King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (3 page)

Rivergrace pulled her weapon and unlatched the chain belt worn about her waist, snapping it into the air, thick and sturdy, into the face of the first Vaelinar coming at them, sending his sword arm awry. She slashed him across the throat, and took a second out with the back swing of her blade. Nutmeg got the third in the knees with a smashing blow of her stool, and then a second to the head. He moaned but once. Grace cried out, “Attack!” worried, as she saw no sight of Sevryn. Lily made a smothered sound in the doorway before getting out, “I’ll find Hosmer,” and disappearing into the depths of the farmhouse, no doubt to go out the back way in search of Nutmeg’s brother who had joined the city’s Guards.

Grace moved cautiously behind the small barricade of the wooden bench, searching the deepening shadows across the way. No movement, not of Sevryn or Vaelinar or Galdarkan. She glanced down at the one attacker who remained alive at their feet, the second she’d caught with her backhand. Crimson spilled over his chest and bubbled from the corner of his mouth, but he lived. His eyelids fluttered as she knelt over him.

“Who sent you?”

His mouth pulled. His breath bubbled as he answered, “No survivors.” With a hand too quick to stay, he grabbed her sword to slit his own throat.

“Velk,”
muttered Nutmeg.

Rivergrace stood carefully. “To be expected, I suppose.” Though the assailant was undoubtedly a Vaelinar, she did not recognize him and he did not wear the colors of any affiliation.

A sound across the way caught her attention, and a body toppled from the depths of the dusk. One of the queen’s Vaelinar guards. Just beyond, she could see shadows grappling, one being shrugged off with a grunt and a cry that stopped abruptly. That body, too, fell out into the street, and Sevryn jumped into the open, clear of it. So Lariel’s guards had been at work defending Nutmeg, although not successfully. She wondered how big a force had been sent against them and tightened her grip on both the sword and chain.

“Get her inside,” Sevryn ordered. He turned to set himself in the street.

Grace hesitated but a moment, before seeing what he turned to meet.

Kobrir, the assassins all assassins hoped to be one day, spilled out into the lane. Sevryn stepped into a stance to face them.

T
HEY ATTACKED WITHOUT WARNING. What assassin worth his salt would do otherwise?

He pivoted and countered by letting fly with daggers readily at hand: one, two, and three. They dropped and lay unmoving in the afternoon shadows, but from the quiet, he knew there were more and he was also fairly certain his downed opponents were not dead or dying but injured enough to stay out of the fray. Sevryn drew back quickly to find a defensible spot among the shanties footing the dirt lane and when he turned around; the three bodies were gone, melted into the late afternoon shadow, retreated. The Kobrir did not leave their dead or wounded behind.

He could tell the Kobrir by the deadly stealth with which they moved and how quickly and soundlessly they closed on him out of the sidelines even as they blurred in and out of the narrow buildings and ditches. He recognized the odd smell of their skin and the stain of
kedant
venom on the weapons they grasped. And he knew that as soon as they regrouped, they would attack again.

He felt strangely alone in the middle of the street, not liking it. He made his way down it, toward the city itself until he reached a tavern. The Kobrir did not kill just for the sake of it. They had their targets and kept their collateral damage as low as possible. So if they were after him and him alone, it behooved him to add numbers to the fight, milling about in the street, engulfing both forces. He backed up and kicked the door twice, hard, yelling “Fight! Fight!”

The tavern doors flung open with a crash, spilling out spectators both drunk and sober. A few took to their heels, shouting for the Guard. Master Trader Bregan emerged into the last of the sunlight and threw his head back, taking in the Kobrir just out of range.

“Ho, Sevryn. What are you up to here?”

“I appear to be having a bit of contract problems.”

“Let me help you with the negotiations.” Pulling at his leather sheaths, Bregan ended up next to Sevryn, his own vicious swords in his hands. “Trouble always did shadow a Vaelinar’s heels,” he said, kicking away a drunk who staggered off, muttering. His own breath held a faint haze of liquor.

“Good timing.”

