The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [123]
The man with the scar down his cheek and a sword in his hand answered with a wordless snarl that held more fear than anger-and ducked into a dark opening in a leaning wall of one wing of Silvertree House. The merchant stood back thoughtfully, listening for a scream from within. He seemed almost disappointed when it didn't come.
He'd turned away and taken three steps before an arrow hummed out from behind a nearby tree and snatched him off his feet, to spill him dead in the grass with a look of amazement on his face and his throat sprouting a goosefeather shaft.
The man who first knelt over the body to make sure of death murmured, "Adeln's man?"
Another man crouching beside him shrugged. "One of the downriver barons. Every last one of them has a pet conspiracy-and half of them don't even know they're doing the work of the Serpents. Our masters at least-uhulurrkkhh!"
A good strangler needs only a waxed cord and enough purchase to use it, but the man flailing useless hands and going purple was still struggling feebly when a needle-slim blade burst through the breast of the masked man holding the cord and sent both slayer and victim thudding onto the merchant's body.
That same blade descended smoothly into the face of the man who'd asked about Adeln at about the same time as its wielder remarked, "Getting a mite crowded around here!"
"Well," a new voice said softly and menacingly, as yet another strangling-cord found the bladesman's throat, "it's not every day that legends come to life, and Dwaer-Stones roll out of bards' fireside tales into hands eager to use them."
Another messenger moved hastily away from the burial ground, heading to report another conspiracy, as the last group left standing exchanged grim glances and slipped into the opening that led into the Silent House, leaving the bodies sprawled in the grass.
Overhead, vultures were already circling. A bat eyed them thoughtfully for a moment before it took wing from a nearby branch and flitted away-only to intercept a flash of silver in midair, and crash to earth curled lifeless around the hurled dagger that had spitted it.
"Wizards are becoming creatures driven by persistence," murmured the owner of the gloved hand that twisted the dagger free. "Now, that's a disquieting development."
Like a silent, grimly smiling shadow, the man called Velvetfoot skulked to the opening in the wall and vanished into the Silent House. A kingslaying was just one more fee, but Dwaerindim, now…
The coins of the Delcampers bought much in Ragalar. Streets, the shops that lined them, ships to bring their contents and to take craftwork to far docks, the loyalty of men to do all this work-and the best healings all the gathered Ragalan priests of the Three could work.
Wherefore Flaeros Delcamper yet clung to life, albeit as a much-bandaged bag of splintered bones sprawled helpless for yet another day, in a heavily guarded bed that had felt his scant weight for many such days now.
The tale of his daring escape from the daggers of the Serpent-a score of hired swords and even his own tutor, an old Ragalan minstrel named Baergin who'd paid for his treachery with his life, hacked down by the Serpent's warriors in the shouting wake of the fray-had become old news in Ragalar, and more. It was part of city lore now, one of the tales that told Ragalar's long and oft-lawless history… and it was a tale all the better because it was, with all its improbable leaping from one balcony to another, its warriors racing about with swords drawn to do butchery in the broad light of day, and its sinister blasts of Serpent-magic smashing away balcony and fleeing Delcamper into a bone-shattering fall into a dung-cart, and the spell-battle that followed as outraged mages staying at the Lion traded spells with a cowled Serpent-priest until the Scaled One was