Beneath Ceaseless Skies #189 Read online

  Issue #189 • Dec. 24, 2015

  “A Killer of Dead Men,” by David Tallerman

  “So Strange the Trees,” by James Lecky

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  A KILLER OF DEAD MEN

  by David Tallerman

  Otranto knew better than to ask why any man must die.

  Yet in the case of Vixara Ixar, it was a simple enough question to answer. For Vixara was young, handsome, rich and growing richer by the day and, even if all of those offences could have been ignored by the populace of Cold Harbour, a visitor from a distant land that few could so much as pronounce. He and his family were different, in a city that tolerated difference only dimly.

  In so much as Otranto had an opinion on the matter, he felt that such were poor reasons to take a life. It didn’t matter. A deal had been struck, a payment made, and so Vixara Ixar would die today.

  Otranto had watched them ride out before, from his perch in the forest that bordered Cold Harbour on its eastern side: Vixara, his sister Vixalla, and their entourage, all impossibly graceful in the saddle. They were a curious people, Otranto had to admit. Strange in their appearance—their features small and somehow inchoate, their skin a shade of grey that should have been dull and was in fact lustrous—and strange in their habits. Every day they set out, not hunting, merely trotting along the forest pathways, and always by the same route. Nobles of Cold Harbour, routinely suspecting their lives to be in jeopardy, would never have made it so easy for a potential assassin. For every resident of that ancient city understood that, more than trade, more than fishing or whaling, assassination was Cold Harbour’s foremost industry.

  Having for five days studied the Ixar’s route, Otranto had picked his spot for the sixth. There was an area where the trees and brush thinned, and there Vixara liked to put his horse to the gallop. It was something else no wise citizen of Cold Harbour would have considered, since for a matter of a half-minute it took him out of view of his bodyguards.

  An entire half minute. Some jobs, truly, were too easy.

  This time, Otranto had chosen to wait amidst the lower branches of a stocky, overarching cedar. He heard Vixara before he saw him, first as the merest tremble and then as a rising drum beat, which reverberated through the trees. Then Vixara hove into view, galloping at full force across the sparsely wooded ground. Close to Otranto’s position he began to rein in, at a point where the path was besieged on both sides by shocks of fern; he bobbed upon his mount’s back with the effortless grace of the expert horseman, guiding smoothly around one curve and another. However at the last he picked up speed once more, thrilling at one final stretch of straight and level ground that ended in a narrow gap between two mottled trunks—and the trip-cord Otranto had rigged there.

  Whatever poise Vixara possessed, it was for nothing when his horse’s forelegs crumpled beneath it. Vixara had been riding bareback, according to his people’s fashion. With nothing to hold him in place, he was flung forward like a shot from a cannon and on into the foliage that hemmed the path before him.

  Otranto had judged the cord’s height with care, so as to minimize the risk of harming Vixara’s mount. Too, it was composed not from metal but fine rope wound from the fibers of a broad-leaved local plant, strong enough not to break but sufficiently pliable so as to leave no mark. The imperatives of his contract aside, no one had paid him for the beast’s life, and he was gratified to see it climb dazedly back to its feet.

  Otranto dropped to the ground. With a single swift gesture he cut one knot free and began coiling the cord as he dashed to the second tree to slit the second. Vixara, in the meantime, was struggling to rise. It was evident from the way his left arm drooped that it was badly fractured. Even as he saw Otranto, even as his eyes fell upon the small, serrated blade Otranto held, he seemed more confused than fearful. The puzzlement in Vixara’s expression only deepened when Otranto slid the knife back into its sheath; he could not know, as Otranto did, how ill-suited such a blade was to the taking of a life.

  Vixara began to speak but stopped when Otranto placed gloved hands upon him; one gently cupping his chin, the other at the point where neck and shoulder met. For a moment they stared at each other, the killer and the condemned. Otranto, whose memory was flawless, made himself absorb every detail of that stricken face: the soft-contoured cheek bones, fine black hair, wide-set eyes with irises the shade of slate, and the delicate nose broken once at its apex and carefully reset. All of this he committed to memory, as was his duty. Then he wrenched. Knowing the precise pressure points as he did, it took only a calculated application of his strength. Vixara’s neck broke with a clean crack.

