Red scowled at his companion. The man was an idiot. If Léac had left him to do the job alone, the girl would be dead by now. And he didn't trust this woman either. A brothel was a brothel as far as he was concerned, no matter who the clientele happened to be. And whores were whores ─ why trust this one just because she was robed like a courtier?
"I think we would have remembered someone of that description, gentlemen. She sounds quite ─ unique, wouldn't you say?"
Red hawked and spat. The pale, yellow string of phlegm slid between the cobbles at his feet. Lavinia eyed him with distaste.
"You're certain?" he asked again.
"Your master, Sir, happens to be one of our best clients."
Why doesn't that surprise me?
"Why would we want to run the risk of losing such custom for the sake of some freakish outcast of Colvé?" She laughed, the sound like shards of glass crashing to the floor.
Red shifted uncomfortably. Perhaps she was right. They should have murdered the bitch when they had the chance. Now she could be anywhere between Colvé and Dal Reniac, possibly even sleeping out wild on the moors ─ she was mad enough to do that, it seemed. Lavinia assumed a more seductive pose.
"Your master has charged you with a difficult task, I can see. Why don't you give yourselves a rest, gentlemen?"
Red's companion appeared to prick his ears up.
"We boast some of the most accomplished girls in the empire, Sirs. And as I know your master well, I'm prepared to give you an hour to yourselves with two of them."
The blonde began to fan his face furiously with his hat. "I'm sure the master wouldn't object..." he began.
Red eyed him in disgust. "Can't you keep it inside your trousers for more than a few hours, man? This is a waste of time." He turned to Lavinia. "A generous offer but we must be moving on."
Lavinia shrugged. "As you wish. It's certainly not every day a man receives such an offer ─ a free hour of pleasure in an exclusive bordello. But I can see you are men of business so, good day."
She headed away across the courtyard. "Come on," Red growled. "Let's go."
"No, wait!" A hint of desperation had entered the blonde man's tone. "My friend is wrong ─ our master would not begrudge us such an opportunity, I'm sure. Especially given the fact that he is himself, as you just pointed out, such a regular customer."
Smiling, Lavinia turned round. "Well, gentlemen, what's it to be? I'm busy too, you know. And I won't repeat the offer."
Red's accomplice turned to him, his eyes pleading. "How could Léac possibly know that we took an hour more or less to find the girl? Besides..." he bent down and whispered in the wiry man's ear "If the whore is lying, and she's really here, it may be our only way of getting into the place."
Red mulled this over. It was the first sensible idea he'd heard from the man all day. He glanced across at Lavinia who was surveying the pair, her eyebrows arched in irony.
"Very well," he agreed at last. "We'll take you up on your offer. But if it should turn out that it fails to match your description ─ our master will hear of it."
"Sir, might I remind you that we have a reputation to maintain," Lavinia threw back haughtily. "And besides that, your master may well own Colvé, but he doesn't own The Serpent. This way, gentlemen."
She led them through an alcove and up spirals of stairs to a plainly-plastered corridor at the very top of the building, along the sides of which ran a series of wooden doors. She indicated one at the far end. "One at a time, if you don't mind, gentlemen. And if you mistreat my girls, I will hear of it." With that, she turned and headed down stairs.
The blonde looked hungrily at the door, saliva flecking the corners of his mouth. Red's stomach turned.
"For the Emperor's own sake, man. Get in there and do what you have to. I'll check these rooms."
Head down, the big man thundered like a bull towards the door at the far end, grasped the handle and leapt across the threshold. Red observed him, shaking his head.
"There's no one..." the blonde's sentence was cut short. With a gasping sound he clutched at his throat, and sank to the floor. The door slammed shut again.
Shit! The bitch has been here all along.
***
A dead weight, he crumpled to the floor in front of her, and before she could stop it, the door slammed shut. Hal had expected to take both of them as they entered the room. Now she had lost the advantage of surprise.
She looked down at the blonde man, his throat sliced open, blood gushing from his neck, coalescing in a puddle on the floor. Orla had been right about one thing, at least. The next kill was easier.
She heard Red breathing heavily behind the door and clenched her sword in readiness. His voice rasped between the hinges. She could smell his garlic-tainted breath.
"I know you're in there, Thæc. I can wait all day, girl. I promised my master I'd be coming back with your head in a bag. And that is just what I'll do."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that. The odds are a little fairer this time, don't you think? You haven't got your friends to help you out."
"Should have stuck you the first time, bitch. But I don't repeat my mistakes. You'll come out in time. And when you do, I'll be ready for you."
She grimaced. He was persistent if nothing else. There was a sudden motion behind the door, the sounds of scuffling and banging. Hal steeled herself for the onslaught but it didn't come. Instead, a girl screamed.
"So what's it going to be, Thæc?" Red's gravelly voice rasped through the keyhole again. "Are you going to stay in that room like a trapped rat while I butcher this girl here, or are you going to come out and get what's coming to you?"
