---

---

Larn

Ralnor

Dar Eherdir

Dear Pupil of Mine

---

---

 

 

“Ayup,” the tavern patron said, bushy brows meeting in the middle of his forehead. “Merchants saw them getting out of their ships. All fancy and shit.”

“The King of Lesia?” The tavern keeper asked, just to be sure. “How did they know it was him?”

“Some of them heard the guards talking,” the patron replied. “They went out of the west gate yesterday, quite the parade.”

“So our King met with him? In Aldenport?”

“Such is the gossip. Twas brief.”

Ah, Larn thought, moving away from them and started walking towards the exit. But that is not helpful. He paused next to a man eyeing those entering for any valuables easy to misplace.

“Move along now mister,” the man warned, breath stinking of cheap beer and onions.

“The Horned Hen is closed?” Larn asked him casually and the ruffian raised his black eyes to stare at him.

“What if it is?” He grunted.

“Was of the mind to pay it a visit, it caught me by surprise,” Larn told him.

“I guess yer unlucky.”

“Why is that?”

The man smirked. “Stuff happened in Alden this year.”

“Like what?” Larn asked and fished a coin out of his purse. A silver. “Hey, you might get lucky.”

The ruffian smiled showing him two rows of yellow-stained teeth, a couple of them rotted away completely.

 

---

 

A two story Inn at a cheap part of town named ‘Molten Cherry’, the ruffian had said. Larn paused at the entrance and read the label over it. The place looking quite empty, though in good condition for the neighborhood. He walked inside, place kept in the semi-dark, the windows covered and the only light coming from the long bar where Lena Verano was standing behind. She raised her head and looked at the approaching Larn a little unsure.

It’s the hood, Ralnor thought and stopped in front of the counter. The inn was empty.

“A tall dark stranger,” Verano said and Ralnor flicked a coin on the counter. He sent it spinning on the polished surface reaching a frowning Lena Verano’s side, before making a sharp turn and returning in the middle. The aged Lena put a hand on to stop it from spinning. “I take it traveler, you want more than a room?”

“Why traveler?”

“There’s a lot of road on that cape,” Lena Verano said still uncomfortable. “A touch of sea as well.”

“I can’t name the road, nor speak of the sea,” Ralnor replied, keeping his voice even. “Shades have no tongue and all dead sound alike.”

Lena Verano grimaced, as she’d checked on Oras coin while he talked and had her suspicions confirmed.

“To the Servants,” she croaked managing to add after a pause. “Of the Fading Light.”

Ralnor pushed his hood back and smiled showing her his sharp teeth.

“Goddess,” the mid-aged woman gasped and stepped back.

“Remain composed,” Ralnor urged her menacingly. “I just want information.”

Verano blinked. “About what?”

“An order came from the Horned Hen. Your birds Lena Verano,” he told her, hoping she wouldn’t collapse and make him lose even more time. “All the way to Rida they came. Quite the journey.”

“I didn’t… what order?” Verano gasped, turning paler than she’d been a moment before.

“A man was here from the Guild. Was he alone I wonder? Was she with him?”

“A man,” Verano crooked her mouth. “When was this?”

“In the summer. It was an ordeal to reach you,” Ralnor paused, before adding. “People died to pave the road.”

“I can’t give out names, you know that,” Verano protested, some of the makeup running down her eyes.

Mezera didn’t.

I’ve heard the name mentioned, she’d told him back in Altarin.

Are you the Fading Light?

“Robart Barlow,” Ralnor helped her to speed this along.

Verano nodded.

Hmm.

“But you saw him from afar,” Ralnor chanced. “The light,” he looked about them. “Was poor perhaps?”

The aged Lena stood up straighter realizing he was there for information. “There’s plenty of light inside the Horned Hen mister…?”

Ralnor was there for information she had it right to a point.

But what worked more in her favor was the fact that one doesn’t visit a well-stocked butcher, to ask for the meat of yesteryear.

“Call me Larn. You’ve touched my shadow in your past,” he said instead to reassure her.

It was never his stronger skill.

The woman stood back. “I’m fairly certain, I’ve never seen you before in my life, Larn.”

“A sage thing that you didn’t,” Ralnor agreed. “I never said you saw me. Now, about this Barlow… the one you definitely gazed upon?”

