Imperial Assassin (16 page)

Reynik shrugged his shoulders and grimaced. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be easy. The most worthwhile things never are. My idea should not compromise you, though. Listen. This is what I think
we should do . . .’

Two days later and he was leaning against the wall in the street outside the Civil Court. He feigned a nonchalant disinterest as he picked through the bag of nuts he had purchased from a street
vendor. Under his casual exterior, his heart was beating wildly. This was it. If all went well, then in a few minutes he would be a wanted man: wanted for the murder of Lord Kempten. Murder was
such an ugly word. No wonder the Guild hid behind words like ‘contract’ and ‘hit’ and ‘assassination’, he thought grimly.

A cloud passed over the sun and he cursed softly under his breath. ‘Don’t hide your face now,’ he muttered, looking up to the sky to see how long the sun was likely to be
obscured. Timing was everything. Even a few heartbeats late or early would make all the difference.

Reynik looked across at his marker. There was no discernible shadow line. ‘Come on, sun. Don’t let me down.’

Anxious moments passed with excruciating slowness. There could not be long left until he should be moving, but without the movement of the shadows over his pre-noted markers, all his preparation
would be in vain. As suddenly as it had dived behind the passing cloud the sun burst forth again, sending shadows leaping across the square. Reynik checked his marker. The shadow of the building
was almost upon it. A minute or two more and it would have been too late.

Painfully slow seconds passed as the shadow crept silently forward. Reynik’s heartbeat quickened further as he sensed another cloud approaching. Would the shadow touch his marker before
the cloud concealed the sun’s progress? He knew it would be a close race. The cloud won, but only just. As the line of the shadow disappeared and the warmth died from the air, Reynik decided
it was so close that if he left now, it would make no difference. By his reckoning, he had something close to the count of three hundred at a medium marching pace until the first afternoon call
sounded. It would take him a count of two hundred and thirty to reach Kempten’s door.

He pushed away from the wall and walked across the square towards the Civil Court building. It felt good to be moving. The sick feeling that had been growing in his stomach receded as he began
to stride out. With a flourish, he scattered the contents of his bag across the road. An instant flurry of wingbeats demonstrated the vigilance of dozens of pigeons, ever quick to descend from
their roosts for easy pickings.

Up the steps, in through the main door and along the first corridor; his count reached one hundred and thirty. ‘Slow down,’ he remonstrated silently. ‘There’s no
hurry.’

With his heart thumping like a galley drum, Reynik reached the turning into the final corridor. Three doors down on the left hand side was the entrance to Lord Kempten’s office. The
corridor was empty. Under normal circumstances this would make it ideal for his hit, but he needed to be seen. He slowed further. His count passed two hundred and twenty. What should he do? If he
made the hit without being seen by anyone, then it would defeat the main objective. The only alternative would be to make sure he was seen during his escape. If he made it too obvious, however, he
could be considered sloppy and unworthy of the Guild’s attention. Two hundred and fifty: time was running out.

‘Damn it!’ he cursed, gritting his teeth in frustration.

He hesitated outside Lord Kempten’s door, torn with indecision as the seconds crawled slowly by. His mental count passed two hundred and eighty. It was now or never. He could wait no
longer. Drawing his knife from inside his jacket, he flung open Lord Kempten’s door. As expected, the Lord was sitting behind his desk. The old man hardly had a chance to look up from his
work before the poisoned blade drove home with deadly force. Kempten gave a loud cry and slumped forward over his desk, hands clutching at the handle of the knife protruding from his chest. A pool
of dark blood was already spreading over the work surface as Reynik turned and ran down the corridor.

A sudden shout from some distance along the corridor behind him made his heart leap. He had been seen. This was excellent, as it simplified his plan. The only thing left to do was to escape
cleanly. He looked over his shoulder to see who had shouted. There were two men at the far end of the corridor. They were not guards, but they were already running along the corridor towards him.
They must have seen him throw the knife. Everything was working perfectly.

Outside the bugler sounded the second call. Reynik sprinted to the end of the corridor and turned left, deeper into the building. No sooner had he rounded the corner than he stopped and began
dismantling his disguise. In one fluid movement he whipped off his jacket, reversing it in the process. Inside out, his previously dark-brown jacket became a rich blue with completely different
styled lapels and epaulettes topped with silver buttons. A second or two later and he was wearing it again.

A door opened further along the corridor and Femke emerged wearing a dark brown jacket in the same style as the one he had just been wearing. Reynik did not spare her more than a momentary
glance as he pulled off his brown wig and ripped off his false moustache, stuffing both in an inside pocket before securing the top button of his jacket. His own hair he had, with Femke’s
help, dyed blonde the night before.

The pounding footsteps of his pursuers were approaching the corner as Reynik ruffled his hair with his fingers and dropped silently to the floor to assume a sprawled position. The two men
rounded the corner to see him writhing on the floor, apparently winded, and a figure in a brown jacket disappearing around a corner some distance ahead.

‘Are you hurt?’ one of the men asked, pausing briefly to kneel next to Reynik.

‘Just winded,’ he wheezed, chest heaving in apparent protest. ‘That way,’ he added, pointing down the corridor in the direction Femke had gone. The men needed no further
encouragement. They left at a run.

It took them more than a minute to catch up with Femke, who was jogging along the corridors in the general direction of the main exit. She deliberately ignored their calls to stop until they
were all but upon her. When she did stop and turn to face them, Femke regarded them with an expression of frustration and anger.

‘Look, I’m in a hurry. What is it? Spit it out and make it fast. I’m already late for my next appointment.’

