[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 52

Vyrik and his students moved like a breeze in the night. Any passerby looking for them would find only patches of shadow. No defining features, no calling cards, no faces.

The Assassin grinned to himself. The money that Councilman Dantra gave him was more than quadruple the going rate. Even after he looked up this Altres, he knew the Guild would only charge half that amount.

So Vyrik did what he did best. He lied.

Sure, it went against the Assassin’s Guild oath and creed, but what did it matter? This place was going downhill faster than a frightened maruka across the midnight sands of Dalmanii.

The Councilman wouldn’t live long enough to report his transgressions–if he ever learned of them–to the Guild. Vyrik was safe.

His underlings, all hopeful graduates of the Guild, were shadowing his every movement. They were the best of the best, and those he personally took an interest in.

Vyrik made a motion with his hands, his students huddled close enough to him that they could see.

They were good kids. Excellent Assassins.

The four students went about their specific errands. After tonight, with Vyrik’s endorsement, they would pass their final examination, and become full members of the Assassin’s Guild.

A life of riches, spoiled brats looking to knock off dear grandma, and thrilling danger awaited them. So long as they didn’t foul this up.

By all reports, this Altres character was a no-talent Bard who had realized his lack of skill with the lyre and lute and picked up a mug instead.

He often tended his own bar, but being as this was Murkmire, things were a little rustic for Vyrik’s tastes. He couldn’t be sure if that was normal here or not. Strange creatures they called koblins roamed the city, doing odd jobs for anybody who had two coins to rub together.

The people of Murkmire had apparently hated the little weirdos once, but they had warmed up to them the same way anybody warms up to a person who will clean your chimney during the dead of winter for less than 10 [Sparks].

All his sources pointed to Altres being the one who campaigned to have the koblins help out around Murkmire. Everything that seemed twisted and wrong with the city seemed to sprout–like a poisoned root–from this one tiefling.

How was not Vyrik’s concern. He was given a target, payment–in advance, naturally–and a rough dossier on the man.

As a professional, Vyrik did his own legwork. Which meant he got his students to do it while he made sure their work was thorough and complete.

With the additional bodies buried deep below their owners’ cellar floors, there would be no loose ends to tie up except for the client.

And even if Vyrik wasn’t sure of the full backing of the Guild, he knew the Councilman would not be stupid enough to cross a high-ranking Guildmember.

Not if he wanted to live to see tomorrow.

Counting in his head, Vyrik reached 60 and turned to leap over the small wall leading to the back of the tiefling’s establishment, the Devil’s Due.

A little too on the nose, if Vyrik was concerned, but bad taste seemed to run in the blood of the wretched people who lived in Murkmire.

The warding that Tilee had found on the back walls was deactivated. The window opened and the door to the back room lock picked and ajar for Vyrik’s arrival.

It was more than a little unsettling to see how many layers of defense this tiefling bartender had. Sure, he had something worth taking. Gods knew how many scoundrels and thieves Murkmire had, but it still felt excessive.

Assassin’s wouldn’t steal, unless stealing information counted. Their victims would always have a purse full of coin, and if possible, they tried to avoid maiming wherever possible.

The Guild had standards.

Then again, not all of those were possible.

Oh, leaving money and valuables around was fine.

Vyrik was paid handsomely no matter what, and sometimes he took a little “trophy” now and again. Everybody did it, just nothing too flashy.

A memento to fondly remember the target by.

Maiming was sometimes unavoidable, though. Targets, especially the strong ones, never went down without a fight.

He tried to be civilized about it, but sometimes a target will do everything in their power to get stabbed in the face with an acid-enchanted blade.

Dealing with such difficult clients always put a damper on Vyrik’s mood. He hoped the tiefling was a proper client. One that was fast asleep, assured in the knowledge that his various wards and protections kept him safe from the things that go bump in the night.

Silence, blessed silence, met Vyrik’s entrance to the first floor of the Devil’s Due.

He had to admit, it was a decent place inside.

All the chairs were placed upside down on the tables for cleaning. The floors were polished so well they gleamed, and his students would be nearby waiting in the shadows to watch him and to assist if necessary.

He couldn’t see them in the gloom filled cavernous room, and he marked that down as an improvement. They were getting good.

Should something go wrong, they would jump in and assist Vyrik in taking out the client. He preferred things not to get messy, but sometimes you couldn’t avoid it.

The second best was to be quick.

As Vyrik slipped like a ghost through the large room and up the stairs, avoiding the fifth and seventeenth that squeaked, an uneasy sense of dread filled his belly with ice.

No matter how old you get, you always get the jitters right before the final act, he chided himself. It was one of his little foibles. Nothing to worry about. He had done this hundreds of times.

Only when Vyrik slipped inside Altres’ room did he begin to suspect that things were not as they seemed. The door had been cracked open a hair, but he had left specific instructions for his students to leave the door alone.

It was always the final barrier, and so many students thought it would be simply locked, or delicately warded.

