As Arlen dropped to the crenulations circling the building below Jordan's window, he was cursing every god he knew. He had seen the boy start to crumble under the pressure; he had almost had him, and that bastard Unspoken...
He took a deep breath of evening air, bringing his temper back under control. It wasn't the boy's fault Marick had decided to play it like this, while Yddris was still squarely in the way. The Unspoken hadn't known Jordan long enough to build the kind of trust that led to fewer questions and a slacker surveillance. Having Silas forced on him had in turn forced Arlen to show his hand sooner than he would have liked and now he was dodging Yddris at every turn, second-guessing how much the Unspoken knew about him and his plans. It always appeared to be more than he would have liked.
He had eventually told Marick that Yddris had known his last name, in the hours following Jordan's release from the warehouse. It had seemed like an inevitability that Marick would find out some other way, and he'd rather it came from his own mouth. It could potentially ruin all their plans if Yddris knew more than he was letting on.
"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" Marick had snapped, and then he had gone eerily calm. "No matter. Things will go ahead as planned. Concentrate on the job I gave you for now."
That, more than anything, had pissed Arlen off. His employer could have had any number of reasons for making sure he didn't interfere with the meeting he had with Jordan, but this was breaking a cardinal rule of the guild. People who knew more than they should had to die, though that person being a witch man was an obstacle. Still, he had expected it to be taken seriously, not to have it brushed off like he was some sort of rambling child. Marick hadn't treated him like a child when he was little more than that, joining the guild for the first time at a little over fourteen years old. The man hadn't been leader then, and though he wasn't Arlen's tutor, either, Arlen owed half of his skills to Marick. It was more than a little needling to be brushed aside like that.
Arlen scowled and shook his head clear of those thoughts; that wasn't what he was here for. He hadn't even intended to drop in on Jordan, but when he had found the window unlocked, he hadn't been able to help himself.
It wasn't quite full night yet, but all the torches around the castle's inner ramparts were lit and firelight glowed in dozens of windows. In the middle distance, Orthan's house temple shone like a beacon, filling the air around it with a golden haze, and far below, he heard the metallic crank of the gatehouse portcullis coming down for the night. The mountains on the borders of the city were glowing only feebly, thin veins of green just visible if one squinted hard enough. Arlen would find a private room for the night in a pleasure house that didn't ask too many questions instead of trying to get home before the demons came out. He would have preferred an inn, but this close to the seat of power, seedier was safer.
He jumped down to walkway of the curtain wall. They hadn't yet stationed guards here for the night; the inner wall was guarded in the dark season only, when there was no guarantee the runework on the outer would hold under the constant battering from demons. Arlen didn't know how that witchcraft worked and mistrusted it as a point of principle, but even he had to admit that it was clever. He had heard tales of the time before the city was rune-warded. It was the only time he didn't begrudge Unspoken their utter strangeness.
He didn't come across many guards as he darted along the wall. The few he did see were easy to skirt around, deep in conversation or focused in the wrong direction. Arlen hadn't had time to choose a mark and learn to impersonate them, so he relied on his speed and silence. He supposed he had had enough misfortune befall him in recent days that Nict might have sat up and taken notice, since he made it to his destination unseen despite the bustle in the main building. It gratified him that for once he had managed to make a plan that Yddris hadn't guessed ahead of time. After all, what business would an assassin have with an Angel?
The dungeons, where his target resided, still presented a problem. He had no disguise and the dungeons were patrolled regularly. He could hear voices in the corridor below as he crouched on the stairwell, out of view of any servants in the corridor above. They sounded far enough away that the guards could be in the office at the end, but there was no way of being sure and it was certainly not going to buy him enough time to question Nerahardt.
He darted back up the stairs, pulling a bottle of smoking belladonna, a firecracker and a smoke bomb out of his pocket. Just past the dungeon stairs the wall jutted out in a corner; Arlen pressed himself into the gap, secured his scarf around his mouth, and threw the smoke bomb into the path of a passing maid.
She shrieked as dark grey smoke billowed from the capsule, and before she had a chance to look up in the brief window before it filled the room, Arlen struck the firecracker to life on the wall and lobbed it after the bomb. Sparks of various vivid colours cracked and whistled through the air.
"Raziel, you amazing, scummy bastard," Arlen murmured as he pulled the cork out of the belladonna. The commotion had brought servants running, including the guards Arlen had wanted to lure away. While the firecracker was still shrieking and pinging shrapnel off skin and armour alike, Arlen rolled the belladonna into the smoke and chaos. A moment later he heard the delicate vial snap under someone's foot.
