he dropped the short sword and crumbled to the street with a moan. As soon as the assassin hit the ground, Cale had a knee on his chest and a dagger at his throat.
'Move and you're a dead man,' Cale hissed.
Unable to breathe through his ruined nose, the assassin wheezed through a mouth rapidly filling with snot and blood. 'All right. All right. I ain't movin'.'
Even up close Cale didn't recognize him, though he knew most of Selgaunt's professionals.
'Speak,' Cale ordered. 'All of it. And if I think, you're lying…' He pricked the assassin's throat with his dagger and let the threat dangle.
Fear cleared the man's watery eyes. 'Sure. Sure. What's it to me, right?' He tried to force a laugh but choked on his own blood.
Cale waited for the coughing fit to pass, then asked, 'Who hired you?'
The assassin hesitated only an instant. 'House… Malveen. Pietro Malveen.'
Cale nodded. That sounded about right. Turning an assassin loose on the Uskevren would be just like Pietro Malveen. Foolish, ham-handed dolt. He pressed his knee further into the assassin's chest.
'Who was your target?'
'No one,' the assassin managed between gasps, then hurriedly added, 'I mean, anyone… any Uskevren. I thought you were one of the sons.' He turned his head to the side and spat blood. 'Who in the Nine Hells are you?'
Cale replied with cold silence and a hard stare. Stupid question, he thought. If you knew the answer, you'd already be dead. He kept his dagger to the man's throat while he tried to decide what to do. He could hardly turn the assassin over to the Scepters, Selgaunt's city guard. Too many questions there. But he had to get to the Stag soon. Riven would be waiting. Perhaps…
'You're the butler,' the assassin blurted, certainty in his voice. 'Dark, but you don't move like any butler I've ever seen.'
Cale grimaced. Foolish, foolish man.
'What?' The assassin's voice rose an octave. He sensed he'd made a mistake. 'What'd I say? You are the butler, aren't you?'
Cale stared down at the now frightened man with cold eyes. Though he knew now what he had to do, he nevertheless found it distasteful. Apparently realizing his danger, the assassin began to struggle. Cale held him in a grip like a vise.
'Hey, wait, wait, mmph-'
Cale covered the assassin's mouth with a powerful hand and leaned in close. 'You're right,' he whispered into the man's ear. 'I am the butler.'
He flashed the dagger and opened the assassin's throat. The dying man screamed into Cale's palm while his blood poured steaming onto the frozen cobblestones. Cale watched him, emotionless. It was over within seconds.
Cale wiped his blade clean on the man's cloak and stood. He took no pleasure in what he had done, but he had to do it. If he had allowed the assassin to carry word of his skills back to the Malveens, someone would have grown suspicious-Radu Malveen if not that idiot Pietro. Cale could not allow that.
Some secrets have to be kept, he thought, irrespective of the cost.
Without a backward glance, Cale left the cooling corpse behind him and headed for the Black Stag.
The hearth stood unused, the coals cold. Only the wan orange glow of a single oil lamp provided light in the Black Stag. Hanging crookedly from a hook behind the bar, the lantern's flickering wick emitted wisps of oily black smoke that twisted upward to mix with the clouds of pipeweed smoke hovering around the ceiling beams. The dim, dancing flame created a confusing patchwork of shadows and smoke shapes that played eerily across the dead eyes and hard faces of the Stag's hushed clientele. They looked like the lost souls some said wandered about the uppermost of the Nine Hells in search of peace.
Cale stood in the Stag's windswept doorway and grimaced. Lost souls indeed.
He had just left a man lying dead only three blocks away.
Perhaps twenty other patrons sat huddled in pairs and trios at the Stag's greasy wooden tables. Their hissing whispers remained indecipherable even to Cale's sharp ears, but he could imagine the content of their conversations well enough. He had been party to many such conversations himself once-black market deals, bribes, assassinations…
Drasek Riven, he saw, had not yet arrived. Irritated, Cale walked across the common room to the bar and exchanged four coppers for a tankard of ale. He took a table far from the Stag's only public entrance, in a corner that commanded a view of the rest of the room. The stink of sweat, spilled ale, and the lantern's fish oil created a distinctively vile stench unique to the Stag, and disturbingly familiar to Cale. The smell recalled to him the man he had once been, a man who did black deeds in the cover of night. He thought again of the corpse back in the alley and knew that the ghost of that man yet haunted his soul. He still did black deeds.
Trying to banish the image of the assassin's panicked gaze, Cale threw back a gulp of sour ale and slammed the tankard down on the table. A few wolfish faces jerked his way at the sound, but his cool stare quickly turned them back to their own business. He mopped his bald pate with a suddenly sweating hand, a hand that had slit a throat only minutes before.
'You are not that man anymore,' he chanted, as though invoking a spell. 'You are not that man anymore.'
The corpse he had left in the alley made a mockery of his claim and he knew it. No matter that he had played the loyal servant to Thamalon Uskevren for the past nine years. He remained a killer. Anything else, no matter how well played, was a sham. If Thazienne ever learned of his fraud…
Shaking his head angrily, he dismissed Thazienne from his mind. Now was not the time for distractions. He could not afford to show weakness when facing Riven. That black-hearted bastard smelled weakness like an Inner Sea gray shark smelled blood in the water. Cale needed to be focused.
Endless minutes passed and still no Riven. Cale grew increasingly edgy. His long fingers beat an impatient drumbeat on the arm of his chair. Why had Riven contacted him? Their scheduled meet was still a tenday away. Where in the Nine Hells was he?
The door to the Stag flew open, and Drasek Riven strode into the common room as if he owned the place. Without a glance to either side he stalked directly up to the bar, his scarlet cloak billowing behind him like a pool of blood. Wordlessly accepting a tankard of ale from the skinny, greasy-haired barkeep, he turned to survey the common room with a contemptuous sneer. His right hand rested comfortably on the hilt of one of his two sabers.
Gazes that had nervously followed the assassin's trek to the bar hurriedly turned back to their own business and dared not look up. Drasek Riven fairly stank of murder. He had a reputation among the Night Knives as a man who loved to kill. No one in the Stag risked eye contact. Except Cale.
Cale met Riven's hard gaze with a cool stare. The assassin's one good eye flashed recognition, and he strutted over to the table. Licking his lips, Cale tasted the salt of sweat. Riven reminded him of a hunting cat- compact, powerful, and predatory.
Calm down, man, he ordered himself. Though he towered over Riven physically, Cale knew his own bladework was no match for the temperamental assassin's slim sabers. He made his face an emotionless mask as Riven slid into the chair across from him.
'You're late,' Cale announced matter-of-factly.
Riven regarded him over the rim of his tankard while swigging a gulp of ale. He set the tankard down softly and sneered. 'So?' Clearly, the assassin was itching for a confrontation.
Cale gave no ground, though it meant risking naked steel. He pointed a single finger at the assassin's pockmarked face and hissed, 'So the next time you make me wait, I walk away. You understand? We'll let the Righteous Man decide who's in the wrong.'
That struck home. Cale was Riven's only rival for the guildmaster's ear. Where Cale urged caution and patience to the Righteous Man, Riven urged violence, and violence now. Most times, events had proven Cale's
