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The Killing Grounds Page 23
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“I’ll be your spotter for your finals today girl,” he said totally ignoring her apology.
“Oh, I thought you came to collect on my bounty.” She held the lower Lord's stare, wanting to get a rise out of him on the off chance that he may let his guard down and say something that could be helpful later on.
“I’m not here to chatter with you Du Preeze, go about your business please. When the claxon sounds for the final time we shall discuss your results or I’ll call a corpse cart. Either way it makes no difference.”
Alara's hand was close to her blades and it would only take a moment for her to draw one and end the vile man, but he watched her movements like a hawk and even though his outward demeanour was calm, she could almost feel the hatred pouring out of his body. The claxon sounded once in the hall, one boy had been retired already! Her mind went back to Gideon and his use of poison on the apprentice in the dorm, no food or drink until this is all over. She reached out with her mind and sensed the wards protecting the other floors had been removed. There was a boy in the room above hers and one on the floor below. Both had failed to make it out to the corridors yet. They were probably waiting for more claxons to go off before they made a move. Not a smart move, ignoring Lord Basel she jogged slowly to the end of the corridor. Maybe if she played the game to her advantage she could tire him out before their inevitable showdown at the end of the finals.
When she reached the end of the hall she stopped and parted the curtains of the window leading off of the stairwell. She took a blade from her belt and loosened the paint that had held the window in place for years as quietly as she could. The window opened with an alarming creak and Alara heard Lord Basel tut behind her. She ignored him and climbed out onto a small ledge that edged around her floor of the building. The air was cold and damp and the small amount of rain that had fallen on the city the previous night had formed a frost, making the ledge slippery.
She inched her way around the building until she estimated that she stood exactly where her room was and looked up to see if the boy above her had a window, but she was out of luck. The only opening was in the next room, so that would have to do. She needed a way up and scanned the old-fashioned air conditioner that hung out of the window. It was still solidly in place and the conduit snaking down the wall that housed the wiring would hold her weight. She shimmied across the ledge and pulled on the conduit to make sure it was secure, placed one of her blades between her teeth and climbed up as silently as she could. The window was easy to open as the constant shaking of the air conditioner had loosened the glass and one pane had fallen into the room. She reached through the gap, flicked the latch and climbed into the room and stopped to catch her breath. Even though she was fit, the stress of the day and the pressure of having a spotter drained her more than this sort of exercise would normally do.
Lord Basel climbed into the room showing no signs of distress, he opened his mouth to speak to her, but she raised a finger to her lips to signal for silence She closed her eyes in concentration and scanned the room next door to get a an idea of who she was up against. It was Nine. She already knew that he was mundane and didn’t try to mask her use of the Arts, but another person was in the room with them and shielded himself from Alara’s probe. It must be his spotter. She panicked, if the spotter gave away her position she could be dead in the water and open to attack. The boy was pacing up and down and she could feel the fear in his mind. The Artist could give her position away any minute, she had to act fast. She crossed to the door and motioned for Lord Basel to join her, maybe he could be of some use after all.
The door opened silently and she crept into the hall and stood with her back to the wall next to the boy’s entrance, a blade was in her hand and her mind was on one thing and one thing only, time to kill, do it quickly and cleanly, now go. She took a deep breath and peered into the peephole, the effect didn’t let her see what was happening in the room but that wasn’t the point, this one wasn’t painted over and that’s all that mattered. She pointed the blade at Lord Basel and silently instructed him to stand in front of the door. She reached around him and knocked on the door. There was a moment's silence before she heard footfalls. She scanned the room to make sure that it was the boy on the other side of the entrance and not the Artist. She waited for the boy to have a chance to look through the peephole and then motioned for Lord Basel to move back. The door opened slowly outward away from Alara and the boy stepped into the hallway. As he opened his mouth to speak Alara stepped into his line of vision and slammed her blade into his temple, killing him instantly, the boy fell to his knees and the claxon sounded; Alara had her first kill of the day.
The boy's spotter appeared in the doorway and kicked the corpse to see if he would move and looked at Alara, “Thanks Du Preeze, this idiot was boring me to death with all his fretting and pacing. If he had made top five with that effort I would have retired him, it was fucking disgraceful!”
“Yes Sir.”
“I’ll see one or both of you for the ceremony later,” he nodded toward Lord Basel and left the area muttering something about wasting his day on such an idiot.
Alara placed her boot on the side of the boy's head and pulled her blade free of his skull, after cleaning it on his fatigues she placed it lovingly back into her blade belt.
Lord Basel grabbed her by the shirt and slammed her into the wall. Her head bounced off the plaster three times, his face was millimetres away from hers and Alara thought that he was going to kill her there and then. “Don’t you ever use me for your dirty work again Du Preeze!” he snarled.
She wasn’t going to back down and spat in his face, “Get your filthy hands off me Basel!” By the end of the day one of them would be dead, so there was no point in trying to be polite any longer.
“That’s Lord Basel to you girl!” he said as her spittle ran down his face.
