I do like you, master. I’d like to be your friend, Kylar said, but only in his mind. Somehow those words wouldn’t force their way past his lips. Maybe it didn’t matter. Durzo wouldn’t believe him anyway.
“Roth’s a Khalidoran prince, kid. He’s got a Vürdmeister. Soon he’ll have more wytches than all the southlands have mages and an army to boot. He owns the Sa’kagé. There’s no hope. There’s no way to oppose him now. The Night Angels themselves wouldn’t try it.”
Kylar threw up his hands, fed up with Blint’s fatalism and his superstitions. “Here I thought they were invincible.”
“They’re immortal. It’s not the same thing.” Blint popped a garlic clove. “You can take what you need from my place. I wouldn’t want you to die just because I’ve got better gear.”
“I won’t fight you, master.”
“You’ll fight. You’ll die. And I’ll miss you.”
“Master Blint?” he said, remembering something Dorian had said. “What does my name mean?”
“‘Kylar’? You know the word cleave?”
“To cut, right?” Kylar asked. “Like a meat cleaver.”
“Yes, but it has another meaning, too. In old wedding ceremonies, a husband and wife were commanded to cleave together.”
“Like cleavage?”
Blint smirked, but the dark cloud over him didn’t shift. “Right. Cleave means both ‘to come together’ and ‘to split apart.’ Two opposite meanings. Your name’s like that. It means one who kills and one who is killed.”
“I don’t understand,” Kylar said.
“You will. May the Night Angels watch over you, kid. Remember, they have three faces.”
“What?”
“Vengeance, Justice, and Mercy. They always know which to show. And remember the difference between vengeance and revenge. Now get out of here.”
Kylar stood and stashed his weapons expertly. His hip brushed the table as he stood and the balanced coin wobbled and fell before he could reach out with his Talent again and stop it. He ignored it, refused to see it as an omen. “Master Blint,” he said, looking his master in the eye and bowing, “kariamu lodoc. Thank you. For everything.”
“Thank you?” Master Blint snorted. He picked up the coin. It was castles. Castles I lose. “Thank you? You always were the damnedest kid.”
50
Kylar had an hour before Durzo came after him. He knew that because he’d watched Durzo drink a full mug of stout, and Durzo Blint wouldn’t work when he had alcohol in him.
It was the perfect time to go to Master Blint’s safe house. He might get lucky and be able to figure out how Master Blint intended to kill him from what tools were missing.
To be careful, he used the back alleys to get to the safe house. In short order, Kylar disarmed the trap on the lock, then searched for the second trap. If he’d been fully visible, he would have felt exposed, but his Talent obeyed him this time and covered him with shadows. He still had no idea how well he was concealed, but in the heavily shadowed and rarely traveled street, he felt comfortable taking his time. The second trap was embedded in the doorframe opposite the latch. Kylar shook his head. And Blint said he was no good at traps. Setting a trap which used the release of pressure from the bolt itself for a trigger was no easy feat.
Having disarmed that trap, Kylar started picking the lock. Blint had always told him that setting more than two traps on a door was a waste of time. You should get someone with the first trap, but if it was set so poorly that it made them overconfident, you might get them with a perfectly placed second trap. After that, only an idiot wouldn’t check the door over so carefully that they’d find anything you could hide.
Kylar didn’t have to fumble with the rake. He’d practiced on this door for years, so he pressed the tumbler in place almost instantly. Then he felt something wrong. He threw his fingers apart and dropped the rake just as the spring released. A black needle darted out between his spread fingers, grazing his knuckle and almost breaking the skin.
“Whew.” The black compound on the needle was henbane and kinderperil. It wouldn’t have been fatal, but it would make a person ill for days, and he wouldn’t have had time to get far before the poison did its work on him. It was a nasty bit of business—and its presence meant that Master Blint was still testing him. “Only an idiot wouldn’t check the door over carefully after two traps.” Gods.
Kylar stepped inside carefully. This safe house wasn’t as spacious as the one where he’d spent his first months with Master Blint, and with the animals in it, it had been terribly noisy, smelly, and dirty.
Now the animals were gone. Kylar scowled. A cursory examination told him they’d been here this morning.
Moving further in, Kylar saw a letter sitting on Durzo’s desk. He drew a knife in each hand and opened the letter without touching it. He doubted Durzo would use a contact poison in the paper, but he hadn’t thought the wetboy would put a third trap on the door, either.
“Kylar,” it read in Durzo’s tight, controlled script:
“Relax. Killing you with contact poison would be terribly unsatisfying. I’m glad the third trap didn’t get you, but if you had used what you thought you knew about me instead of checking, you’d have deserved it.
“I’ll miss you. You’re the closest to family I’ll ever have. I’m sorry I brought you into this life. Momma K and I did everything we could to make you a wetboy. I suppose it’s to your credit that we failed. You mean more to me than I ever thought another person could.”
Kylar blinked back tears. There was no way he could kill the man who’d written this. Durzo Blint was more than his master; he was his father.
“Tonight it ends,” the letter continued. “If you want to save your friend, you’d better find me. —A Thorne”
A thorn? Well, Blint was certainly prickly enough to call himself a thorn, but he was also usually a good speller. And what did he mean about saving my friend? Did Durzo know where Elene was? Why was he threatening her? Or was he talking about Jarl? The blood drained from Kylar’s face.
The animals were gone. Everything else Blint owned was still here, so he wasn’t moving.
The animals would look fine to a cook, and the taste tester who tried the foods wouldn’t be affected for hours—long enough for the foods to be served at a dinner.
Blint only drank after he finished a job.
The animals were gone. All of them. There weren’t many places that could take all of them.
“Oh shit.” Blint was poisoning the nobles at the Midsummer’s banquet. Elene wouldn’t be there, of course. Neither would Jarl. Blint must have known something he didn’t. It must mean that Logan would be there.
Roth was attempting his coup. Tonight.
Kylar felt dizzy. He threw a hand down on the table to steady himself and set the glass vials and beakers to clinking against each other. His eyes raised to one he’d stared at for years. The asp poison was there. It was low. Blint had really meant the threats. For a while after talking with him at the arutayro, after seeing the letter, Kylar might have thought Blint wouldn’t kill him. But he would. It was all professional for Blint. He’d crossed a line years ago when he let Vonda die, and there was no going back.