“Too early for dinner and too late for lunch. Truth be told, I should be down at the stables, packing for the road.” Sevryn knew Bregan had been a sword master in his youth before his accident, and despite a weakness in his right side, he was still formidable. And game. He had not always been thus; he had fallen into drunken ways in self-sorrow after his maiming, but judging from his current form, those self-destructive times were far behind him. A master trader with a powerful guild and an even more powerful father behind him, Bregan still fought most of his own battles. Sevryn felt him move instinctively to his flank as the two of them backed into an alley. “What’re we facing?”

“A few traitorous Vaelinar besides the handful or two of Kobrir.”

Bregan swallowed a curse and raised his blades as shadows heaved and the attack came at them.

Sevryn swung away from the first knife with a hiss, stepping away with a vicious parry, and found himself with precious little time to do anything more than react. He shouldered away the lunge of a second assailant, blades whining as they slid off one another. The alley gave them close quarters and shadows in the late afternoon sun, and the experienced Kobrir knew how to work the scene to their advantage. Assassination was all they had been trained to do, its dark art swam in their veins instead of blood. They maneuvered him about as Sevryn found himself blinded by a shard of unexpected light one second and then doused in inky darkness the next. He let his ears and his hands do the work then, sensing what his eyes could not. Another step into the fray, letting Bregan guard his back, the Kernan trader prince nearly as good with his weapons as those the two of them faced.

An assassin took his measure with a slow blink of his eyes, the only part of his face visible under his veil. He raised both hands in a salute to Sevryn before stepping into his assault. Sevryn met him hand to hand before sweeping his boot out and catching the other in the kneecap, crumpling him to the ground. A dagger to the throat and Sevryn leaped over the body, carrying Bregan with him. He held two in a frontal assault, now in cautious movement, assessing him further. Still at his back, Bregan grunted harshly as he took a blow, and his sword sang a steel-driven note as he met blade with blade.

He looked to make certain Grace had not come after them, braver than she should be but, to his relief, saw no sign of her. He could fight his best if he knew they were clear, and he knew that she knew that.

Then Sevryn lost all thought except for the need to meet attack and mount attack, to give as good as he got as the tide of Kobrir descended upon them.

He didn’t intend to die that day. So when Death granted a respite, Sevryn grabbed at it and Bregan and hauled his comrade up, clambering above the fray like a creature going tree-born, as the Kobrir fell back in disarray and confusion and lost them momentarily. Sevryn crouched on the edge of the roof, eyes intent upon the alley below. A cold moist wind off the river bathed his heated face, hiding his scent, barely rippling the edge of his cloak, and curling off the edge of the daggers he held. Unsure of the exact moment it had happened, Sevryn had gone from prey to hunter. That quickly the tide had turned.

Without doubt, living remained imperative. He put his hand out, stilling the companion who moved restlessly beside him. He could appreciate the other’s stiffness, the leg brace that helped more than it hindered although the limb the brace contained remained unwieldy. Bregan quieted with a slow inward hiss of breath. Sevryn winced, but none of the shadows below—the shadows which moved in spite of the torchlight and the moonlight—seemed to take notice. They were searching, quietly and effectively, save that none of them looked up. When the Kobrir did, the pitched battle would begin again. They would swarm up walls to the rooftop as handily as they had swarmed the alleys. He could almost swear that the laws of flat and incline did not hold for them. He had once seen a Kobrir creep across a ceiling, although with some effort that made him think later that they might have been using climbing gear of some sort to achieve that. As assassins, they had no peers.

Except perhaps a man like himself who had been trained by both the street and by Gilgarran, which did not give him an edge, just an opportunity. He could hold his own against one. Two. Even three. But more than that boiled down below him, shadows merging and dividing until he lost count of the twilight shapes. He remained convinced they had come for him although the Master Trader would be a far richer prey if hostage taking were their intent. Yet in the skirmish below they had—had he imagined it?—acted as if Bregan were an inconvenient obstacle to be put aside with as little harm as possible, so that their target might be achieved.

He let his mind wander down twisted ways as dark as the shadowed and misty alleys below him. If Sevryn were taken out, how vulnerable would Nutmeg be? Lariel? With her brother only two seasons dead, who could stand for Lariel if he were gone? Not that the Warrior Queen needed anyone to raise a blade for her; she was nearly as swift and sure as he was with a weapon, but who would have her back? Only Bistane after him. Sevryn told himself it should be too dangerous to so openly assassinate him.

