Baron Assassin: Chapters 5-7

Okay, I never intended to write this much. Sometimes my imagination grabs hold of an idea and makes me write a couple chapters before it lets go of it. I never, ever imagined it would take 15,000 words to get it done. At this point, I'm almost compelled to finish it one day just because I've already sank so much time and effort into it. Plus, i think it's pretty good. Fortunately, my imagination is finally satisfied, and I go back to writing all those pesky projects that are already under contract. In the meantime, enjoy! ~Eric

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Chapter 5

As Varal considered the little girl sitting across from him at the table, he once again tried to make sense of the what had happened over the last few days. All previous attempts at this task had ended in utter failure. He was, however, certain that if he just kept at it long enough, understanding would make itself known. He had never intended to take custody or responsibility for Marida. He was firm in his conviction that an assassin had nothing of value to offer a child. Yet, somehow, fate had twisted itself in such a way that he had wound up taking responsibility for her anyway.

At first, he’d only intended to allow it for one night. That decision had been primarily based on the fact that she had adamantly refused to be separated from him. When the priest had tried to lead her away, she had clung to Varal’s arm like it was the only source of water in some terrible, unforgiving desert. Rather than endure the hysterical wailing, he’d said he would find accommodations for her for the night. That decision had led to the next day, when he’d discovered that the church intended to bury the girl’s mother in a beggar’s plot. He’d learned that meant she would end up in an unmarked grave in a particularly dreary piece of land outside the city walls.

He'd inquired about the cost of a proper burial and, finding it a trivial sum, agreed to pay it. That had been followed by a lecture that the girl would need proper attire for the funeral. Varal had been perplexed about why they assumed that he would deal with that problem. It was nearly as baffling as the obvious, if unspoken, assumption that he would continue caring for the child. When he considered the way the girl had seized his hand and refused to let it go when they had entered the church, maybe it wasn’t entirely baffling. He had, after several inquiries, found a tailor that specialized in clothing for children.

The women in the shop had cooed over the girl while casting him the occasional suspicious look. Then, they had lectured him for buying her a funeral dress but allowing her to wear rags the rest of the time. His attempts to explain the situation had fallen on what, in hindsight, he suspected were willfully deaf ears. He also realized that his extensive experience as a killer had done very little to prepare him to manage problems that couldn’t be solved by making someone into a corpse. By comparison to what he usually confronted, these social interactions weren’t very important. Or, minimally, they weren’t important to him, but they were vexing.

When the tailor had asked where to deliver the clothes, Varal immediately understood that his small home that had almost no food and only one bed was not appropriate. He’d told the tailor that he’d send a message about where to deliver them once he’d made arrangements for lodging. That had landed him and the little girl at a hotel, where he’d gotten a suite with two rooms. He’d assumed that would be the end of his problems for a while. The assassin had been left to marvel at his own naivety. Lounging in the room and perhaps reading would have been fine for him, but that was not sufficient for the girl.

While even he could see that Marida was suffering from the way she would abruptly burst into tear or stare off into space, she still seemed to have endless energy. Far more energy than she could possibly burn away inside the confines of their suite. Varal had, in pure desperation, started taking the girl for walks in the city, hoping against hope that it would tire her out. Yet, it seemed that everything and everyone fascinated her. He’d turn to see Marida with her nose pressed up against the glass of some shop, eyes fixed on some pretty bauble or a cake. She pointed at everything and everyone. Even his composure had slipped a little when the girl had gone running up to a woman about to step into a carriage. He spotted the noble crest on the carriage and worried the aristocrat would do something petty.

“You’re so pretty!” shouted Marida. “You’re a princess!”

The woman, a dark-haired beauty with lavender eyes, had looked at Marida in utter bewilderment. Then, she’d let out a delighted laugh.

“Oh no, my dear. I’m not a princess. Just a countess.”

“What’s a countess?” Varal heard the girl ask as he stepped up next to her.

“Marida, please don’t bother the countess. Please forgive her, my Lady,” said Varal with a bow. “She means no harm.”

This much, at least, he’d been trained for.

