Skulduggery 9, page 16
“I have to say that I was pretty worried about you,” Dar sighed, “but I guess I should have been getting a good night’s sleep after all, since you were just fucking the guild master’s brains out.”
“It’s sweet of you to worry, my friend,” I said with a grin, “but I had it under control.”
“You always do,” the halfling replied. “So, what do night elves look like under all their clothes? Is it the same as--”
“Dar!” Penny smacked his arm. “That is not a polite question.”
“Oh, my mistake,” Dar said. “I didn’t realize that I was in polite company. Since when have you been all uptight about that kind of thing?”
“It’s not being uptight,” the redheaded pixie told him. “Some things are just private, and that means none of your goddamn halfling business.”
“She’s not wrong, you know,” I chuckled.
“Oh, fine, have it your way,” Dar sighed. “You can’t blame me for trying to get a few details out of the whole affair.”
“Maybe I’m just trying to encourage you to remember what we talked about,” I said.
“I know,” the halfling sighed again. “I should find my own affair to worry about.”
“I was thinking that you might look for something a little longer than an affair,” I pointed out, “but, yeah, that’s the idea. You deserve to be happy, my friend.”
“That’s fucked up, Wade,” Dar said as he rubbed the back of his hands against his eyes. “You can’t just come in here and spout off all your wisdom to make people teary-eyed and shit.”
“Why, Dar,” Penny said with a smile, “I didn’t know you had a heart!”
But even though the redhead teased him, she reached over and gave his arm a squeeze, and she didn’t let go until the halfling recovered himself and waved her away.
“Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Dar demanded and then slapped his own chest. “So there’s gotta still be something in here, and Wade’s right. It’s high time that I started to act like it.”
“Do you want us to help you?” Ava asked.
“We could keep an eye out for any eligible halfling women,” Penny added. “Make some introductions, set up a few dates, that kind of thing.”
“Oh, no, no,” the dark-eyed halfling said quickly. “I don’t think I need any interference from either of you two, thank you very much. I can handle myself just fine.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us,” the red-haired thief said with her nose up in the air.
“As much as I’d like to stay and talk some more about Dar’s relationship issues,” I said with a grin, “I’d better go now if I want to get to the headquarters before the musicians or anybody else gets there.”
“Do you need someone to come with you?” Ava asked. “It feels a little bit like you’re about to walk into a lion’s den alone.”
“No, I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll feel better if I know that you and Penny are safely far away from there, and I know Dar will take care of anything that you need while I’m gone.”
“But they’re the guild masters,” Penny said. “Doesn’t that mean they’re pretty powerful?”
“True,” I said, “but there will only be six of them, since Clodia isn’t going to join them. And even if they’re powerful, the poison should kill them anyway, and if it doesn’t, I can always use the Opalstone amulet to turn things to my advantage.”
“Won’t they have guards?” Dar asked.
“I doubt they’ll want to mingle with the guards at their own party,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll leave them outside, and by the time anyone is able to call for help, it’ll be too late.”
“It sounds like you have everything covered, as usual,” Ava said with a nod, “but you can’t blame us for worrying about you a little, can you?”
“I appreciate your concern,” I said and reached across the table to grasp the blonde assassin’s hand.
“And mine!” Penny said as she reached out to grab my other hand.
“And mine,” Dar snickered as he stretched his hand out across the table to join mine and Ava’s.
“Yes, the same goes for all of you,” I laughed. “Listen, I’ve gotta go now, but I’ll get back as soon as I can, so just stay safe until then, alright? I’ll be back before dawn for sure, but hopefully before midnight.”
“Be careful,” Penny whispered.
After I told my friends goodbye, changed into a fresh pair of clothes, and grabbed all my weapons, I hurried through the streets back toward the guild masters’ headquarters. Even though it was light outside, there was no sign of movement around the marbled building itself, so I figured that I still had plenty of time to get into position.
It didn’t take me long to break through the lock on the back door, and once I relocked it from the inside, I hurried forward into the main domed chamber. There were still no traces of movement or sounds inside, but I still moved quickly just in case someone suddenly showed up to start the party preparations.
After I crossed the main chamber, I jumped up to grasp the ladder, climbed all the way to the platform high above the marbled floor below, and then wedged myself into position on the narrow overhang. I was quite high, but I had a clear view of the chamber from here, and I should be able to watch all the guild masters as they enjoyed themselves and then choked on their poisoned wine.
I shifted around for a while on the platform, but I didn’t have to wait too long before the first arrivals to the party showed. Of course, they were the workers that the guild masters had conscripted for the party, so they were mostly halfling musicians and caterers, with a few humans thrown into the catering company for heavy lifting.
I had a feeling that they would be forced to stay in the kitchen for as long as the party lasted, so the elves wouldn’t have to see their human faces and have their celebration ruined.
