3 Days Before the World Ends, prt. 3

The first part of any bounty job is to know if you’ll need any backup. Typically, that involves collecting intel or scouting around so you don’t end up charging into a room full of killers like a suicidal idiot. You wanna know some basics about the environment, how many guys there are and—even more importantly—how hard it’s gonna be to take on any odd person. Learnt that the hard way on one of my earlier jobs. Turns out that Fyroner and Kerdaantite commoners are nothing alike apart from the fact both can kick your ass if you’re not expecting it, because of religion and forced military service respectively. Lemayans, on the other hand, are complete wusses, except for the high-bred ladies who all seem to be assassins for some reason or another—don’t ask, Lemayans are all crazy. Lanskari are cowards, and Thashi go the step further as to actively avoid conflicts like the naïve little idiots they are. No wonder it took a whole army of Watch Bluejackets to kick the Lanskari out of Thash. The Thashi probably saw the Lanskari coming to invade them and tried to talk them down with offerings of flowers or something.

But I digress.

The point is, know the targets enough you won’t get your ass handed to you when you finally go up against them.

Yeah, right. That’s kinda hard to do when last Falsenight’s blunder made them all pack up and leave.

“Well, fuck,” I say, fists on my hips as I look around the secret basement under the empty warehouse Jeiko led me to. There’s nothing in the rickety building apart from the inch or so of seawater pooling on the floor, slime, and wooden platforms. I stand on one of these. It’s half-rotten, but it’s better than having my boots in the half-stagnant sludge that’s probably full of piss and shit and whatnot. I try to hold my breath as much as I can to keep smelling the stench at a minimum.

“I—” Jeiko starts. “We were here! You’ve got to believe me, we were here—they kept us in cages on the platforms—”

I get a sudden, powerful urge to bite the annoying twerp’s head right off. I grit my teeth and breathe through my nose. Big mistake. The stench hits me like I flew headfirst into a wall. I turn and climb back up the ladder to the warehouse above. Pre-Falsenight light filters through the tall windows in hues of green and gold. The cleanliness of upstairs and the put-togetherness of the warehouse is unlike anywhere else in Andellion. The Lanskari are merchants, first and foremost, and it shows in the sense that their nicest buildings after the ones housing all the important highbred snobs are their warehouses. They’re also heavier guarded than even their prison. Well. When there’s actual merchandise in the sarthing warehouse, that is.

Sarthing useless kid.

I begin marching south along the docks. Gulls fly overhead, their cries mixing with the rhythmic creaks of wood and the crashing of salty waves against hulls. Sailors bustle about, yelling at each other in Common and the occasional other language. My rage only boils hotter the more idiots I have to dodge or jostle to get to Grand Canal street. I swear, the next moron who doesn’t look where they’re going—

“Rhedd!” comes a high-pitched voice behind me. “Wait! Rhedd!”

It’s the kid. I ignore her and keep moving.

A hand grabs my elbow. I spin around.

“WHAT?”

The twerp starts, eyes wide and taking a step back. I stare her down. She shakes herself out of whatever shock my outburst caused and juts her chin out. More human mannerisms, out of an Ejiari who doesn’t even look like the Andellian sort. Odd.

“You just left,” she says. For some reason, she’s got the audacity or the stupidity to sound surprised at that.

“Yes,” my voice is flat. Surely she didn’t really think I wanted to keep her hanging around?

She presses her lips together, but that doesn’t stop the shaking in her lower jaw.

Sarthing Gorgoz, she did, didn’t she? Idiot. Human children are idiots, and it looks like it’s a generalizable fact across sentient species.

“I thought—” she starts, in the same little voice she used to manipulate Greg the Egghead back at the Dancing Bells.

“Obviously, that’s not something you’re good at,” I cut in, my stare turning into a glare.

“You said—”

I jab a finger at her chest. “The deal was you show me where the bounties are. The bounties aren’t here. You don’t know where they went. Translation? You’re useless. Dead weight. And I don’t need dead weight.”