“Clearly not,” said the countess, gently cupping Marida’s cheek in her hand. “And you—”

The woman’s voice caught when she looked at him, her eyes going wide and then narrowing. Varal felt the nearby guards tense, and he saw one slowly reaching for a blade. He gently pressed Marida with his hand to step behind him. It would only take one careless guard, and she could be killed. The countess’s eyes flicked to the girl, and then to her guards.

“Stop that,” she snapped, and the guards all froze. “You’ll frighten the girl even more.”

Marida, having sensed the change in the air, was now cowering behind Varal. The countess fixed him with a hard look.

“You, sir, are a very dangerous man.”

His eyes flicked to the guards before he said, “Not today. Not if I don’t need to be.”

“If you’re aren’t being dangerous today, what are you doing?”

“Walking. Just walking around the city.”

“And who is the child? Your daughter?”

He glanced down and saw Marida peeking at the countess from behind him.

“No. I’m just—” he paused. “I’m just looking after her for a short while.”

“And where is her family? Her mother?” demanded the countess.

Marida’s breath caught, and he didn’t need to look to know she was about to start crying. Varal felt his expression change. He wasn’t sure what it changed to, but the countess’s already pale skin paled even more.

“Awaiting burial,” he said in a hard voice.

The countess looked from him to Marida, who had her face pressed into his side. The girl was making choked noises as her shoulders hitched. The countess closed her eyes for a moment.

“I see. My rash words have unkindly reopened fresh wounds.”

Varal looked down at the sobbing Marida and, uncertain what he could do for her, just placed his hand on her head.

“If you’ll excuse us, Countess. I think it would be best if we returned to our lodgings.”

“No,” she said. “I caused this pain, and to one who clearly didn’t deserve it. Both of you will accompany me to my estate, where I can hopefully put this right.”

“My lady,” said one of the guards with a glare for Varal.

“Be still, Aaris. If this man meant me harm, it would be over, and all of you would already be dead.”

Despite several of his protests, Varal found himself inside the countess’s carriage. Marida was pressed against his side, still sniffling occasionally. The countess kept looking between him and the girl with a frown on her face, like they were a puzzle that she dearly wanted to solve but couldn’t.

“And what do you do, Master?” she let the unspoken part of the question hang in the air.

“Varan Halfstead,” he said. “I’m a merchant.”

That was the identity he’d chosen to go with. It was real enough that if anyone went looking for information about him, they’d find enough to satisfy most people.

“A merchant,” said the countess.

“Yes, my lady.”

The countess asked Marida a few innocuous questions, but the girl had calmed down enough that she was distracted by everything they were seeing in the city. After they passed through the gates of an estate and entered the manor, the countess called for one of her servants. The countess whispered in the maid’s ear, although Varal still heard her.

“The girl has lost her mother recently. Please introduce her to some of the other children. Help distract her.”

“Yes, Countess.”

Marida took some convincing but eventually went with the maid. Varal and the countess trailed behind them. Close enough that Marida could see him nearby, which seemed to reassure her.

“You say she isn’t your daughter, yet she looks to you as she might to a father,” observed the countess.

After it became clear that he didn’t intend to answer, the countess sighed.

“You don’t intend to make this easy, do you?”

“Make what easy, Countess?” asked Varal.

He intended to remain silent for anything that wasn’t a direct question. That seemed safest to him.

“The two of you don’t make sense. You clearly have some understanding of etiquette, yet she doesn’t. At the same time, I have no doubt that if any of my guards had gotten near to her, you would have swiftly and quite mercilessly murdered them. She clings to you like family, yet you are clearly unused to such behavior. I can’t help but wonder, what is your relationship? Are you some distant uncle called in after the death your sister? A cousin with a sudden and unwanted responsibility?”

“No,” he said. “We’re not related. I just helped her a little when she needed it.”

“Helped her with what?”

“Something unfortunate.”

“Something quite unfortunate for her to have imprinted on you the way she has. And what do you intend to do with her?”

“Do with her?” he asked. “I don’t intend to do anything with her. As I said, I’m only looking after her for a short while. I understand that the church takes in orphans. I assume that is what will happen after the funeral.”

