The Killing Grounds Page 27

  Most Artists practiced from a very early age, especially those born into wealthy families or found themselves among other gifted people. Several of the girls that grew up with Alara in the workhouse had Artistic tendencies, and the sweat master took great pains in developing their skills for his own use. She smiled remembering her early days in the shop, the girls had all bunked together in the back of the house and used to stay awake late into the night telling stories and sharing jokes, and Alara had missed their friendship when she joined the Guild. She snapped back to reality and thought about going back to her room to recharge her batteries for the night’s expedition, but her eyes came to rest on the blue crash mats at the back of the gym. She dragged herself to her feet and climbed to the top of the stack and closed her eyes. The sound of boys training filtered into her mind, but she shielded and found peace and quiet and fell into a deep sleep.

  Twenty-Five:

  The two assassins positioned themselves on the rooftop opposite the Killing Grounds where they had a clear view of the front port cache and the side exit. It was cold and the heavy winds had blown the snow clouds offshore. The crescent moon and clear skies glistened off the wet flagstones outside of the old hotel and offered little in the way of illumination to see by, as Alara stared at the small light that hung above the side entrance. The rooftop where they hid was flat and covered in the debris of an old fast food sign that groaned as it moved in the wind. The inside of the building had been burned out and gutted, along with every other building that surrounded the Killing Grounds as a warning to any shopkeeper that their presence would not be welcome. A few vagrants had taken up residence in the shop next door and Alara made a note to have the building flushed clean when she returned to the Guild.

  Black attempted to shield them from the cold.

  “Forget it, any Artist worth their salt would check the area for dead spots, we need to do this old school,” said Alara.

  “Who says the Quartermaster would give the bounty to an Artist?”

  “Lord Osari’s mundane, they will send an Artist and I’m betting whoever it is will be sneaking out.”

  “Then they would wait before leaving. We’re wasting our time Du Preeze.”

  “No they will leave now, they will either want him dead as fast as possible or rescued immediately. If it’s an Affiliation assassin they will know where Lord Osari is and use the opportunity to get close enough to retire the mark, and if it’s someone aligned with Lord Osari they will want to retire the mark and aide in his release. If I were them I would leave immediately. I’m banking on the Quartermaster to make the right decision and leave the Affiliation out of this.”

  He nodded in agreement and waited for the city clock to tick to twelve and ring its bell to signify the start of their rescue attempt. “How was Lucinda tonight?” she asked trying to take her mind off of the enormity of their task.

  “Better, she’s awake and accepting food. Her sister visited her earlier, but the rest of the family has kept their distance. I tried to listen in but the nurses chased me away.”

  “She needs her rest, just give her time.”

  “She needs to get well and back in the game!” he said harshly.

  Alara knew he was right and patted him on the arm. “She’s going to be alright Alex,” but there was a seed of doubt in Alara’s mind that they may have lost Lucinda for good and she turned away from Alex in case her face betrayed her feelings.

  The clock chimed midnight and the two assassins settled in to wait for any signs of people leaving. “Look,” Black said as a carriage drew up to the front of the Killing Grounds. Two people rushed out of the building and into the carriage that sped off down the street. Alara got to her feet and made for the drainpipe. She would have to move fast to keep up with those horses. “Wait,” Black said and pointed to the side door where another assassin slipped into the night. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Damn!”

  They waited a few seconds and three more assassins left the building and disappeared into the gloom. “What now?”

  Alara had expected one assassin, not six. “There is only one mark.”

  “That we know of,” he corrected her.

  “We can only deal with what we know, Black.”

  “Maybe the Quartermaster opened the hit up to more than one of them?”

  “No,” he would have warned me wouldn’t he? “I think the others are decoys in case someone’s watching.”

  “Like us you mean?” he said sarcastically.

  “Indeed,” she snapped back irritated by his tone.

  He ignored the intensity of her quip, “So who do we follow?”

  She thought for a moment, “None of them, we head to the Great Hill and make a decision from there, Lord Osari’s mark was high level, and probably a member of the Senior Council and whoever has that bounty now won’t waste any time trying to collect on it. If we’re quick we may be able to track them, unless they’re Artists, either way we’ll be able to sense them in the area. The decoys will lead us a merry dance around the streets so we ignore them. Everything we’ve learned leads to Sable being the mark, but if she is aligned with the Affiliation the other assassins may have been sent to protect her. The only other targets could be Lord or Lady Millhaven or...”

