Chapter 158: An Account Reopened
The lane from The Green Table's side street fed him into a residential belt that traveled in the direction he needed to go. The row houses here sat on stone foundations, their upper floors a grid of dark Mycari timber with shutters drawn against the approaching second dusk. A few dozen yards ahead runelamps began coming to life as the shadows deepened. Cal continued toward Mirathra's main Hearthsong Inn and let his mind drift to thoughts of dwarven consonant clusters and phonetic keys. He shifted the pack against his shoulder and picked up his speed, thinking of the tub in his room and how good a bath with a book sounded after a long day.
The ten-yard bubble of his [Sphere of Perception] shrieked in warning.
Two spikes above, one behind, and one from the alley mouth to his left, all converging simultaneously. Cal twisted and dropped his weight before his brain named the threat. A crossbow bolt punched the air where his neck had been and buried itself into the shutter across the lane with a woody crack. A pair of throwing knives came in low from the roofline behind him. One skipped off the cobbles a foot from his ankle, the other opened a stinging line across the meat of his right calf.
He rolled off his shoulder and came up with Bael'zhar clearing its sheath. The harvesting knife slid into his left hand as an afterthought, the recent acquisition of [Ambidexterity] and [Dual Wielding] deciding it for him. A green blur launched from an alley mouth with a curved blade already reaching for the space where his kidney would arrive, but Cal was somewhere else by the time the strike closed. [Flicker Step] put him three feet sideways and the swordsman's momentum carried him past.
A second attacker came off the roof. Long-limbed and lithe, with a straight blade in each hand. He landed in a crouch that ate his impact and was already charging.
Cal ignited [Crimson Overdrive] and Stamina roared through channels that still felt the effects of the day's sparring, while also threading a stream into the nerve cluster to activate [Liminal Breath]. Time stretched, and Cal finally swung his perception to take in his foes.
Four of them. Two blade-forward closers pressing him in the lane, a crossbowman working a second bolt into the groove from a second-story balcony across the way, and a fourth just now dropping the crossbow to draw a short-hafted axe, a low D, his aura a bar of red weight against Cal's senses. He was surrounded, and they held the high ground.
Cal caught the roof-lander's first cross-cut on Bael'zhar's spine, redirected the second with the harvesting knife against the flat, and gave ground on purpose, one step, then two, quickly dancing sideways to keep two from his back. A third throwing knife whooshed past his ear. The alley-mouth Mycari re-entered the fight with a low thrust Cal turned aside with a step and a twist of the wrist.
The axeman was suddenly two long strides closer than he should have been. Cal broke contact, dashed fifteen yards to the mouth of a dead-end service gap between two row houses, and held the choke point.
The pack moved in. Two closed the distance to hedge him while the axe wielder swapped back to his crossbow, and the other crossbowman dropped down into the lane to get a better angle, weapon raised. The swordsman in green planted his boots in the lane a few yards away and grinned.
Why do I get the feeling nobody's coming to help me?
Every shutter on this street had been closed before he turned the corner, and every shutter had stayed closed.
[Perfect Memory] recalled the four men in road-scuffed leathers at the restaurant. One who'd looked at him for a fraction of a second. They'd settled up at the bar towards the end of his stay and walked out unremarkable, after he'd eaten a meal with them in the room and told himself everything was fine.
Blood ran warm into his boot from the calf laceration. He set the sting against the ambient dial of his [Pain Tolerance] and let it recede to the level of an itch.
"C—," the swordsman started. Cal dropped his Legacy to keep the words from stretching, while winding down Overdrive to save his resources.
"—omfortable?" The elf's common tongue carried the round vowels of a Mycari raised in the Virethane. "Take your breath, dull-ear, and enjoy it. There won't be many of 'em left."
Cal ignored the man and took in the fight. Tactically he was facing three high E-tiers and one low D, their auras all feeling martial in nature. They carried a mix of weapons and were skilled and well-coordinated, with enough talent to use some movement Abilities at the very least. Cal had plenty in the tank and his perception showed no reinforcements in range, although there were clearly Mycari peeking through shutters all around them, as he mapped with his mind's eye.
"You know who paid us?" the swordsman asked. He lowered his sword and waved off his own question with his other hand. "Course you don't. You've been living like someone who thought the story ended, but you murdered a Blackbriar heir, ya bastard. Things certainly didn't end there for his father."
The knife wielder next to him wheezed out a laugh.
"There's been standing coin from Herod for your head," the swordsman went on, "since before the snow melted. We'd have walked past you tonight, just an idiot stumbled into the wrong business—except a fancy human in the dinner house had a word on the way out. Said your name. Said the Blackbriar coin was real, and he'd match it through Herod if we did the work tonight."
Oh, that slimy little...
Cal gritted his teeth while doing his best to keep his face blank.
