The guard shook his head, then spoke again into the tube, alternating the mouthpiece between his mouth and his ear as he awkwardly received the report from elsewhere in the castle.
“Are you sure you… Well, have you checked… Send patrols five and six… Yes, he’s here… Yes, sir… right away, sir… Understood.”
Recapping the tube, the guard looked at Norcross. “Intruders, sir. They’ve disabled the house’s whale oil tanks and have entered the main galleries.”
Norcross looked at Daud, as though his prisoner had something to do with it. Daud narrowed his eyes as he watched the almost cheerful demeanor of the collector crumble and his eyes glinting with an altogether different set of emotions.
Among them, fear.
Norcross turned back to the guard. “Seal the galleries. Have the patrols flush the intruders out—”
The guard shook his head. “No, you don’t understand, sir. The intruders have already taken out four guard patrols. It’s a large group, on the loose in the galleries.” He gently took Norcross by the arm. “Now, if you’ll come with me, sir, the guard captain has ordered you to the safe room.”
Norcross blinked as if he was coming out of some kind of trance.
“Very well.” Norcross turned to Daud, but the way his eyes moved over him and the body of the woman on the other table, Daud wasn’t entirely sure he was really seeingwhat was in the room. “We will resume this… ah, later.”
The two men left Daud alone in the preparation room. Next to him, the motionless body of the woman was pumped full of chemicals as the machine on the trolley continued to whirr.
Intruders? Thieves… or assassins? Daud didn’t care about the latter. But the former was a different proposition. There was plenty to steal in Norcross’s collection. The guard had said it was a large group—an organized gang, perhaps.
Daud didn’t care who they were, so long as they didn’t take the Twin-bladed Knife. That was his.
And now it was time to get it.
With the music box deactivated, he felt his powers returning, although the sustained broadside of ancient music had drained him and he knew it would take a while to recover fully. He pulled against his bonds again. The cuffs shifted but remained firm, strapped to the table.
He felt the Mark of the Outsider catch fire, but he dampened the urge to draw on it—it was too soon, and he was simply too weak.
And he didn’t need supernatural power to get free from the processing table.
Daud counted to three, then wrenched his right arm, tearing the metal cuff from the table. With one arm free, he made short work of the other bonds. Then, with one last look at the horrific remains on the other table, Daud drove his fist into the side of the preservation machine in anger, punching a hole clean through it, then tore the wheel off.
Daud left the room, heading toward the tower chamber and Norcross’s private collection.
Toward the Twin-bladed Knife.
19
THE NORCROSS ESTATE, SOMEWHERE IN SOUTH-CENTRAL GRISTOL
26th Day, Month of Earth, 1852
“So, heed my warning, gentle reader. Should you or anyone you love witness some misshapen shadow fall across your path, or should you hear the slightest rumor of dark words whispered from rooftops, then flee. Flee with all haste.”
—THE KNIFE OF DUNWALL: A SURVIVOR’S TALE
From a street pamphlet containing a sensationalized sighting of the assassin Daud
Morgengaard Castle was quiet as Daud came up out of the cellars and back into the entrance hall, emerging from a set of stone steps hidden behind a small service door underneath the grand staircase that swept up from the huge double doors of Norcross’s castle.
The rest of the castle was also dark, thanks to the reported sabotage of the house’s whale oil tanks. However long Daud had been unconscious, it was still night, the great windows letting in nothing but dim, grayish moonlight.
Daud paused by the service door, cocking his headas he listened for something, anything. But there was nothing except the sound of his own quiet breath and the distant ticking of a grandfather clock.
The guard had reported a large group of intruders; but Daud had no idea how many or where they were, but as he listened, he could hear no movement.
But he wasn’t planning on taking the intruders on. They could help themselves—which was exactly what he was planning on doing.
Getting his bearings, he headed in the direction of the tower stairs, sticking close to the walls where the shadows were darkest, the master of stealth once more in action.
He saw the blood first. Daud paused, scanning the stairs, the landing above, and the wide open doorways that led out of the entrance hall. All were clear. He waited, counting, but after one minute, two minutes, there was still no sound. He crabbed along the wall, then ducked down and across to the other doorway, across which lay the body of the guard.
The man was face down on the floor, his head turned to one side, his eyes open. A prodigious amount of blood was pooling beneath the body, the thick carpet soaking it up like a sponge and shining wetly in the moonlight. Daud glanced up, looking in the direction the man had fallen, and saw a line of blood traveling up the wall in a cone-shaped spray. The guard had had his throat cut with some violence, his back to his assailant. He hadn’t seen it coming.
Daud moved on, alert. His progress was slow but sure, his senses alive to any movement or sound. He wondered where all the guards were—the intruders had come in, yes, and they had taken out some of Norcross’s men. But someone had sounded the alarm. Had they all rushed to fight? If so, where exactly was the fight? Daud still couldn’t hear a thing.
He stalked through several dark galleries. Then he found the next body.
And then the next. Soon he had counted twelve dead guards with their throats cut. One of them was
