"Have you got everything you need?" Marick's eyes had pierced him through the gloom. It had been the first time Arlen had seen his employer in days.
"Yes sir."
"Is the boy ready?"
"As ready as he'll ever be."
"Good." Marick gave a rare smile, but his eyes had darkened. "I'm sure you won't fail."
Arlen ran over the exchange again in his head as he hurried through the Orthanian quarter with Silas on his heels. Something about it had rubbed him the wrong way, though he wasn't sure what it was that made him think Marick was keeping something from him. Something about his expression and the way he spoke; but Arlen couldn't have put a finger on it if he tried all night. He needed his mind focused on the task ahead, all of it. This was the biggest job he had ever done, with higher stakes than he had ever faced. He couldn't afford to waste energy complaining that he'd had to bring Silas on such a complicated, time-sensitive mission.
The Orthanians weren't back from the Hallow dinner when they reached the temple, but the guard had been doubled and they were actually doing their job, which meant Eril knew he might be in danger. The priest wasn't going to make it easy to catch him alone.
Arlen had been at the scene of countless deaths, most of them by his hand. Marick commissioned him to kill men who owed too much money, who were trying to escape a contract, or who actively challenged Marick's dominance over the criminal underworld. Out of necessity, Arlen had had to kill castle guards, beggars, and civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had killed from all levels of society, more names and faces than he would ever remember, but he had never been scared to do what needed doing. Most of the men and women he had killed mattered in their own circles, but none of them had sent shockwaves through the whole of society, not like Eril's would.
Arlen was scared this time.
Silas had been sick several times on their journey, and Arlen regretted that he had such a strong stomach – he'd have liked to quietly throw up in a gutter as well, to purge some of the nervousness from his body. Instead it sat like a boulder in his gut and ate at him.
"You remember the plan?" he grunted, during a lull in the retching behind him. He crouched behind a chimney overlooking the temple courtyard. The guards were less likely to spot them against the sky if they blended with the roofline. "Keep it together, kid. Someone'll find us just by following the puke."
Silas gasped for breath and spat one last time. He straddled the roof like a horse, his balance worse than Arlen's.
"I can't do this."
Arlen only spared him a glance before returning to his watch. "Then Marick will kill you."
Silas made a strangled noise. "There has to be some other way to pay the debt."
"When you're in Marick's debt, you pay however he tells you to," Arlen murmured. The guards outside the temple door were fidgeting, which meant they expected the house contingent back from the castle soon. The whole courtyard was rune-warded; the entire quarter was, in fact, including the roof Arlen and Silas sat on. It was the only area of the city where it was safe from demons no matter what time of day it was, but the guards, who were from other quarters, were visibly agitated at being outside for so long. Arlen wished they'd stop checking the sky for Marrowhawks. Every glance increased his chances of being spotted.
"I'll say it again," Arlen said. He withdrew from his vantage point for a moment to fix Silas with a scowl. "Do you remember the plan?"
Silas pressed his lips into a thin, bloodless line and nodded.
"What if the drug doesn't work?" he asked.
"It will."
Arlen had had one experience before with the drug in question; Tuka in Tochk, more aptly known in layman's terms as arsewort, had once been slipped into his drink. He had been with the Devils for a few years by then. Marick was poised to take over the guild, and the whole had split into factions, backing their favourite for the takeover. Someone slipped the powdered root into the drinks of several of Marick's followers, and Arlen vividly remembered the week of burning hellfire that erupted from him afterwards.
He'd returned the favour by finding out who had done it and double-dosing their food. He and Usk had worked together ever since.
"What if Eril doesn't go to the back privy?"
This was where they'd planned to kill him. Behind the temple stood a small brick outhouse. Its only security consisted of latches on the doors, which Arlen thought was stupid considering anyone using the outhouse was vulnerable; it was far easier to threaten someone with their trousers round their ankles. He guessed it spoke to Orthanian complacency that they thought nothing could happen to them just because they were taking a shit.
"Are there other privies?" Arlen asked, a warning note in his voice. He had grilled Silas on the layout of the temple for just this reason; if their victim wasn't exactly where they planned, things got complicated. He didn't trust Silas to improvise without getting them caught; the last time he'd improvised, he'd had to be rescued from the scaffold.