“But—” the Ejiari’s eyes fill up.

I turn and walk away before I can see any more of the emotions on her face. I already know what’s there. Old memories of another girl, desperate and terrified, well up in my mind, fill my chest up with painful, choking ice. My breathing quickens.

No. Don’t. I can’t—don’t think about it.

Focus. I’ve got a job to do.

Sarth, I need a drink.

I ball my hands into fists, digging my nails into the skin at the base of my thumb until it hurts. Focus, gods sarthing damn it! Forget about the blueskin. I got a job to do. If I don’t do the job, someone else will. I won’t be able to get the drinks I need. What do I need to do? Think. Think about the next steps. Watch. I can go to the Watchtower here, see if the Bluejackets heard anything, got any leads. Probably not—Watchmen are beyond useless eight times out of ten. They’ll probably want to detain me for questioning like they wanted to yesterday. It’ll be a complete waste of my time, but it’s not as if the slavers aren’t already gone. Maybe I can talk the Watch into paying me for the paltry lead I got. It’ll be something at least.

By the time I finally manage to drag myself out of my head, I’m already a few blocks down Grand Canal street. Falsenight’s coming, so the long thin boats on the brown water are either docking on the thin stone walkways down near the water, or heading towards the side. Merchants up on the road are bringing their wares indoors. On top of being proud of their trading traditions and military wusses, Lanskari are particularly superstitious about Falsenight, and spend all the thirteenth hour indoors, with blinds drawn and shutters closed. Something about nightwraiths cursing anyone who errs outside with bad luck and/or blindness. I’ve been out and about in Falsenight a bunch of times and never saw nor felt a nightwraith, but then maybe my life’s cursed enough already that they just stay away. Still, I pull my hood up over my head and keep my eyes on the cobbles as the day turns to dusk, then night, and the city goes still and silent.

The local Watchtower’s located at the junction between the Grand Canal and a secondary canal that branches off to the east. I cross the bridge to the gates and frown. They’re closed, Kerdovan’s Watch interwoven five-point stars and crescent whole and seamless at the centre.

That’s odd. I’ve been around Andellion a lot, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Watchtower’s gate closed before.

Well, too bad. I still gotta talk to the Watch, and it’s not a closed gate that’s gonna stop me.

I walk around the Watchtower compound, looking for a place I can either climb the wall or go through it. Since Kerdovan’s Watch doesn’t typically get into trouble with people, except for the whole debacle with the Lanskar-Thash war, the walls are mainly… decorative. Like hiding in a temple or church, going to a Watchtower is a way to seeking sanctuary, and the walls are supposed to make whoever’s inside feel safe if anything else. I snort. Never mind that sometimes the dangers are corrupt Watchmen themselves.

Finally, I find the reason why their closed gate is completely useless: a mulberry tree whose branches are actively growing over the wall. I roll my eyes at the stupidity of it all. Symbolic wall of protection, indeed.

I check around me—there’s no-one out as far I can see—and start climbing the tree, quickly moving myself to climb between the Watchtower complex’s wall and the trunk of the mulberry tree. It’s a bit annoying to do in the dark during Falsenight, since it involves a lot of feeling around and not looking up, but it’s laughably easy compared to scaling the overhang face of the Sunken Tower in the Gates. But then, pretty much anything is. I mean, it’s dangerous enough that Shadesteele himself—he’s normally the textbook definition of hands-off—got crazy mad and banned it.

I pause on a branch, grab myself a snack, munching on the tree’s juicy berries as I squint over the wall, scanning the Watchtower ramparts and courtyard. The Watchtower itself is completely dark, which is… weird, because normally I should be seeing some light where shutters or blinds don’t close completely. Huh. I fixate one point, then another, pausing long enough to focus on the input from the corners of my vision. Nothing. No movement, nothing.