The laughter and the screaming started when Arlen reached the dungeon corridor. The belladonna wasn't deadly – it was too dilute for that – but it packed a punch as a hallucinogen. Anyone in that corridor would be giggling and seeing things for the next few days, and that was if they didn't pass out and spend the time in a drugged stupor.
"Who's there?"
The Angel was slumped in the corner of his cell, far from the proud and haughty creatures Arlen had seen in the past. Even Anarabelle Novae had more poise and dignity than the winged, stinking lump in the smelly gloom, and she wandered the castle chained and barefoot and wearing little more than a sack with holes in.
"I expected a better show," Arlen said, stepping up to the bars and cocking his head to get a better look. Dark eyes glared at him through a curtain of greasy hair.
"Who are you?"
If he squinted, he could make out that some of the stains on the man's robe were rust-red rather than dark brown; blood. Though the Angel looked cautious, he didn't move. Perhaps he couldn't.
Arlen schooled his emotions. Angels could read them, and he didn't want Nerahardt to detect his boiling irritation, to find an opening to wind him up. Arlen was the one in control here.
"It doesn't matter," Arlen said, picking his words carefully, "who I am. All that matters," and at this he drew a long, thin pipe out of a pouch on his waist, allowing the Angel to see it, "is who you are."
"Where did you get that?" Nerahardt hissed, pressing himself further back against the wall. "They were all burned."
"Not all of them, clearly," Arlen said, and shook the pipe so that the dart inside rattled. It was laced with common weed poison, of course, but he would let Nerahardt think it was the same weapon that had turned the tide on the Angels during the Annexe War; Death venom, difficult to harvest, fast-moving and one of the few poisons no one, even the Angels with their lore and medicine, had found an antidote for. The Unspoken weren't all saints; they had had a dark side during the war that they all liked to pretend hadn't existed. The weed poison would leave Nerahardt in a great deal of pain for a couple of days, but then his Angel blood would fight it off and he would survive. The fear was a much better weapon.
He hadn't rescued the blowpipe from a mass burning, either; he had simply painted a Varthian hunting flute.
"What do you want?" Jeorge asked in a low voice.
"I'm wondering why you're here," Arlen said, pleased to have cooperation so quickly. He had thought it would at least be a little bit harder than that. Nict really was smiling on him. "I've done some digging on you, Nerahardt. No one from Caelum has asked for you back. Why's that?"
"Had orders," Nerahardt said, after only a minor hesitation. His eyes were on the flute. "I had a task to carry out. They found out I led the revolution ten years ago, but Lucifer said he would pardon me if I was successful."
"And is this task to do with the recent death of the Unspoken?"
Jeorge's flicked to Arlen's concealed face. "Not directly."
"Maybe you could elaborate a little?"
"There's a deal," Jeorge said, the whites of his eyes showing huge as the flute glinted in the light from a nearby brazier. Somewhere upstairs someone let out a hoot of laughter and cried something about flying horses. "An alliance. Between the Orthanian house and Lucifer."
Arlen narrowed his eyes. "What kind of alliance?"
"Pave the way for Caelum to expand," Jeorge said, "And Orthan can have the seat of power when the Harkenn household is flattened."
Arlen spat. "Who in Orthan?"
"I don't know. I didn't get that far. I was arrested before I was made privy to any plans."
"Oh, likely story. I should poke you full of holes just for the demonshit."
"No, wait, I swear, I swear, I don't..."
"What does it have to do with Unspoken?" Arlen snapped, losing patience with the plaintive whining. Then it occurred to him, "Because they're loyal to Harkenn."
"And they're Nictaven's biggest asset," Jeorge said, nodding. "As long as their guild is loyal to the Harkenns, Lucifer won't get anywhere close to the Reach and the Orthanian house won't get the throne. I think they wanted to scare them, wanted them to step aside or turn themselves over at the prospect of being wiped out."
It suddenly made sense why Marick wanted Eril dead. If any of this plan worked, the Devils would be rounded up and hanged. Like the Unspoken, the Angels were all attuned to magic, though in a different way, but unlike the Unspoken, they were bred soldiers and used their gifts indiscriminately. There was no prospect of bullying them into letting the Devils be, not like Harkenn's soft-as-demonshit city guard, and no oaths that kept their magic from being weaponised against people.
Arlen's scar tingled.
"Do you know who killed the Unspoken?" he asked softly, an idea beginning to form.
"No. Probably hired someone, I don't know." Jeorge's affected haughtiness was slipping as his agitation grew. "They'll kill me if they find out I told you this."