It looks like I've got some unfinished business in Deadfall after all, and a certain "fixer" I'll need to fix for myself.
This guy was talking because, apparently, he wanted Cal to know who was killing him. Like he thought it was a done deal. Maybe it wasn't for Cal so much as it was for the people watching and listening through their shutters. It didn't matter. What mattered is they'd stopped pressing him, and that was really, really, stupid of them.
With a surety born of his physical Impartment and perfect sphere of awareness, he slid the two weapons he was holding back into their sheaths faster than anyone could react, while sending Mana to his silver void ring and withdrawing his spear.
The swordsman's bluster sputtered out while the knifeman next to him went very still.
"Mongrel," spat the axe-wielding crossbowman from the back. "You dare show that stolen weapon in front of us."
"He's got a ring," said the crossbowman next to him. "This job keeps getting better and better. We're gonna be rich!"
"A half-blood carrying a true Mycari spear," the swordsman ground out, "is a thing that needs dealt with whether the coin is there or not."
Cal ignored them and restarted his Legacy, knowing things were about to kick off again. The world slowed as he pulled Mana to begin drawing the spellwork for [Combustion] a foot in front of his sternum—the quick four rune explosion he'd used to kill Narbok. The last time he'd cast this Spell it had taken his hand and left him with a memory his body still felt.
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The first two runes formed. He was reaching for the third when the two elves in front pushed towards him and the two in the back fired. The pack broke onto him all at once.
The Spell fell apart before he could complete it. Cal dropped his hand back to his spear while dodging the bolts, [Combat Analysis] having given him the read on the angles well in advance.
[Crimson Overdrive]
[Dash]
[Lancing River]
Stamina charged in his legs and detonated up through his hips as he darted past the sword and knife wielders, who managed weak glancing blows to his armored shoulder and torso as he dove past, heading straight toward the crossbowman who had dropped from the balcony. [Spear Mastery] did the rest. The combination crossed the yards between them in a burst of red light, the spear-point riding a glut of transferred kinetic force. The Mycari had enough time to see him coming and no time to do anything about it. The spear took him through the ribs and out through the base of his spine, and Cal was already ripping the shaft free by the time the man's crossbow clattered onto the street.
One.
A throwing knife took him high on the left shoulder, too shallow to slow him. The axeman next to him had quickly drawn his weapon and swung, but Cal ranged it with a small burst of Stamina. Another [Dash] pulled Cal further away from the oncoming enemies and gave him the space he needed.
He planted his feet in the middle of the lane, and this time he built the spellwork where he wanted it. Ignis. Ventus. Condense. Project. Wrapped into a spiritual vise. The runes hung in the air and glowed, banked and volatile.
The rushing axeman saw them, and he did a quick re-calculation. He circled sideways, wide, giving the hanging construct a respectful berth, keeping his eyes on Cal and the axe up.
Cal advanced on him, using the longer reach of his weapon to force the man to stay between him and the runes hanging in the air. The construct claimed the center of the lane now, and the axeman was treating it like terrain, a hazard with fixed edges and something to route around on the way to the kill.
A hard feint at the elf's lead hip moved him closer to the waiting Spell. The axeman gave the ground, trying to keep his arc away from the banked runes, while the two other Mycari charged in.
The knifeman reached Cal first. He'd taken the near side of the construct at a run, both straight daggers up, and cut in from Cal's right. Cal met him without leaving his spot, parried high with the spear-head, swept low with the butt, and drove [Sundering Strike] through the meat of the shoulder. The knifeman wheeled away to save the arm, and his retreat crossed the axeman's circle and jammed it, both elves checking their footing to keep clear of each other. Cal spent that half-second pressing the axeman another foot toward the runes.
The swordsman came slower, swinging wide around the far side of the construct behind the knifeman with his curved blade ready.
The axeman glanced at the runes. [Combat Analysis] caught the change in his stance a breath before he moved, balance rolling to the balls of his feet. He came in fast and hard, trying to close inside the spear's reach and bodily shove Cal away from the spellwork.
Cal met the charge with the spear held short and took the axe-led shoulder-drive on the braced haft. The impact beat down his arms until he rolled with it, stepping through and grappling the man, rotating all that momentum on his heel as he spun and fed the axeman's own rush right where he wanted it.
Into the runes.
Cal threw the man backwards while catching his falling spear mid-air and triggered the Spell.
[Combustion] was for close work, and the power this time was greater than the first. E-tier Mana with E-tier control. The detonation walked the line between concussion and immolation, taking the axeman across the chest and the throat and the underside of the jaw. The pressure wave shoved Cal backward a few steps and rang his bones like a hammered cup. His face burned and his eyebrows singed.
The axeman's body hit the cobbles in a few torn pieces separated by a smear of char.
Two.
