The Archon's Assassin (7 page)

A few more shots kept open the channel between them, and then he was off on Nameless’s heels.

THE MAD MAGE

N
ameless bent over and clutched his sides. His panting came heavy and fast, roaring like ocean surf inside the great helm. And shog, it stank in there. Everything stank: years of sour burps and hungry-breath that never seemed to dissipate through the eye-slit. When was the last time he’d cleaned his teeth? Aristodeus should have thought of that when he’d hatched his scheme to insulate Nameless from the black axe. Probably had. Probably thought it was funny.

“How many…?” His lungs burned, and a stitch like a spear-thrust lanced through his side. “How many alleys? Thought it was just the one.”

Shadrak was already halfway to the other side, no more than a shifting shadow in his hooded cloak. He hopped lightly onto the bottom step of an iron staircase that ran up the outside of a crooked building. One crooked building among many. Everything had taken on a twisted, bowed, and precarious look the instant they’d crossed into the wizard’s quarter.

“This is it.”

Nameless straightened up and pivoted so he could get a better look—another flaw with the helm. Most of the time, he could barely see where he was going, and he was constantly worried about embarrassing himself in a fight.

The buildings flanking the alley were tall and slender, kind of like the whores in Brink. Not that he’d been there—the whores, that is. He was a beard-man through and through. But the stonework: that was a thing in and of itself. Most of New Jerusalem had the kind of masonry he’d grown up with in Arx Gravis. New Jerusalem’s construction had been the parting gift of the dwarves to the first settlers; Maldark the Fallen’s final act before he vanished from Aethir. But the craftsmanship in the wizard’s quarter was as dwarvish as a shandy-drinking giant with no hair. There was a hodgepodge of misplaced buttresses, warped overhangs, and crooked lintels. Atop the roofs, tiles of different shapes and sizes glinted in the light of the suns. He caught his own reflection in a window of contorted glass. Made his belly look huge, and his arms as long as an ape’s. He knew it for what it was: some kind of illusion; but all the same, he sucked his gut in and pulled his shoulders back.

“You coming, or what?” Shadrak said, and bounded up the staircase to a round wooden door at the top.

“Just catching my breath, laddie,” Nameless said, taking a firm grip on his axe and lumbering up the first few steps. Iron creaked, and the railings shuddered. “This thing safe?” His hands found his belly again. “Think it’ll take my weight?”

Shadrak came down a step, eyes constantly moving, taking in every last detail on the rooftops, the ground, and back the way they’d entered the alley. “You need to get into shape. Now, hurry. Just because we lost the soldiers, doesn’t mean we’re out of this yet. They had a psycher, and it got my scent.”

“Well, there’s a thing,” Nameless said. Not the psycher. That was another thing altogether. It was the mention of getting into shape. “That’s what I came to see you about.”

“Too busy,” Shadrak said. “It’s a shogging struggle finding the time to keep myself trim, never mind training anyone else.”

“What?” The belly again. The midget was referring to his belly. Odd thing was, it felt solid as rock, carved from stone. He started to lift his chainmail hauberk but gave up when he couldn’t angle the helm enough to see.

“Not me. I’m fit as a fiddle, laddie. I want to train others. See, there’s this building in Brink that would make a perfect… What do you call it? Somewhere you can lift weights and spar…” Aristodeus had a word for it, though why Nameless had revealed his plans to that old coot, he’d never know. Well, he did. He had to pass the time somehow while he was being tube-fed.

“Can this wait?” Shadrak said. He turned back to the door and ran his hand over it.

“You know me, laddie.” Nameless clambered up behind. “No hurry. But there’s a need for it, I tell you. Not for the general public, mind. I can’t be done with all those whining fatties promising how much weight they’re going to lose and then tucking into a double-helping of pie and potatoes. It’s the soldiers I’m after. You might have noticed back there, but it’s the same all over: undertrained, out of condition. It’s no wonder I can put any five down without breaking sweat.”

“Only five?” Shadrak said, still very much focused on the door.

“Ten, then,” Nameless said. “Fifteen. Don’t want to be boastful. So, you think it’s got potential? Enough to make an investment? I was going to ask it as a favor, but seeing as you owe me—”

“Owe you?”

“For catching you, and for getting you away from New Jerusalem’s finest.”

Shadrak held up a hand. “No.”