  As those grey eyes faded into lifelessness, Otranto lowered Vixara’s body face first upon the already-crumpled bracken and began once more to run. By the time he had ducked behind a bank of foliage he could already hear the sound of approaching hooves.

  From his concealment, Otranto considered the scene he’d left and decided that it was satisfactory. The ideal assassination looked like an accident, yet an accident that could never have occurred. Like the melodramatic seascapes that hung in the merchant halls, it mirrored reality even while exceeding it. Vixara might have been thrown from his horse, fallen badly, broken his neck. But he hadn’t—and they would know.

  It was Vixalla Ixar, Vixara’s sister, who was first to arrive. Otranto watched as she absorbed details, one by one: the panicked horse, the scuffed ground, the shattered ferns and the expensive leather riding boots that protruded, their angle alone sufficient to imply what she must already be fearing. Vixalla dismounted and hurried to where her brother lay, and even at a distance Otranto could see how her features contorted. Then, to his surprise, she glanced up. He had rarely seen such utter desolation in a human face. Her dark eyes scoured the woodland thereabout, and for an instant it seemed that they even fell upon his hiding place. Had she already suspected the truth?

  But the moment passed. Vixalla slid to her knees beside the corpse of her brother, hid her graceful, grief-contorted features behind hands fine as sparrow’s wings. The wail that escaped her lips was awful to hear.

  Finally the Ixars’ entourage was arriving, half a dozen horsemen in identical livery of palest blue and silver. It was time for Otranto to leave, via the route he had painstakingly prepared.

  Perhaps they would think to search for him. They would not find him.

  * * *

  Meetings with the guild High Brothers were a privilege Otranto had long ago come to find more dreary than edifying. He knew, without pride, that he was a master of his craft, a killer almost without compare, and there was no more pleasure left in hearing those accolades from the mouths of others. These days their encounters bore the character of a ritual, compliments and feigned modesty exchanged without enthusiasm from either party.

  This time, however, Otranto’s summons came late in the evening of the next day, a circumstance unusual enough to rouse in him the faintest unease. Nevertheless, he hurried through the lamplit streets, hood drawn well up, and when he arrived at the guild hall—a nondescript door in a nondescript street—knocked a dozen times in precise pace and rhythm. A narrow hatch opened, Otranto discreetly held up his left hand to reveal the tattooed glyph on that wrist, and the door swung open.

  Within, Otranto was led through narrow passageways to a room on the second floor. It was customary to be kept waiting, as a means of emphasizing the careful order of things within the House of Dusk. Thus, Otranto was surprised when he saw a man sat waiting, and more so when he recognized Argen Spiria. Spiria was most senior of the High Brothers, and Otranto had rarely had
cause to speak to him, for he’d long since retired from the House’s day-to-day business.

  So something was amiss after all.

  “Otranto,” said Spiria, his voice a gritty rasp, “you are the finest craftsman in all the House of Dusk—which is the greatest gathering of killers in all Cold Harbour, and so in all the world.”

  Ah... this was more familiar. It was to be the usual hyperbolic praise after all, and Otranto tried to form a suitably unassuming reply.

  “For this reason,” continued Spiria, “what would be disappointing from another is a thousand times more so from you: your failure has brought shame on all of us, Otranto Osario.”

  Something in Otranto’s stomach turned cold. It was the word failure, he realized—that word he dreaded over any other. “Master,” he said, with calm he didn’t feel, “Vixara Ixar is dead. I killed him with my own hands, witnessed his last moment with my own eyes.”

  “Ixar is not dead,” Spiria hissed, “Ixar is quite alive. At this moment, he is taking cocktails at Oegel’s Theatre of Revels, awaiting tonight’s late performance of The Dragon’s Mistresses—and his presence has been confirmed by our own agents, amongst many others. You failed us, Otranto, even knowing that the rules of our house brook no failure.”

