“Shite,” Nix said, making himself small against the wall. He shouted down the hall. “That’s not very sporting, you fakkers!”
“Come on!” Egil said.
Nix fell in behind him. “You sure you know where we’re going? I mean, maybe there’s some other big torturer fakker you need to stop and kill?”
“No, I think I’m good,” Egil said. “Now keep moving!”
The tread of boots fell in behind them as they pelted down a long corridor. Crossbow bolts whistled past them from time to time, each one summoning a curse from Nix. Two hit him square in the back and only Veraal’s mail saved his life.
The corridor ended at a wide set of ascending stone stairs.
“This is it!” Egil said.
Without slowing they took the stairs two at time, harried from below by the sounds of their pursuers. A large, reinforced wooden door topped the stairs. Nix pushed down on the latch and breathed easy when he found it wasn’t locked.
Crossbow bolts whistled out of the darkness behind and below them. Two thunked into the wood of the door and quivered there, another slammed into Nix’s back, the mail shirt once more saving his life.
“Here!” called a voice from below. “They’re over here! Going up!”
Nix shoved the door open and he and Egil piled through and slammed the door closed behind them. They surprised three guildsmen seated at a table, in the midst of a card game. Commons and a few terns lay piled on a table and each of the men held playing plaques.
“What’s this now?” said one of the men, his narrow face and long hair reminding Nix of a wolf.
“A bit of a misunderstanding,” Nix began, but saw the truth of the situation reach the men as they took in Nix and Egil’s bared weapons, the priest’s blood-spattered arms and face and pate.
“Shite,” one of them said, and all three lurched to their feet, bumping the table, scattering coins.
“Yours for now,” Nix said to Egil.
Egil charged the three men and they answered with shouts and curses. Wood splintered, coins chimed to the floor. Nix looked around for a bar for the door, saw nothing.
“How do you slubbers have all these damned locks but not simple bars?”
He pulled the magic key from his satchel, hearing behind him the spill of a chair, the meaty thud of Egil’s hammer against flesh, an abortive wail of pain, the crush of bone. A word in Mage’s Tongue animated the key and it gave its demand.
“Give us some meat.”
“Meat, now? Fak.” He didn’t bring any thrice-damned meat.
Another thud from behind him, a cry of pain abruptly cut short as Egil’s hammer reaped another guildsman. The priest growled and more wood splintered. One of the men cursed and Nix imagined him backing up in a panic.
A jarring impact on the door knocked Nix away from it. It started to open. Nix cursed and threw his shoulder back into it, slamming it closed once more. Someone howled with pain on the other side. The door must have caught his fingers or hand. An idea struck Nix.
“I need one of those bodies, Egil!” Nix called, leaning into the door as the men on the other side pressed against it. “Hurry!”
A corpse flew in from behind, hit the door, and lay in a bloody heap beside Nix. The dead man’s skull was concave from a blow of Egil’s hammer. Nix shoved the key’s bit into the dead man’s cheek.
“Meat,” he said, and the key bit a chunk and chewed.
Another impact on the door, another, another, each one pushing the door open an increment. Nix fumbled with the key and nearly dropped it, his feet scrabbling on the floor with the effort to reclose the door.
“You fakkers are dead!” came a shout from the other side of the door.
“Egil!” Nix called. “Egil!”
The priest hit the door at a run and slammed it closed, eliciting curses from the other side. Nix shoved the key into the lock, felt it warm, and gave it a turn. Once it locked, he pulled out the key and shoved the blade of a punch dagger into the keyhole, hoping to foul the mechanism. He turned his back to the door and sagged to the floor. Egil did the same. The guildsmen on the other side continued to beat against the door, but they’d need a lot of time to get through the reinforced wooden slab.
“They have to have an axe somewhere,” Egil said.
“Aye,” said Nix. “Has to be another way up from the underground chambers, too. Even so, I’m going to say this hasn’t gone half bad so far.”
“Agreed,” Egil said, grinning.