No one seemed suspicious of anything, so I just kept still on the narrow platform above the main chamber, and I watched as the musicians started to practice on one side of the room, while the caterers set up food on tables on the other side of the room. The marbled floor in the center of the domed chamber was kept clear, and I guessed that was where the elves planned to do their ridiculously formal dances.
I felt my heart in my throat as the first barrels of wine were rolled out, but they were set into position beside a table full of crystal glasses next to the food, and that meant everything seemed to be perfectly in place.
After the staff lit the torches all around the room with plain old orange fire instead of Clodia’s magical blue flames, they all retreated to their serving stations along the sides of the chamber, and then we all waited in silence.
Ten minutes passed, and the musicians began to play some elven melody that was just about as tuneless as they came, and I realized that my hiding spot was even better than I’d thought. The acoustics of the domed chamber let me hear everything that happened below as clearly as if it was all right beside me.
Finally, the guild masters all began to arrive. As each one entered and greeted the others, I squinted to get a good look at all of them so I could see the faces of my enemies before they died.
But as one elf after another entered the domed chamber, I saw that Clodia had kept her promise, and I already started to wonder what else I could make her do for us. She seemed very eager to do whatever I asked, but it was more than that. She just seemed so happy to be told what to do for a change, and it was like she had never been so glad to let someone else call the shots so she could just sit back and enjoy herself.
When all six guild masters had arrived, I peered down and studied them to see that they were a mix of day and night elves, but they were too far away for me to see the pins of what guild they each represented. There was a female night elf over to one side, and she seemed desperate to get the attention of a tall blond day elf.
The blonde elf carried himself like a warrior, so I would have to keep an eye on him, but I didn’t think even the fiercest elven warrior would be a match for all the nightshade that I had put into the wine.
A few of the guild masters had brought dates to the party, but they were all elves, so I didn’t give a shit about them. If they were with the guild masters, then they knew exactly what kinds of bastards they were, and that meant they deserved to die right along with them.
“Ugh, has anyone seen Clodia?” a night elf called from below. “She’s late, as usual.”
“Does anyone care?” one of the day elves chuckled. “She’s not exactly pleasant, and we all know it.”
“She was quite a bitch to me at our meeting this week,” a female night elf sniffed. “I certainly wouldn’t miss her if she didn’t show up.”
“Still, I’m surprised that she’s not here yet,” another guild master said. “I thought for sure that she would want to come see Aleron’s latest human mistress and make a jest or seven.”
“But as you can see, I didn’t even bring a human mistress,” the warrior-like blond chuckled as he turned to face the others. “I thought I would go solo and change things up a bit.”
“That wouldn’t be because Clodia made you feel guilty, is it, Aleron?” another day elf laughed. “Not that I mind the fact that I don’t have to smell a human here while we’re trying to have a good time, of course.”
“As if Clodia had that kind of power over me,” the blond guild master sneered. “And please, I know you’ve had an affair or two of your own with a member of one of the lesser races, so don’t pretend I’m the only one who does it.”
I suddenly connected the blond elf’s name with what Clodia had told us. Aleron was the head of the Assassin’s Guild, and while that was certainly enough to explain why he looked like such a warrior compared to the other guild masters, that wasn’t what I really noticed.
Instead, even from all the way up on my platform, I noticed that he looked an awful lot like… well, like Ava.
“That’s impossible,” I muttered, but at the same time, I wondered just how impossible it was.
After all, Clodia had already told us that Aleron was famous for his human mistresses, and he was even more famous for the fact that he threw them away once he found out they were pregnant with what the elves considered to be nothing but half-breed trash. The guild masters traveled all over the empire, so it was completely possible that Aleron had come to our own city once to meet, seduce, and then abandon Ava’s mother to die in the gutters.
I clenched my fists but forced myself to remain still. The thought that I might be looking at the bastard who had forced Ava to fend for herself from such a young age, who had made her long so badly for a family of her own but at the same time given her such issues of trust and abandonment… that thought was enough to make me want to jump down and rip his throat out myself before the elves even tasted the wine.
But if Aleron was her father, then he would be dead soon enough, and I was just here to make sure that happened.
“Shall we dance, so we can get our party underway?” a night elf demanded.
“You mean so we can start to drink,” Aleron laughed.
“Well, obviously,” the other elf responded.
The six elves all lined up along with their partners in the middle of the chamber, and when the musicians began to play some other tuneless monstrosity, all the elves began to circle each other and then weave in and out in some elaborate elven dance.
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that this was how the guild masters started their fucking parties, and I understood what Clodia meant about law and order. If this was the elven idea of law and order, then they could shove it up their asses.
It was high time for a little chaos to come into their empire.
After they finished their ridiculous dance, the guild masters all laughed and clapped, and then they moved to the side of the room to each grab a glass of the poisoned wine. Then as the music fell silent, the guild masters and their partners brought their glasses back into the center of the domed chamber, stood in a circle, and raised them high.