‘Next appointment! I don’t think so, lady. The only place you’re going is to the gallows if Lord Kempten is dead.’

‘Lord Kempten? What are you talking about? I’ve just come from an interview with the Chief Clerk for a job here. I have another interview at the Palace for a different position very
shortly. Please don’t delay me. I need to get a job or my landlady is going to throw me out on the streets. I don’t think my interview went well with the Chief Clerk, so I really need
to get to my next one on time.’

Femke argued with them for a couple of minutes before leading them back to the Chief Clerk’s office who confirmed her story, and that she had left in a hurry at the sound of the second
afternoon call. At the mention of the second call, the two men looked at one another as it dawned on them that they had been fooled. Not surprisingly, there was no sign of the blonde man they had
seen sprawled in the corridor. Reynik was long gone.

The Guildmaster looked around the chamber from his podium. The dying echoes of the traditional recitation of the Assassins’ creed were still ringing around the chamber as
he checked who was present. A second meeting of this magnitude in as many months was highly unusual, but these were unusual times. Nearly every alcove was full. The notable exceptions were those of
Brothers Falcon and Wolf Spider, both of whom had lost their lives recently. Even Brother Dragon was back in his alcove. It was as complete a meeting of the Guild as had been held during his tenure
as Guildmaster. He took a deep breath.

‘My first point of order is to find out which of you accepted the contract on Lord Kempten. Can the Brother please explain why they took on the hit without informing me?’ he asked,
keeping his voice mellifluous and devoid of condemnation.

A pregnant silence formed in the gloomy half-light of the chamber. The Guildmaster turned slowly full circle, his eyes seeking out each of the shadowy figures, only to see them shaking their
heads in denial. When he had completed a full sweep, he gave a thoughtful ‘Hmm’ and raised a forefinger to stroke his lips.

‘If none of you claim responsibility, then who carried out the strike? Does anyone know anything about the killing of Lord Kempten this afternoon?’

There was another pause, but this time a voice spoke into the stillness. It was the soft voice of the woman known as the Fox.

‘I heard that it was a young man who made the hit, though he may have had a young woman accomplice. Rumour has it they staged a clever switch to fool their pursuers. Whoever did this was
professional and well organised. It was a slick operation.’

‘Yes, I heard something similar. It was the involvement of the woman that intrigued me. It is possible, of course, that she really was an innocent bystander who happened to get swept into
the assassin’s escape by chance, but it does sound unlikely, more so because no one can now locate her. I confess that initially I thought the woman was you, Brother Fox. I see now, however,
that I was wrong.’

The woman assassin bowed low in her alcove and the Guildmaster bowed in return. He looked around the chamber and asked if anyone else knew anything about the killing. There were no further
speakers.

‘Very well,’ the Guildmaster said decisively. ‘Please bend all your efforts over the next few days towards finding this mystery hit duo. It does not do to have unaffiliated
assassins on the streets of Shandrim. It has always been accepted that the Emperor’s spy network occasionally kills at his bidding, but this did not have the look of their work. For a start,
Surabar is well-known for his dislike of assassinations and those who perform them. The Emperor is unlikely to have ordered a hit while in the process of trying to purge us from the city. If such
hypocrisy were ever discovered, he would be ruined for life. Also, Kempten was Surabar’s biggest advocate. Why would the Emperor order him killed? No. This was someone operating on the
outside – on our side of the Palace walls. Therefore, it is down to us to do something about it. The Emperor is sure to cast the blame for Kempten’s death in our direction. We must be
ready. We must find the culprits. If they are as good as they appear to be, then we could offer them a chance to join us. If they refuse, we will kill them and send their bodies to the Emperor as a
demonstration that we were not responsible. Either way the Guild wins. What do you say?’

There was a chorus of ‘ayes’. The Guildmaster smiled under his hood. He hoped they would join. It was never good to be down on numbers in a time of crisis, and he was keenly aware of
the losses of Falcon and Wolf Spider. If it did transpire that this was a hit team rather than a solo killer, what should he do? It was policy to keep junior members from learning each
other’s identities in order to ensure the safety of the Guild. The only person who knew all of the true identities of the assassins was the Guildmaster. Would it hurt for two of the junior
members to know one another well? Or would it spark secret meetings between others in the Guild looking to team up? Being an assassin was a lonely life in many ways. The possibility of working in a
team of two or more might be an attractive proposition for some.

The Guildmaster instinctively glanced across at the booth where Shalidar sat cloaked in shadow. What had Brother Dragon done with Brother Falcon in Thrandor? How had they linked up? Had they
known one another’s true identities for long? He felt it unlikely that he would ever find out the whole truth. That Brother Falcon was dead was not in question, for his icon had returned. The
silver cufflink in the shape of a soaring falcon was one of the more subtle icons, but the central chamber’s magical alarm had rung every bit as loud at its ownerless return as it had for the
wolf spider pendant.

Shalidar had not killed Kempten. The Guildmaster was certain of this, for Shalidar had not left the Guild complex in days. The city was a dangerous place for him at the moment. There were too
many people looking for him in Shandrim just itching to claim the handsome reward that the Emperor had placed on the assassin’s head. The Guildmaster was also having him watched. For once, he
knew for certain that Shalidar was telling the truth. It was hard to see how the man could have any involvement in this latest development, but the Guildmaster found himself reflecting that, given
Shalidar’s recent history, he could not be ruled out of involvement immediately. Brother Dragon had managed to stir up so many hornets’ nests over the last couple of years that it was
hard to ignore his ability to create trouble.