I grab myself another few berries and stuff them in my mouth before using my branch to drop onto the ramparts. I land in a crouch, all my senses in alert. Nothing moves, and I hear silence save from the normal background sounds of a city during Falsenight. The warm, humid air smells of mulberries, with the occasional whiff of canal water in the mix.

By reflex, I unholster my sparker and rotate the magazine to lightning charges—enough to KO anyone who jumps me so I can ask them questions after. I quickly slide the charge level cover, uncovering blueish-purple light. Alright, so I’m not completely charged, but enough to get a good five shots before I’ll have to rotate to other kinds of charges. Hopefully, the shakes in my hands doesn’t throw off my aim too much.

I sneak along the ramparts, mentally keeping track of the ambient light levels. I want to scout out what’s going on at the Watchtower before the first hour of the afternoon rolls around and Falsenight leaves. Something’s up, and I don’t like the idea of still being here when the daylight comes back.

I find stairs and take them down. Now in the shadow of the wall, I edge around the perimeter of the yard. No-one. No horses in the stables. Maybe the Watchmen packed up and left when they got into a spat with Lanskar.

Except that doesn’t make any sense. There were two of them at the Dancing Bells last Falsenight, and as far as I can tell the Watch got involved in Thash a month or so ago. If they were to leave because of the conflict with the Lanskari, you’d think they’d do it when Ranhed declared their intentions to liberate Thash.

I’m jumping to conclusions, anyway. There’s nothing saying that the Watch left. Maybe they’ve got good blinds and shutters.

Yeah, I’m not convincing myself of that. There’s too much weirdness, starting with the absence of Watchmen at the Inn last evening when we snuck out. And there’s no sound coming through the windows of the Watchtower. It’s like the building’s completely dead. I look around again to the silent, unmoving courtyard and slowly raise my head to peek through the window.

Hint number I-dunno-what that something is seriously up? I can see straight into the floor level of the Watchtower.

I flex my wrist and the hilt of my smallest knife falls into my palm. I draw it and wriggle it into the crack where both windowpanes meet. The blade slides upwards, and the latch on the other side lifts and falls away. I lever the windows open a crack and ease them away from each other until I can fit into the hole. My fingers grip the rough stone windowsill and I hoist myself up and into the Watchtower main hall.

It’s dark. The only light is the half-darkness outside coming in through the windows.

Where is everybody?

My hand reaches into my satchel, feeling for the cold of a metal cylinder. I find it and turn the dial, rotating the opaque lid out and replacing it with a lens that focuses the light of the strumar inside to a tight beam of weak white light. Not enough to be seen from far away, but enough that I can make out my surroundings.

Since Lanskar’s one of the original ten countries that signed the Farseer’s pact, the Derisle Watchtower’s pretty much identical in basic layout as the ones found in the capitals of the other nine countries of the pact, minus the inevitable changes that a thousand or so years of constant inhabitant modification brings. The basic format is like someone took a cross-shaped base and stuck a cylinder surrounded by six triangular-shaped spires that tapered upward on it (old Kerdovan the Farseer probably had an unhealthy obsession with ancient Tentarren ruins, if you ask me). The branch of the cross where I slipped in is the entrance hall. I head to the back, towards the atrium. There’s still no-one. Heading to the right shows no-one in the administrative wing of the cross. My next stop is the mess hall, the arm of the cross opposite to the entrance hall. I step in, raise my strumar high to get as much light as possible. There are two tables here, long enough to sit maybe twenty normal-sized people side-by-side.

There’s still food on both. More food is half-eaten on plates, the cutlery a bit everywhere. I walk down the aisle, picking up a loaf of half-eaten bread, tearing off a chunk and shoving it into my mouth. Ugh. Stale. I don’t bother checking what’s in the goblets. It’s always water, with Watchmen. I snatch a few apples from a nearby fruit bowl and put them in my knapsack.

