Ghost Ascension – Episode 5

You point at the trailing Kindred assassin.

“Probably the lookout,” mutters Lucan. “Keeps watch while the other four deal with that woman.”

As he speaks, the woman in the red coat vanishes into a crowded shop selling important Anshani carpets. The four assassins wait for a moment, and then enter the shop themselves. The fifth assassin pauses near the entrance, glancing back and forth.

“They won’t kill her in the shop,” you murmur. You’ve dealt with Kindred assassins before, many times, and you know how they operate. “They’ll wait until she’s alone, kill her then. Or make it look like an accident, depending on their orders.”

“Take the lookout, make him talk?” says Lucan.

You nod, and walk into the street, putting on the mien and expression of a harried serving maid. Lucan walks away from you, circling around the street. He knows exactly what to do.

You’ve done this with him before, after all.

Among other things, it seems, as of last night.

No. You can think about that later, after you’ve found Nikaedes.

You approach the Kindred assassin, and he looks up and smiles as you approach. He looks little different than any other middling merchant, except for his gray eyes, which have the sort of coldness that only comes after much killing.

“I am sorry to trouble you, sir,” you say, speaking with a thick Caerish accent. “But…but…”

Lucan walks up to the shop’s door. The assassin glances at him once and looks away.

“Why, it’s no trouble, my dear,” says the assassin, touching your shoulder. “What is the matter?”

“It’s just that I’m lost!” you say. “My mistress the Countess told me to buy a bolt of silk from the market by noon, and if I don’t…”

“Not to fear,” says the assassin, cupping his hand around your hip and turning you, “the market is…”

Lucan reverse himself, grabbing the door jamb for leverage, and his fist slams into the side of the assassin’s neck. You sidestep, seize one arm, twist it behind the assassin’s back. Lucan grabs the other, and together you hustle the assassin into an alley before anyone notices. You strip the assassin of his knives, and Lucan shoves him to the ground. The assassin leaps back to his feet, cat-quick, but Lucan is quicker, the tip of his sword resting at the assassin’s throat.

“Dreadfully sorry for the hassle,” says Lucan, smiling, “but we’d like the answers to some questions.”

The assassin sneers. “I would never betray the sacred blood pact of the Kindred clans, sworn upon the altar of…”

“Yes, yes, yes,” you say, dropping the Caerish accent. “Your sacred blood pact, I’ve heard it all before. You were following that woman in the red coat. Why?”

The blood drains from the assassin’s face.

“You’re her,” he whispers. “The Ghost Countess.”

All at once another voice fills your head. Your mother, this time, dead after she murdered your father for the magi.

“Torture him,” she whispers. “Make him scream, make him beg, make him tell you what you want to know. You were always weak and useless, child, too weak to do what must be done…”

You force aside the hallucination and make yourself smile.

“Tell me,” you say, “your orders.”

The assassin licks your lips. Evidently the stories of your exploits have gotten grislier for the retelling among the Kindred assassins.

“I don’t know the details,” he says. “They don’t tell the likes of us very much. Two kills. The first, a woman wearing a red coat and other outlandish garb, who would be found either near or within the Black Cuirass Inn. The second is some foreign type, somewhere in the catacombs. A man with gray skin and yellow eyes. Both are supposed to be dangerous, but the man more than the woman. We’re to take them both quickly, if possible.”

Yellow eyes. For a moment, just a moment, you remember yellow eyes looking at you, narrowed in hate and rage…

Then the memory is gone.

You shake your head in frustration.

“Who hired you?” says Lucan.

“The magi, of course,” says the assassin. “They paid well, too. They want both the man and the woman dead, quickly, and…”

You shake your head again, still trying to shake loose the memory, your mother’s hateful voice buzzing in your thoughts.

The assassin takes that moment to strike.

He leaps forward, ducking under Lucan’s sword, hands reaching for your throat. No doubt he thinks himself faster than Lucan.

Lucan proves him wrong.

“Damn it,” mutters Lucan, wiping his blade clean. “I know it’s going to be a bad day when I have to kill a man before breakfast.”

“Let’s get back to the street before someone finds the body,” you say, and together you leave the alley.

Your mind races. You need to talk to the woman in the red coat. Someone in the city hires Nikaedes to kill the Emperor, and Kindred assassins start prowling the street looking for victims? A very thin coincidence.

But the minute the woman in the red coat leaves the shop, the remaining four Kindred assassins will realize that something has gone amiss. They might decide to kill her then and there and damn any witnesses. You need to warn her, or deal with the assassins. Of course, if you deal with the assassins too forcefully, the woman might spook and flee in the confusion.

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