The gaming table had lost a leg in the combat and sat slanted on the floor. All of the chairs had been overturned. The other two guildsmen, their bodies broken by Egil’s hammers, limbs at grotesque angles, lay on the floor among the scattered coins and playing plaques.
“You fouled their game,” Nix said. He picked up a plaque and showed it to Egil—the Knave of Blades.
“They weren’t very good players,” the priest said.
“How many is that now?”
“Guildsmen?” Egil asked. “I lost count.”
The pounding on the door behind them ceased and the silence struck them as more ominous than the attempts to break through.
“Probably should move,” Egil said.
“Aye, that,” Nix said with a sigh. He stood. “To the grand room with us.”
Egil indicated which door they should take. Nix listened at it and heard nothing to alarm him. He opened it and peeked out.
It was like looking into another world. They emerged from the dank chambers beneath the guildhouse to a long carpeted hallway appointed with cushioned chairs and wall art.
“Seems these guildboys do all right,” Nix said, as they hustled down the hall.
Egil grunted.
They moved quickly through the guildhouse, Egil navigating its halls and stairs and rooms by way of the mental map Merelda had given him. They still saw no one, and it seemed that word of their attack had not yet reached beyond the underground chambers. But that was mere good fortune and they knew they had only a short time before someone raised a general alarm. They needed to get to the Upright Man before that.
“Place is a maze,” Nix said.
Egil nodded, his mind obviously on the layout in his head.
“It’s also emptied out,” Nix said. The rooms and halls they walked were empty of guildsmen. “The Upright Man might not even be here.”
“He’s here,” Egil said. “That boy said there was a meeting. That’s where they all are.”
As they moved, hugging walls, staying quiet, peeking ahead, Egil softly told Nix what he needed to know about the grand room.
“It’s a big rectangular room. Double doors on all four sides. Big triangular table in the center, chairs around. Upright Man sits at the top point of the triangle. Lots of guards within. Outside, usually pairs of guards at the doors. That’s all the usual, anyway.”
“Mere pulled all that out of that slubber’s head?”
Egil nodded.
“Get me to the doors opposite the Upright Man’s spot at the table,” Nix said. “I’ll distract. You go in the other way and snatch him.”
“Aye.”
Nix shrugged. “Of course if he’s not in there, we’re fakked. We may be fakked anyway. Bit off a big piece of meat here, my friend. Makes for a hard chew. But it’s now or not. We have minutes at best, before those slubbers from the rooms below get word up here. We move fast enough, we may yet take them by surprise.”
“They feel safe here,” Egil said.
“They should,” Nix said, thinking of the reinforced doors and locks.
Egil nodded. “Take the two stupidest slubbers in Dur Follin to attack the guildhouse.”
“Ballsiest is what you mean,” Nix said. “I can barely walk I’m swinging so low.”
Egil grinned and they hustled through empty rooms and corridors, making their way to the grand room. Presently Egil put up a hand to stop them.
“Right around this corner,” he said softly.
Nix peeked around the
corner and saw two guards. They looked more bored than alert. Word of the attack hadn’t yet reached them. Nix pulled back.
“Two men, as you said,” he said to Egil.
Egil pointed. “This hallway goes around to the other side, to the doors near Channis.”
“Channis?”
“The Upright Man’s name. The boy said it.”
“Right. Aye,” Nix said. “I’ll take these two, then get inside the room and draw eyes. You go around to the other doors, kill the guards there quick, and stand ready. When you hear the commotion inside, you get in and grab this Channis. I’ll meet you over there.”
“Good,” Egil said. “Then what?”
“What do you mean, ‘then what?’ ”
“We get him,” Egil said. “We tell him why he’s dying and do it. Then how do we get clear?”
“Why’re you asking me?”
“I thought you’d have a plan.”
“Why would you think that? I’m making this up as we go. You’re the one with the map of the place in your head.”
Egil shrugged. “Hmm. I guess we’ll figure something out.”
Nix looked at him a long moment. “Shite, man. I guess we will. Here I go.”