“I see,” said the countess.

She wore an amused look that Varal didn’t understand, but it left him feeling unaccountably nervous.

“In the meantime,” she continued, “who is seeing to the girl’s needs?”

“Her needs? We’re staying at a hotel. We eat there.”

She gave him another look that he didn’t understand.

“I mean her other needs. Bathing. Brushing her hair. Tending to her clothes. She can’t be expected to do those things on her own. Not at her age.”

Varal blinked a few times and asked, “She can’t?”

The girl seemed to get dressed well enough on her own. Although, looking at her hair, Varal had to admit that it did look rather tangled.

“Of course, she can’t. Does she have a maid, at least?”

“I… No, she doesn’t.”

“Well, at least I can do that much to make amends. Matia,” called the countess.

One of the maids who had been trailing after them, a stern woman with gray hair, stepped forward.

“Yes, Countess.”

“Select one of the maids to accompany Master Halfstead and young Marida while they are in the capital.”

“Her duties?”

“To attend to young Marida.”

“Not Master Halfstead?” asked the maid, her steely gaze boring into him.

He looked to her and said, “I have no needs that require a maid or any servant for that matter. I am a simple man with simple requirements.”

“I’m quite sure you are anything but simple, Master Merchant,” said the countess. “Choose someone motherly. Someone patient.”

“Esma, I think,” said the maid after a moment of thought.

“Yes, she would be ideal,” agreed the countess.

“I’ll see to it, Countess.”

The maid fell back and Varal said, “I will compensate your servant for her time.”

“That won’t be necessary. It’s a small enough thing, and I do owe that poor girl.”

Varal thought that having the maid around would be tiresome, but it would also be useful. He still had business with those slavers. Having someone to watch over Marida would free up his time to see to that problem. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought to simply hire someone to watch the girl. Inexperience, he thought.

“Are you always this guarded and taciturn, Master Varan?” asked the countess.

He thought briefly and said, “Yes.”

“So, it isn’t just me that you find bothersome, but all people?”

“I have no feelings about you one way or the other, my lady. I find the same is true about most people.”

“If that is true, then why are you so intent on helping that child to whom, by your own admission, you are not related.”

Varal stopped, turned, and looked directly at the woman. She turned to face him.

“The world is an ugly place, countess. A fact that I have, as most men have, contributed to. You ask why I am so intent on helping that child. It is because,” and he was struck by the truth when it left his own lips, “when her own needs were so great, she asked me to help her mother. No thought for herself. No greed. No petty quest for power or position. Just help her mother. A task for which I proved wholly inadequate. So, I do this instead. I will see her fed, clothed, and housed until such time as her mother receives a proper burial.”

The countess looked shocked at those words, blinking rapidly, and her mouth hanging open a little. She shook her head slightly and seemed to come out of a daze.

“And then? Will you take her in?”

“Of course, I won’t. Even if I wished to, I am—” he tried to think of the right way to explain it. “I am ill-equipped to be a parent to anyone.”

The countess looked as if she meant to say something. That was when a group of shrieking, laughing girls ran by waving fistfuls of colorful ribbons. Varal watched as Marida ran with them, her sadness at least temporarily put aside.

Chapter 6

“It was very interesting to meet you, Master Merchant. I look forward to our next meeting.”

Varal raised an eyebrow and said, “Countess, such a future meeting seems unlikely to me. But I appreciate your hospitality.”

“Oh, the future is a very fickle thing. It might surprise you,” said the countess before crouching down to speak to Marida. “And you, little one, it was very nice to meet to you.”

“Nice to meet you. Bye, bye,” said Marida around a yawn.

“Esma, please take good care of Marida.”

“Yes, Countess.”

With that, Varal, Marida, and Esma climbed into the carriage. It only took a few minutes before Marida was curled up on the seat, fast asleep.

“Do you have any instructions, Master Halfstead?” asked the maid.

“Esma, was it?”

“Yes, Master Halfstead.”

“I have no instructions for you, Esma, save to look after Marida. That will be more than sufficient. On that note, I must attend to business this evening. I’ve been putting it off, so I might be delayed until late in the night.”