“Listen, I run the Guild’s brothel for thirty years. I know Barlow. I’ve met him over a score of times in that time. It was him,” Lena Verano insisted.

Yet, he wasn’t.

“Was he with someone else?”

“Lord Nattas, a good client for a time,” Verano replied.

Ah.

The plot thickens.

“You are friends with Lord Nattas?”

Verano smiled and there was some appeal there. “I’m friends with a lot of people,” Seeing that he wasn’t amused with her tease, she added. “I’ve helped during the riots.”

“What riots?”

“Haven’t you seen the Dome?”

What am I, some gullible religious fool or a tourist visiting the sights?

“Sightseeing wasn’t in my schedule,” Ralnor said soberly, his patience running thin.

“It’s half gone. They blew it up.”

“Who did? Lord Nattas?”

“No, those priests that were after him. After my girls,” Verano explained.

“The priests were after Lord Nattas? And your harlots? How did you help him?”

“They planned the whole thing here,” Verano paused and glanced at the coin still in her hands.

“There is something else there,” Ralnor decided. “You don’t care about Lord Nattas, but you are covering for someone. Who has Lord Nattas helping him?”

Lena Verano stared at him undecided. “I don’t know you.”

“But you know Barlow, who is fully dead for a good many years now.”

“I know what I saw… Larn.”

This is a problem.

Ralnor crooked his mouth, glanced at the empty inn and then at the covered windows.

“You had a girl working for you… it’s some time back. Years,” he started and Verano deflated at his words. “A smart girl, made quite the coin for you. Then she decided… killing was her calling. It’s a small trip I intended to make after we finish here, but just for the sake of expediency… is she here in Alden?”

Verano shook her head right and left.

“I haven’t seen her in a while,” she lied.

“Thank you,” Ralnor replied.

 

---

---

 

A dash and he stopped behind the messenger. The girl turned her head and glanced back, the clean soaped body not hiding the stench of decease flaring between her legs. Satisfied no one was following her, the harlot crossed the street heading for the central square and the Palace. She stopped three streets before reaching it and made a right heading east. Down a short alley and out in a bigger street, two removed from the Guardtower. The young whore stopped in front of a bakery, but didn’t get inside with Ralnor watching her from the rooftop he’d climbed up.

He thought the whore Lena Verano had dispatched to warn her former girl would enter it and made the climb preemptively. The whore though just stood there idle and looked directly across the street at a well-maintained two story apartment. All made out of finely-cut stone and red-brick finishing. Marble column decorations at the large and tall windows. The curtain moved on one and the whore below him on the street nodded and walked away.

Back to her mistress, the message delivered.

Ralnor groaned in frustration and stared at a pigeon sharing the spot not a meter from him. The small bird glanced at him with its small beady eyes nervously.

COO

The pigeon asked politely flapping its wings once.

“Thanks, I’ve room enough in my spot,” Ralnor replied. “Eh, unfortunately I got to climb the one across.”

COO

“Aye, it’s for a job.”

 

---

 

There was a young Issir girl watching the expensive house from a corner. She was well hidden inside the entrance of the side alley. Another Issir was standing with his back on a chimney, on the adjoining rooftop. A good spot to watch for anyone approaching from above, but Ralnor had gone past him with relative ease, once the darkness came over the city.

Being a patient chap, he’d taken his time earlier on the roof of the Bakery. Rested a bit and had his fill waiting for the day to end. There was some chill in the night air when it did, but Alden, while colder than other Lorian cities with the exception of Asturia, wasn’t that much colder than Rida.

With a soundless sigh Dar Eherdir moved silently across the tiled rooftop, reached the edge and climbed down. He paused next to one of the upper floor windows, his fingers dug at a crevice, the paste brittle above the cut stone and left leg on the protruding lip, the right touching the stone wall. He used his left hand to push the curtain away an inch. The room dark and empty when he entered it. A bedroom, the bed set but not slept in. A large one with a mosquito net frame built into it.

Dar Eherdir paused to listen for sounds, heard a soft half-whisper half-whistling tune coming from the next room. An office, its heavy door cracked open, with yellow light escaping from the narrow crevasse. He reached for his peleg, the steel throwing hatchet shaft slightly curved and its blade longer, with a small spike at its back end.