It’s clear that the Watchmen left, at the latest, in the middle of last night’s meal. Maybe even as early as last Falsenight’s meal. Except people close the drapes at Falsenight, and that wasn’t the case. Okay. So, they probable left last evening.

My boot lands in something sticky.

I frown and crouch, touching a finger to the substance I stepped in and bringing it to my nose.

Well, shit.

It’s blood. A small pool of it, thick enough that it’s not quite dried yet. I wipe my finger on my trousers, rinse it in a goblet of water, and wipe it again.

I switch my strumar’s lens to one that scatters the light more. Now that I’m looking for it, I can see signs of struggle. Food, plates and goblets on the ground when they shouldn’t be. No bodies, but that patch of blood I stepped in.

Outside, Falsenight starts to pass.

I need to get out of here.

Fast.

I turn the dial on my strumar twice, clicking the lid back into place and drop it in my satchel. My best bet is to go out the way I came in. If the Watchmen were herded out by someone, there are probably people around to make sure to catch anyone they didn’t get the first time.

Which always means that people might have seen me come in. I was so busy making sure no-one inside would see me I didn’t fucking do anything to hide from people who might be looking in from outside.

That’s an amateur mistake.

Fucking sarthing father of all damnation I’m a sarthing moron.

Right on cue, I hear noise from down the hall, near the entrance.

Shit. Sarth. Eddra. Fuck.

I look around. There’s no telling the kind of Talents or Gifts these guys may have. Sarth, I don’t even know who ‘these guys’ are. The Watch pisses off a lot of people, least of all the Lanskari Merchant Lords. Not only that, but the dining hall is getting light and lighter every moment I waste beating myself up over my idiocy. There’s a door at the back. I quickly make my way to it, away from the quiet noise of footsteps echoing in the atrium. Thanks be to whatever sadist deity oversees the world—I’m not out of practice enough to have forgotten how to move fast and silently, and the same can’t be said about the people down the hall. I slip into the room, close and bar the door behind me—

!blade, front of neck!

Sarth! I spin around, drawing my knife with the cross-guard and knock the sword aside just as one of the enemies tries to threaten me with it. I shove the barrel of my sparker right into my opponent’s chestplate, which bears the running horse of one of Laskari’s Merchant Lord houses.

“Guess the Bluejackets really pissed your bosses off,” I say, lowering my sparker to point at the soldier’s crotch instead of right in his chest and spinning the magazine to lethal shots. Let him think that I just went to nonlethal or something. “As you see, I’m a merc. So why don’t you call off your friends?”

“You’re breaking and entering on Merchant Lord property,” the soldier says. Stupidly. And loud. “You’re under arrest. You can either come peacefully or be dealt with extreme prejudice.”

I smile at him, baring my teeth his way. Last chance to back down, idiot. “No can do. Got a bounty to collect on. Slaving ring to bust. Apparently, you aren’t dedicated enough to your city to do it yourselves.”

!sword disengaging, swinging at—! I raise my sparker and shoot him in the head just as he frees his blade. Electricity arcs all over his body, jumping along the metal of his armor, and he collapses to the ground, twitching, probably filled with burns and his heart stopped clean. Hah. Should’ve worn scatter armor, moron.

I kick his sword away from his clenched grasp and pick it up, feeling the weight and balance. Crappy. But it’ll do.

!quarrel to neck!

I knock it out of the air with my new sword and shoot the newcomer. And electricity explodes on the far wall, two andels wasted. Sarthing shakes.

“Armed hostile, to me!” someone yells.

From the mess hall, the clank of running feet.

!quarrel, thigh!

I dodge it, look around. Shelter. Need—there. I vault over the table at my left and use momentum to tip it over. A quarrel thuds into the wood. Makeshift shield. Adequate.

Gotta get out of here. Where are the exits? My eyes dart around. Nothing but walls, counters, shelves, and one sarthing miniscule window I won’t fit through.