"No," Silas said quickly, "but he might be late, or...or decide to go in the chamber pot."
"Nobody with any sense is going to relieve themselves of the burning shits in their own bedroom," Arlen snapped. He couldn't believe he was having this conversation. It wasn't the most dignified method of killing someone, but a victim as well-surrounded as the Head of Orthan had to be dealt with in a way that separated him from his guards. If it was anyone else, if there were any other options, Arlen would never have done it this way.
He almost hoped the Orthanians got held up and had to stay at the castle for the night. It would mean putting it off for another day. At the same time, he wanted nothing more than for it to be over already, and his nervousness warred with his impatience. He itched for a stiff drink. He should have had something before he left; a shot or two of whisky or a blackweed pipe. He had wanted to have a clear mind, but now he thought it would be clearer if he had taken something after all.
The first sign of the returning delegation was a moving column of torchlight appearing along one of the streets nearby. Arlen watched the household approach with clenched teeth.
"Get ready," he muttered. "As soon as we see Eril head inside, we start moving."
"They're here?" Silas craned his neck. "Where?"
"Just move when I do," Arlen said, slipping back behind the chimney as the first guards of the entourage entered the courtyard. Silas shuffled up behind him and squatted low.
"You stink, Arlen," he muttered. "Has anyone ever told you?"
"No, because it's none of their business."
"When did you last have a bath?"
"Not the time, kid," Arlen growled. "Also, fuck you."
The procession crossed the courtyard. It was a small delegation; only the highest ranking priests were invited to the Hallow dinner at the castle. As a result, they had a disproportionate number of guards escorting them. Despite the numbers, it was easy to pick out Eril; dressed in ostentatious gold and moving like he was hurrying over hot coals, gaze darting everywhere. The illegal liquor, stolen from Eril's stores, that Arlen had slipped to a servant earlier that day had reached its intended recipient, by the looks of things. Arlen waited until the last guard disappeared inside, and then gestured for Silas to follow as he slipped out from behind the chimney and leapt to the next roof along, where he slid down a drainpipe and landed on the wall of a private courtyard. Foliage overhung the wall, blocking much of the light from the temple and blurring his shadow. He edged along it, and when the wall ran out he dropped down and darted the last few yards to the cloister corridor.
It was a risky strategy, but Silas insisted that patrols ran hourly along the cloister corridors, and Arlen had seen the last patrol leave just before Eril arrived. All the same, he kept low and close to the wall in case he needed to vault back over it and run.
Patrols were one thing; acolytes who weren't asleep were another. A few doors ahead, a latch rattled and a door swung open, ejecting a bleary-eyed acolyte into the night. Arlen froze. Behind him, Silas inhaled sharply. The boy looked barely older than fifteen or sixteen, and hadn't spotted them yet.
Arlen muttered a curse. He hated dealing with kids.
It took the acolyte longer to notice them than Arlen expected; for a wild moment, he thought the boy might walk right by without seeing them. A few feet away, though, he slowed, stopped, and then opened his mouth to yell.
Arlen was faster; he darted forward and caught the boy by the throat, slamming him against a pillar of the cloister wall and pressing a dagger to his side, applying enough pressure to make it clear what it was. The boy stopped struggling, eyes huge and bloodshot as they darted over Arlen's face, lingered on his blinded eye and then shot to the floor.
"You squeal," Arlen breathed, "And I'll gut you like a pig."
"Arlen, don't."
Arlen closed his eyes, prayed to Nict for patience, and opened them again. "Why not?"
Silas stepped forward and tried to wrestle Arlen's knife hand away, but even after weeks of training he hadn't built up enough muscle to make more than a trifling attempt. If it hadn't been so urgent that he stop complicating things, Arlen might have teased him for trying.
"He's a friend," Silas said. The boy made a strange noise under Arlen's grip.
"Are you having a laugh?" Arlen hissed. "We can't fail at this job. You don't have friends here, boy, your friends would happily have watched you swing for killing that servant. I'm not going to let you fuck this up with your stupid weepy sentiments. Got it? You ruin this, and your debt will be the least of your problems. I will fucking haunt you until you go mad, do you understand?"
"You're killing him," Silas whispered, and Arlen looked round. The acolyte had gone purple and clawed at Arlen's hand.
"No," Arlen said. "You are."
