Blade Archer ~ Thirty-Seven
Jun. 9th, 2013 05:26 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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yraeRonanen’s and Banok’s words continued to mull themselves over in Kael’s mind as the week rolled on. They compounded and urged him on until he almost forgot he was scared, almost dared to believe the Talons would make everything better. Once he offloaded all that he knew to the Talons, Ronanen and Banok had both advised him, it would all be in their hands. He could leave the fear and the danger behind and simply let the professionals deal with it. They would pull the whole syndicate from the streets and leave Kael safe.
He closed his eyes, feeling the camel lumber rhythmically under him as the group of blade archers made their way back towards Ni-Yana. Safe. It was never a word he had thought he would apply to his life. Even before Ynuk’s ill-fated project, he had grown up knowing how to dart his eyes around for danger, how to spot a Talon from the other end of the street, how to scale rooftops to escape them. Now, apparently, the Talons were the ones to protect him and keep him safe. It was a foreign concept, but one that Ronanen and Banok had him almost believing. Almost.
Safe.
He took a deep breath as the camels crossed the bridge over the Ra-Lin and back into civilisation. He had hardly noticed the city approaching. But for the excited ripple that passed through his training partners, he might have missed the change all together.
Banok rode up beside him.
‘Talk to your friend,’ he urged. ‘He was working for these people for years. He’ll know something that can help, even if he doesn’t realise it. Where they met, smells and sounds, voices, anything. Just because he never saw their faces, does not mean he couldn’t identify them.’
Kael nodded stiffly. ‘No dropping me name,’ he reminded Banok. ‘They get a sniff the Talons know, they’ll find me in a heartbeat.’
The sun was just brushing the horizon as Kael left his camel. The other boys had all left straight away to the baths and massage rooms, but Kael had almost missed his stable work while he had been gone, and tended to his own before helping out with the others until Giltha shooed him out to get some rest.
He headed briefly to the baths, only because he was almost certain of where Aen would be. Once clean and halfway presentable, he climbed the stairs in the palace to the bar. The room was full of palace staff still in uniform and a few casually-dressed army members.
Aen and Kelon were both at their usual stools in the corner by the bar bench. Both were grinning as they talked, until Aen caught sight of his friend approaching and his smile froze and slowly dropped. He looked away and took a heavy gulp of his beer as Kael took up the stool on Kelon’s other side.
This was the boy who had killed his mother. It had been an act of stone cold revenge against his brother.
Kael laced his fingers on the bar bench, looking down as he twiddled his thumbs. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and swallowed again. He couldn’t look at Aen as he formulated his words. He had a task to do, and if anger or bitter hatred intervened then he would never be free of his old life.
‘I need… I need to know everything ye does. About them.’
Silence. He’d done well to keep any feeling from his voice, he thought. He just needed to get what he came for and go, before he had time to sort out just what he felt.
‘I’m sorry, Kael. I didn’t—’
‘Don’t.’ Quiet, forceful, filled with warning and still fairly clear of emotion. He nearly said something more, but ground his teeth and just barely held back. Aen’s every word sounded like an excuse, a sour drop that only twisted his anger further. He wasn’t sure he could hold it for long enough to hear anything useful, if indeed Aen had anything useful to say.
‘I dunno nothing, Kael, I swear. I told ye everything—’
Kael shoved his hands against the bar bench. His stool clattered to the floor behind him as he strode to the door. He knew he couldn’t control himself any longer, especially not when Aen was being so useless. If he had to listen to another word from Aen’s mouth, he was sure he would punch the archer in the jaw. Even his skin seethed with anger, itching his back and under his arms.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was running. Just as he reached the door, he spun on his heel. A dozen of the nearest patrons had turned towards him, with more heads turning as he stared Aen down. He should have just left, he knew, but it was too late to back out now.
‘Three years, at least,’ he barked. ‘Ye knows something.’
Silence, then a low ripple of murmurs followed his declaration.
Aen had his back turned and head bent over the bar. Kelon stared back at Kael, his face torn by sympathy and horror. Kael held his gaze for a few moments, warning him not to follow, then turned his heel and pushed out of the door. In the chilled air of the hallway outside, he folded back against the wall, listening to his breathing calm and doing his best to shun the thoughts in his head.
