Beneath Ceaseless Skies #128 Read online

  Issue #128 • Aug. 22, 2013

  “Ill-Met at Midnight,” by David Tallerman

  “The Clay Farima,” by Henry Szabranski

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  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  ILL-MET AT MIDNIGHT

  by David Tallerman

  Otranto clenched the garrote, leaned back some ten degrees, sucked in and held a sharp, chill breath of night air.

  What surprised him most—and much about this situation seemed remarkable—was that his target seemed actually to understand what was happening. Most people tried to peel at the cord, to pry it free. The impossibility of success, the fact that they were actually assisting their own strangulation, never even occurred to them.

  This one, however, had gone straight for Otranto’s hands. Not only that, they’d dug a nail deep into the joint between his fingers and thumb, where the flesh was most tender. Otranto had had to choke back a bark of pain. Since the advantage was entirely his, he’d put the pain aside—though not without difficulty.

  The garrote was made of fine silk laced with steel wire, designed to choke bloodlessly. Its ends were looped to small grips of cherry wood. He’d crafted it himself over a period of three weeks, designing for speed and efficacy. Still, the target was thrashing hard enough that the smooth handles were biting his palms. Otranto drew harder.

  Normally when a victim began to slacken he would release his grip. This time, Otranto determined to hold on for a full thirty seconds. At the twentieth, the figure in his grip began to buck again, their last sly breath exhausted, and Otranto allowed himself a brief, grim smile.

  When they went limp for the second time, he felt confident the job was done. He span his hands in a deft whirl, not only sliding the garrote free but looping it ready to slip onto the clasp at his belt. Sure enough, the smack with which the target struck the paving slabs confirmed that they were past the point of deception.

  Still... something wasn’t right. Any number of things weren’t right.

  With eyes conditioned for darkness, Otranto scanned the nearby hedgerows. Not so much as a stem twitched in the low breeze. Satisfied, he hefted the body by its shoulders and drew it into the shadow of the outer wall, which less than a minute ago he’d been silently climbing over. He rolled the corpse onto its back and stepped back.

  If he’d hoped for answers, he was disappointed. If he’d been wanting more questions, on the other hand....

  Guards didn’t commonly dress only in black—or if they did, it wasn’t without some mark of livery, some insignia. Guards traditionally carried swords, sometimes longbows, but never in his experience anything like the compact crossbow sheathed against this one’s hip. Guards, also, were invariably male. On the rare occasions they weren’t, the perceptible differences were so scarce as to be considered similarities. Nothing like this frail raven-haired girl, whose beauty had been marred by violent death but not erased.

  “What in the nine bright hells is going on?” Otranto muttered, though it broke at least two tenets of his code to speak without good reason whilst on contract.

  He crouched back into the shadow of the outer wall, scanned the shrubberies and trees until he felt comfortably certain he was alone, and then allowed himself to consider. Since the beginning, there’d been much that had struck him as strange about this assignment.

  First, there had been the imbursement, which was extreme—a sum a man might retire on. Second had been its manner of payment. Normally, one received a portion up front, never quite half, rarely less than a quarter. On this occasion, compensation depended entirely on completion. He would never have agreed, not so much as considered, were it not for the eye-catching nature of the amount.

  Third were the instructions. Not a name, as was usual. Rather, a message, so precise and yet so vague that he’d had no choice but to commit it exactly to memory: Go to the fountain at the center of the pleasure gardens, and slay the one you find there at precisely the hour of midnight. Beware of any who cross your path, and take care to defend yourself.

  Again, he might have rejected the assignment for that alone, were it not for the money, and even then he’d have thought twice. The guild High Brothers, however, their aged eyes stuck fast upon the percentage share they’d take as brokers, had made it clear that this obligation would be settled, however odd it might seem, and that only their most brilliant artisan should dare attempt it.

  No surprise there, for it was a long time since money had flowed easily into the House of Dusk. Now a dozen guilds vied for the work of one in the city of Cold Harbor, and coin was at a premium. Otranto couldn’t blame the high brothers if they’d developed an eye for gold, any more than he could blame himself. Things were difficult where they’d once been easy and the idea of retirement, once an unimaginable impossibility, held more appeal than he dared admit.

  So here he was—and his options were limited indeed. His oath as a guild brother bound him: either settle the target or, in the name of honor, formally immolate himself, an option that held no appeal at all.

  Otranto glanced once more around what little he could make out of the pleasure gardens. The vast grounds, located far enough from the dockside and the center of the city to maintain an air of quietude even during the busiest portions of the day, should not have been guarded, especially not at this hour. They were open to the public, at least those of the public well-off enough not to look out of place there. Here, as in most cases, the codes of society asserted themselves without the aid of sharpened steel, and the inconsiderately poverty-stricken kept a wide berth. Unless something had changed recently—and Otranto’s meticulous research said it hadn’t—he should not have encountered anyone besides the occasional trysting pair of late-night lovers.

  Young lovers did not commonly carry crossbows, nor dress entirely in black. Another mystery, on a night already sick with them. “No choice,” Otranto murmured, for it struck him that there was no use in adhering to a rule once broken. “No choice but onwards.”