He shoved the acolyte at Silas, who went down like a sapling in a gale. Arlen stalked off, but stopped around the corner to listen. There were a few moments of muttered conversation, and then, "But they're the Devils, Silas! What were you thinking?"
"I didn't have a choice," Silas hissed.
"There's always a choice." The boy's tone was disgusted, clear even through the hoarseness. "You just make all the wrong ones. Hanging out with scumbags like that. I knew there was something off about you the day you arrived."
Silence. Arlen cocked his head.
"You take that back." The response came so quietly that Arlen only just heard it. "Take that back."
"What part?" the acolyte sneered. "It was all true."
A fleshy thud followed, and then a cry of pain, quickly stifled. Arlen leaned back against the wall. Maybe he hadn't given the boy enough credit.
Silas stalked around the corner several minutes later, still fuming. There was blood on his knuckles. He stopped short when he saw Arlen.
"Is he dealt with?" Arlen said.
"Yes," Silas said grimly. He avoided Arlen's gaze. "He called you a scumbag."
"He's not wrong." Arlen smirked. He got that one a lot.
"He is wrong," Silas mumbled.
Arlen cuffed him sharply across the ear. "Don't go getting weird and sentimental on me. It doesn't get you anywhere. It's just weakness for someone stronger than you to exploit."
Silas touched his ear, a peculiar expression on his face, but shook it off when Arlen loomed over him, hand raised to strike again. "I understand."
"Good." Arlen lowered his hand, though he was tempted to hit him again just to drive the point home. He needed a partner, not a mooning foal. The idea nauseated him. "Come on, we're running out of time here."
They crept around the cloister corridors more cautiously than before, listening for rattling latches every few yards. Arlen might have been a killer by trade, but he wasn't fond of leaving too much collateral damage. It wasn't professional.
The outhouse was lit from inside, but as Arlen had hoped, there were no guards outside the door. The building was located in another, smaller courtyard. One side opened into the yard from the cloisters. Directly opposite was another entrance, where the cooks went to and from the stores beside the outhouse. Movement caught his eye on that corridor; the guards who would ordinarily have been stationed outside the privy door loitered there instead. It wasn't ideal, but he had anticipated that they wouldn't go far.
He pulled a firecracker and some matches out of his pocket. He turned to go through the plan one last time, and found Silas sitting on the flagstones, hugging his knees under his chin.
"I can't do it," he whispered. "I can't do it, Arlen."
Arlen fought the urge to hit him. He didn't want to do it, either, but if one wanted to run with the Devils, they had to do as they were told. He had learned that a long time ago. Silas still seemed to think there was a choice.
He grabbed the boy by the front of his collar and pulled him close until their noses touched. Silas didn't resist; he'd gone limp in Arlen's grip like an oversized ragdoll.
"We're doing it," he breathed. "One day we will look back and feel nothing. One day, you will never think of it again. Today, we have a job to do. Tonight, you're a Devil, and Devils don't cry in corners. They do what needs doing, and if they can't do it yet, they learn. Do you want to learn?"
Silas's gaze focused. Arlen took it as an affirmative.
"Then do as I say," he said, and pressed the firecracker into the boy's hand. Arlen gave him the box of matches, and this time Silas took them himself. "You know the route from here to the stores. Plant this far enough away that they go running," he indicated the guards with his chin, "and get back here straight away. Okay?"
Silas nodded and scrambled to his feet. Arlen turned to watch the yard as his footsteps retreated, scanning the darkness for signs of other guards he might not have spotted. There would undoubtedly be many men scattered through the temple corridors, and they would all come running at the first sign of trouble. This was a job where seconds could save them a sword through the gut, and he prayed Silas was up to it.
Silas returned long before the firecracker went off; he was fast, Arlen would give him that much. The boy reached him just as a deafening whistle sounded from the depths of the temple. All around them the building came to life at the noise. Guards shouted, and the two Arlen had been luring away ran for the source; he grabbed Silas by the scruff of the neck and hauled him across the courtyard before the priests and acolytes all left their rooms to investigate.
Arlen kicked down the privy door and pushed Silas inside with a blade clutched in one hand, and turned to assess the situation. It wouldn't be long before everyone worked out that the firecracker was a distraction. They would have seconds to get away. He turned back at a strangled yell. Silas emerged from the outhouse with a gold pendant clutched to his chest, looking numb and haunted. Arlen glanced inside, grimaced, and then threw Silas across his shoulders and ran.