Banok’s question echoed in his memories. Why was he trying to protect Aen? It wasn’t because Aen had been a friend. Coming face to face with him a week on made that painfully clear. He would never be able to hold a civil conversation with Aen again. So why protect him? Why not just hand his name to the Talons and let them question him?
Because he didn’t trust the Talons. He didn’t trust them to keep what they found out to themselves. That’s why he had to talk to Aen himself, then whatever information he passed on couldn’t be traced back to him. As much as he found out, he could pass on to Banok and be rid of it for good.
The door creaked open again, and despite his own assertions to himself, that it was all just about information, Kael couldn’t keep himself from gritting his teeth and turning away.
‘I wanna help,’ Aen said, his voice far stronger than Kael felt. ‘Please. I’ll give ye everything I got.’
Kael nodded stiffly, hardly trusting himself to do much more. ‘Not here,’ he muttered, then turned his back and headed downstairs. Aen followed a short distance behind as Kael led him to the archery range. This late there was nobody left training. The deep shadows of the range opened up to the studded night sky above.
Kael rested his back against a post holding up the small shelter to the side of the range, folded his arms and set a flat glare on his once-friend. ‘Talk,’ he said quietly.
Aen shrugged and took a seat on one of the boxes holding training gear. ‘Longer than three years,’ he said, resting back on his hands. How could he appear so casual? ‘I been with ‘em a long time. A long time. I dunno when they got me, but I remember some guy coming to me when I were, maybe, five or six? Got me to be a distraction while he grabbed someone at the markets. That’s the first I can remember of it all, but I reckon they had me before then.’
Kael loosened his jaw, only because it was going stiff and sore, and he could feel a headache coming on because of it. ‘Ye said it was ‘cause yer mate got killed.’
He shook his head, then shrugged. ‘That’s when they got me on as assassin,’ he agreed. ‘But I been with ‘em far longer’n that. I never thought to ask no questions, y’know? They never had to threaten me directly, cause ye just knows that if ye crosses ‘em, they’re coming after ye with everything they got. I been part of that kind of thing plenty of times enough to know.’
‘Like Ynuk,’ Kael supplied.
Aen nodded. ‘He’s a pretty extreme one. Nobody actually goes after these guys, y’see? Nobody’s that reckless. Soon as they’re suss of someone what might sell ‘em out, go to the Talons or whatever, they snuff ‘em out like that. I seen it happen to maybe a dozen of ‘em.’
Kael swallowed. ‘About nine years ago,’ he began, his hands numb where he clutched his shirt under folded arms. ‘Ye know anything about then?’
Aen’s face shadowed as he frowned in thought. ‘I were ten…’ he mused. ‘I reckon there was something by the docks.’
‘A fisherman,’ Kael prodded at his memory.
Aen nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. Yeah, they said he lost a whole lot of merchandise, I reckon that was it.’ He straightened, opened his mouth to say more, then snapped it shut again and turned aside.
‘What?’ Kael pressed. ‘That was me Pa, Aen. Tell me what ye knows.’
Aen swore between his teeth. ‘That’s why he been after us,’ he said, mostly to himself, it seemed. ‘The smuggler, he was…’ He waved a hand around as he searched for the right word. ‘He was a test. Like fer new kids. They catch someone what’s done wrong, tie ‘im up and show ‘im to the new kids what want to join the ranks.’
Kael’s fingernails dug into his palms through the fabric of his shirt and bile rose at the back of his throat. ‘Ye killed me pa.’ He could hardly hear his own voice through the rushing in his ears. ‘Ye’re the Kid.’
Aen shook his head. ‘Nah, not me. I had to watch, though. That was part of the test.’ He was staring at a spot on the floor, apparently lost in the memory. ‘Had to watch through bars while they sent him in with half a dozen guys in hoods. The hoods were for me, not him, he knew he was going to die. I weren’t allowed to see their faces, though. Ye sees their faces, ye’re dead. So they go in, six of ‘em, with this little kid younger’n me. He has a hood on, too, and a blade in his hand.’
‘Stop it,’ Kael croaked. He didn’t want to hear.
‘They build it up like it’s some reward,’ Aen went on. ‘Killing the weeds what grow in the organisation. It’s what ye wants to grow to, y’know? I been with ‘em fer years, and this kid gets a shot before me, and fer years more I still don’t get nothin’.’