“Oh,” Nameless said. That rather shat on his plans. “Thought you were some big guild-lord now. Surely a few hundred denarii—”

“I mean…” Shadrak pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Maybe. Later. Let’s discuss it later.”

He reached into a pouch and produced something tacky, which he rolled in his fingers for a few moments before pressing against the base of the door.

“What are you doing?” Nameless asked.

“Door’s warded with enough crap to keep an army out, and if I knock, he’ll just pretend he ain’t in.”

“Knows you well, then, does he?” Though what kinds of connections Shadrak had in the wizard’s quarter didn’t bear thinking about. Just being there made Nameless’s spine tingle and gave him the urge to find the nearest crapper.

Shadrak stood back and gestured for Nameless to do the same. He slipped a pistol from its holster, then took a black cylinder from one of his belt pouches and screwed it onto the end of the barrel.

Nameless tensed as Shadrak pulled the trigger, but there was no thunderous boom. Instead, there was a rushing, popping noise. Smoke billowed from the sticky stuff on the door. It fizzed and burned, gave off a muffled blast and a burst of flame. When the smoke cleared, the door hung in ruins, and someone coughed and spluttered from inside.

“Magwitch, you old tosser,” Shadrak called out. “No magic, got it? Else I’ll string you up by your balls.”

Nameless bobbed the great helm in a show of respect. “Can’t say fairer than that, laddie.” He always admired a plain-talker.

Shadrak tested the floor with his boot before stepping inside.

Nameless hesitated, shook his head, and followed him.

He couldn’t see a whole lot. Not just because of the helm this time; besides the dusty light from the twin suns spilling through the wreckage of the doorway, the only illumination was a gloamy haze that limned everything in red.

A man lay on the floor, muttering and moaning. Looked a lot like a scarecrow to Nameless. He was bundled up in a long, dark coat with dozens of red flecks about the collar. No doubt they would’ve been white out in the daylight; probably, they fell like snowflakes from his mussy gray hair whenever he scratched. Say one thing for him, though: he had a beard you could hide a mountain in. Made Nameless want to poke about inside it for a gift, like he and Lucius had done with the sack of secrets Pa brought home every winter-fest. Back in the day.

The man searched about on the floor until he found his twisted spectacles and jammed them on the bridge of his nose. The instant he blinked his eyes into focus, he gasped and almost choked, then frantically tried to scurry backward on his arse.

Shadrak grabbed him by the ankle. “Hold still, Magwitch. It’s me.”

“Oh my gawd, oh my gawd,” Magwitch said. “I ain’t done nothing. I swear it.”

“Never said you did.”

“But my door.” Magwitch kicked his ankle free, turned onto his front, and started to crawl like a dog.

“That’s because you never sodding answer it.”

“Don’t want no assassins here, thanking you very much,” Magwitch said. “A wizard’s house is his sanctimony.”

“Eh?” Nameless said.

Shadrak gave him a wry grin. “You get used to it.” Then to Magwitch, he said, “No one’s gonna harm you. We need your help.”

Magwitch stopped still and peered back at them through his legs. “And I’ve given it. More times than I care to remonstrate.”

“I know,” Shadrak said. “And it’s not been forgotten.”

“Without my wards, Plaguewind and his Dybbuks would have found and killed you long before the Night of the Guilds.”

“Maybe,” Shadrak said. He stiffened a little at that.

“He was a stygian, you know. Those nasty cretaceans have demons at their beck and callow.” Magwitch got his legs under him and stood on creaking joints. “So, it would be unjust in the extremities to silence me for what I know, now that the curtain has fallen on your last advocate.”

“I think he means adversary, laddie,” Nameless whispered.

If Shadrak heard, he ignored it. “You know about Morrow? About the theater?”

Magwitch tapped the side of his nose. “Know not to eat cherry pie, too. There’s nothing you can hide from me, Shadrak the Unseemly. I see all. Know all.”

Shadrak darted forward and thumped him in the fruits, doubling him up. “See that? See this?” He grabbed hold of Magwitch’s ear and twisted.

The wizard squealed, but green flames sprung up from his fingers. Shadrak showed no sign of having seen it, but Nameless did. He strode over, closed his hand over Magwitch’s, and squeezed.

The flames fizzled out, and Magwitch whimpered.

“Used to do a spot of arm-wrestling,” Nameless said. “Grip like this,”—he applied more pressure—“was enough to take the fight out of most men, even before these big boys came into play.” He raised the hand holding his axe and flexed his biceps. “Peaked like a mountain,” he said, though when he angled the eye-slit for a look, it was more of a rolling hill.

