Chapter 139: The Clean Cut
Candles flickered, their flames trimmed to precise heights in Sylas’s private chamber. Shadows played across the walls, deepening as dusk settled over the Veiled Hand’s underground sanctuary.
Soren stood with his back straight, hands at his sides, waiting as Sylas studied a yellowed parchment spread before him on the polished desk.
"A young noble," Sylas said without looking up. "House Trelaine. Minor family, but ambitious." His finger traced a line on the parchment. "He’s been funneling money and informants to the Cathedral for months. Names have disappeared because of him."
Soren remained silent, watching the way candlelight caught in Sylas’s green eyes as the assassin leader finally looked up.
"He’s sheltered himself in a ruined manor near a scavenger hamlet." Sylas slid the parchment across the desk. "Three miles east of the Glass Wastes’ edge."
The map was crude but precise, a structure with multiple entrances marked, patrol routes indicated by dotted lines, terrain features noted with economical script. Soren committed each detail to memory, the familiar coldness of focus settling into his chest.
"Two guards," Sylas continued. "They sleep outside his inner chamber while he takes wine before bed. Predictable habits." He produced a smaller scrap of parchment. "Guard rotation. Timing. Entry points."
Soren took it, scanning the information with clinical efficiency.
"No witnesses," Sylas said, his voice dropping lower. "No signal. You go alone." His perfect mouth tightened slightly. "Mira watches from distance. End him cleanly."
The shard against Soren’s chest remained neutral, neither warming nor cooling. Valenna’s presence lingered at the edges of his awareness but offered no comment.
"Understood," Soren replied, folding the parchments and tucking them inside his tunic.
Sylas studied him a moment longer, those unsettling green eyes missing nothing. "Prove your blade. Prove your presence."
"I will." No hesitation. No questions. No moral quandaries to debate. Just acceptance of the task and determination to execute it perfectly.
–
Wind cut across the Glass Wastes like a blade, carrying particles of sand that had fused to crystal during some ancient cataclysm. Each gust whispered through broken archways and collapsed walls, creating a sound like distant, pained breathing.
The cold bit through Soren’s clothing as he moved across the blighted landscape, keeping low where terrain allowed, his footsteps leaving minimal impression on the glittering surface.
Ahead, silhouetted against the deepening twilight, stood what remained of Trelaine Manor, a structure more ruin than building, its eastern wing entirely collapsed, its western façade held together by stubbornness more than sound architecture.
Light flickered from three windows, warm against the gathering darkness.
Soren paused behind a fragment of wall, assessing approach routes. The manor’s grounds had once been formal gardens, now reduced to skeletal hedgerows and crumbling stone paths. Perfect cover for one who knew how to move without being seen.
’Breathe slower,’ Valenna murmured as he prepared to advance. ’Your anticipation is making your movements sharp.’
He adjusted his breathing, feeling his heart rate settle into a steadier rhythm. The cold focus that had served him during his first kill returned, narrowing his perception to only what mattered, distance, timing, angles of approach.
Soren moved like liquid shadow across the dead garden, pausing at intervals to listen. The scrape of a boot against stone from the northern corner, a guard making his rounds.
Smoke from oil lanterns carried on the wind, bringing with it the scent of cheap fuel and cheaper tobacco. Through a broken window came the sound of laughter, young, slightly slurred, edged with the forced bravado of someone playing at power.
’Center your weight,’ Valenna advised as he slipped between a rotten hedge and a collapsed portico. ’Your right side is dropping.’
He adjusted, feeling the improved balance immediately. No wasted movement, no excess sound. Just the quiet precision he’d spent months perfecting.
The patrol pattern matched Sylas’s intelligence exactly, two exterior guards circling at fifteen-minute intervals, predictable to the point of negligence.
Soren timed their movements, identifying the optimal window for entry. A gap of forty seconds when the northeastern corner stood unobserved. More than enough time.
When the moment came, he slipped through a half-collapsed servants’ entrance, boots silent against stone floors strewn with debris.
The interior smelled of mold and disuse, overlaid with the sharper scents of unwashed bodies and spilled wine. He moved through what had once been a kitchen, now repurposed as a storage area for scavenged goods of questionable origin.
Voices drifted from an adjacent room, men playing at cards, their conversation a mixture of complaints about their posting and crude jokes at their employer’s expense.
Soren avoided them entirely, taking a narrow service corridor that Sylas’s map had marked as a direct route to the noble’s quarters.
–
The young master of House Trelaine was exactly as described, barely twenty, soft-handed and fidgeting, his expensive clothing incongruous against the decrepit surroundings.
From his vantage point in the shadows of an adjoining room, Soren watched through a partially open door as the noble poured himself another glass of wine from a crystal decanter that had somehow survived the manor’s collapse.