The lane went bright and then dark and then bright again as the runelamps registered what had happened. Somewhere in a building above him a child started crying but was quickly stopped, muffled. No shutter opened.
Cal's ears rang and his eyes watered, but his sphere wasn't bothered.
The knifeman was still on his feet, favoring the shoulder Cal had opened. The swordsman had lost his composure. He was staring at what was left of the axeman with his mouth open and his blade held loosely. Cal chose the knifeman because he was still capable.
He came in on him behind a [Dash], and this time it was pure [Spear Mastery]. He drove a powerful thrust off his back foot. The elf parried it wide using his good hand, but Cal redirected the man's own force, rolling the shaft over the parry to drop the spearhead down onto his forearm. The blade carved a line from wrist to elbow. The second knife came up as Cal vanished with a [Flicker Step] to the elf's blind side, spear reversed and butt into temple. The knifeman staggered.
The man was good, and he tried to recover. He got a foot planted and brought both blades up into a guard, but Cal saw the defensive posture forming and broke it. A low sweep with the spear's haft hooked the man's ankles and tore his feet from the ground. The blades came down on reflex, cutting nothing. Cal was already inside the man's guard, driving the spearpoint up under the chin.
Three.
Cal pulled the spear free as the body went still. His sphere caught the fourth man's decision the instant it happened. The swordsman had done the math of being the last man standing against an opponent the four of them couldn't handle, and his feet were already turning. He ran.
Watching him go for exactly the half-heartbeat it took to confirm the direction, Cal saw him flee toward an alley mouth, deeper into the residential belt. He held the spear in his left hand, tore the throwing knife out of his shoulder with the other, and threw.
The blade crossed the twenty-five feet of lane in a flash of silver and red. The point went in at the base of the skull. The swordsman took two more steps before his body remembered it was dead, and then he went down.
Four.
The lane was silent again. He stood in the middle of it with a spear in one hand and an aftertaste of charred fat in his nose, every shutter on both sides still closed. A whole street of people had watched four of their own die and hadn't opened a single window or made a sound.
Freaking Mycari, man. Whatever. I'm not sticking around to see if more show up to try and finish the job.
The silver ring on his left hand opened, and he swept the axeman's remains into it, everything he could grab quickly. Then the knife wielder, blades and all. The crossbowman and the runner last. He was on his knees over the final bloodstain when the first cry went up.
A woman from a second-story window above the alley shouted out an unmistakably performative wail.
"Murder! Murder in the lane! Someone bring the guard!"
A second voice picked it up two windows down. Then a third. The shutters that had held all through four deaths began to bang open one after another, and the neighborhood discovered its lungs.
Cal stood, stowed his bloodstained spear in his void ring, and began to run, eating the street in long bounds. He used his [Spiritual Perception] liberally but noted no signs of pursuit.
"—half-blood, saw him, saw him running—"
"—four of ours, four, in the lane behind The Green Table—"
"—get a runner to the outpost—"
The voices thinned as he put distance between himself and the ambush site. Three blocks away the neighborhood architecture shifted and the tension began to bleed out of his shoulders. The waiting batch of notifications came due, and he let them run.
[Your proficiency with Dash (E) has increased to Adept]
[Your proficiency with Flicker Step (E) has increased to Adept]
[Your proficiency with Sundering Strike (E) has increased to Adept]
[Your proficiency with Combat Analysis (E) has increased to Expert]
[Your proficiency with Grappling (E) has increased to Adept]
[Your proficiency with Combustion (E) has increased to Practiced]
[Your proficiency with Throwing (E) has increased to Practiced]
He ran for what seemed like hours and finally, two streets from the Hearthsong, in a stretch of avenue where his own feet were the loudest sound, he slowed. Cal let the sphere pull back into place and stopped actively checking his surroundings with his perception, taking the time to work through the events of the evening.
[Perfect Memory] replayed all of it and would not let him unremember a thing. The Spell he'd invented killing a young man outside Deadfall had helped kill four more men collecting on that blood-price in the streets of Mirathra. A father in Deadfall was paying real coin to avenge a son whose death kept compounding. And a professional criminal named Loric Thane had sat across from Cal and declared peace while planning a double cross.
Herod's coin was in the wind and would send more crews—better ones next time, once the story of four bodies reached the enclaves through whatever channels moved that kind of information around the province. Loric was an active adversary with completely unknown associates.
The Hearthsong's windows glowed warm at the end of the avenue. He climbed the front steps of the inn with the same stride he had left it with that morning, and the door opened at his approach.
In his room he threw the bolt and set the dwarven language primer on the desk. He'd work the phonetic key tonight anyway. Sleep would come or it wouldn't.
The water flowed hot from the runic spigot, exactly the way he'd thought about it a street and an ambush ago. He drew the spear back out of the ring and leaned it against the tub before he got in.