The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask (2 page)

The dwelling he was about to infiltrate housed one Arend ir’Montevik, an aristocrat from the city of Atur whose religious charities Tallis was disinclined to favor. He nearly spit at the thought. The Blood of Vol had enough followers to fill its coffers without receiving generous donations from the likes of ir’Montevik.

While the man’s coin could surely pad his own depleting coffers, Tallis wasn’t after his wealth. Not
this
time, anyway. He didn’t know what business ir’Montevik had in Korth at present, but he would see to it the valuable scrolls in the man’s possession wouldn’t reach their final destination. Gold was one thing. Necromantic spells in written form were quite another.

Haedrun, the agent who’d given Tallis this job, had offered one hundred galifars for every scroll he could acquire. Such pay was paltry compared the scrolls’ actual value, but Tallis respected the Red Watchers and their work. For
her
, he would do this one cheap.

And if he chanced upon anything interesting or valuable
in ir’Montevik’s possessions—say, dragonshards or perhaps a choice potion or two—then it would all even out. The noble was burdened by a substantial inheritance, and when such unfortunate men failed to employ their legacies properly, it was up to men like Tallis to relieve them of it.

Tallis studied the wide tower. Every story of the Ebonspire included four flats, each overlooking Korth in one of the cardinal directions from a wide balcony. His enhanced vision could not pierce the darkness as far up as he meant to climb, but he was able to scrutinize the nearest balconies, his point of access.

There: two stories down and directly across on the tower’s eastern side, Tallis spotted
another
guard. This one’s ivory tabard and burnished breastplate proclaimed him one of the White Lions. A military man must reside within that flat. That balcony wasn’t his target, though it was his means of accessing the Ebonspire. The guard would have to get out of his way.

A long-hafted battle-axe rested within the White Lion’s reach against the tower wall, and he held a longbow in hand. His posture was rigid from the arduous instruction all White Lions received under the iron-willed General Thauram.

Thauram. It had been a while since Tallis had crossed blades with
that
particular half-elf. He still saw the scar from that encounter every time he bathed.

Tallis appraised the young soldier and saw that he was tense, expecting a problem. One of Thauram’s “amnesty cases,” a felon who avoided execution only by indentured military service to the city?

Tallis simmered at the irony. Here he was, one of Karrnath’s true patriots, staring across to the other side of the law at this young rogue-in-knight’s-armor.

“Are you prepared to bleed for your nation, little white cat?” he whispered.

Tallis looked to the street far below, waited until the patrol had passed, and knew he had only a few minutes before the next. He tapped the ring on his left hand—little more than a loop of leather marked with an arcane sigil—and felt a furtive tingle spreading
throughout his arms and legs. His muscles flexed involuntarily as they adapted to the magic within.

He checked to make sure his weapon—a hooked hammer—was still strapped to its harness over his shoulder. Tallis gauged the distance, made a fist with his right hand and looked to the second ring he wore there. He pointed his fist at the Lion on the balcony, sparing a glance to the tiny dragon head that adorned the iron band.

“Telchanak,”
he said with his best Draconic accent, triggering the magic of the ring. He felt not the sleightest recoil as a ghostly white force manifested from the ring and launched itself across the space between the two towers. With little more than a quiet rumbling, the force closed the distance, solidifying into the shape of a dragon’s head with curling, ramlike horns. Tallis heard the guard’s brief cry of surprise then the resounding crunch of his breastplate as the dragon’s head slammed into him. The vaporous force faded away.

The parapets denied Tallis any chance of a running start, so he coiled his body into the structural cleft. Even the greatest athlete would have difficulty clearing the gap between the buildings, but Tallis had come well-equipped. When his feet pressed against the stone, he felt an instant surge of strength and agility in his legs, owing to the enchanted boots he wore.

He mouthed a silent, half-hearted prayer to the Sovereign Host, then jumped.

The sheer black wall of the Ebonspire thrust itself upon him. With a deftness belied by even his own body, Tallis grasped the minute imperfections in the wall with his right hand, grooves that would have been impossible to find without the augmentation afforded him by the leather ring. His left hand found the lip of the balcony one story above.