Her heart pounded. The stakes had just been raised. She heard movement again and risked peering through the wooden slats of the door. She could just make out Asha struggling in Red's arms as he held a poniard to her throat.
"Be a good girl now and come out before I stick your friend here."
"Don't listen to the bastard, Hal!" Asha attempted to pull at the man's arms but he forced the point of the knife dangerously close to her skin.
"Alright, I'll come out. But let her go!" Easing open the door, she emerged on the threshold, her sword raised, the blue dress now bespattered in blood.
"Lay your blade on the ground," Red ordered. "Do it!" he yelled when she hesitated.
Years of duelling had taught Hal to distinguish false confidence from real. She caught the tremulous ring to Red's voice. There was fear there, she realised.
"Good girl. And now kick it away." She slid it down the corridor with her right foot.
"You've got me. Let her go now."
He flung Asha against the wall. She sank onto the floor, clutching at her neck and gasping for breath. "This is where it ends, girl." Picking up her sword, still grasping the poniard in his right hand, he edged forward.
"It certainly does," she whispered. Before he could come closer, she reached into the bodice of the dress, pulled out a dagger and flung it at his face. It hit him between the eyes. Red looked at her, his expression of confusion morphing into one of agony as the knife pierced deep inside his skull. Then, groaning, he fell backwards and was gone.
"Good thing your friend keeps his blades sharp." Hal looked across at Asha who had stopped choking, although her breathing was still forced and ragged. "Are you alright?"
"I'll live."
"What the hell were you thinking of, coming up here? You knew what I was going to do."
Asha coloured. "I thought I could help, that was all."
Hal offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet. "You could have got yourself killed."
Still shaking, Asha made no reply. Wordlessly, she picked up Red's legs as Hal hoisted him by the arms and they half-dragged, half-carried the assassin's body back into the room and dumped him unceremoniously on the rug next to his companion. Asha looked down at the blood-drained corpse on the floor in shock and disgust. "By all that's holy, Hal, could you not have been more subtle? We just had this room painted!"
"I didn't have time for subtlety." She nudged Red's corpse with her foot. "What are we going to do with these two?"
Asha surveyed the gruesome scene, her pale eyes now those of a calculating courtier. "Well I know they weren't the first, and I suspect they won't be the last."
Hal stared at her aghast. "You kill off your clientele?"
"Of course not. That would hardly be good for business, would it?" Asha snapped. "I just mean that occasionally some of our customers get a little out of hand ─ perhaps they've had too much to drink or they think that just because they've paid for a girl they can do whatever they like with her. So on occasion, for our own protection we have been forced to, let's say, take some fairly terminal measures."
"And what do the town guards have to say about that?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Well it would be unwise, wouldn't it? After all, we do know all the dirty little secrets of every senator, courtier and merchant who visits this place. I don't think a couple of miscreants like these two are worth destroying reputations over, are they?"
Hal could appreciate the logic, but it made her uneasy all the same.
"Oh come, now Hal, would you rather swing for this pair of lowlifes?" Asha's lips twitched in amusement as the duellist struggled to reconcile morality with pragmatism.
"No of course not. I had to do it. They'd have followed me all the way to Hannac and beyond if I hadn't stopped them."
"You don't have to justify yourself." She caught Hal's gaze and her expression softened. "The same old Halanya Thæc." She smiled enigmatically. "Too honest for the court."
Hal looked away, embarrassed. "This dress is ruined," she said, examining the blood-soaked material.
Asha observed her for a moment before moving closer. Her lips almost pressed to Hal's ear, she whispered: "If you're staying tonight, I can help you out of it."
Hal froze and sensing it, Asha backed away, her expression unreadable. "You know, Hal" she said finally, "I think I was a little in love with you in the past. In fact, I believe a few of the wards were. You were just so different, so determined to reject the cards that fate had dealt you."
The duellist stared, her mind failing to absorb Asha's confession. "But you all hated me!"
Asha smiled and shook her head. "We didn't hate you, Hal. We were jealous. You were the only one who refused to be manipulated. And when you left, finally, we weren't surprised. We were just sorry that none of us could defy them all in the way you had done. Then, of course, shortly afterwards, my uncle put paid to my aristocratic future."
She bit her lip and Hal could see she was struggling to hold back tears. She suddenly experienced an enormous wave of regret for this girl whose potential had been devoured by the court. Perhaps, she conceded, she had been one of the lucky ones. Her life may not have been easy, but it had always been hers to control.
Reaching forward, Hal pushed a stray lock of blonde hair out of Asha's eyes. "I see. Now I understand. And if you'd told me this in the past, our lives might have been different. But now I'm looking for someone ─ someone I've lost. And I won't give up until I've found her again."
Asha scanned Hal's face gravely. "She must be very special, I imagine."
"Oh, she is."
The door swung open and they both jumped. Lavinia entered the room and ran a trembling hand across her ashen face. "Two corpses in less than an hour, one of my best rooms all but destroyed and now I'll have to come up with a convincing alibi for the town guards. Halanya Thæc, you'll bring a house of ill-repute into ill-repute!"