Beneath Ceaseless Skies #189 Read online

  It was that, perhaps, that saved him. He was not prepared to die like this; would not allow his life’s conclusion be the pathetic highpoint of a comic play. And somehow he clung on, just long enough for momentum to carry him back towards the Ixar’s box. Judging his moment, he let go, fell more than leapt, and landed with all the grace he could muster on the balustrade of the box below. He hesitated for the fraction of a second it took to recover his balance—which was also long enough to register the expressions of horrified astonishment upon the faces of the corpulent lord and lady gaping up at him. Then Otranto was springing easily over their heads, pushing indelicately through the curtain at the back.

  He turned left in the corridor beyond, ignoring signs that declared the next area forbidden to patrons. He flung himself down a flight a stairs, dashed through a darkened area filled with painted scenery and bric-a-brac and, ignoring also the startled cries of stage hands, hurried on through another curtain, into dazzling artificial light.

  The cast were frozen in tableau, their memories of the script apparently not extending to a brutal assassination or to the perpetrator arriving upon the stage. Otranto disregarded them, rushed on. Before he could reach the farther curtain, however—beyond which he knew a ladder led back to the safety of the rafters—a cry rose from the auditorium, loud enough to overrule the general panic.

  “He’s alive! Ixar’s alive!”

  Otranto, against every instinct for survival he possessed, could not help but look. And there, sure enough—in his box, surrounded by his blank-faced guards—stood Vixara Ixar: unmarked, unscarred, not so much as a graze upon his ashen skin.

  Ixar was alive. It was impossible. Yet somehow, again, Otranto had failed.

  There would be no second chance tonight. Even he couldn’t kill from the stage of a theatre in which every man, woman and child was alerted to his presence.

  Otranto turned and fled.

  * * *

  Escape was little challenge, for no one made a concerted attempt to impede him. They were stunned, as he’d known they’d be—but not, as he’d hoped, by his remarkable feats of prowess. No, those who knew enough to guess the identity of the assassin who’d struck so daringly beneath the bright lights of Oegel’s would be speaking the name Otranto Onsario for entirely different reasons tonight.

  Once he was well clear, Otranto inspected his injured wrist. As he’d thought, his bracer had deflected the worst of the impact, leaving only a purple welt of bruising. Still, he could not but be impressed at Vixalla Ixar’s aim, which had come so close to ending his career forever. Truly the Ixars were a formidable pair; if Otranto should live so long, he would be careful not to underestimate them again.

  That if, however, was a significant one. This time, Otranto didn’t go home. He went instead to a safe house he had rented under a false identity—or rather, a safe attic, since the remainder of the building was occupied by numerous poor families of a type not inclined to pay undue attention. Otranto, who refused to indulge in paranoia for its own sake, made a check of the traps and alarms he’d set. Finding them undisturbed, he settled down to sleep, determined that the fact of a few master-assassins set upon ending his life should not deprive him of a crucial night’s rest.

  If the High Brothers knew of this location then nothing he could do would save him. If they didn’t, it was useless to waste energy on worry. Tomorrow he must kill Vixara Ixar for a third and a final time, and he must do so without revealing himself in the meantime—for there was every chance that Otranto’s own brethren were already hunting him by now.

  * * *

  Otranto woke with the dawn, disappointed to find himself feeling hardly rested. No strength of mind could have protected him from the dreams that had troubled his night. The one image he recollected was of Vixara Ixar’s face, smiling though blood streamed freely from his throat. In the nightmare, Otranto had known that that smile was meant only for him, and that it was a covenant between them. Kill me, it said, and I will live again. As the wound closed before his eyes, as its ragged edges sealed, Otranto had known that the vow was true.

  Breakfasting on dry biscuit and figs, Otranto weighed his limited options. To show his face in the streets of Cold Harbour was to invite certain death. His one hope, for survival and for reclaiming his reputation, lay in completing his contract once and for all. Yet he had no idea what measures would be required to extirpate Vixara’s life. Would drowning suffice? Could the man possibly recover from beheading? One thing was clear: there was more here than Otranto currently understood.