Shouting followed; they'd already been spotted. Arlen cursed. He'd hoped to at least be clear of the courtyard before anyone came for them.
He couldn't scale to the rooftops with Silas on his back, not while the boy was tense as a spring and trembling so hard it was making Arlen's teeth rattle. If they survived this, Arlen was stealing two bottles of nettle wine and forcing one of them down the boy's neck. The other he'd have himself, light up a blackweed pipe, and smoke and drink until he couldn't see straight or remember what his name was.
In the meantime, they needed to survive.
"Would be good if you used your legs, boy," he growled. Silas didn't respond. Arlen heard a low moan from behind him, and groaned as the boy puked onto the street.
When the impact first came, Arlen kept running for several yards. Then Silas cried out something Arlen didn't catch, and agony rocketed through his leg so suddenly that it buckled, depositing them both on the cobbles. The world swam as Arlen looked back to inspect the damage.
"Those fuckers have crossbows," he said faintly. A thick metal bolt had pierced him through the calf. It hadn't emerged from the other side, and he didn't think it had been fired from close enough range to shatter his bones, but something had at least cracked and blood already ran down his leg into his boot. The bolt shaft was the only thing stopping him from bleeding out. "Nict's balls."
His blood pulsed in his ears, reducing the world to a hazy fog of indistinct sound. Silas shouted at him. He blinked fuzzily, before the shouts of gaining pursuit filtered through.
Arlen pushed himself to his feet and almost fell over, swaying dangerously until he propped himself against a wall. He was dimly aware that they weren't far enough away that they wouldn't be found, but the pain in his leg was reaching a paralysing crescendo. He took a deep breath and willed the pain away. He retreated from it in his mind, imagining the leg as separate from him.
"Up," he barked, clenching his fists and pointing at a gutter pipe running to the roofs of the street. If they got higher, their pursuers would have a harder time keeping track of them. The burly guardsmen were too heavy to climb up there themselves.
"What about you?" Silas said, voice cracking.
"I'll come after you. Go!"
Silas darted a dubious look at the bolt sticking out of Arlen's leg, but for once, blessedly, he did as he was told. The first few steps Arlen took after him were blinding agony; white flashed across his vision until he was feeling his way up the pipe and praying he didn't slip. Another crossbow bolt whistled through the air behind him, so close to his head he felt it pass. One last push; he gritted his teeth, braced his leg on a window ledge, and swung himself up.
"Go ahead of me," Arlen gasped, accepting Silas's help in standing up. "Alert someone. This bolt is coming out if I have to pull it out myself, but I'd really rather not."
"I'm not leaving you. If you pass out and fall off the roof..."
"And you're still here, we'll both die," Arlen snapped. "Orders, boy. Fucking follow them."
There were shouts below them. A bolt skittered off the tiles of the roof. Silas ran, and Arlen limped after him. He dug in his pockets. A good assassin always had backups.
He threw a vial of smoking belladonna into the street where the shouts were loudest. A moment later, the shouts were replaced with helpless laughing and the loud wumph of someone heavy falling over. Arlen grimaced and stalked on. Every step was white-hot pain. He'd dealt with this before. He could make it.
His resolve faltered when he couldn't hear the guards anymore. Back in the temple, alarm bells were ringing, and someone had run to the bell tower to send a distress signal to the castle. Arlen paused, panting, leaning against a chimney. It would so easy just to fall asleep...to just...
He pitched off the roof, and startled awake when someone caught him.
"The fuck," he spat, and then recognised the sharp-toothed grin looming at him through the dark.
"Looks nasty, that," Usk said.
"Did you manage it?" Jesper's voice echoed from somewhere else in the alley.
"He did it," Arlen muttered. "Did he make it?"
"He's absolutely hysterical, but he made it," Jesper replied.
"Good," Arlen muttered.
"Anyone might think he was growing on you," Usk said, smirking. The giant began to hurry away from the temple, and Arlen gritted his teeth against the pain and indignity.
"Fuck that." The world spun again. Darkness drew in at the edges of his vision. "Just making sure Marick gets the evidence."