Dar Eherdir didn’t move for two full minutes. The spot he’d picked the darkest inside the bedroom, the light coming from the street and the half-opened door not reaching him.

You burn incense. I know where you are, he warned her.

But the Assassin didn’t move. Dar Eherdir made a silent step forward an eye on the door, the other on the seemingly empty bedroom with the open windows. He peeped through the crack the door left, caught sight of a mirror on the part of the wall that he could see. Part of a heavy office desk visible on its surface and half a window. Also open, this one facing the corner of the building. The soft breeze blew at the curtains and they moved, the black thin tube hanging from a thread moving along with them, its importance vague and mysterious.

To someone that had lived a normal lifetime.

Still brilliant.

Three times the curtains flapped gently, but nothing happened. The fourth the wind was stronger just a tad, the breeze catching the dancing thin tube at the right spot. In one way, out the other. The soft whistling sound brief and barely noticeable.

Dar Eherdir turned slowly around and stared at the window he’d entered. The frame lit up from the light coming from the street.

Not much, but still… it was a mistake.

The bed creaked a moment later, his patience rewarded.

There.

“Dear pupil of mine,” Dar Eherdir said evenly, while stepping back to his original position. “Let us talk.”

“Did you kill them?” Faerith K’lael asked and jumped down lithely.

“What for?” Ralnor snorted. “They are blind and deaf.”

“You killed Ni Sane,” Faerith K’lael hissed, wearing her lost in the trade youth’s skin.

Vanity.

“I did,” Ralnor replied and Maja thought about coming closer, then decided to keep those couple of meters of separation. “I killed him dead. He was slow as a tree,” the latter a play on her assassin’s name in Imperial.

Ate his liver and half a kilo of thigh flesh.

“Why?” She asked, her eyes on the peleg.

“I had given orders to leave Nattas in place.”

“A contract came up, the Mediator cleared it,” Maja was giving it her all to keep her voice low. “You killed him for that?”

“Nattas is against a war with the Khanate. He must stay put.”

“Why?” Maja queried, slowly regaining her composure. “What do you care about the war?”

Ah, the whore grew up into a proper assassin.

“Have you talked to him?” Ralnor asked instead.

“Nattas? That’s his house,” Maja said with a frown.

“You are planning another attack?” Ralnor asked changing the subject.

It was interesting she was in the dark, or is she pretending?

“I have already,” she said and pointed at the half-closed office door. “I’m about to get myself a drink. Are you going to put that away?”

“Once you turn your back,” came Ralnor’s retort. “I don’t want to get knifed whilst fiddling with the hook.”

“I’m opening the door,” Maja told him and pushed the door open. The office was empty of course.

“Nice touch with the whistle.”

“Did it work?” Maja asked tauntingly walking to the curtains and untying it. She slotted it down her bosom, after popping a button open on her tight leather top. “It’s for a hawk.”

“Nah, it didn’t. The open window put me on edge. Do you have a hawk?”

“Nah, I don’t,” Maja replied, walking to the table and opening a bottle of expensive wine, then filling two silver and glass goblets with it. “Thought I saw something moving outside, but I wasn’t sure.”

She slid one goblet on the desk towards him.

“I’m fine,” he said sending the goblet back.

“It’s not poison.”

“What did you use to kill Nattas?” Ralnor countered, knowing her love of all poisons.

“As you wish,” Maja yielded. “He got out of it unscathed. He’s very clever.”

“So now you work for him?” Ralnor asked looking around the spacious office.

“He asked for a Guild contract.”

“How did he find out about you? Plenty of Assassins in the Guild.”

Maja smacked her lips and stared at her cup.

“You told him,” Ralnor sighed. “What was the contract? Better yet, who wanted him out of the way?”

“Tsk-tsk, no you don’t.”

“Maja, I’ll offer something of worth in exchange,” Ralnor said.

“That’s not how it works.”

“That’s exactly how it works,” Ralnor countered.

“Says who?”

He glared at her and she puffed out exasperated.

“Let me hear the info first,” Maja hissed.

“Q’ Oluil,” Ralnor said evenly.

Maja’s blond eyebrows snapped up, creating wrinkles on her forehead.

“Q’ Lie Nwala’s pupil,” she said cautiously. “Why would you… Oras hells!” She gulped down the rest of her wine and placed the goblet back on the desk, next to the bottle. “Are they…”

“Oh, yes… very much so. I should have made it clear,” Ralnor explained.