  In the end, Otranto set out in disguise, his appearance adjusted in perfect imitation of an elderly beggar, down even to a peculiarly fetid odor culled from the less pleasant portions of Cold Harbour’s extensive sewer system. This costume was one of three he kept in the safe house, and the one most suited to the day’s business, which was the gathering of rumor and supposition from amongst the good folk of Cold Harbour.

  By late evening, Otranto had accumulated a cupful of loose change, mostly tin fints and the odd greenish copper noble, and had heard much of what the city had to say regarding both Vixara Ixar and himself. Ixar, it was agreed, was surely a demon, a warlock or some monstrosity peculiar to foreign parts. Whatever the case, it was widely accepted that he was immune to harm, though the precise means of that immortality defied consensus. A few stalwarts held that they’d expect to see at least one more attempt on Ixar’s life fail before they subscribed to any such nonsense. However on the whole, the populace were only too willing to accept the notion of a deathless visitor from beyond the sea; just as they were depressingly eager to impugn Otranto’s own name, which a mere day ago would have been spoken in only the most apprehensive whispers.

  All of that was more or less as Otranto had expected. One fact, however, did stand out: it was evident that knowledge had become public of his first attempt on Ixar’s life. It might mean nothing, for rumor spread quicker than lice in Cold Harbour. Nevertheless, it was a noteworthy fact, and Otranto had felt an itch in the back of his mind ever since he’d encountered it.

  Now, the last sunlight was being smothered by the northern mountains, and Otranto was crouched in a patch of foliage in the woodland surrounding the Ixars’ compound home.

  The Ixars had purchased a manor on the very edge of Cold Harbour, close to where Otranto had first assassinated Vixara. The house had been derelict when they’d bought it, a relic of the old city, isolated by the great fire that had swept these streets a century ago. The Ixars had no neighbors, for the houses to either side had long since been demolished and their vestiges abandoned to the encroaching wilderness, which had made this dilapidated border of town more park than city.

  It was within those ruins that Otranto waited now, with the bushes before him and at his back a crumpled section of brickwork that had survived the devastation: a finger of broken chimney pointing slantingly at the sky. As Otranto watched, a guard, dressed in dark livery that made his grey skin almost white, drew closer. The man was alert, peeking carefully to left and right, and held a wavering torch high in one hand. Nevertheless, he did not see Otranto. A minute later and the glow of his torch had vanished around the next corner.

  Many such sentries patrolled tonight. Otranto had little doubt that their presence was for his benefit, and none at all that Ixar was expecting yet another attempt on his life.

  Otranto had no wish to disappoint. It was rare that he indulged anger, for in general it slowed the thoughts and muddied the reactions. This night, however, he was prepared to make an exception. When he had been out-maneuvered and connived against, his named defamed and his flawless career sullied, it seemed to him that any other emotion would be too small for the occasion.

  With the guard out of sight, Otranto scurried up the jut of shattered chimney, clambering with such lightness that he all but floated upon its near-vertical face. At the summit, he balanced, crouched and sprang, swung from a branch above and flung all of his weight forward, towards the perimeter wall before h
im.

  For all his agility, Otranto’s fingers barely caught upon the wall’s edge, but that was enough for him to haul up one arm and then another. Rather than climb over, however, he peeked first to inspect the walkway beyond. There was torchlight to his left and right, and fainter glimmers from below, but this patch of wall walk was clear, and so he crept over.

  The house and its enclosure were built from a pale stone no longer common in Cold Harbour, a color not dissimilar to the complexion of the Ixars and their servantry; perhaps it was the reassurance of that similarity that had drawn them here. The place had something of the fortress about it: at the front a great walled area containing the stables, patches of garden, and much empty space of no particular purpose; then, beyond that, the house itself, the lowest of its three tiers extruding to make room for a great, pillared portico. The remaining two levels were plain enough by the city’s standards, with a little ornamentation to window frames, gables, and such, and two wide balconies, one to either side of the doorway.