"Don't let them find out, then. If you want a tip on how to do that, I suggest growing some balls," Arlen retorted, slipping the flute back into his belt pouch. "Thank you for your assistance, Nerahardt. If I find out you've lied to me, be assured I'm saving this dart for you."
"Wait, where are you..."
Arlen was already running. The change in the atmosphere had been subtle, but years of sneaking around this castle had taught him how to tell when the game was up. The shrieking and laughing had stopped. Replacements would arrive for the afflicted guards soon.
As he had suspected, the corridor was empty when he reached the top of the stairs. There were small scorch marks all over the floor from the firecracker, and Arlen's vision wavered a little as he breathed in traces of the belladonna. He put a hand over his mouth and ran for the servants' corridor he had escaped through with Silas not long ago, only breathing freely when the door was closed behind him.
For a moment he stood in the pitch dark, churning things over. If Caelum was making a move, that meant the treaty would crumble the moment Harkenn found out. There was no way that the dissolution of the treaty wouldn't result in another war. The Orthanian house had a deep-rooted bitterness about the Harkenns taking power centuries ago that was passed down through generations, but Arlen had never expected them to make such a bald-faced grab for the seat. And with Angels, too. He shuddered. He wasn't fond of Harkenn, but Lucifer sticking his fingers in everyone's pie was a prospect he enjoyed even less.
Still, he could use it. Shit could still make sculpture.
There was no Unspoken waiting for him on the battlements when he reached the top of the ladder this time. He abseiled down the outer wall, bypassing the gatehouse altogether. Below and all around him, firelight winked and flickered, and somewhere in the distance he heard a Firebull wailing. His fingers almost slipped on the rope. The Death was objectively about the worst demon to be cornered by, but there was something about the 'bulls in particular that gave Arlen the shakes. Perhaps it was their strangely humanoid hands and feet, thick and strong in some deadly caricature. Perhaps it was simply the wailing. If Arlen had to imagine what a tortured soul would sound like, he would compare it to a Firebull's cry. Firebulls didn't venture into the city unless they were desperate, deep into the dark season. The fact that one was so close at this time of year felt like an omen.
His luck ran out when he reached the streets. He had set out alone deliberately; it had been hard to be around Silas and his nagging about apprenticing to Arlen. He hadn't found a way to tell him it was highly unlikely Arlen would be the one to teach him, not without the kid flying off the handle and doing something reckless. The number of times the ex-acolyte had asked him to reveal who his competitor was disturbed him; Silas hadn't mentioned killing Jordan since the first time, but the feverish glitter in his eye at the topic made Arlen think he hadn't forgotten it.
And when Arlen consistently evaded his questions, Silas unfailingly got the urge to do something idiotic, like follow him to the castle.
Usk was with him, looking unimpressed as he almost lifted the stammering boy off the ground by the ear. They stood in the shadow of a pub on the main street. As Arlen approached, rage coiling in his gut, Usk dropped Silas and kicked him in the back of the knees. He went down hard on the cobbles with a screech.
"Intercepted him," the brute grumbled. "Little eejit thought he'd sneak out after you."
"If you don't stop being a petulant little shit, I will kill you," Arlen hissed, as Silas picked himself up off the ground. "I'd even take your debt onto myself just for the pleasure of seeing you drown in the river."
Silas scowled. He never reacted to Arlen's threats anymore, another development he didn't like. They both knew Marick had Arlen's hands tied. "I wanted to help."
"You do not take it upon yourself to decide what to help with," Arlen growled. "Your track record falls reliably into the category of incompetence. When you have a job to do, I help you, and you do exactly as I say. You don't get to decide what to do."
"You're not my tutor, though, are you?" Silas said, setting his stance in a clear challenge. "If you were, you could tell me exactly what to do."
"Even if I were, I would only have marginally more power over you than I do now," Arlen snapped, "You're under my charge. I saved you from the scaffold. You owe me a life debt, and you can start paying it back by doing as I say." He ran a finger down the flat of his hunting knife. "I think you forget too frequently that Marick only wants you alive. He never specified how many fingers you needed to have."
This finally got a reaction. Silas hung his head, cowed, but Arlen didn't want to hear an apology and turned to Usk instead. The Varthian was staring up at the sky.
"What is it?" Arlen asked, turning to scan the battlements in case he'd missed a witness to his intrusion. There was no one there.
"No moons," Usk said.
There weren't.
"Nict preserve us," Arlen murmured.
The Firebull howled again, closer this time.
The dark season was upon them.