Tallis hung there for a moment against the wall until the swaying of his body slowed. From the gasping noises below him, he knew the dragon-ring’s concussive power had succeeded only in knocking the wind from the White Lion. He was still a viable
threat. With his free hand Tallis pulled a metal rod from his belt and dropped from the railing.

A split second later, he pressed a button on the rod and it locked in place, magically suspended in space as though held by an invisible arm of prodigious strength. Swinging from the artificial handhold, Tallis used his body’s momentum to drop squarely above the stumbling guard.

“Wait!” the White Lion sputtered, struggling to rise.

“Wrong occupation, boy.” Tallis grabbed the younger man’s longbow. Ash, he noted with admiration—the garrison was issuing fine arms to its young recruits these days. Then he swung the hard wood against the man’s face.

The crack of cartilage ended all resistance and the guard slumped to the ground. Blood leaked from his nose—likely broken. Tallis would be long gone before the man would awaken to report a disturbance.

He waited briefly at one side of the balcony in case the scuffle had been heard. Satisfied his presence was still undetected, he began to climb. The two rods he carried, as well as his boots, made scaling four more stories easier work.

All told, this certainly was easier than scaling the Starpeaks in search of an enemy redoubt. Then again, the cold Aundairian mountains hadn’t been crawling with White Lions who knew his face.

When Tallis neared the appointed balcony, he locked one of the rods in place. With feet planted on infinitesimal crevices and one hand gripping the second rod, he paused to listen. Nothing but the whistle of the cold night wind. Could ir’Montevik’s balcony be unguarded, after all? Most of the Ebonspire’s occupants—wealthy visitors and influential citizens—had no need to guard from the outside, but a paranoid man like Arend wouldn’t take chances. Tallis had expected more.

He produced a rune-carved wand of ivory from a pocket on his calf and pointed it at the balcony’s edge. Muttering a series of carefully memorized syllables, his best emulation of its arcane
trigger, Tallis saw a glimmer of light at the wand’s end and then a second glimmer along the iron balustrade above. Even with no guards, magical wards would have been in place. If the wand had done its work, any such spells would have been stripped away. Tallis climbed higher, then pulled himself up to the balcony’s rail—

—only to see an enormous figure rushing at him with a heavy blade raised.

“Blunted!” Tallis dropped to step down on the rod he’d left hanging in place, narrowly avoiding a wide sweep of his attacker’s sword. He steadied himself with the balcony’s lip.

“Intruder!” the guard shouted, staring down at him. The man’s head was covered with a broad helmet, his voice loud and resonant. One thick-fingered hand gripped the railing, while the other held the sword, poised to kill. He wore heavy plate armor, with a steel buckler on his left forearm.

No, not armored—not in the conventional sense. The guard was a warforged, a living construct given life during the Last War and the illusion of freedom at war’s end—now expected to settle down into the fragile peace. In Karrnath they’d never achieved even the “freedom” offered by the other nations. Here they were pressed into indentured service, usually in security or heavy labor.

“No, I’m not!” Tallis said. “I’m … family. I just … I knew my uncle wouldn’t … let me in.”

“You lie. You wear a mask!”

For a moment, he feared the warforged would turn away and shout for help, raising an alarm, but this was a matter of pride. If Tallis was a burglar intent on stealing from its master, then the guard would handle him alone.

Tallis could exploit that.

“You’re right,” he goaded. “I
am
lying. Thought you’d fall for it … you witless
golems
usually do.”

The warforged growled at the insult and swung its blade. Tallis threw his body to one side, evading the blow, trusting his balance and enhanced mobility to save him. In the same motion,
he took hold of the construct’s low-swinging arm, a broad limb of fibrous hardwood and plated metal. He jumped and climbed up, easily gaining holds along the warforged’s body. The construct tried to shake him loose, but Tallis scrambled over it before it could bring its weapon to bear.

Tallis was happy to see that the balcony door was closed. The curtains were drawn along the glass door, admitting no light from within. Only a sliver of the Storm Moon broke through the clouds. He could see perfectly with his darkvision lenses and hoped the warforged was disadvantaged in the gloom. Tallis loosed the hooked hammer from its strap and held it up as the construct turned to face him.