“I expect she’ll sleep all night,” said Esma. “She ran herself ragged this afternoon. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Thank you.”

After getting Marida into bed and discovering the suite had an attached room for a servant, which solved a problem before Varal could give it much thought, he left the hotel. A carriage returned him to his small apartment. He took the time to change into clothes more appropriate for the night’s work. He finished by putting on a wide belt and drawing out the tools of his trade from the storage treasure masquerading as a plain ring. Daggers, a short sword, a garrote were strategically attached to the belt. Then, he pulled out a case containing many small vials. He weighed the case in his hand before returning it to the storage ring. Some tasks required poison, but he didn’t intend to hide how these people were going to die. He finished by placing some clean clothes, the kind a businessman might wear, into the ring.

Satisfied with his preparations, Varal glanced around the space. He suspected this might be the last time he set foot in the small apartment. There was nothing of value in those small rooms. No objects of sentiment that might fill him with regret to leave behind. It had only ever been a convenient, anonymous place to sleep in a quiet part of the city. A modest, affordable location for a businessman whose work often took him out of the city. And the last place anyone would look for an assassin the authorities had taken to calling The Lamentation.

He'd heard stories that the name came about because of all of the families he’d left grieving their dead. However, Varal suspected that title belonged equally to him and Gibon. Their methods weren’t identical, but they were similar enough that it would have been easy to attribute all those deaths to one man. Especially if the people tasked with looking into those deaths were lazy or stupid. Not that everyone in the city guard was lazy or stupid. Some of them were quite dedicated, but they were warriors first. Men and women trained to intervene and stop violence between citizens. A few of them were people that even Varal would go out of his way to avoid fighting if at all possible.

Of course, figuring out the how and especially the who after someone was dead wasn’t something they excelled at. They generally relied on rumors and magic to track down the murderers they caught. That meant that the easiest way to avoid imprisonment or execution was simple. Don’t brag. Having never been inspired by staggering levels of stupidity to drunkenly discuss his work in a tavern full of strangers, Varal was unsurprised that he’d gone uncaught. His own magic that muddled the magical remnants did the rest of the work for him. Posing as a merchant also meant that he had excuses for going almost anywhere in the city and meeting with almost anyone.

Shaking off that line of thought, he left the apartment and locked it behind him. He spread his magical senses to ensure that no one way too much attention to him. It was dark, but it wasn’t late enough that the streets were entirely clear. Once he’d assured himself that there were no hidden observers nearby, he leapt to the nearest rooftop and began his journey toward the slums. He took it slower than he had when fetching the healer, often stepping between shadows when he felt the telltale tingle that suggested someone might be paying attention to his location.

A little part of him wanted to rush in as soon as he arrived. It had always been like that and he, as he had always done, forced that part of himself down. He’d have less information than he usually did going into this situation, which meant he needed to be more caution, not less. He moved around the building and observed. It didn’t take him long to spot the lookouts. Varal was less than impressed by what he saw. The qualities of a good lookout were the same as the qualities of a good manor guard. They needed to diligent, attentive, and able to stave off the boredom that came with standing around and looking at nothing for hours at a time.

These lookouts met none of those criteria. One was hunched up against a wall in a vain attempt to avoid the cold wind that marked the night. He wasn’t looking at anything but the ground. Another was smoking a pipe and had his hands cupped around the bowl, presumably in an attempt to soak up whatever meager heat it gave off. A third was staring blankly into the distance. Only the fourth had shown any awareness that something strange might be happening, his eyes scanning the darkness for movement. Yet, even he had become lax again after an hour without anything untoward happening. Worse, they couldn’t see each other from where they hovered in alleys. A fact that Varal took advantage of.

He took the one who had shown a modicum of a survival instinct first. A hand over the man’s mouth and a swift thrust of a dagger into his heart. There were magic defenses against those kinds of ambushes, but the kinds of people who had them didn’t work as lookouts for slavers. They could make far more for far less risk as house guards or city guards, regardless of their status as commoners. The other three followed swiftly after. That was when Varal turned his attention to the building. It wasn’t warded. It couldn’t be without drawing all kinds of unwanted attention. But that didn’t mean it was safe to simply kick open a door and charge in.