  It was the rightmost of those which drew Otranto’s attention now. For while its twin was dark, the right balcony was lit by braziers spitting lurid fire—and in their light, Otranto could make out clearly the figure gazing anxiously into the night. It was Vixalla Ixar, sister to Vixara.

  It was unlike Otranto to be impulsive. Nevertheless, he made his decision almost in the moment he recognized her. Gravely risky it might be, sure to jeopardize his mission, and yet he could feel the answers to his questions sliding closer as he gazed upon that blaze-lit figure. For the first time in his career, whys and wherefores seemed to matter, more even than the task in hand. Even if he should succeed against Vixara, Otranto might be none the wiser as to the truth of the man’s curious resurrections. That, he found, was a prospect he could not tolerate; for what value did an assassin have if his victims should refuse to die?

  Otranto covered the rest of the distance to the house with little trouble; little for him, at any rate, for only one who’d trained to do so could have hung for a full minute by his fingertips, or vaulted effortlessly to the low roof of a stable block and back again. All the while, torches bobbed around him like predatory insects, and Otranto eluded them all, navigating the darkness as though he were a portion of it given life.

  At the house, he transferred—via a gutter pipe of sturdy lead, the vacant balcony, the tilted roof of the portico and finally a creeping spread of ivy—to a point where he could drop to the second balcony, making no more sound than a gust of wind might have. Crouched, he watched Vixalla steadily. And perhaps she sensed his gaze, or perhaps she’d only grown tired of the night’s chill, for mere moments had passed before she turned towards him.

  To her credit, she didn’t cry out. Her breathing stumbled, her whole body clenched, but she didn’t otherwise betray her shock. Instead she asked softly, “Who are you?”

  It was clear she meant to play for time, as most who kept their calm in his presence did. Since it would do her no good, Otranto saw no reason to be ill-mannered. “My name is Otranto Onsario. I represent the organization they call the House of Dusk.”

  Vixalla nodded, a small tip of the head. Her face was delicate, but there was strength behind it. She wasn’t afraid, though she had every reason to be. “And you’re here to try once more to kill my brother,” she said.

  He almost agreed with her; almost said, yes, that’s precisely why I’m here. But there had been a note in her voice he couldn’t place, though it jarred like a cracked bell. So instead of speaking, he replayed her words in his mind, exactly as she’d spoken them.

  And there it was. He could accept that Vixalla was brave, enough to hide her fear or even divorce herself from it altogether. He could believe she was pragmatic; that she had witnessed enough of life and death to discuss both candidly. But he had seen the Ixars together, had noted the unconscious signs that marked out their sibling closeness, and he could not accept that Vixalla held no affection for her brother.

  Because what he had heard in her voice was relief—and it could mean only one thing.

  It was obvious, really. He’d have known the answer a day ago had he not been forced to rely on the smoke bomb, as any assassin was sure to have been for a kill at close range in so crowded a space. He knew why Vixara Ixar still lived, when Otranto had twice taken his life. He knew who had hired him to kill Ixar, hired him before anyone else could, and why. Only one question, in fact, remained.

  “Who were they?” Otranto asked. “Who were those men I killed in place of your brother?”

  For a moment it seemed Vixalla wouldn’t answer, or that she was striving to formulate some convincing lie. Then she said, “How?”

  “The first man’s nose had been broken once,” Otranto said. “Though it had been carefully reset, the scar remained. The second man I killed had no such scar. Had I not been obliged to use smoke I’d have noticed its absence immediately. But, smoke or no, my memory is faultless, and if there’d been a scar I’d have seen it. However similar they looked, they were not the same man, and neither was your brother.”

  “No,” Vixalla agreed, “they weren’t.”

  “Then answer my question. Who were they?”

  “Slaves of our household,” she said, “chosen and brought here for their likeness to Vixara. We arrived here with three such men. One of them you saw at Oegel’s, and waits now in my brother’s bedchamber. The other two you have already murdered.”