Kael shook his head and thudded it back against the post. His fingers quivered and he raked one hand back through his hair. ‘I don’t care,’ he barked, but his voice was too weak and sick to hold any venom. ‘Why would ye even want to do that? It’s sick, Aen! Who would want to kill people fer a living?’
‘Ye thinks I doesn’t realise that now?’ Aen said, his tone unchanged. ‘Like I been saying, they had me since I were a kid. I didn’t know any other life. I signed up for army training to get some more skills so maybe they’d give me the test, too. It’s all I knew.’
Kael forced a deep breath and felt his head clear a little. ‘So ye got ye’re big chance, realised that, hey, these people what I’m killing, they got families, too! Well, how about that. How can that never occur to ye?’
Aen shrugged helplessly. ‘I guess because they didn’t let ye have yer own thoughts. Soon as they saw anything like that, then we all knew what happened. It weren’t until I got into army training that I even thought about families. And not ‘til I saw yer house that I made the connection… to yer Ma.’
Kael felt his jaw clench again, and he shook his head to force it loose. He had already dwelt on that enough now. He needed something solid to pass onto Banok, something that would find them.
‘Who are they?’
The assassin shrugged again. ‘I never seen any of their faces. Either I had a hood over me head or they did. And I never met anyone in the top jobs, only ever the grunts on me own level. Someone’d come up behind me in the street, grab me into an alley and tell me where the next meeting was, then run off. I never had a meeting in the same spot twice. By the docks, behind the palace, under the bridge, high class, low class, always different. They’re always careful about where ye meets them. Same fer picking up yer pay. They tells ye where to meet, someone comes with a bag of coins and off they goes again.’ He straightened as a thought came to him. ‘They always pay in Kazinian coins. I never even saw a Raykinian coin ‘til a coupla years ago. I never seen any Kazinians doing this stuff but it might help?’
‘Maybe,’ Kael said dubiously. How had Banok put it? ‘Get any little detail. All the places what ye knows they took ye, any voices that was different to normal, accents or anything… Ye said ye had the hood on sometimes, so ye was probably somewhere they didn’t want ye knowing about, so think of everything ye knows from those spots.’ He pushed away from the post. ‘We don’t associate anymore, got it? I don’t want nothing to do with yer mob.’
‘What?’ Aen pushed away from his own post, grabbing Kael by the arm. ‘I thought we was going after ‘em. What’re ye doing with what I told ye if ye’re not going after ‘em?’
Kael glared at him and yanked his arm free of the assassin’s grip. ‘Taking it to someone I trust.’
He closed his eyes, feeling the camel lumber rhythmically under him as the group of blade archers made their way back towards Ni-Yana. Safe. It was never a word he had thought he would apply to his life. Even before Ynuk’s ill-fated project, he had grown up knowing how to dart his eyes around for danger, how to spot a Talon from the other end of the street, how to scale rooftops to escape them. Now, apparently, the Talons were the ones to protect him and keep him safe. It was a foreign concept, but one that Ronanen and Banok had him almost believing. Almost.
Safe.
He took a deep breath as the camels crossed the bridge over the Ra-Lin and back into civilisation. He had hardly noticed the city approaching. But for the excited ripple that passed through his training partners, he might have missed the change all together.
Banok rode up beside him.
‘Talk to your friend,’ he urged. ‘He was working for these people for years. He’ll know something that can help, even if he doesn’t realise it. Where they met, smells and sounds, voices, anything. Just because he never saw their faces, does not mean he couldn’t identify them.’
Kael nodded stiffly. ‘No dropping me name,’ he reminded Banok. ‘They get a sniff the Talons know, they’ll find me in a heartbeat.’
The sun was just brushing the horizon as Kael left his camel. The other boys had all left straight away to the baths and massage rooms, but Kael had almost missed his stable work while he had been gone, and tended to his own before helping out with the others until Giltha shooed him out to get some rest.
He headed briefly to the baths, only because he was almost certain of where Aen would be. Once clean and halfway presentable, he climbed the stairs in the palace to the bar. The room was full of palace staff still in uniform and a few casually-dressed army members.
Aen and Kelon were both at their usual stools in the corner by the bar bench. Both were grinning as they talked, until Aen caught sight of his friend approaching and his smile froze and slowly dropped. He looked away and took a heavy gulp of his beer as Kael took up the stool on Kelon’s other side.
This was the boy who had killed his mother. It had been an act of stone cold revenge against his brother.