“R’ Estel?” Maja asked nervously.

“An Issir woman? I’m afraid all hope is lost,” he replied, again word playing with the dead assassin’s name real meaning in Imperial.

Maja clenched her jaw.

“Now,” Ralnor said to prevent her from doing something idiotic. “You should know they attacked me. Why, it was an ambush really, but I take equal offense.”

The Leader of the Guild licked her lips, the soft tongue looking rather tasty, but Ralnor had eaten his fill already and wasn’t too distracted.

“Impossible,” she finally said. “Who gave the order?”

“At first I thought it was you,” Maja opened her mouth to deny it, but Ralnor stopped her placing a small scroll on the table. “You were in Altarin last winter.”

“No I wasn’t, who told you that?”

Hmm.

“Dean Kutas.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Runs the Golden Bird inn. Your Guild owns it,” Ralnor explained patiently.

“Since when? Wait that’s… Kise, yeah,” Maja said after a thoughtful pause, looking troubled. “Nothing happens in Altarin.”

“Kise is dead. This Dean Kutas took his place and mentioned you to a pupil of mine, unfortunately deceased now. That’s the second I lose in quick succession.”

“I hope Zestari was the other,” Maja deadpanned. “What? She was a bitch and trust me, I know bitches.”

“You weren’t in Altarin, Dean Kutas lied,” Ralnor droned summing it up with a crook of his mouth.

“Apparently,” Maja said. “I’ll have him checked out at some point.”

“You should get rid of him outright,” Ralnor snapped.

“Or that… sure,” Maja agreed.

Damn it.

“As I said,” he hissed, not liking being made a fool and led in circles. “At first I thought it was you.”

The female assassin frowned and opened the scroll.

“That’s Verano’s sign on the missive,” Maja said after she read the scroll he’d taken off the dead assassin. “The Horned Hen.”

“I talked with her.”

“I know,” Maja said reaching for the bottle again. She seemed at ease around Lord Nattas’ belongings. You can take a harlot out of the brothel trade but you can’t take the trade out of the harlot. “I meant that I knew someone was looking for me.”

Yes dear, but still you failed.

“She claims Barlow was there,” he told her.

Maja raised her head. “So what?”

“You’ve seen him as well then?”

“Not in person here, but the Lena knows him best.”

“Maja, ah… Lord Nattas talked with him?” Ralnor asked very frustrated.

“He did. Barlow pointed him the right way, since I was out of the city. You know the drill,” Maja replied looking at his face.

The closest Servant gets the notice.

“Nothing else?”

“What else Larn? What are you looking for? Obviously you are not here for me.”

“Robart Barlow can’t be in Alden, or anywhere else Maja. The man’s dead for years.”

Maja thought about it for a moment. “Ah, no way… how many years?”

“Seven. I’ve seen his body. It was him. As dead as one can be.”

Maja pushed away from the desk and walked to the window, stared silently outside for a while.

“Verano knows him well. She introduced us. I’ve seen him at least five times since and Lord Nattas met with him while she was present. She wouldn’t lie to me. You are mistaken,” she said finally.

“She didn’t lie but she was wrong. The man fell from his horse. Some animal or other spooked it in Colle. Predators worked on the corpse before he was found. I’ve seen his face. It was him.”

“What were you doing in Colle?” Maja asked turning around.

“It’s irrelevant.”

“An impostor is the Guild’s Mediator?” Maja inquired, making it sound absurd.

“If we are lucky,” Ralnor retorted.

“How the fuck do you manage to still freak me out after all these years?” Maja hissed with a grimace. “What does that even mean? Oras curse ye! I felt a shiver right through my kidneys!”

“I believe you owe me a name, dear pupil. Who gave the order to take Lord Nattas out?” Ralnor asked calmly, unperturbed by her hysterics.

“The same who ordered the attack on the ‘Virgins Wedding’,” Maja replied, the grimace turning into a scowl. “That priest, fanatic… whatever.”

“The priests were behind it?”

“Not a Priest of the Five,” Maja said crooking her jaw, the youthful mask cracking. “Some other old god. It’s why I’m helping Nattas.”

Oras serves no other God and no other people.