He gave a double cough and released his grip on Magwitch. Suddenly, Aristodeus’s word hit him like an arrow to the brain: gymnasium, wasn’t it? Gym. Sooner he had one of them, the better. This shogging liquid diet the philosopher had him on was making his muscles waste away to nothing.

“Shame you didn’t get to set foot inside Queenie’s,” Shadrak said. “I know someone who’d give you a run for your money. Best arm-wrestler in New Jerusalem, and just so happens to work for me.”

“Sounds like a challenge, laddie,” Nameless said. “If you’ve the guts to wager, I’ll take the winnings instead of a loan.”

Shadrak scoffed and turned his attention back to Magwitch.

“How’d you know? And don’t lie.” His hand hovered above the blades in his baldric.

Magwitch eyed him nervously, licked his lips, and said, “I worked for Morrow.”

“What?” A dagger danced free in Shadrak’s hand. “You work for me, shogger, and no one else.”

“I forgot,” Magwitch said in a pitiful voice. “By the time I ruminated, he’d paid for my services, and I was too scared to renegade on the agreeablement.”

Shadrak closed a fist about the wizard’s collar and raised the blade to his eye. “So, you shogged me over.”

“No, no. Not at all,” Magwitch said. “It was just obstetrics. Wizard eyes, that sort of thing. I could see him at all times, and warn him of danger.”

“But you didn’t,” Shadrak said. “He ate the pie.”

“Congruitious loyalties,” Magwitch said.

“What?”

“I think he means ‘conflicting’,” Nameless said.

“Yes, that,” Magwitch said. “You were my first, Shadrak; and if I hadn’t forgotten, my only.”

“Less you say about that, the better, laddie,” Nameless said.

Shadrak sheathed his blade and flashed Nameless a look with his unsettling pink eyes. “You taking the piss?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Nameless said.

Shadrak stared at him long and hard. His fingers twitched above the handles of his pistols, and he worried his lip, like he was chewing something over.

Nameless couldn’t say he liked the look much. He would’ve glowered back, but the midget wouldn’t see it through the great helm. Instead, he casually hefted his axe to one shoulder and let Shadrak’s glare burn out against the scarolite covering his face. Finally, Shadrak relaxed, as if by an effort of will, and he looked back to Magwitch.

“Can you shield us from psychers?”

Magwitch’s eyes widened. “In here, yes.”

“Good, then we’re staying.”

Shadrak started to push past, but Magwitch held out his arms to stop him. “Not here, you’re not. A wizard’s house is—”

“Yeah, his sanctuary,” Shadrak said.

“No. Dangerous,” Magwitch said. “There are arcane forces aswirl in the eaves. Shadow people lurk in every cornice, and a plague of curses seeps insipidly into the minds of visitators.”

“Good,” Nameless said, barging by to take a look for himself. “Sounds like Kunaga’s Ale House back home. Oh, and laddie, it’s ‘insidiously’, unless you were talking about Ironbelly’s Special Brew.”

He ambled into a ramshackle room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a long table, upon which were all manner of wizardy things: alembics, retorts, dishes of different colored powders, candlesticks, a knotted tangle of tubes, lengths of metal wire, and what looked like toe clippings. The ceiling was plastered with creased and brown-stained paper covered in strange symbols and letters.

Suddenly, the room brightened considerably, and the inside of the great helm burst with the light of a furnace. Nameless blinked until his eyes adjusted, then he turned back for an explanation.

Magwitch’s sores and flakes stood out in stark reds and whites. Either the fellow needed a good scrub with a rough cloth, or he should be banished to one of those colonies on the border with Qlippoth—the ones the untouchables were sent to on account of their incurable diseases.

“Now look what you’ve instimulated!” Magwitch yelled at Shadrak. “You’ve ratcheted my opus.”

Magwitch stormed into the room and started sweeping everything from the table.

“Weeks and weeks of experimentation ruinated because you didn’t have the brains or the courtesan to knock!”

“What happened?” Nameless asked, as the contents of the table crashed and clattered to the floor.

“Him, that’s what!” Magwitch pointed a grimy finger at Shadrak. “Stealthy Stan over there. Blows up my blooming door. Only takes a minute or two of daylight, and poof goes the dimminuting spell!”