Chapter 39 - The Messenger of the Gods

  Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.

  - Chanakya.

  Hughes was still puzzling over what he’d witnessed in the gardens—a vulnerable moment between Lady Seraphina and the de Laney girl. The puzzle had gnawed at him from mid-afternoon straight into these dark hours of the night. Love, the young man realized, was no gentle emotion but a shadow war, a clandestine hunt for the secrets held in another’s deck while shrouding one’s own. He chastised himself for couching something so delicate in such antagonistic terms. He was not Seraphina’s enemy.

  Now he balanced on the steep, tiled ridge of the Robert de Chastille roof, overlooking the dormitory where the woman he revered above all others slept. Night air carried the scent of damp slate and night blossoms from the gardens; silently, he wished her only the kindest dreams.

  A scarcely audible whisper disrupted the stillness—no louder than a moth’s flutter—just before three shapes settled beside him. Their attire was a study in midnight: tight-layered cloth that drank moonlight, hoods shadowing their eyes, masks veiling every hint of flesh. Even their weapons had been stained black to drink in the dark.

  “Veil, your reports arrive later with each cycle. The Elders grow … restless,” said the tallest, voice flat as a freshly whetted blade.

  Lee. Hughes recognized him at once—Lee, a common name for a common, most ordinary man. He had always wondered if his origins had always been the source of his pettiness and spite. A wry smile touched Hughes’s lips.

  “I am but one man living two lives,” he answered, words drifting like ash over the roof tiles. “There are only so many hours in the day… and in the night.”

  The trio hissed, low and venomous.

  “Insolence to the Tower is not forgiven,” warned the figure to Lee’s right, her pitch needling like nails on slate. It was a voice that he had always found annoying.

  Hughes tugged down his own mask, letting moonlight sculpt his plain features. “To the Tower? Perhaps. To you, Lee?” He shrugged, foregoing Lee’s Tower name, Shadowclaw. “Because, to you, Lee, I owe nothing.”

  “We are the Tower,” Lee replied, silencing his comrade with a raised hand. “Slight us, and you slight the Elders. As you know, their patience thins.”

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  “As does mine. A path to the throne was promised to me, yet nothing has come of it. And now, I find myself with no desire left to squander my time obeying the tremulous decrees of withered old men,” Hughes said, voice low but carrying. “I think I will make my own path, free of the Tower.”

  Lee recoiled half a step, as though the word treachery were a blade at his throat. “Explain yourself, Xuzu. This is treachery!”

  Hughes’s gaze flicked, so swiftly it might have gone unnoticed, to the narrow sheen of oil he’d spread across the tiles of the roof earlier. The young man had prepared well for this encounter.

  He smiled, all teeth in the silver light. “I’ve long wondered how you clawed your way to Triad leader, Lee, when your sole gift and talent is stating the obvious.”

  “Alive or dead?” muttered the second subordinate, eyes never leaving Hughes.

  “Alive,” Lee commanded, drawing a short straight sword from the sheath strapped across his back. Moonlight kissed the razor edge for a heartbeat before the dark-stained steel swallowed it. “We must know who turned one of our own. And, an example made of the traitor. I will enjoy this”

  Predictable to the last, Hughes thought, sneer widening. They wanted him breathing—tilting the odds, beautifully, in his favor.

  Hughes shifted subtly, his weight poised and ready. He watched, tense as wire, as the trio moved to surround him in practiced unison. But discipline couldn’t guard against what they couldn’t see.

  The woman to Lee's right lunged forward first, her footing confident until her black-shrouded foot slid on the carefully concealed oil, scattering droplets that glittered briefly in the moonlight. In that fractured heartbeat of vulnerability, Hughes surged forward, a quick twist of his wrist, and his hidden blade sprang from its sheath across his forearm. He stabbed at her, burying his steel deep into her side, feeling the muted vibration through as it cut deep into flesh.

  The katar was a difficult weapon to wield defensively, but Hughes had chosen it for a reason—it could punch clean through the concealed armor worn by the Tower’s agents.

  Even grievously wounded, her face betrayed no pain—only a cold, mechanical focus. Tower-trained to the last breath, she bit back the instinct to scream, clutching at the blade lodged within her abdomen. She crumpled soundlessly to her knees, eyes blazing hatred as her blood seeped silently onto the tiles.

  Lee snarled and flicked his hand; dark glints flashed through the air as throwing knives flew towards Hughes. He spun, dancing between the blades or deflecting with his own, a deadly ballet of agility and instinct. His own hands moved with fluid precision, returning their deadly volleys. Knives hissed and whined, scoring shallow lines across clothing, sparking off tiles, and vanishing into darkness.

  The third Triad member closed the gap, darting low, aiming to flank him. Hughes pivoted swiftly, countering with savage elegance, and met him blade to blade. Black steel sang its muted song, a deadly chorus punctuated only by breaths drawn through clenched teeth. Hughes sidestepped a slashing blow, exploiting a gap in the assassin’s guard, and thrust his sword into the boy’s chest.

  Yet triumph swiftly soured—his blade caught firmly in bone. Desperately, Hughes twisted and tugged, but the steel was trapped, unyielding as stone. Lee, Shadowclaw, seized upon the moment, driving forward with a brutal thrust of his own aimed squarely at Hughes’s heart.

  Hughes’s pulse quickened; death was a heartbeat away. He thought only of regret that he could not spend more time with…