. Burko, the gang’s leader, wasn’t among them.

“This has a smell to it, Captain, if you know what I mean,” Blossom commented unpleasantly. “What’s a gang from that end of town doing all the way up here on High Street? How’d they get past the guards at the Black Gate, not to mention the Garden Gate?”

“What I want to know,” Rudi interjected, pulling the sword from a dead youth’s grip, “is where, in Boccob’s sacred name, they got these.” He held the sword out to his captain.

Garett didn’t need to take the sword. Greyhawk citizens weren’t allowed to carry such weapons, and youths such as these would not have been able to afford table daggers, let alone decent fighting blades. Especially these blades. He had already noted them while he searched the bodies.

“Someone provided them,” Garett explained grimly. “Take a closer look. They’re standard issue blades from the barracks armory.”

Rudi looked up sharply. He had grown used to a sergeant’s salary and to buying his own weapons, but he suddenly recognized the plain leather hilt wrapping, dyed red like everything belonging to the watchmen. There was no mistaking the weapon. The simplicity of its manufacture and lack of adornment of any kind, whether on tangs or pommel or the blade itself, characterized it. The city was far too tight-fisted to pay a craftsman for such useless extras on a blade that would be passed from man to man.

“Someone paid these guys to kill us,” Rudi hissed, his face reddening with anger, “and gave them the weapons to do it.”

“He’s a little slow on the draw sometimes,” Blossom said to Garett and Burge, putting a calculated sneer in her voice, “but he always finds the target.”

“Not us,” Garett said solemnly, jingling the ten silver nobles and the gold orb in his hand as he turned to stare across the street at the Lord Mayor’s house. Apparently, the sounds of fighting had not disturbed anyone within. Of course, it was set back a way from the road. “It’s me someone wants out of the way.

“Because of all these other killings?” Rudi asked, but he shook his head before his own question was out of his mouth. “No, this was too crude for a man who uses magic to murder.”

“There’s the Old Town murders,” Blossom interjected. “Those don’t have anything to do with magic.”

“Don’t they, darlin’?” Burge asked, raising an eyebrow as he turned toward her. He rubbed a hand over the lacerations on his chest. “What do you think is lurkin’ down there in the sewers then?” He turned away from her and said to Garett, “We didn’t even mention to these two that we ran into a street gang the other night, but I can think of one man who made it his business to know. I bet you even put Burko’s an’ Whisper’s names in the report, didn’t you?”

Blossom’s eyes widened for an instant, then narrowed, and her voice dropped to a tense whisper. “You’re talking about Korbian Arthuran.”

Garett pursed his lips as he continued to jingle the coins. Korbian could have found out that he’d left town, and knowing that, he could have found out by which gate as easily. It was a safe enough gamble that Garett would check in at the same gate on returning. Korbian was also rich enough to pay the coins and cheap enough to look somewhere outside the usual Assassins’ Guild, with its high rates. That wouldn’t please Axen Kilgaren. The watch’s captain-general could have gotten the weapons from the barracks, too. He might even have smuggled the street gang through the Black Gate and the Garden Gate without leaving a record of their passage.

And yet, Garett wondered, did Korbian Arthuran have nerve enough to try to kill him right outside the mayor’s front door?

Garett drew a deep breath and turned to his officers. “Blossom, Rudi, you’ll go to the High Quarter watch house and return with a patrol to take care of this mess. But say nothing of what we’ve just discussed.”

Rudi protested. “But, sir, if Korbian—!”

“Say nothing, Sergeant!” Garett repeated sternly, snatching his old sword from where he’d left it sticking in the road. “We were attacked. That’s all you know. I’ll han-dle the rest of the report.”

They recovered their horses. War-trained, the animals hadn’t wandered far from the conflict. Garett tied his sword to the saddle, as he had before, and mounted up. While the others mounted, he wrapped his hand around the familiar hilt. He reflected that in the street fight the sword now sheathed on his back, Guardian, had served him like any other sword.