Kael laced his fingers on the bar bench, looking down as he twiddled his thumbs. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and swallowed again. He couldn’t look at Aen as he formulated his words. He had a task to do, and if anger or bitter hatred intervened then he would never be free of his old life.
‘I need… I need to know everything ye does. About them.’
Silence. He’d done well to keep any feeling from his voice, he thought. He just needed to get what he came for and go, before he had time to sort out just what he felt.
‘I’m sorry, Kael. I didn’t—’
‘Don’t.’ Quiet, forceful, filled with warning and still fairly clear of emotion. He nearly said something more, but ground his teeth and just barely held back. Aen’s every word sounded like an excuse, a sour drop that only twisted his anger further. He wasn’t sure he could hold it for long enough to hear anything useful, if indeed Aen had anything useful to say.
‘I dunno nothing, Kael, I swear. I told ye everything—’
Kael shoved his hands against the bar bench. His stool clattered to the floor behind him as he strode to the door. He knew he couldn’t control himself any longer, especially not when Aen was being so useless. If he had to listen to another word from Aen’s mouth, he was sure he would punch the archer in the jaw. Even his skin seethed with anger, itching his back and under his arms.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was running. Just as he reached the door, he spun on his heel. A dozen of the nearest patrons had turned towards him, with more heads turning as he stared Aen down. He should have just left, he knew, but it was too late to back out now.
‘Three years, at least,’ he barked. ‘Ye knows something.’
Silence, then a low ripple of murmurs followed his declaration.
Aen had his back turned and head bent over the bar. Kelon stared back at Kael, his face torn by sympathy and horror. Kael held his gaze for a few moments, warning him not to follow, then turned his heel and pushed out of the door. In the chilled air of the hallway outside, he folded back against the wall, listening to his breathing calm and doing his best to shun the thoughts in his head.
Banok’s question echoed in his memories. Why was he trying to protect Aen? It wasn’t because Aen had been a friend. Coming face to face with him a week on made that painfully clear. He would never be able to hold a civil conversation with Aen again. So why protect him? Why not just hand his name to the Talons and let them question him?
Because he didn’t trust the Talons. He didn’t trust them to keep what they found out to themselves. That’s why he had to talk to Aen himself, then whatever information he passed on couldn’t be traced back to him. As much as he found out, he could pass on to Banok and be rid of it for good.
The door creaked open again, and despite his own assertions to himself, that it was all just about information, Kael couldn’t keep himself from gritting his teeth and turning away.
‘I wanna help,’ Aen said, his voice far stronger than Kael felt. ‘Please. I’ll give ye everything I got.’
Kael nodded stiffly, hardly trusting himself to do much more. ‘Not here,’ he muttered, then turned his back and headed downstairs. Aen followed a short distance behind as Kael led him to the archery range. This late there was nobody left training. The deep shadows of the range opened up to the studded night sky above.
Kael rested his back against a post holding up the small shelter to the side of the range, folded his arms and set a flat glare on his once-friend. ‘Talk,’ he said quietly.
Aen shrugged and took a seat on one of the boxes holding training gear. ‘Longer than three years,’ he said, resting back on his hands. How could he appear so casual? ‘I been with ‘em a long time. A long time. I dunno when they got me, but I remember some guy coming to me when I were, maybe, five or six? Got me to be a distraction while he grabbed someone at the markets. That’s the first I can remember of it all, but I reckon they had me before then.’
Kael loosened his jaw, only because it was going stiff and sore, and he could feel a headache coming on because of it. ‘Ye said it was ‘cause yer mate got killed.’
He shook his head, then shrugged. ‘That’s when they got me on as assassin,’ he agreed. ‘But I been with ‘em far longer’n that. I never thought to ask no questions, y’know? They never had to threaten me directly, cause ye just knows that if ye crosses ‘em, they’re coming after ye with everything they got. I been part of that kind of thing plenty of times enough to know.’
‘Like Ynuk,’ Kael supplied.
Aen nodded. ‘He’s a pretty extreme one. Nobody actually goes after these guys, y’see? Nobody’s that reckless. Soon as they’re suss of someone what might sell ‘em out, go to the Talons or whatever, they snuff ‘em out like that. I seen it happen to maybe a dozen of ‘em.’
Kael swallowed. ‘About nine years ago,’ he began, his hands numb where he clutched his shirt under folded arms. ‘Ye know anything about then?’