Out of time. The crossbowmen are getting closer. And they’re reloading so sarthing fast, there’s gotta be fabrika involved.

I snatch two cutting knives off the nearest counter and duck back behind a table, shifting one to my offhand, which is still holding the sword. At least, if I miss, it won’t be the equivalent of two whole diats down the drain.

Fast, before more come.

I peek out above the table.

!quarrel, head and arm!

I duck back down. Soon as they fly over my head I shoot back up, inhaling. The kitchen knife flies through the seven or so feet between me and the crossbowmen. I miss where I was aiming—the one on the right’s neck—by a good two inch, but the idiot ducks right into the blade. He howls in agony as the knife buries somewhere in his face. Not dead, but out of the game for now at least. There’s a huge thump on the door to the mess hall, and probably more people coming via the back route my current opponents took.

I glance back at the tiny window. Yeah… that sarthing opening didn’t get any bigger. Which means that my best option is to do the next stupid thing that might work. Also known as charge into battle head on and hope I can cut a path through that back door before backup breaks down the door to the hall.

Fucking hell, if I die in a Watchtower because I was too sarthing curious about why I couldn’t find any Watchmen, I swear—

I stand, inhaling again and throwing my kitchen knife with my offhand. Then charge straight at the back door, where the backup are only just coming in.

Yelling.

Chaos.

!quarrel, back of neck!

So the little bastard was flanking me?

Ha! Idiot.

I dodge a smidge. Grin when the quarrel gets the first of the back-up brutes right in the throat. The guy right behind him doesn’t even have time to react before I slice at his unprotected sword arm and slash at his thigh. He goes down.

!sword, face!

I knock the blade out of the way with the armor on my forearm, catch my enemy’s throat with my own.

!sword, left knee!

I swear and twist out.

!—side of knee!

Instead of cutting into tendon, a thin slice of burning. Flesh wound. Fuck.

!quarrel, back—sword thrust, chest—quarrel, arm!

I twist out of the way, moving my arm plate in the path of the quarrel I can’t dodge. The door to the mess hall bangs open as the bolt ziiings off the scatter armor on my shoulder. Fuck. That was a close one.

“Get him!”

I slam the pommel of my sword on the last guy blocking my escape. See his eyes cross in the dim light. Swing him around by his tabard.

!quar—

My danger sense cuts off as my human shield becomes a human porcupine. I shove him into the kitchen and duck into the storage room.

“Halt!”

…and find myself facing way more crossbowmen than I can take on.

Well.

Fuck.

Me.

How did I get this pathetic?

“I surrender!” I shout, my sword clattering to the flagstones as I raise my hands.

“Don’t move, or we’ll shoot!” one of the Merchant Lord goons yells.

“Oh, really?” I say, layering on as much sarcasm as I can manage so that I don’t sound like I really am—scared shitless. I add an eyeroll for effect.

One of the guys, one of the leaders apparently, moves forward, crossbow still raised and ready to send a quarrel punching right through my chest plate.

Then, out of nowhere, the room goes pitch-I-can’t-see-my-hand-in-front-of-my-face-black. What the—? The room erupts into chaos.

!quarrel, chest!

I dodge in the dark. There’s shouting, clanging, like someone—or something—is attacking.

Screw this. Let’s make a dash for the door.

“Nightwraith!” a woman’s voice shrieks. “Oh, Gods almighty, the stories are true!”

I slam into an armored body and shove them aside. Something sends pain ripping in my wounded arm. Crap.

!sword!

“Gah!”

I twist out of the way. Something slams the side of my head, making bright spots erupt in my vision. I swear. That was a shelf. I’m at a wall.

Where’s the damn exit?

“Red!” someone shouts. Something grabs my arm.

I yell and slam my free forearm forward. The back of my hand hits something soft and pointy. Someone swears.

“Sarth! I’m trying to save you, mercenary scum!” the same voice snaps.

Wait, really?

“Great,” I say. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”