“You would serve your master better as a ladder, my friend,” Tallis said, “as I’m guessing you’re even easier to fight than to climb.”

“I will tell him I had no choice but slay the intruder,” the warforged said.

Tallis had to make this fast. He jumped forward, buoyed by magic, and made an experimental attack with the edge of his hammer. The warforged’s buckler turned away the blow with ease, and Tallis winced at the sound of ringing metal. He aimed his second and third swings to hit, but the construct deflected each as easily as the first. The guard was a worthy foe, but Tallis was not one to rely on a fair fight.

“Is this all you can do?” he said. “Hide behind your shield?”

The warforged stepped forward and swept its heavy blade down. Tallis took a step back and evaded the swing then stumbled. The construct followed the feint, and Tallis rolled to the side. The warforged’s defenses opened. Using the same rolling momentum, Tallis reversed his weapon and buried the pick’s head deep into the fibers of the warforged’s stomach.

Tallis rose, twisting the weapon to grind the wood further apart. The warforged struggled to stay on its feet. The wound would have been fatal to a living man within seconds. That the construct could stand at all was testament to its strength.

Tallis was never sure if warforged could feel pain the same
way living people did. He’d only known a few during the war, and none were particularly verbose. Reversing his weapon again, Tallis brought the hammer’s head down against the construct’s helmlike head. With the loud ringing that followed, he looked around to see if anyone had heard.

Still, it surprised Tallis to find a warforged employed by Arend ir’Montevik. Normally Cultists of the Blood of Vol had little use for constructs. Why bother, when their clerics could raise the dead to do their bidding? He had expected only ir’Montevik himself and maybe that musclebound goon of his to be here.

Tallis peered through the glass door and the narrow slit between the curtains to a darkened bedroom with wisplight from a common room beyond spilling in.

The door was unlocked. He slipped into the room, quietly closing the door behind him and keeping to the wall as he approached the opposite exit. He gave the room a cursory examination—it appeared empty of the scrolls he was after. He slipped his enchanted lenses in a pocket. He paused to listen to the voices in the next room.

The laughter of children startled him. It sounded like a whole family!

Tallis froze, reassessing the situation. As far as he knew, Arend didn’t have children. Haedrun would have told him if the nobleman had brought family with him to Korth. So what was this?

“Papa,” said the voice of a child. “It’s cold here!” The boy’s voice was merry, despite his words, and carried a sleight foreign accent. He heard a man chuckle. Surely not Arend! The man had no sense of humor.

Another voice joined the conversation, the assertive voice of a mother. “Rennet, take this blanket. Gamnon, you really should make a fire.”

Gamnon! Tallis’s stomach clenched. This was
not
Arend’s family. This was a mistake. His instinct had been right—ir’Montevik wouldn’t have owned a warforged. Could he possibly have chosen the wrong floor?

No. Impossible. He turned back to the balcony.

A figure appeared in the room behind him, slipping through the balcony door just as he had. Veiled head to foot in black wrappings, the intruder was lithe and tall. Tallis caught the gleam of metal gauntlets beneath the linen, but he couldn’t see any eyes exposed. From its supple form, he guessed it was a woman, perhaps a professional like himself? She was weaponless.

Surprised by this development, he instinctively adopted a defensive stance with his weapon held up.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

The shrouded figure strode gracefully past him as though she hadn’t heard him at all. Steel blades, as long and slender as rapiers, appeared in each of her mailed fists. Whether an act of magic or mere sleight of hand, the weapons looked real enough.

“Stand down!” Tallis said, hoping to halt the intruder as well as alert the family to the danger.

The shrouded figure did not heed him.

“Who dares?” came a furious voice in the next room.

Responding to the alarm, a well-dressed steward appeared in the doorway with a half-drawn blade of his own. The cloth-wrapped intruder thrust both rapiers into the man’s torso—one in his stomach, the other near his collar—making not even a grunt in the motion. Sputtering blood, the steward toppled. The intruder stepped into the room beyond without hesitation.