They rode on along High Street, past the Grand Theater, now closed and dark, and another public garden. Near the corner of High Street and the Processional stood the enclosed compound that was the High Quarter watch house. Blossom and Rudi broke away and rode inside to carry out Garett’s instructions.

Across the Processional, Garett gazed at the empty High Market Square. The moons shone down on the tentless space, washing it with a sweet light. He thought of Ven-dredi and hoped that she was safe at home. Then, with Burge at his side, he turned his horse toward the Citadel.

There still was an hour or more before dawn and much work to do.

You were absent from your watch last night!” Korbian Arthuran shouted. His face was purple with rage as he slammed a fist down on the table. Plainly, he wasn’t in a good mood. “The futile efforts of your men to hide the fact couldn’t fool me. I have loyal officers to report such things!”

Garett eyed his superior officer with cool contempt. He had bathed and changed into a standard watch uniform at the barracks in anticipation of the summons that had once more brought him before a full, early morning meeting of the Directorate. Garett had gotten no sleep, but he was wide awake. He let his gaze wander around the table as he studied the other directors’ faces.

Ellon Thigpen looked on impatiently, but he allowed the captain-general to rail on a little longer while he leaned back in his chair and sipped from a mug of broth. The mayor’s eyes were puffy and ringed with dark circles. He wore the face of a worried man.

But it was the magister himself who interested Garett most. Kentellen Mar sat at the far end of the table, and Garett felt the constant scrutiny of the man’s dark-eyed gaze. Kentellen sat hunched back in his chair, arms folded across his middle, as if feigning a weary, sleepy appearance. But Garett wasn’t fooled. From under that long shank of gray hair, those eyes took in everything.

On a chair directly behind the magister sat a young, blond boy, perhaps ten years old. With a discipline uncharacteristic for a child his age, the boy had said not a word, uttered no complaint, nor made any sound at all during the meeting. But he had quick, dark eyes, and the fire of a keen intelligence burned in them. Garett glanced at him time and again, unable to shake the feeling that the child understood everything being said.

“. . . tantamount to desertion!” Korbian continued unabated. He was on a roll now. It was no longer a sense of indignation that drove him, but a sense of theatrics. “I could break you for this, Captain! Your arrogance of late has bordered on insubordination. I could make you pay a very high price!”

At last, Ellon Thigpen reached out and touched the captain-general’s arm. “Calm down, Korbian,” he urged gently. “I don’t think ...”

Garett listened with only half an ear. He didn’t bother even to hide a yawn as he reached behind his belt and pulled out a new leather purse. Leaning forward in the chair they had offered him, he loosened the purse’s strings and upended the contents on the table. Ten silver nobles and a gold orb spilled out upon the tabletop.

Garett put a hand over the pile of coins as all eyes turned toward it. With a sharp outward thrust, he scattered them. Coins flew across the table. Some fell in directors’ laps. Some slid off the table and skittered on the floor. Garett had his own gift for theatrics when he wanted to employ it. The gesture was dramatic enough to shut Korbian up.

“Someone has already paid a high price,” he stated icily. “And ten youths paid an even higher price with their lives last night. My investigations required my brief absence, and I returned as quickly as I could.” He paused, daring to glare around the room. “One of you paid those boys to take me out. The details of the attack are in my report. You can all read it.”

He glanced around the room again, meeting each upturned gaze with cool disdain. They meant nothing to him, this collection of men, these politicians. They disgusted him. “And if I were you,” he continued, addressing his secret enemy, “next time I’d go to Axen Kilgaren. His price is steep, but he guarantees his work.”

Garett finished by setting down the gold orb. He had palmed it when he pushed the other coins across the table. He flicked it with the tip of a finger. It slid over the polished roanwood surface to a smooth stop right before Korbian.

“You go too far,” Korbian said in a deadly hiss. He rose out of his chair and leaned forward on the table, planting his hands on either side of the accusing coin. “You are suspended from duty without pay until further notice.”

Ellon Thigpen sat back in his chair with a look of pain. “Korbian, don’t be a fool!”