  There was no use in arguing; the High Brothers could not be contradicted. “It would appear so, Master.”

  “And what should be the punishment for your failure?”

  Otranto didn’t hesitate. On some level, he realized, he had been anticipating this moment, or one like it, for a very long time. “The punishment for failure should be death by my own hand.”

  “It should,” agreed Spiria, with a tone like cold iron. “However... the fact remains that you are our best operative. Understand: you are not irreplaceable, for none of us is. But you’re valuable, and you’ve served us more than well in the past. Therefore, Otranto, you will have one more opportunity to extinguish Ixar’s life. This is all I can grant you and more than you deserve.”

  More, too, than I’d ask for, Otranto thought. He had lived by the guild rules for so long that the idea of breaking them seemed anathema. Still... he had fulfilled his contract, as fully as any man might.

  “Thank you, High Brother,” he said, “for your generosity.”

  “You have no reason to thank me,” said Spiria. “Unless you can perform miracles, I’ve extended your life by a mere few hours. Because the client dictates that it must be tonight, Otranto. At Oegel’s. Before an audience. This time, Cold Harbour must see Vixara Ixar die.”

  * * *

  Otranto planned while he ran.

  He didn’t fear death—or not in the way that most men might. After all, it was essential to his profession that his head be always in the lion’s jaws. At any rate, Otranto wasn’t hurrying because his life was on the line. He was hurrying because he had a contract to fulfill, and its terms required speed.

  How was it possible Vixara Ixar had survived? Otranto had heard of men recovering from the most outlandish injuries, of grave-caskets opened only to reveal the frantic marks of fingernails gouged within their lids. Perhaps whatever people the Ixars belonged to, their dissimilarities went beyond mere customs and appearance; perhaps their anatomy was different as well. Yes, though it was exceptionally unlikely, it was possible. And ultimately it made no difference. Whatever the unique difficulties its subject might pose, Otranto once again had his contract to fulfill.

  He ran north-east first, over the rooftops. One thing was certain: he would need equipment beyond the ordinary. Public assassinations were always a hazardous gamble, and the odds became all the less favorable in an open space like Oegel’s. Add in the fact that the intended victim was surely forewarned and the probabilities in Otranto’s favor shrunk to a sum that only a madman would consider gambling upon.

  Otranto returned to his home first, a garret apartment in one of the seedier portions of Cold Harbour. There he discarded his cloak for a close-cut outfit of black cotton velvet over a vest and guards of finest chainmail, and filled a pack and certain pockets with the items he’d determined he would need. Then Otranto set out again across the roofs, this time in the direction of Oegel’s. By his estimation, The Dragon’s Mistresses would already have finished its first act.

  Otranto had previously scouted Oegel’s Theatre of Revels, as he’d made himself familiar with all of Cold Harbour’s landmarks. He scurried across the thickened glass roof, careful that the moon should not cast his shadow into the gaslit gloom below, and found the access hatch where he remembered it. Otranto descended the ladder beneath, to find himself in the rafters of the playhouse.

  The noise rising beneath him was overwhelming. From the stage, the actors were bellowing to make themselves heard over the audience’s laughter. It was the part where the dragon—played by Vincenz Lisparo, if Otranto’s ear didn’t deceive—discovered that his two mistresses were themselves lovers, and the actor’s tone was appropriately strident. With each line the crowd’s hysteria rose, until it seemed that they and Lisparo were locked in a duel where mutual deafness was the goal.

  All to the good. Oegel’s might not offer much in the way of cover, but it held more than its share of distractions.

  Otranto crouched to gaze down into the theatre, waiting as his eyes adjusted between the gloom of the rafters and the brightness of the stage. His keen gaze quickly sought out Vixara Ixar, seated, as Otranto had expected, in the box Oegel kept reserved for visiting foreign dignitaries. It was as much insult as compliment, for the Ixars had lived in the city for six months now; but there would have been uproar had Oegel allocated them another box, and Vixara appeared happy enough, even if his careful smile was a mile from the cacophonous jollity around him.