  Otranto chose to ignore the implicit insult in her choice of words; she was, after all, only recently accustomed to Cold Harbour’s customs. Nor could she be expected to fully understand the distaste he felt at knowing he had ended, without recompense, the lives of two men whose names had never graced an official contract of excision. Still, there was an added coldness to his voice as he asked, “Did they know they were being set up to die?”

  “They understood they were protecting my brother by imitating him in public. Would it have helped them to know more?”

  “They might have lived longer.”

  “Assassin... if it had not been them, it would have been my brother. If not you, then someone else. Their families will be generously compensated, even though they were slaves. Much good will be done with the gold we make here and send home to our own land. Who are you to judge us?”

  “I?” Otranto smiled. “Merely a killer of some note.”

  “Then kill me,” she said, “if that’s what you came to do.”

  “Why should I do that?” Otranto’s surprise was unfeigned; the rules of the guilds were so well known in Cold Harbour that it was hard to comprehend how anyone could be unfamiliar with them. “I have no contract for your life; only your brother’s.”

  “So far as anyone knows,” Vixalla said, “my brother is dead. Dead, yet still living.”

  “What they believe and what they know are quite different things. They imagine your brother is a monster, or a demon. They imagine he twice survived my ministrations.”

  “Yes, they do. Because they’re foolish and superstitious. Just as they’re so ignorant and blind that they can’t tell one of my people from another unless that person be dressed in gold and finery. We have carried out this trick before, in other cities, in other lands... but never was it made so easy.”

  “Easy? You think so?” Otranto held her gaze—and for all her obvious strength of will, she could not quite disguise her fear.

  Yet her voice didn’t quaver as she said, “Didn’t you say you have no interest in killing me? Don’t play games, assassin.”

  Had she been cowed then, perhaps Otranto would not have made the choice he did. Certainly his own response surprised him, even as the words formed in his mouth. “No games,” Otranto replied. “What I offer you is a choice, Vixalla Ixar, to pass on to your brother. I’ll kill no more doubles. But I will kill him, should he—or anyone who looks like him—ever be seen again. If he’s prepared for a life of solitude then you may announce that he died of wounds sustained last night at Oegel’s. After that, do
as you wish. Stay in Cold Harbour or leave.”

  “What does it matter to you?” Vixalla spat, and there was sudden fury in her gaze, precisely as at the theatre the previous night, fire fiercer than that the braziers hissed at the cold night air. “Why not kill one last slave? So that the fools can tell their children’s stories and my brother can walk free?”

  “Because,” Otranto said, “my own life is at stake—but more than that, my reputation. Because, in so much as could reasonably be expected, I’ve fulfilled the terms of my contract. Because, as I’ve explained, I dislike killing without recompense. You have until noon tomorrow to make your decision. After that it will be too late.”

  Vixalla turned away. There was a choked knot in her voice as she said, “You’ve offered me no choice at all. Is this the only way?”

  But when she turned back, Otranto was already gone.

  * * *

  Otranto had little interest in the comings and goings of Cold Harbour. Nevertheless, he found that he was a little disappointed when the next morning, once more dressed in his beggar’s garments, he first encountered the city’s latest rumor: that Vixara Ixar had passed away during the night, of grievous wounds that his people had managed temporarily to hide but could not mend.

  If that dissatisfied him, Otranto found himself actually aggrieved by the news, later that day, that Vixalla Ixar was leaving with her brother’s body and her entire entourage, to return to their distant homeland.

  Early that evening, Otranto watched their ship depart. Vixalla had picked old Captain L’Strange’s vessel The Doublegoer, and the deliberateness of the choice brought a smile to Otranto’s lips as he watched, in his filthy rags, from the harbor side.

  He had liked the Ixars, it occurred to him. They had entertained him, when so little did these days. It would have amused him to continue their duel of wits. Yet perhaps this was for the best, for he’d have taken little satisfaction from ending either of their lives.