They hadn’t seen the stomach-churning stilegraphs of those unfortunate souls who triggered Eruption Wards or the sinister Riptide Ward that many among the paranoid elite kept around for people such as him.

Not that this Altres person would have the money for such an exotic thing, but it was always best to be careful. And this was an examination.

The final exam always included wet work.

Theory and practice could only get you so far. It was the last chance for a student to back out and keep their lives.

Vyrik looked around the room. The hairs on the back of his neck were tingling like mad, but he couldn’t find any reason for it. All he saw was a messy room of a live-in slob and a large four-poster bed with a tangle of lumps beneath the sheets.

The Assassin frowned.

He had known that Altres was a lady’s man, rarely going to bed alone, and rarely with less than a single woman, but it never made it easy.

If possible, he’d avoid killing the women. They did nothing wrong, but he did not envy them the bloody morning they would have.

Waking up next to a stiff couldn’t be fun.

With the greatest of ease, Vyrik glided through the room, avoiding any potential traps that might have been disguised as slovenliness. He took a moment to let his eyes adjust.

Right in the middle was a red tiefling, soundly and happily asleep. Glancing at the figures curled up beneath the blankets, their long manes of silken hair spread out, covering their faces, he had reason to be.

Oh well. Another job well done.

Vyrik leaped and thrust down with two daggers coated with bukral venom.

Even a glancing cut would kill a grown man in a matter of seconds. Unless you knew how to stop your heart or were an exceptional healer, you would be dead before you understood what was going on.

The face that turned toward him melted, the red skin of the tiefling vanishing as the terrified tear-filled eyes of Tilee, his favorite student, stared up at him.

The poison took hold, rolling her eyes up into the back of her head. Vyrik threw off the blankets, finding his students tied and paralyzed like dead fish.

He didn’t bother to check if they were alive.

With lightning-fast reflexes, the Assassin rolled out of bed and brandished his knives dripping with crimson red poison mingled with darker fresh blood.

A dagger flashed out of the shadows and took him in the hand. His own poisoned dagger flew up into the air.

Before Vyrik could zero in on the position of the dagger, another whistled out of the dark corner.

The Assassin was ready for this one. He parried it expertly with his own blade and cocked back his arm to respond in kind.

Everything happened with such speed and finesse that the initial dagger was still spinning through the air as Vyrik’s muscles tensed to throw. A third dagger, on the heels of the decoy dagger, knocked into his disarmed poisoned blade, still twirling in the air.

Nobody should have been able to make a shot like that. And yet, either through luck or skill, the poisoned blade reversed direction and stabbed Vyrik in the shoulder before he knew what was going on.

Not to be outdone, he threw his blade, but another flash of moonlight showed a thin sword batting it aside.

The tiefling walked out in his bedclothes, shaking his head and making a tsk tsk sound with his teeth. “You really should have read up on the Guild’s background about me,” Altres told him.

The poison worked its way through Vyrik’s limbs, turning them weak as milk.

With effortless ease, the tiefling pushed the Assassin to a sitting position on the bed. He took out a card, black as night, edged in silver. The symbol at its heart, also made of silver, stole Vyrik’s breath.

Or perhaps that was just the poison doing its work.

“You know, the Guild loathes it when brother fights brother, but you came into my house and tried to kill me, so I say it’s fair. We’ll let the Guild discuss my punishment.”

“Y-you can’t b-be, I checked…” his breath whooshed out of his lungs as the poison traveled to his diaphragm, paralyzing it.

Of all the ways to go, bukral poison was quite peaceful. The wound in his hand only hurt for a moment. He didn’t even feel the blade in his shoulder. His body shut down, flowing out from the wound to the peripheries before coming back in for the internal organs.

How long had it been, ten seconds? Twenty? It was odd how much detail Vyrik could make out now.

The lumps of clothes were covering up other bodies, he could see now. Dark stains spread out from several piles, but only visible from this side of the room.

Clever.

Altres followed his gaze. “You are not the only callers I received tonight,” he told him. “Though you are the only gentleman. That’s why I have taken the liberty of sparing your wards.” Altres leaned over his shoulder and grimaced. “Well, all but one. Can’t exactly blame me for that. If you didn’t bother to check for a simple Swap illusion, that’s on you, friend.”

The Assassin tried to fight back. He tried to summon all of his willpower to push against the poison that was nearing his heart. Breathing was all but impossible except with the shallowest of breaths.

He wanted to scream, to yell and rage against this tiefling that had dared to thwart his plans. But a calmer part of his mind, the part trained for decades in the Guild, had seen the card Altres carried. A card that Vyrik–or any skilled Assassin for that matter–coveted above all else.

That part of him said, At least you were killed by a true master of the craft.

Only thirteen Assassins had that card at one time. The silver skull with tiny rubies set into the eye sockets was among the greatest treasures of any Assassin living or dead.

“Sorry, friend,” Altres said, and Vyrik had the impression that he actually meant it. He gently laid the man back on the bed, kissed his forehead, and murmured a prayer for him.

By the time the last word left Altres’ lips, Vyrik had died.