If he was in their position, he’d have magical traps prepared just inside of the doors. That’s why he chose what had been a window. It was just a boarded over empty space in the wall now. Those boards did pose a problem. Physically yanking them out was likely to make noise, but any magical solution might alert the people inside. At least one of them was bound to have magic. Conswin was the most likely candidate. He was in charge of this business, which meant he needed the strength to compel the loyalty, or at least the silence, of his underlings. At this point, though, Varal was committed. He’d hidden the bodies of the lookouts, but it was only a matter of time before they failed to report or someone discovered them.

Alerting another magic user was problematic, but less problematic than alerting the entire building to his presence. Decision made, he used a magical blade to swiftly slice through the nails holding the boards in place. He climbed through the window and into the dark room. At least, it would be dark to anyone else. One of the passive skills he’d acquired was called Night Sight. That made everything in the room clear to him, even if it was primarily in shades of gray. There was nothing worth noticing. A few pieces of broken furniture and something that he suspected was a rat’s nest sticking out of a wall.

Now that he was inside and no longer worried as much about stealth, Varal did two things. First, he withdrew the mask that he had used during every assassination he’d ever carried out. It was magical and drew tight to his face. It turned his face into a smooth, dark gray visage without affecting his peripheral vision or breathing. Next, he drew the short sword. It was a special, enchanted, and had been given to him after completing his first assassination. It was what they used when his guild wanted to send a message to certain kinds of people. There were many names given to those swords, but the term most people used was vampire blade.

When used against a magic user, it ripped out their magic and most of their life. What was left was little more than a withered, useless husk wrapped around a mind that couldn’t speak or control its body. Erstwhon called it the living death. When used against a person without magic, well, it was just a big knife. Not that using a big knife made Varal less dangerous. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door a crack and listened. Then, he expanded his senses. There was no one nearby to see him. He stepped into the hall and immediately activated Shadow Step. He wanted to be ready, as some part of him anticipated that this would turn into a brutal fight for survival.

That turned out to be a wholly unfounded concern. He ended up killing most of the slavers through the expedient of slitting their throats in their sleep. It seemed that they been relying far too heavily on those lookouts to warn them. Or, maybe, they’d just gotten complacent from being successful for a time. He didn’t know and, on reflection, didn’t particularly care. Anything that made his work easier was a boon. Who knew? Maybe the goddess had decided to smile on him for this particular outing. The few who were awake proved almost as unaware as those who had been asleep. Several were killed with swift daggers to the heart. One was garroted. The only ones he couldn’t sneak up on were guarding a door.

Shrugging to himself, he just walked down the hall toward them.

“Who are you?” shouted one of the guards.

The other one, who Varal thought of as the smart one, didn’t bother with useless questions. He drew a short sword of his own and charged. There was a very brief exchange and then a headless guard dropped to the floor. The other one was so shocked that he just stared at the head that had rolled to his feet right up until Varal stabbed him. The man finally looked up and into the blank mask.

“But who are you?” gurgled the man before he slid off the short sword.

Once again, he extended his magical senses, expecting wards on this room. He found… nothing. He frowned to himself. That seemed wrong. There was someone in the room. He could feel that, but no protections? No magic? This all felt like a trap. Putting his back against wall next to the door, he lifted his leg and slammed it into the door as hard as he could. He’d expected a reinforced door that would break off its hinges and fall. Then, the person in the room would send some kind of magical attack out at him or, barring that, some kind of ranged weapon. What he didn’t expect was for his magically reinforced kick to make the door explode into tiny pieces. The scream of terror that immediately followed it was also not to plan.

Feeling as though he was missing something important, he stepped around into the room. There he found a giant of a man crouched against the far wall. The giant took one look at him and screamed again. It might have been mistaken for the scream of a small girl it was so high-pitched and laced with terror.

“Conswin?” Varal demanded.

“Please don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me!” sobbed the man. “I never wanted to do this. They made me!”