“Let’s not kid ourselves Lord Basel, we both know how this is going to end, so let’s cut the crap and get this over and done with,” she had drawn a blade and held it next to his chest but he had a free hand and had his own blade pressed up against her jugular. He could try to slit her throat but she would make sure he died at the same time.
He looked down at her knife and stepped away, sheathing his own. “Don’t forget bitch, there are Guild laws in play here.”
“And one of those involves roughing up an apprentice during finals does it?” she said, trying to calm herself down as much as possible.
“You're mine until that claxon sounds for the last kill and don’t forget it!”
“And then what?”
“And then I’ll go back to my own business, now I suggest you get on with it or is this just a ruse so you don’t have to fight a real man?” He looked down at the dead apprentice, “Not just a pathetic excuse like this one.”
Her ears were still ringing and she could feel a welt begin to bubble under the skin on the back of her head, she used a healing wave to take the pain away, come on girl, two down, three to go! If the numbers were even there would be three more boys on this side of the Killing Grounds, the thought of going to find Alex and Lucinda crossed her mind but the claxon sounded for a third time and Alara came to her senses. She scanned the area and only found two targets, there was someone else on her side of the Killing Grounds, but no matter how hard she tried, it was impossible for her to see who or what it was. She searched for the assassin responsible, but came up blank. Whoever had retired the boy was an Artist and was shielded from her probe. That meant that it was either an artist or an apprentice that was shielded by a ward, maybe Alex or Lucinda had come over to her side of the hotel to help her out, but then why would they split up? No, whoever this was it most definitely was an enemy. She tried the scan one more time, but only found spell scents that she didn’t recognise. There were too many Artists on the grounds for her to search at such a distance.
She felt Lord Basel tap her on the shoulder with a pencil, “Are we just standing here until the claxon sound
s for the last kill Du Preeze?”
He was right, get back in the game! She scanned the room two floors down for signs of the other boy, but he was nowhere to be found. She scanned all around but came up empty; the boy had to be somewhere! Relax, stop hurrying and look carefully, she closed her eyes and ignored the tutting of the lower Lord and found her next mark. He was holed up between the first and second floors. She took off for the stairwell and ran down them three at a time, not caring about the amount of noise she was making, but as she reached the landing she found it empty. She scanned again, he was definitely in the area and as she looked down she caught sight of the air vent that led into the crawl space between floors. Small paint flecks littered the floor and Alara smiled.
“So another boy that wants to hide from you Du Preeze, what is it with you and chicken shit boys? I tell you what; let’s see you do this with none of your Witchcraft.” The look on his face told Alara all she needed to know about how Lord Basel viewed the Arts.
“Challenge accepted,” she snarled back.
She used her knife to silently unscrew the bolts that held the grate in position and slipped into the darkness. The boy had positioned himself twenty metres to her right in a tight corner, but as she made her way inside she felt a breeze blow through the crawl space. Lord Basel had crawled in behind her and was blocking the light from the landing; he’d probably given her position away as he dragged himself into the cramped space. She rolled to the left and quickly crept away from Lord Basel. A knife thudded into the wooden beam just above her head; she hugged the floor as much as she could, but kept crawling away from the boy's position. It turned out to be just a lucky shot as she heard another blade clatter against the wall some way away from her. That gave her an idea. She angled herself toward the boy's position and quietly crept toward him. If she was right in her thinking maybe a distraction would throw him off his game. It took her three minutes to get to within fifteen metres of him and another ten to cross the last five. She was now within accurate throwing distance of her prey, if he hadn’t moved! She kept silent, concentrating on the noises in the crawl space, trying to listen out for anything unusual. She heard a rustle of wings and smiled to herself knowing that the last part of her plan was indeed in place. She pulled two knives from her belt and threw the first one as clumsily as she could for the roof of the floor above, it clattered noisily into the concrete above the boy's head where the bats she had seen flying around the Killing Grounds were roosting for the day. They took flight and headed out of the crawlspace behind the boy's hiding place like a swarm of giant black bees. He jumped up, trying to wave the bats away and she loosed the second blade which tumbled end over end until it lodged under the boy's chin. She heard him gurgle and fall to the floor. The bats were gone and the claxon sounded from somewhere above her. She crawled to the boy and retrieved her blades and said a silent thank you to the colony of winged rodents. The dead boy’s spotter crawled away swearing about being covered in dirt and guano and Alara couldn't stop herself from letting out a stifled laugh.
By the time she had crawled back out Lord Basel was sitting on the stairs waiting for her. “Happy now?” she asked sarcastically.
He grunted and left her to clean the dust and cobwebs from her fatigues.
“Mind if I do things my way?” she asked.
“Go ahead Witch,” he replied. “Only one left, the time's drawing near.”
“Time for what?” she snarled.
“For me to report my findings to the Council.”
She waved him away and was on the move. She heard a noise from above and scanned the area, she sensed a boy enter the stairwell four stories up, and he was moving toward her fast. If her luck held he would run straight into her blade and the finals would be over and she would have her chance at ending Lord Basel. She started climbing the stairs as fast as she could without making too much noise, she didn’t want to scare the boy off. As she reached the third floor landing she stopped and waited as the sounds of the boy running down the stairs became louder. She ducked into the corridor adjacent to the stairwell and waited with blade in hand, but instead of footfalls she heard a thud and the sound of bone hitting concrete, and the claxon sounded for the last kill.