  He summoned up the map of the pleasure gardens he’d consigned to memory. He had purposefully entered on the northern side, where the foliage was dense, rather than from one of the more sculpted edges. To his left was a neat avenue of orange trees, to his right a region of interlocking water features; but ahead were shrubberies and stands of high grass, a veritable excess of cover.

  It had seemed the only logical route, when he’d studied the plans in his secluded garret room above the Knife and Spindle. Now, that unarguable logic filled him with unease. What was obvious to him would be obvious to others.

  Otranto sprung to the shadow of a statue, two entwined women carved in the classical style, and from there to a neat corner of hedgerow. He took the barest moment to make sure his senses had registered no change—everything was as it had been, no unexpected noise or scent had stirred his senses—and then darted round the hedgerow to the slim shadow of a raised flowerbed and on to a display of miniaturized trees.

  Nothing struck him as unordinary. Yet—for all that he saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing—his senses strained like a mad dog at its leash. He pushed his face a little way into the moonlight. It went against all his training and his every instinct, but he had to find out what was setting off his mental alarums....

  The faintest tremble in the air—and something stung Otranto’s throat.

  It felt like an insect bite. He knew better. With extreme care, Otranto drew out the barb with the nails of thumb and forefinger, held it to his nostrils. Around the tinny scent of blood were other odors: bitter lemon, copper, a foul undercurrent of rancid butter.

  Black Ovid venom. Rare. Ex
pensive. Invariably, fatal within a minute.

  Thank all the gods.

  Otranto feigned limpness—though it was only partially an act, for he could already feel the poison going to work—and staggered to his knees, keeping his back to where he judged his unseen foe to be. His fingers dipped within one of the pouches at his waist, the fifth to the left of his buckle, and drew out a few strands of red-orange fiber. These he slipped between his lips, chewed thrice, swallowed, and Otranto finished by tumbling onto his front, taking care that his right hand fell beneath his waist.

  The lugweed would neutralize the poison coursing through his veins, though he’d have the grandmother of all headaches in the morning—if he should live that long.

  A professional would check their kill. A true specialist would follow the dart with something more definite, preferably from a safe distance. Which was he dealing with? He strained his ears; could just make out footsteps in the wet grass. A good sign. The soft swish, swish drew nearer, clearer.

  Noisy and overconfident. Better and better.

  Still, neither guaranteed stupidity. They might be aiming a bow or readying a knife this very instant. Then again, more than a minute had passed; by rights, Otranto should be dead. Sure enough, the footsteps continued their approach. Otranto tried to map the sound over his recollection of the surroundings. Weren’t they passing those tall purple flowers now, coming from his left? Closer... a little closer....

  Otranto rolled onto his back and flicked his wrist, with all the deft grace of a temple dancer. The number three knife he’d drawn from his belt sliced the air with a thin whistle, ended its journey in the mark’s left eye.

  A lucky throw. He’d been aiming for their throat. Still, not bad for the circumstances.

  Otranto was on his feet and under the mark before they could hit the ground. They were unexpectedly light, like a man-sized puppet carved from worm-eaten wood. With his right hand he retrieved the throwing knife, wiped it on the target’s sleeve, and replaced it in his belt. Then, more from habit than practicality, he hauled up the target’s body and tipped it into the stand of miniature trees.

  When he went to tuck in their straggling limbs, he realized something strange, something that explained why the body had been so light. The man was startlingly frail and deathly pale to match, little more than a bag of jutting bones sheathed in ivory skin.

  Otranto had a feeling he should know this victim. Try as might, though, he couldn’t say from where.

  Anyway, was that word, victim, really applicable here? Wasn’t it he himself who’d been the mark? Were it not for his exceptional preplanning and a large element of good fortune, he would be the one being left here as fertilizer.

  At the thought, Otranto felt his stomach lurch, and foulness bubbled into his mouth from his suddenly roiling innards. He paced to the cluster of towering purple flowers and vomited. That was the lugweed doing its work; both it and the venom came up in a shower of whitish filth. The taste was bitterly acidic, but he felt better for it. His head seemed clearer.

  He was exposed, standing in the open; but if anyone had been watching, he’d already be dead. Otranto would have liked to pause a moment, to consider the new evidence provided by his mysterious attacker. There was no time. Midnight was fast approaching, and his carelessness had already tempted fate enough. Stealth might not have been yielding many dividends tonight, but that was no reason to abandon it altogether.

  His assailant had come from the direction of the avenue of orange trees. He’d dismissed that route before, but now his intuition said otherwise. Otranto scurried to the dark line of trunks, abandoning his usual poise in favor of moving fast and low. He tucked himself behind the bole of the first tree that he met and glanced to left and right. Now he understood. The foliage was quite dense at this time of year, laden with globular fruit and thick with shadows. Moreover, if his assailant had approached by this route, then there was a chance their poison darts had already cleared it of threats. He could see no bodies, but then he wouldn’t have expected to.