“Is that right?” asked Varal, drawing a second dagger and approaching the man. “If you tell me about them, I might even let you keep your eyes.”

Chapter 7

Alidair Vestin made his way to the king’s private study. He waited outside while the guards announced him. He wasn’t sure how the king was going to react to this news. On the surface, it was a good thing. On the surface. What lay beneath was another matter entirely because it was composed almost entirely of questions with either bad answers or no answers at all. All Alidair had was tenuous speculation, and he loathed that sort of speculation. Informed guesses based on experience and at least a partial foundation of fact were one thing. That’s what spies did, after all. Pure guesswork was a road to an unmarked grave somewhere. There was a call from inside the study, and the guards waved him in.

Alidair strode over to the desk, bowed, and said, “Your majesty.”

The king reached up to rub at his temple with two fingers.

“Alidair.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Unless you want me to stab you, repeatedly, stop doing that when we’re in private. It’s tedious enough when we’re in public.”

“Understood.”

“So, what catastrophe threatens to burn down my kingdom or empty my coffers today?”

“For once, none that I can tell. I’ve come about that loathsome child slavery business.”

“Did we finally catch the bastards?”

“Not precisely, although they won’t be taking any more children. Ever.”

The king glanced up and fixed Alidair with a piercing stare.

“Explain.”

“Well, it would appear that someone did our work for us. As far as we can tell, every member of the gang, or damned near every member, was rather efficiently murdered two nights ago. Dozens of children were set free to return to their homes or to the care of the church.”

The king closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and let out an enormous sigh.

“Alidair, why do I get the feeling that you’re about to turn something I consider an unalloyed good into a huge goddess damned mess?”

“Because that’s exactly what I’m about to do,” admitted Alidair apologetically.

“Why?” moaned the king. “Why are you turning this cause for celebration into a bad thing? Slavers are dead. My citizens’ children have been freed. As far as I’m concerned, if we can find the people who did it, we should heap gold on their heads, serve them a feast, and pile on the honors. Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do exactly that?”

“Well, for one thing, we don’t know who did it. Officially.”

The king glared at him and asked, “Officially, what do we know?”

“Officially, a masked man infiltrated the slavers’ base of operations, killed all of them, and then left. He supposedly told a passing businessman that there were children trapped in the building who had been abducted and ordered him to go in and free them.”

The king reached up with his other hand and began rubbing at both of his temples.

“A masked man killed the slavers? A masked man?”

“And, according the reports, the masked man matches what few descriptions we have of The Lamentation.”

“You understand how absurd all of this sounds, correct?”

“I do.”

“So, what do you suspect, unofficially?”

“Unofficially, I believe that the businessman was the one who did all of the killing before he freed the children. I also believe that he may, in fact, be The Lamentation.”

“Even if he is that assassin,” said the king, “what possible reason could he have for doing that? Assassins aren’t generally known for their acts of kindness and public-spiritedness.”

“I’m not sure about that. The Lamentation supposedly killed a fair number of people that we would have had killed eventually. But,” said Alidair, seeing the look on the king’s face, “that’s neither here nor there.”

“Is there any actual evidence that this businessman did the killing or is an assassin? Anything other than your intuition?”

“The businessman doesn’t exist.”

“What?”

“Well, let me rephrase. The man is real enough. His businesses exist. It’s his history that doesn’t. He claims to be a survivor from Grovesmar.”

The king frowned at that.

“The town of Grovesmar was destroyed in the last war. Razed. Everyone was supposedly killed.”

“Precisely. He looks to be about the right age, but there isn’t a way to confirm the story. Whatever records existed there were destroyed with the town.”

“How convenient,” said the king. “All anyone can say is that it might or might not be true, but nobody can back it up. Anything suspicious about his businesses?”

“No,” admitted Alidair. “As far as we’ve been able to determine in the last day or so, they are real businesses engaged in legitimate trade. They’re even pretty honest about paying their taxes.”

“I assume there is a reason you didn’t have him in brought in for a more thorough questioning?”

