Chapter 15: The Assassin’s Way
Nathan sat on the ground, looking at the bloody corpse lying on the other side of the room. He’d need to retrieve the man’s weapon sooner or later - or destroy it. It was too dangerous an artifact to leave out. He’d also need to dispose of the corpse before it started smelling even worse.
But that wasn’t what was overwhelming him at the moment. They’d been attacked by an [Assassin], and he'd been after Nathan. The man was neither a mage or a slave, and his gear was all wrong for Giantsrest. No, this person was from somewhere else. It was possible that the remaining mages had thrown around wealth to get some external help. But more likely was that this was just the first indirect attack of many that came from the Questors.
He said he’d start the Endings early, not that he wouldn’t send killers after you. This isn’t going to be the last time. And the next one might take the opportunity to kill my teammates, even if it would have tipped me off.
There was a faint knock on the door, and Nathan got up to answer it. He found a nervous-looking woman outside with the armband that identified her as one of Myrla’s messengers. She blinked up at Nathan, then seemed to remember how to speak. “Is there a problem here?” Her eyes widened as she spotted the scattered furniture and the pool of blood
Right, the noise. I demolished a chair over the man.
“Yeah.” Nathan replied tiredly. “An assassin. I’d like to ask for some guards and some help getting rid of the body.” He glanced back into the room. “And a new chair.”
The messenger clapped a fist to her breast in a Giantsrest-style salute before sprinting away.
Nathan heaved a deep breath and went to carefully secure the knife. He also managed to extricate the man’s dimensional bag, disabling a lethal security enchantment first. Then he patted the would-be-assassin down for other possessions, finding a few enchanted odds and ends as well as a single sheet of enchanted paper that declared itself to be a writ of free passage through Litcliff for one person. It was signed by three of the city’s five oligarchs.
A team arrived to haul the body away, leaving a scrubbed floor and a new chair where the old one had been. Nathan sat in it, looking down at the writ and wishing he could talk with the Heirs. This complicated things - in a lot of ways. They'd need to make some decisions soon.