  At any rate, Otranto thought, he appeared very much alive and his neck very much unbroken.

  Behind Vixara sat his sister Vixalla, her elegant features set not in anguish, as when Otranto had last seen her, but in studied pleasure echoing her brother’s—though she could hardly have seen the stage from the seat she’d chosen. Around them stood five men who could only be bodyguards; they had the same somewhat flattened features as the Ixars, the same dark, lustrous eyes and unforced grace, and they also all wore swords conspicuously at their hips.

  That was to be expected. The element of surprise was lost—but not, Otranto hoped, irretrievably.

  He scurried to the place he’d picked out, hooked his grapnel to a beam above and placed the remainder of the rope on the rafter before him. Then he slipped on the mask he’d brought, an oval of deepest black covering all except his eyes.

  They were at the point in which the dragon confronted his wife about her infidelities, only to be resoundingly scolded for his own. Though Otranto had little interest in such things, he knew that the scene was legendarily funny. He chose his moment carefully: a line delivered by Lisparo with perfect comic bathos left the crowd in paroxysms of delight. As the laughter swelled, Otranto nudged the rope free, grasped it with both hands, and slid down.

  Nearing the Ixars’ box, Otranto gripped tight to slow his descent and instead flung his weight forward. Letting go, he landed neatly upon the balustrade. In the same instant—and even as Vixara’s eyes widened with shock—he slipped a tiny globe from a pocket and dashed it to the floor. Immediately, thick clouds of purple smoke engulfed them both. Before anyone could react, Otranto had lunged forward, and then the blade now in his hand was buried hilt-deep in Vixara’s throat.

  It was an ugly way to kill a man. This time, though, Otranto needed to be utterly certain. He twisted the blade, once, twice, felt blood bubble beneath his fingers.

  He waited long enough to be sure that Vixara could not possibly have survived—and long enough, too, for Vixara’s bodyguards to begin to react. Then Otranto kicked hard against the balustrade behind, propelling both himself and Vixara to the floor. As Vixara’s chair and its lifeless passenger crashed against the boards, Otranto somersaulted free.

  Through the already-clearing smoke he
could see that Ixar’s men had done exactly as he’d anticipated. Three had moved to gather round their master’s seat—or rather, where it had been a moment before—whilst the remaining two, more enterprising or perhaps only pessimistic, had chosen to block what they’d imagined to be Otranto’s escape route, pressing closer to the balustrade and the rope that dangled there.

  Only one person had accurately anticipated Otranto’s next move. Vixalla Ixar was not looking at her brother, nor at the dark pool already spreading towards her feet. Her eyes, showing nothing this time but unmitigated hatred, were fixed upon Otranto crouched before her—as was the delicate single-shot crossbow she held outstretched in one hand.

  It was not the trinket of a noble that Otranto might have mistaken it for at a glance. Though its compact form limited its function, he had no doubt of its lethality at such close range. And he had no time to consider. She would expect him to flee for the booth’s entrance, or to attack; therefore he could do neither.

  Otranto sprang back, instead, towards the balustrade. Three of the bodyguards were heading for where he’d just been, once again a step behind him. All they served to do to was to impede their mistress’s shot. That, however, still left the two who’d moved in the direction of Otranto’s dangling rope and the escape route he’d originally rejected. A kick against the upraised leg of the chair that had until moments before seated Vixara Ixar flipped it into Otranto’s grasp, and he flung it at them with all his strength, forcing them to dodge aside. Then he hurled himself after the chair—and into empty air.

  Even as he began to fall, even over the screams that met the chair’s inevitable collision with the seats below, Otranto heard the crossbow’s distinctive click. Vixalla, disregarding of her bodyguards’ lives or else certain of her aim, had fired after all. Pain lashed through Otranto’s wrist, and for an instant he was certain his fingers would fail to close upon the rope. What grip he managed felt tenuous, unsustainable. He swung out helplessly into the auditorium and caught a sickening glimpse of players and audience below, all of their too-small faces turned towards him.