Nix sheathed his falchion, palmed a throwing dagger in each hand, and adopted a look of concern as he stepped out into the hall. He walked rapidly toward the guards, looking behind him from time to time, as if watching for pursuit.
“What’re you about, git?” one of the guards asked. Both of them were hard-looking men with scraggly beards and unforgiving eyes. They tensed and put hands to sword hilts. “House is to be empty ’cept for them with business at the meeting.”
“Aye, aye,” Nix said. “But there’s something going on back there.” He was counting the paces between him and the men, closing the distance. “I heard shouts and such. We need to let ’em know.”
“Let who know?” said the other guard. “Who you with?”
“Me?” Nix said, and whipped the two daggers in rapid succession. The first took the larger of the two guards in the throat and he fell to the floor, writhing, gasping, spurting blood. The second hit the other guard in the shoulder and sank deep. He grunted, shouted, and started to pull his blade with his wounded arm. Before he’d cleared half the scabbard, Nix had his falchion drawn and drove it through the man’s chest. The man died staring into Nix’s face, a bubble of blood forming and popping between his lips.
“I’m with Egil,” Nix said to him. “I don’t think you know him.”
Nix freed his blade, let the man fall, and pulled two smoke balls and the last boomspark from his satchel. He struck a matchstick, lit all three, took a breath, and loudly threw open the doors of the grand room.
—
Wall-mounted torches and a ceiling-mounted chandelier cast the grand room in bright, flickering light. Nix took it in at a glance.
Seven men sat around a triangular polished wooden table, its surface inlaid with Aster’s symbol, the stiletto and the coin. Three men sat on one side of the triangle, three on the other, all of them in ceremonial black robes embroidered with Aster’s symbol, with the number of coins embroidered around the symbol presumably denoting their rank. A pair of guards stood along the wall behind each of them.
Their personal muscle, Nix supposed.
One man, hulking and scarred, was at the table’s apex: the Upright Man, Channis. His hand was raised, fist clenched, scarred face pinched in anger. Nix had interrupted him in mid-tirade, it appeared. A solitary man stood behind and to the Upright Man’s left, also in ceremonial robes, rounding out the Committee.
“What is this?” Channis demanded. His deep voice sounded like grating stone. He glanced back at the man standing near him.
An accusatory look, Nix thought.
Nix bowed. “Good evening, members of the Committee, you motley fakking collection of miscreants, slubbers, and bungholes. I’ve something to tell you.”
Murmurs of surprise ran through the assembly. The guards along the wall drew steel. Several members of the Committee, including Channis, pushed back their chairs and stood.
“And it is this,” Nix said, and paused for effect. “Fak you all.”
He doffed an imaginary cap and gave a bow.
“Someone snatch this little pissdrip,” Channis said. “I want him sent to Zren.”
Nix rolled the lit smoke balls into the room and tossed the boomspark onto the table, right on Aster’s stiletto. Everyone around the table scrambled back, unsure what to make of the boomspark.
The rope holding the ceiling-mounted chandelier was anchored to the wall near Nix. He cut it with a backhand slash of his falchion and the chandelier crashed down on the table. Hot wax splashed as the candles fell. Everyone leaped away from the table, cursing.
Nix gave a bow as the guards along the wall rushed toward him. “Goodeve, bungholes!”
The smoke balls exploded, instantly fogging the room in green. At that everything turned chaotic: men shouted, coughed, accusations flew, members of the Committee barked orders, but the smoke was so thick Nix could scarcely see who was who.
He admired his handiwork for a moment, watching the far doors through the swirl of smoke, trying to see if Egil had come through. Just as things seemed to be settling, the boomspark went off, firing colored sparks in all directions, emitting a prolonged whistle that sounded like a scream.
Men ducked, exclaimed, shouted. Someone slipped and fell right at Nix’s feet. Almost casually, Nix stabbed him through the back. Drapes along one wall caught fire.
Through the smoke Nix caught sight of the doors opposite him bursting open, the doorway filling with a huge barrel shape that could only be Egil, his hammers spinning through the smoke.