  Otranto would never normally have dreamt of following anything as prosaic as a road. Perhaps in this case, though, the direct route was the best. Flitting from tree to tree, shrouded in the sharp tang of ripe oranges, he made up much of the time he’d already lost.

  Sure enough, he reached the end of the avenue without anything else setting his mental alarms clanging. It wasn’t long, however, before common sense demanded he change his route once again. The entire center of the pleasure gardens was given over to a high-walled maze, decorated with statues and topiary to maintain the amusement of the easily bored on the way to Otranto’s own current objective—the elegant fountain at the labyrinth’s center.

  At the point where the road met the maze, it became a steadily diminishing triangle, designed both as easy access for the witless and as a clever optical illusion. From this point, the impression was of a track contracting to the horizon between two walls of even height; in fact, the walls became lower as the road narrowed, and the distant opening was only a short walk away.

  It was also an ideal ambush point. Maybe the usual rules weren’t entirely reliable tonight, but that final narrow gap still stank like a waterlogged corpse.

  After a moment’s thought, Otranto chose instead to scamper to and then up onto the wall. It was smooth and sheer, and more than half his height again, but Otranto’s speed and agility disgraced the most nimble feline. He swung the last distance and rolled flat, to lie pressed along the narrow summit. It was a good point for both vantage and defense—even if the labyrinth’s designers would likely have considered the strategy unscrupulous.

  Once Otranto had confirmed to his satisfaction that there was no one nearby, he shifted to a crouch and began to pick out a path towards the fountain, visible now as a jutting spume of white. Just as he’d expected, the maze was considerably less of a challenge from this elevation.

  Otranto was about to leap to the opposite wall when a flicker of movement caught his attention. It was the barest flash, and only his years of experience allowed him to find the point—the deep purple shadows behind a risqué statue of two boys embracing—and then to extrapolate where the figure, if figure it had been, was headed: an enclosed clearing, from which three petrified women stared back. Sure enough, something disappeared through an archway, just ahead of his roving eyes. He caught only the slightest glimpse, but both Otranto’s night vision and his memory were exceptional, and he felt certain it had been a foot and the black-clad calf of a leg.

  Otranto hopped lithely to the next wall, keeping low. He landed without a sound, balance-walked to the end and around a corner, and leaped another gap, all the while keeping his perceptions focused on where he expected the figure to appear. Brief hints of motion confirmed his suppositions. He continued along a spoke of labyrinth wall, compensating for the slight decrease in height that made possible the optical illusion of the entrance.

  Another jump and he found himself almost at the fountain, near enough to note its vapor moistening the air. He could make out every detail of its elegantly engraved blue marble basin, could almost read the engravings round the rims of the four moondials sat at each corner.

  A noise, then, from the farther side and on the very edge of hearing: a ringing clink, as of metal against glazed pot. It didn’t strike him as a deliberate sound; more the kind one might carelessly make whilst hiding. Regardless, the upturned cone of water hid him impenetrably from that side of the clearing. Otranto bounded across one last gap and slipped down the wall into the band of darkness at its base.

  Something sharp and very cold brushed his throat. “Make no sudden moves,” said a voice from beside him. “If I wanted you dead, you would be. Still. My wants have been known to change.”

  “My left hand is already at my knife-belt,” said Otranto. “You have no way to kill me so quickly that I wouldn’t at least wound you.”

  “Then perhaps we should consider a brief period of truce. Before one of us does something we
might both regret.”

  His assailant didn’t wait for an answer. Suddenly the blade was gone from Otranto’s throat. Otranto backed off three quick steps, considered drawing a weapon; decided against it. Though his response had been far from braggadocio, it was true that if this mysterious attacker wanted him dead, then he would unquestionably now be dead.

  The other man had retreated also. Now he stood a half-dozen paces away, balancing the thin-bladed knife by its tip on the palm of his hand, smiling a smile at once engaging and sinister—as if to say, I could pin your skull to the wall there with hardly a thought if I so chose.

  It came as a surprise to Otranto to realize he recognized this man—though given the strangeness of the night’s events so far, not a great surprise. Indeed, there were few men Otranto knew better; in a sense they were more akin than any two brothers. Yet until now, their entire association had been through reputation and rumor.

  “Otranto Onsario, of the House of Dusk,” the other man greeted him. Recognition, it seemed, ran both ways. “An artist, in the truest sense of the word. Your handling of the Garmine brothers was a portrait of dexterity and restraint.”

  “Jofus Klint,” returned Otranto, “who they call the Red Teardrop. Most skilful artisan of the Chamber of Tears. You do me more than justice. Lord Convolluci’s dispatch was your work, was it not? They said it was an accident, but I never believed it.”

  “Ha! Perceptive as I’d expect. I doubt we’ve been brought here at this midnight hour to admire each other’s craftsmanship, though, however deserved. Would I be right in surmising you’re here on a contract, one exact in every detail but the name of its intended target?”

  “Precisely right,” agreed Otranto. Most of his mind was observing Klint, noting each tiny movement, cataloguing details of musculature, hunting for the telltale bulges of further weapons—but what was left was more than capable of banter. “I fear we’ve been the victims of a hoax... or of something substantially worse.”