Aen’s face shadowed as he frowned in thought. ‘I were ten…’ he mused. ‘I reckon there was something by the docks.’
‘A fisherman,’ Kael prodded at his memory.
Aen nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. Yeah, they said he lost a whole lot of merchandise, I reckon that was it.’ He straightened, opened his mouth to say more, then snapped it shut again and turned aside.
‘What?’ Kael pressed. ‘That was me Pa, Aen. Tell me what ye knows.’
Aen swore between his teeth. ‘That’s why he been after us,’ he said, mostly to himself, it seemed. ‘The smuggler, he was…’ He waved a hand around as he searched for the right word. ‘He was a test. Like fer new kids. They catch someone what’s done wrong, tie ‘im up and show ‘im to the new kids what want to join the ranks.’
Kael’s fingernails dug into his palms through the fabric of his shirt and bile rose at the back of his throat. ‘Ye killed me pa.’ He could hardly hear his own voice through the rushing in his ears. ‘Ye’re the Kid.’
Aen shook his head. ‘Nah, not me. I had to watch, though. That was part of the test.’ He was staring at a spot on the floor, apparently lost in the memory. ‘Had to watch through bars while they sent him in with half a dozen guys in hoods. The hoods were for me, not him, he knew he was going to die. I weren’t allowed to see their faces, though. Ye sees their faces, ye’re dead. So they go in, six of ‘em, with this little kid younger’n me. He has a hood on, too, and a blade in his hand.’
‘Stop it,’ Kael croaked. He didn’t want to hear.
‘They build it up like it’s some reward,’ Aen went on. ‘Killing the weeds what grow in the organisation. It’s what ye wants to grow to, y’know? I been with ‘em fer years, and this kid gets a shot before me, and fer years more I still don’t get nothin’.’
Kael shook his head and thudded it back against the post. His fingers quivered and he raked one hand back through his hair. ‘I don’t care,’ he barked, but his voice was too weak and sick to hold any venom. ‘Why would ye even want to do that? It’s sick, Aen! Who would want to kill people fer a living?’
‘Ye thinks I doesn’t realise that now?’ Aen said, his tone unchanged. ‘Like I been saying, they had me since I were a kid. I didn’t know any other life. I signed up for army training to get some more skills so maybe they’d give me the test, too. It’s all I knew.’
Kael forced a deep breath and felt his head clear a little. ‘So ye got ye’re big chance, realised that, hey, these people what I’m killing, they got families, too! Well, how about that. How can that never occur to ye?’
Aen shrugged helplessly. ‘I guess because they didn’t let ye have yer own thoughts. Soon as they saw anything like that, then we all knew what happened. It weren’t until I got into army training that I even thought about families. And not ‘til I saw yer house that I made the connection… to yer Ma.’
Kael felt his jaw clench again, and he shook his head to force it loose. He had already dwelt on that enough now. He needed something solid to pass onto Banok, something that would find them.
‘Who are they?’
The assassin shrugged again. ‘I never seen any of their faces. Either I had a hood over me head or they did. And I never met anyone in the top jobs, only ever the grunts on me own level. Someone’d come up behind me in the street, grab me into an alley and tell me where the next meeting was, then run off. I never had a meeting in the same spot twice. By the docks, behind the palace, under the bridge, high class, low class, always different. They’re always careful about where ye meets them. Same fer picking up yer pay. They tells ye where to meet, someone comes with a bag of coins and off they goes again.’ He straightened as a thought came to him. ‘They always pay in Kazinian coins. I never even saw a Raykinian coin ‘til a coupla years ago. I never seen any Kazinians doing this stuff but it might help?’
‘Maybe,’ Kael said dubiously. How had Banok put it? ‘Get any little detail. All the places what ye knows they took ye, any voices that was different to normal, accents or anything… Ye said ye had the hood on sometimes, so ye was probably somewhere they didn’t want ye knowing about, so think of everything ye knows from those spots.’ He pushed away from the post. ‘We don’t associate anymore, got it? I don’t want nothing to do with yer mob.’
‘What?’ Aen pushed away from his own post, grabbing Kael by the arm. ‘I thought we was going after ‘em. What’re ye doing with what I told ye if ye’re not going after ‘em?’
Kael glared at him and yanked his arm free of the assassin’s grip. ‘Taking it to someone I trust.’