“Several. For one, he’s a hero to the people in the slums. I don’t need to explain to you how tense things have been there since the children started going missing. If we take their hero—” Alidair trailed off.

“It could well lead to riots,” finished the king. “Hell, I wouldn’t even blame them. It’s not like we managed to return their children. Anything else?”

“The church has been singing his praises to anyone and everyone that will listen to them. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were getting ready to declare the man a saint. Then, there is Countess Ramella.”

“Ugh. What is the madwoman doing now?”

“Apparently, she had an encounter with the businessman and was impressed with him. Particularly the way he’d taken responsibility for an orphaned girl. She’s been singing his praises and, by all appearances, has convinced Duchess Mirwell.”

“So, not one madwoman but two. I see now why you didn’t have him brought in.”

“Quite,” agreed Aldair. “Also, I’m not entirely convinced we could bring him in without an appalling amount of bloodshed. If he truly is The Lamentation, I suspect he’d cut down our people with the same impunity that he cut down those slavers.”

“All right, this is all very interesting, but it does bring me back around to my original question. Why shouldn’t I just heap gold and praise on him, then pat him on the back with a hearty well done? Assassin or not, he just solved a problem for us.”

“He solved half a problem for us,” corrected Aldair. “He killed the gang that was actually rounding up the children, but we both know they were getting support from somewhere. Probably one of the nobles who saw those poor children as a convenient source of income. Then, there’s the matter of the city guard. Someone had to be allowing those children to pass through the gates.”

“I don’t suppose The Lamentation will finish the job for us,” said the king a little wistfully. “I’d let him name his price if he did.”

“You shouldn’t joke like that.”

The king’s gaze sharpened and he said, “What makes you think I’m joking? I’d pay him any sum he asked for if we could find a way to contact him. I mean, we could approach the businessman, but he’d be insane to treat it as anything other than a trap. Damn it, Aldair, I tolerate a lot from my nobles out of necessity, but selling children into slavery? I would rain gold or magical treasures down on him in a heartbeat if he killed them for us, and then I’d pay for the pleasure of spitting on the corpses.”

“I thought that there might be a way to do it through one of my contacts,” conceded Aldair. “A way that wouldn’t feel so suspicious. But the man has disappeared.”

“Killed?”

Aldair shrugged and said, “Possibly, but I doubt it. He wasn’t the sort who would let himself get killed.”

“Too bad. Either way, I’m inclined to simply look the other way about all of this.”

“If it had just been some vengeful father or a rival gang, I’d be inclined to agree. In this case, however, I’m very concerned about letting a man that dangerous slip out of sight. Right now, he’s killing slavers, which even I agree is a good thing. What I’m worried about is what happens if he ever decides that he’s not happy with you? Frankly, I’m not convinced we could stop him if he decided that you need to die. If he slips back into total obscurity, we might never see it coming.”

“You know, Alidair, you have a real talent for stealing misery from the jaws of happiness.”

“You may have mentioned that before.”

Aladair waited while the king took on a thoughtful expression. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it when the monarch began to laugh.

“I’ve just had a wonderful idea. Countess Ramella has been complaining for some time now that the Harven Barony has been falling into ruin and lawlessness ever since the old Baron died with no obvious successor. That barony borders her lands, but both are at a nice remove from the capital. You want to keep the man visible, but preferably too preoccupied to slit my throat in the night. Well then, let’s make him a baron for his services to the kingdom and its people. If we’re lucky, he’ll be so distracted trying to reimpose order and govern that land that he won’t have time for us. If we’re very lucky, the countess will be so distracted by him that she’ll spend less time here bothering me. We’ll even make it hereditary for that girl he’s adopted. That ought to prove a good incentive not to become too much of a problem in the future.”

“You want to make a man we suspect is a ruthless and talented assassin into a baron?” asked Alidair.

The king shrugged and said, “You say that like the rest of the nobility are moral paragons. I doubt there’s more than a handful who haven’t hired a man just like The Lamentation at one time or another. Do you really think it makes their hands clean because they didn’t do the killing personally?”

“I suppose not.”

“Well then, I guess it’s time to wake some people up to draft the paperwork.”