her three eyes tiptoe in darkness, her eight legs track my spine, she mirrors and mocks my pacing.
There's a spider here who knows all of me her web my history full writ.
Somewhere in this strange place a spider waits for my panicked flight:
The Conspiracy Blind Gallan (b.1078)
Soon as the guild assassin left the room, kalam drained the last of his beer, paid up, and ascended the staircase.
From the gallery railing he studied the crowd below, then, seeing that no one paid him much attention, he strode down the hallway and entered the last room on the right.
He closed the door and locked it. Quick Ben was seated cross-legged on the floor, within a circle of melted blue wax. The wizard was hunched over, bare-chested, his eyes shut and droplets of sweat trickling down his face. Around him the air shimmered, as if glossed with lacquer.
Kalam walked around the wax circle to the bed. He took a leather satchel from a peg above the bedpost and set it down on the thin, straw-filled mattress. Peeling back the flap he removed the contents. A minute later he'd laid out the mechanisms for a goat's foot arbalest. The crossbow's metal parts had been blued, the narrow wooden stock soaked in pitch and dusted with black sand. Kalam slowly, quietly, assembled the weapon.
Quick Ben spoke behind him. «Done. Whenever you're ready, friend.»
«The man left through the kitchen. But he'll be back,» Kalam said, rising with the arbalest in his hands. He attached a strap to it and slung the weapon over one shoulder. Then he faced the wizard. «I'm ready.»
Quick Ben also stood, wiping his forehead with a sleeve. «Two spells. You'll be able to float, control every descent. The other should give you the ability to see anything magical-well, almost anything. If there's a High Mage kicking around, we're out of luck.»
«And you?» Kalam asked, as he examined his quiver of bolts.
«You won't see me directly, just my aura,» Quick Ben replied with a grin, «but I'll be with you all the way.»
«Well, hopefully this'll go smoothly. We make contact with the Guild, we offer the Empire's contract, they accept and remove for us every major threat in the city.» He shrugged into his black cloak and pulled up the hood.
«You sure we can't just go downstairs and walk right up to the man, lay it out?»
Kalam shook his head. «Not how it's done. We've identified him, he's done the same with us. He's probably just made contact with his commander, and they'll arrange things to their liking. Our man should lead us now to the meet.»
«Won't it be an ambush we're walking into, then?»
The large man agreed. «More or less. But they'll want to know what we want with them first. And once that's out, I doubt the Guild's master will be interested in killing us. You ready?»
Quick Ben raised a hand towards Kalam, then muttered briefly under his breath.
Kalam felt a lightness come into him, rising to his skin and emanating a cushion of cool air that enveloped his body. And before his eyes Quick Ben's figure formed a blue-green penumbra, concentrated at the wizard's long-fingered hands. «I have them,» the assassin said, smiling, «two old friends.»
Quick Ben sighed. «Yes, here we are doing this all over again.» He met his friend's gaze. «Hood's on our heels, Kal. I can feel his breath on my neck, these days.»
«You're not alone in that.» Kalam turned to the window. «Sometimes,» he said drily, «I have the feeling our Empire wants us dead.» He walked to the window, unlatched the shutters, then swung them inward and leaned both hands on the sill.
Quick Ben came up beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder.
They gazed out at the darkness, a brief sharing of unease passing between them.
«We've seen too much,» Quick Ben said softly.
«Hood's Breath,» Kalam growled, «what are we doing this for anyway?»
«Maybe if the Empire gets what it wants-Darujhistan-they'll let us slip away.»
«Sure, but who's going to convince the sergeant to walk out of the Empire?»
«We show him he hasn't got any choice.»
Kalam climbed on to the sill. «Good thing I'm not a Claw any more. Just soldiers, right?»
Behind him Quick Ben touched his own chest and vanished. His disembodied voice held a note of wry amusement. «Right. No more cloak-and-dagger games for old Kalam.»
The assassin pulled himself up, turning to face the wall then beginning his climb to the roof. «Yeah, I've always hated it.»
Quick Ben's voice was beside him now. «No more assassinations.»
«No more spying,» Kalam added, reaching for the roof's edge.
«No more disguising spells.»
Clambering on to the roof, Kalam lay still. «No more daggers in the back,» he whispered, then sat up and scanned the nearby rooftops. He saw nothing; no unusual huddled shapes, no bright magical auras.
«Thank the gods,» came Quick Ben's whisper from above.
«Thank the gods,» Kalam echoed, then looked down over the roof's edge. Below a pool of light marked the inn entrance. «You take the back door. I've got this one.»
«Right.»
Even as the wizard answered Kalam stiffened. «There he is,» he hissed.
«You still with me?»
Quick Ben assented.
They watched the figure of Rallick Nom, now cloaked, crossing to the far side of the street and entering an alley.
«I'm on him,» Quick Ben said.
A blue-green glow rose around the wizard. He rose into the air and flew out swiftly across the street, slowing as he reached the alley. Kalam climbed to his feet and padded silently along the roof's edge. Reaching the corner, he glanced down to the rooftop of an adjacent building, then jumped.
He descended slowly, as if sinking through water, and landed without a sound. Off to his right, moving on a parallel path, was Quick Ben's magical aura. Kalam crossed the rooftop to the next building. Their man was heading for the harbour-front.
Kalam continued tracking Quick Ben's beacon, moving from one rooftop to the next, sometimes jumping down, at other times climbing.
There was little subtlety about Kalam: where others used finesse he used the strength of his thick arms and legs. It made him an unlikely assassin, but he'd learned to use that to his advantage.
They now approached the harbour area, the buildings single-storeyed and large, the streets rarely lit except around the double-door entrances to warehouses, where the occasional private guard lingered. In the night air hung the taint of sewage and fish.
Finally, Quick Ben stopped, hovered over a warehouse courtyard, then hurried back to Kalam, who waited at the edge of a nearby two-storeyed clearing house. «Looks like the place,» Quick Ben said, floating a few feet above Kalam. «What now?»
«I want a good line of sight to that courtyard.»
«Follow me.»
Quick Ben led him to another building. Their man was now visible, crouching on the warehouse roof, attention down on the courtyard below.
«Kai, do you smell something bad about this?»
Kalam snorted. «Hell, no, it's bloody roses out here. Take position, friend.»
«Right.»
Rallick Nom lay down on the rooftop, his head out over its edge. Below was the warehouse's courtyard, flat, grey and empty. Directly beneath him the shadows were impenetrable. Sweat trickled down Rallick's face.
From the shadow below came Ocelot's voice, «He's got you in sight?»
«Yes.»
«And he's not moving?»
«No. Listen, I'm sure there's more than one of them. I would've known if he'd been trailing me, and no one was. It stinks of magery, Ocelot, and you know what I think about magery.»
«Dammit, Nom. If you'd just start using the stuff we give you, you'd rank among the best of us. But to Hood's Gate with that. We've got spotters, and unless there's a very good wizard around we'd pick up on any magic. Face it,» a note of malice entered Ocelot's voice, «he's better than you. He tracked you all right. Solo.»