Shouldn’t it?

Who could be so bold?

He felt that the tyrant Quendius did not hire the Kobrir. Likely they would no longer work for him, if they had ever worked for him in the past. The rogue Vaelinar weaponmaker did not keep bargains, knew no boundaries, and had little respect for anyone but himself. If he wished Sevryn dead, he and his bound servant Narskap would come do the deed themselves and relish the doing.

Perhaps the ild Fallyn had hired these blades. That would fall naturally to their bloodline. Tressandre ild Fallyn, known for ambition without measure, would not hesitate to cut him away from Lariel if she could. Yet Tressandre’s actions would not be blunt but sharp and hidden, unaccountable, untraceable. The Kobrir attack would be too obvious for her, unless she were desperate. Of all things the sultry woman could be at this moment, he did not think desperate was among them. She had converts now who would be less subtle than she, but they would hesitate to act independently for fear of her retaliation. It was well that they should be afraid of her. He was. But not here, and not now.

His thoughts spun a dark web about him, weighing whether he might live or die. Yet none of them could explain or shake from him the sense that he indeed stood at a crossroads. He would make decisions in the next few moments which would inalterably change his course. They would impact his world and the few he would either stand with or leave behind, and nothing would be the same. He’d felt this fate upon him only a few times in his life, and he had never thought to feel it again. Mentally he flipped a silver coin and sent it spinning through the air, waiting for it to fall . . .

He leaped from the rooftop, killing two as he landed, dancing backward in a slight retreat. They grouped to follow. Another step backward as they closed. And another as he drew the fray down the street. Away from the Farbranch farmhouse and cider mill. Back toward the wards of town and city. Back to the alleyways and gutters and streets like those where he’d lived his early life. Like a mother bird would fake a broken wing to draw the tree foxes and other predators away from her nestlings, he drew them away from his loved one. Bregan, at his flank, moved with him without question as he took to the rooftops a second time. The cloud of Kobrir circled about him below, ravens after the kill, intent on their mission. He decided to strike while he still had some advantage. Sevryn extended his senses, felt his mind identifying the pattern of the reality about him, inhaling long and deep and silently as he learned it intimately. Then he spoke, loosing his Voice Talent that began deep in his diaphragm and pushed out of his throat, vibrating the very air, and the Kobrir reacted. They could not help but respond as he compelled them to submit. Even Bregan started at his side.

He heard his taunt echo from the alley juxtaposed to their current position. He lifted a finger to Bregan and leaped the span, landing softly behind them.

They struck in the darkened maze of alleys behind the Trader and the Yoke pub. He heard them coming, at least five, his hands open and stance wary. Shards of black splintered apart and reformed. He had no fear of street cutthroats and bullies, but as they rushed him, he could hear the hiss of their breaths as they sucked inward, preparing.

“Blades high,” he said. He slashed backhanded across his right flank, catching the first who had hoped to come in under his guard. Swathed in black, the assailant crumpled at his boots but it was Bregan who kicked the body aside. He parried a blow and struck under it, only to have it firmly parried back to him. Bregan let out a grunt which might have been in sympathy, but Sevryn knew was more likely to have come from shielding.

He would have to trust Bregan to take care of himself. He had his own concerns. The trader had grown up with a sword in his hand, and even if he had been forced to change from one lead to the other because of a grievous injury, he had come back nearly as strong and twice as clever, no longer being able to count entirely on his strength. The trader could fight.

Sevryn twisted a knife blade off his sword and countered with a punch of his left fist, his own dagger buried deeply in his hold save for four inches of the point. The Kobrir fell back. Under his veiled face, Sevryn thought he could see pain in the eyes, but the moment fled so quickly, he couldn’t be certain. He hadn’t time. Three Kobrir rushed him, and thoughts fled to reflex, movements honed into him by years of hard training and sparring with some of the best fighters in the world. The trade of killing by body and blade took him over, possessed him, and when he blinked to wipe sweat off his brow with the bloodied back of one hand, he saw two more bodies fallen before him, while three fresh Kobrir glided quietly from the back alley to replace the dead.

They barely gave him time to register that before they were on him again.