“To another year of profit!” one of the elves called.
“To another year of enjoying the hard work of others!” another elf laughed.
“And to the fact that Clodia isn’t here to spoil everything!” the female night elf sneered.
“To us!” they all cried, and then each and every one of them drained their wine glasses.
By the time they had all gone to grab a second glass for themselves, the nightshade had already taken effect, and there was definitely no way to go back now.
The female night elf was the first one to fall. She gasped on her way to get another glass of wine, clutched at her throat, and then staggered backward onto the main floor of the chamber. She started to claw at the skin on her neck as if she could just rip the poison out of her throat directly, but then her eyes started to bleed as the other horrified guild masters looked on.
Of course, they didn’t have much time to feel horrified, because as soon as the night elf dropped to her knees, the poison worked its deadly magic on the rest of the party-goers. The domed chamber filled with screams as the rest of the guild masters tried to dig the poison out of their throats with their fingernails, but that only made their necks bleed at the same time that their ears and noses started to gush out blue blood, too.
The moment that the guild masters all started to drop from the poison, the workers at the party all began to run. A few of them shrieked and panicked, but most of them took one look at a room full of poisoned elves and knew that they needed to get the fuck out of there before someone decided to cast all the blame on them. Musicians and caterers fled through the front and back door of the hall so fast that by the time all the elves had started to bleed from their eyes, the non-elves were long gone.
When they bled from their eyes, I knew that was the last step before the poison finished them off, and it was a good thing, too. I guessed that I had just a few seconds before the guards rushed in from outside, but I planned to freeze them in place long enough to make my escape. I just wanted to stay for enough time to watch all these bastards die, so I knew for sure that the poison had worked.
And as I looked below, all the guild masters and their partners had finally collapsed, and their bloody eyes and purple throats looked like something out of a nightmare where they all laid sprawled around the domed chamber.
Just as I pushed myself up to my knees on the narrow platform, one of the bodies started to move again. I froze in place as I waited to see if it was just someone in their final death throes, but instead, I watched as the warrior-like blond elf staggered to his feet, wiped a trickle of blue blood from his nose, and glanced around at the rest of the room.
How the fuck had he survived the nightshade?
I had watched everyone drink the wine, so I knew for sure that no one had pretended to drink or just skipped the wine entirely, and that meant somehow, the guild master of all the assassins had survived the nightshade poison.
That also meant that if I didn’t go down there and kill him myself, this shit could really get dicey.
As I crawled back across the platform to get to the ladder, I watched as Aleron staggered away from the corpses of the other elves, and I realized that while he had survived, he must have been weakened by the poison, and I would definitely take at least that much. It should make him easier to fight, and that would be my only hope against the head of the goddamn Assassin’s Guild.
I reached the ladder just as I heard shouts from the hallways at the front and back of the guild masters’ headquarters, so I instantly focused on the gemstone against my chest and waited until the whole chamber fell quiet. Then, when I was sure that everyone had frozen in place, I grabbed the ladder, slid myself down to the bottom, and dropped back to the floor.
It was a lot of people to hold in place, and even as I turned to face Aleron, I could already feel that my hold on everyone had started to weaken. As far as I could tell, that left me with two options. I could either get the fuck out of here now and leave Aleron alive, or I could keep the guards frozen in place but relax my control on the guild master long enough to finish him off.
But since I had come this far, I wasn’t about to let one guild master escape, especially not one as slimy as Aleron.
I kept enough of my focus on the guards that were just out of my sight, and when I felt like they were firmly frozen in place, I turned my attention to the guild master of all the assassins and let him move again.
I was right in front of him, so he saw me immediately, but if he was surprised at all by the sudden appearance of a human in the middle of all these poisoned corpses, he certainly didn’t seem like it. Instead, he pressed his lips together into a thin smile and then wiped another trickle of blue blood from his nose.
“Nightshade, is it?” Aleron asked. “I suppose Clodia thought that poison was a clever trick, and now she’s sent some human lackey to finish the job?”
I didn’t say anything. Instead, I just watched the day elf’s hand tremble as he brushed his blond hair back behind his ears, and I realized two things. One, the poison had definitely affected him more than he let on, and two, he had to be Ava’s father.
The hair, the eyes, the cheekbones, and even the straight bridge of the nose all looked like the blonde assassin, and as much as I wanted to slide my dagger straight into this bastard’s heart, I also wanted to see if he had any answers for what he had done to Ava.
I knew it was doubtful, but for her sake, I had to at least try.
“Clodia should have known better, of course,” Aleron said and then coughed and spat out blue-black phlegm. “I’m the master of the assassins, after all, so I’ve built up a bit of an immunity to every poison in existence, you know.”
“A bit, maybe,” I said with a nod to the bloody phlegm on the floor. “But apparently not completely.”
“Ah, it speaks,” the blond elf sneered and then bent his knees so he could start to circle me. “How charming.”