Such was the captain-general’s anger that he lashed out even at the mayor. “I run the City Watch!” he snapped, curling one fist and clutching it tightly against his side. “I will decide who is to be my second! ”

Axen Kilgaren rose slowly to his feet and pushed his chair back. Every eye in the room turned toward the master of assassins. “I do not approve,” he said, leveling a smoldering gaze at Korbian. There was no mistaking the veiled threat in his words.

But Korbian didn’t knuckle under. “It is not a matter for your approval,” the captain-general answered sharply, drawing himself up as if he stood a chance of matching Axen’s physically dominating presence.

A small, very subtle scratching sound drew Garett’s attention momentarily. A few chairs away sat Sorvesh Kharn with a fingertip on one of the silver nobles that had not fallen on the floor. He pushed it around in a small circle, then back and forth on the wooden surface. From the corner of his eye he glanced at Garett, and the barest hint of a smile teased the corners of his lips.

Exactly what it meant, Garett was not sure. If it was a signal, he didn’t understand, so he looked away from the master of thieves and back to Greyhawk’s captain-general. “Suit yourself, Korbian,” Garett said acidly, employing his superior’s first name as if it were an insult. He got up from his chair. “I can use the vacation.”

Dak Kasinskaia waved a hand in the air and spoke for the first time. “Wait, wait, Captain Starlen!” he implored in a conciliatory tone. “Just wait, everybody. Korbian, if you suspend the captain, just who do you intend should take charge of the night watch?”

Korbian Arthuran drew back his shoulders and lifted his nose a bit higher in the air. “A young man I’ve had my eye on for some time, a sergeant down in the River Quarter. He’s due for promotion, and with the rank of captain, I’m confident he can do the job.”

Ellon Thigpen shook his head and frowned. “And this young man’s name?” he demanded.

Korbian folded his arms across his chest and glared defiantly around the room, at Axen Kilgaren, in particular. “His name is Kael.”

“Kael?” Garett blurted. “Sergeant Kael in the River Quarter?” He threw back his head and let go a harsh laugh. “Good luck, gentlemen,” he said when he recovered. He pushed back his chair and headed for the door as he delivered his parting shot. “It was a nice city until you got a hold on it.”

Of course, that wasn’t really fair. Greyhawk had never been a nice city.

Garett stormed into his office and kicked the door shut. There was nothing he needed there. He merely sought refuge until he got control of his anger. He went to his window and stared outward as he smacked his palms down on the sill. When was the sun going to shine again? He was sick half to death of all the damned clouds! He slammed the wooden shutters so hard they shook on their hinges.

A knock sounded on his door and a moment later it opened. Kentellen Mar entered, holding the hand of his small, blond companion.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything, Captain,” the magister said politely. The boy at his side clung to Kentellen’s robes and stared at Garett with intense dark eyes.

With some embarrassment, Garett shook his head and forced himself to be calm. They couldn’t have helped but hear the bang of the shutters. Nor could they help but notice the heat-flush the captain felt still reddening his cheeks, though now it slowly began to ebb. “No, Magister,” he answered wearily. “I was just letting off a little steam.”

Kentellen Mar pointed to the chair behind Garett’s door. It was not heavy, and the little boy moved quickly to push it into the center of the room. The older man sat down somewhat stiffly, and his young charge went to his side. Kentellen slipped an arm affectionately about the boy as he spoke to Garett.

“\ou certainly have a right to do that,” he conceded sympathetically. “Korbian overreacted. In fact, I came here to apologize personally for my silence during the whole unpleasant matter. But until the investiture, I am not truly a member of the Directorate and have no voice in the proceedings. They invited me today out of courtesy.”

Garett moved away from his window and leaned on the back of his desk chair as he regarded his visitor. There was a sharpness, a penetrating intelligence, in the older man’s nut-brown eyes. The dim lamplight reflected in those black pupils, and the whites gleamed moistly. Garett studied the wrinkles in Kentellen’s brow and the deep lines time had carved in his cheeks, lines that disappeared into the thick growth of lush gray beard, and he wondered suddenly at Kentellen’s age.