His hands shook slightly as he drank, eyes darting occasionally to a leather satchel beside his makeshift desk. Papers spilled from its confines, lists of names, locations, the currency of information that kept him valuable to the Cathedral.
Soren observed with clinical detachment, noting the young noble’s mannerisms, the way he startled at small sounds, the nervous habit of adjusting a signet ring that seemed too large for his slender fingers.
Not a hardened conspirator, a frightened boy playing a game whose consequences he only partially understood.
After a third glass of wine, the noble’s movements grew less coordinated. He stumbled as he rose from his chair, making his way toward a curtained alcove that had been converted into sleeping quarters.
Two guards sat outside, their backs to a thin wooden door, heads already nodding with the combination of boredom and shared flask that had rendered them effectively useless.
The noble disappeared behind the curtain, leaving a gap at the bottom just wide enough for a thin blade of light to escape, and for a shadow to enter.
Soren marked the position, calculating angles, timing the guards’ deepening breaths as they slipped further toward sleep.
He noted three potential exit routes, the way he’d entered, a window to the east that opened onto a section of collapsed roof, and a servants’ stairwell that Sylas’s intelligence suggested connected to underground storage areas.
Each path had advantages and risks. He committed them all to memory, then settled deeper into shadow, waiting.
An hour passed. The guards’ breathing deepened into the heavy rhythm of alcohol-induced slumber.
The light beneath the curtain dimmed as the noble presumably prepared for sleep. Soren moved then, crossing the space between his hiding place and the curtained doorway with silent efficiency.
The guards didn’t stir as he slipped past them, their weapons leaning unused against the wall beside them. The curtain parted without sound, allowing him entry into the small chamber beyond.
The noble lay on a bed that might once have been luxurious but now sagged with age and neglect.
A single oil lamp burned low on a nearby table, casting just enough light to illuminate the target’s face, younger in sleep, the anxious lines smoothed away, almost childlike in his vulnerability.
Soren drew his blade with practiced care, the metal making no sound as it cleared its sheath. The shard against his chest remained cool and still, Valenna’s presence watchful but silent. This moment belonged to him alone.
Three steps brought him to the bedside. He considered his options with clinical detachment. Throat for silence, heart for certainty. Both would end the boy’s life before pain could fully register.
In this moment, mercy and efficiency aligned.
He chose the heart, a single, precise strike beneath the ribs, angled upward to sever the major vessels in a single motion.
The blade slipped through flesh with minimal resistance, finding its mark with surgical accuracy.
The noble’s eyes flew open, confusion rather than pain registering in them as they met Soren’s.
His mouth opened slightly, but no sound emerged, the shock and swift blood loss ensuring silence more effectively than any external pressure could have.
Soren maintained eye contact, his hand steady on the hilt, feeling the rapid, weakening pulse transmitted through the blade.
No hatred, no pleasure, no particular emotion at all, just the calm certainty of a task being completed exactly as required.
The boy’s body tensed briefly, then went slack as death claimed him. The transition took less than thirty seconds from first strike to final breath.
The guards outside continued their deep, oblivious slumber, undisturbed by the quiet departure of a life mere feet away.
With practiced efficiency, Soren withdrew the blade, immediately pressing a cloth against the wound to prevent blood from seeping into the bedding.
He wiped the weapon clean on the noble’s own tunic, then resheathed it with the same silence with which he’d drawn it.
The signet ring slid easily from the boy’s cooling finger, proof of completion and potentially valuable intelligence in itself. Soren pocketed it, then arranged the body in a natural sleeping position, pulling the thin blanket up to cover the wound. To a casual observer, the young noble might simply be sleeping deeply, the truth of his state not immediately apparent.
He closed the curtain behind him exactly as he’d found it, leaving the gap at the bottom untouched. The guards remained undisturbed, their breathing never changing rhythm as he passed them like a ghost.
The exit proceeded with the same quiet precision as the entry, through the service corridor, past the still-gaming servants, out the collapsed entrance into the dead garden beyond. No blood trail marked his passage, no disturbed dust betrayed his route, no witnesses remained to connect him to the night’s work.
Somewhere in the darkness, Soren knew Mira watched, evaluating his performance with professional detachment. He didn’t acknowledge her presence, maintaining his focus until he’d put suitable distance between himself and the manor.
Only when he reached the predetermined rendezvous point did he pause, the signet ring a small weight in his pocket, the memory of dying eyes already fading from his mind.
No sense of triumph colored his thoughts, no regret shadowed his conscience, only the clean satisfaction of a task completed exactly as required.
The Veiled Hand had gained another piece of evidence against the Cathedral’s network. And Soren had proven, once again, that his blade and presence could be trusted to finish what was started.