Alara spun around to fend off Lord Basel's imminent attack, but the assassin was gone. She looked in all directions and scanned as far as she dared, but there was no sign of the lower Lord, someone must have been ready to shield him as soon as the signal for the last retirement blasted through the corridors of the Killing Grounds, but who? “Damn it!” Her cry echoed down the stairwell.
“Sorry Du Preeze, if I had known you were here I would have left him for you.”
“Gideon!”
He looked down at her hand, “It’s done Du Preeze you can put the knife away now.”
Alara’s blade was aimed at Gideon’s throat, her reactions had kicked in and she hadn’t even realised that the blade was poised to kill him.
“You’re not the only one that has access to the Arts,” he said. “Fear not, I broke no Guild rules, the spell was cast last night well before the start of the finals.”
So that’s why she hadn’t found him when she scanned her side of the building. He’d been there all along and he could have come after her.
“I believe the Guild is stronger for having you in it Du Preeze,” he said, and walked back down the stairs to the ground floor.
He’d noticed the question in her body language again! That’s the last time, she promised herself.
Twenty-Three:
The mess hall was a mass of assassins milling about, waiting for the surviving apprentices to appear and be accepted into the Guild. Alara was the second to arrive as the applause was still sounding for Gideon’s triumph. Her arrival wasn’t celebrated to the extent that Gideon's was, but after all he was A1 and, in their eyes, the best candidate for the Guild. She looked around the mess hall nervously for any signs of Lord Basel, but the man was as elusive now as he had been back in the corridor, where are you? Black entered the hall to mottled applause, but his face was dark and angry and Alara couldn’t see any signs of Lucinda, oh please don’t let her be dead! As the fourth boy walked in her heart sunk, come on Lucinda, one spot left, make it yours. Several Lords tried to make conversation with her, but her mind was on Lucinda’s absence and the look on Alex Black’s face as he stood alone staring silently at the floor in front of his feet, was not promising.
“Attention class,” the Quartermaster ordered. “Firstly congratulations to our four new members, you all deserve the accolades that will no doubt be given in due course,” he let the applause die down before carrying on.
In due course, what the hell does that mean; this is supposed to be over now. Something was off and she immediately threw a shield up around herself, but the effort it took made her mind ache, the final and the stress of having Lord Basel follow her around had exhausted her.
“As you can see there are only four survivors present, the fifth is in critical condition in the infirmary, it seems that blades were exchanged and both parties scored a hit. One was retired and the other fights for her life.”
Her life, thank the gods! Alara immediately summoned the effort to scan the infirmary, but there was a ward protecting the entire hospital wing of the building. Lucinda was still in trouble, but they had all survived and Alara’s mood lightened.
“We wish her a speedy recovery,” the Quartermaster continued. “Those of you who thought that there would be a ceremony to celebrate are sadly mistaken. As Guild laws demands, you are no longer titled apprentices, but for you to be a full valued member here you will need to start work immediately and you will not be given any status until such time as you add value to the Guild. In other words you all have work to do! My office is open from 5am every morning, there are bounties that I will select for you and I expect nothing but your best when cashing them in. Am I clear?”
“Yes Quartermaster,” the remaining four said in unison.
“Onc
e you start earning your keep you will be allowed to move out of the slum wings and into your own apartments. Millhaven will be given a stay of leave to recover and then she will join you in your daily duties, so make hay while there are only four of you. I would also like to thank the Lords that assisted in the finals. Without their hard work and diligence today would not have been the success that it most certainly was,” he raised a glass to toast the group of Lords that sat to his right. Alara stifled a growl as she searched for Lord Basel in the crowd. “Unfortunately two of our Lords were called away on Guild business and won’t be with us for a few days.” Alara looked back to the Quartermaster who was now staring at her straight in her face. “One other thing, the infirmary is out of bounds until Millhaven is out of danger. Dismissed.”
Alara turned around and headed to where Black had been standing, but the boy had already left the mess hall. Alex, what happened? Only silence echoed back in her head, he’d shielded her out and she had to respect his need for privacy. She walked back to the gym hoping that she would find him there, but the room was dark and eerily quiet. For the first time in her short life her freedom was her own and she wanted to celebrate and not go back to that tiny room with its dripping taps and lumpy mattress. She sighed and turned on the lights and looked at the ropes, maybe freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, she placed her hand on the rope, gritted her teeth and pulled her aching body toward the ceiling.
***
Alara woke the next morning to the sound of young boys and girls shouting and screaming their names out as they tried to get into an organised line at the front of the gym. She wiped the drool from her chin and stretched.
“Room not to your liking Du Preeze?”
“Sorry Lord Sirap,” she said jumping to attention.
“Relax Du Preeze you're not an apprentice now.” He looked back at the large noisy group behind him “You lot shut up!” he screamed. “Come with me Miss Du Preeze.”