That was all Nix needed to see. He turned and dashed out of the room.
“Stop, fakker!” someone shouted from behind.
Nix glanced back to see two guards staggering out of the smoke-filled room behind him, blades drawn. They stumbled after him, shouting, and he quickly put distance between him and them.
He turned the corner and dashed up toward the hallway where he was supposed to meet Egil. Halfway down the hall, a door burst open ahead and to his left, expelling green smoke, a coughing member of the Committee, and his bodyguard. Nix stabbed the bodyguard through the chest, punched the Committeeman in the jaw—the man had a droopy face, as if suffering from a palsy. The blow floored him and Nix kept running.
“They’re here!” the droopy-faced Committeeman said, coughing. “Over here, lads!”
“I should’ve stabbed you, too, bunghole!” Nix barked over his shoulder.
He came around the end of the hall to see Egil backing out of the double doors, a choke hold around the throat of Channis, a muscular, short-haired man with so many scars on his face that his cheeks looked like a map. Egil had disarmed him of visible weapons. The two guards Egil had killed to get entrance to the room lay in crumpled, bloodstained heaps on the floor.
Channis dragged his feet and clawed at Egil’s arm, but Nix had never seen anyone dislodge the priest’s hold once he’d set it. Nix put a blade to Channis’s scarred face.
“You wanna keep breathing, pick up your damned feet.”
The thump of the guards coming up the hall sounded louder. From another hall perpendicular to them came shouts, lots of shouts.
Egil and Nix shared a resigned look. They’d spent their entire time in the guildhouse running from one crowd of men or other.
As if to emphasize the point, a group of a dozen men came around the corner and stormed down the hallway, probably the men who’d pursued them in the tunnels under the house.
“There they are!” shouted the man in the lead, a towering blond man with a scarred eye.
Several of the men stopped and leveled crossbows. Nix made himself small behind a stuffed chair while Egil shielded himself behind Channis. A bolt whistled past Nix’s ear, taking a tuft of hair with it.
“We’ll kill him if you come closer!” Nix s
houted to them, jumping up and putting his blade to Channis’s throat.
That was enough to buy them a moment. The men hesitated. The guards from the grand room came around the corner, too, and they also halted, seeing a sharp edge at Channis’s throat.
“Bring him,” Nix said to Egil, backing away.
Egil looked a question at him.
“He’s the only thing keeping us alive right now. You wanted me to think of something to get us out of here, well, I’m thinking of something. Bring him.”
Nix eyed the guildsmen, a collection of blades, crossbows, and hard eyes. They reminded him of a wolf pack.
“Follow us and he’s dead.”
They backed more quickly down the hallway. The men hesitated, eyed one another, unsure of what to do.
“Move, move,” Nix hissed to Egil.
A few of the men inched forward. One of the Committeemen appeared among the crowd, the droopy-faced man with six coins surrounding the stiletto on his robes. He glanced up the hall, saw Egil and Nix.
“What the fak are you doing?” he shouted, spraying spit from his misaligned mouth. “Get them!”
Nix and Egil turned and ran. Egil had Channis’s head tucked under his armpit and dragged him along like a sack. The stamp of feet and the chorus of shouts behind them was like a roll of thunder.
“We need a room,” Nix said.
“What kind of room?”
“A good godsdamned room!” Nix said.
They burst through a door and Nix slammed it shut behind them. Crossbow bolts thudded into it, at least half a dozen. Another hallway extended before them. They hustled down it, dragging the grunting guildmaster, who resisted as best he could. Nix was looking for a reinforced door with a key lock.
“No, no, no,” he said, running past several doors that wouldn’t do.
The hall door behind them burst open and men and crossbow bolts poured through. One hit Nix in the shoulder, but deflected off his mail.
“You’re going to hit your guildmaster, you stupid fakkers!”
They darted right through a pair of double doors and into a large lounge of some kind. Divans and chairs and a desk stood here and there on the carpeted floor, and a barred window overlooked the grounds outside.