  “House Black,” Alex added.

  “Precisely.”

  ***

  Alara stopped at the base of the Great Hill and looked towards the lights emanating from both Millhaven House and Madam Isabelle’s property; she looked from house to house and tried to spot signs of House Black in the distance. The power mansions of the city lay before her and somewhere amongst the highborns and the politicians an assassin lay in wait. Her Lord was dying but Alara had no idea where to start looking. She heard hoof beats in the distance and dragged Black into the shadows of a massive oak tree. A four-in-hand carriage rushed passed the two young assassins, which was swiftly followed by three limousines all tearing up the hill. They could hear brakes squealing as another car hit a patch of black ice and narrowly missed ploughing into the oak tree.

  “Damn, that was too close for comfort! We need to move fast Du Preeze, time to see if all that gym training was for nothing. Where to?”

  She looked at him apologetically, “Same place as we visited last time.”

  It took them half an hour to make their way close to Madam Isabelle’s estate and in that time sixteen more cars had passed. Each time Alara and Black had jumped behind a wall or into an alley to stop being spotted.

  She watched as the last taillight disappeared into the guarded driveway.

  “I doubt there’ll be lorry deliveries at this time of night,” Black said as they caught their breath behind a hedge.

  “No, and Sable will have cameras on those walls.” A truck full of armed guards passed them and came to a halt at the gates. Orders were given and the two guards on the gate let the truck in, shut the gates behind it and jumped into the back of the truck as it left for the house. She could hear dogs barking up at the main house as the truck arrived so reached out with her mind and was met with a powerful shield. “Argh…” she was knocked backwards into a drift of snow as the attack tried to knock her unconscious. “That’s not Sable’s ward. There’s someone way more powerful than her in the house.”

  “I know, I can feel it too.” They scouted around the wall that surrounded the grounds, being careful to stay out of sight of the surveillance cameras. “This place is a fortress, how the hell are we going to get in?”

  “Well now might be the time to use that mind travel spell you showed me when we took the boy to the common.”

  “That wasn’t mine, my Lord gave me the ward to use, I’m not that gifted. It’s a dead end Du Preeze, let’s get out of here.”

  “There’s always a way Black.” She pointed to scaffolding that supported the rear wall twenty metres away. A guard was patrolling the area, but had stopped walking and was blowing warm air into his hands. “Can you take care of the cameras?”


  “They’ll know we're here.”

  “They’ll know someone is here, but they’ll be looking for one assassin, not two.” She leapt into action and sprinted across the twenty metres to where the guard stood. Her hand dropped to her side, she drew a blade from her belt and let it fly without missing a step. The knife thudded into the guard's shoulder. He dropped to the ground and tried to reach for the blade, but Alara was on top of him in an instant, locked an arm around his throat and squeezed with all her might. The guard put up weak fight and tried to head butt her in the face with the back of his head, but Alara moved quickly out of his way and the blow hit her in the shoulder. She heard a gurgle and felt the man’s body go limp in her arms. She dragged him over to the wall, retrieved her blade, healed his wounds and tied his hands behind his back with wire from a nearby electrical box.

  “The cameras are down and we don’t have much time until they send someone to look for the missing guard.”

  Alara grabbed the radio from the unconscious guard and threw it to Black, “Not unless you tell them something’s wrong,” she smiled. “They won’t be watching all the cameras at once and by the time they do a head check we’ll be long gone, hopefully. Time to move!” Both assassins dodged from tree to tree, staying in the shadows as much as possible and only stopped for Black to answer the radio and report that everything was okay. The sounds of dogs barking grew closer and the hairs on the back of Alara's neck were standing on edge as they reached the barn where Manak had been dispatched. She scanned the area and only met limited resistance from the house. Whoever set the ward concentrated on the exterior wall, the spell scent of the ward seemed familiar, but Alara couldn’t put a finger on who owned it. They skirted the main barn and headed for the one closest to the main house, the baying of the dogs was getting louder and Alara hoped to hell that they were chained up. They crossed the distance between the two barns without being seen and approached the rear of the house. Three guards stood by the back door smoking and talking loudly over the noise made by the dogs. She motioned for Black to join her.

  “There’s a power conduit thirty metres to their left,” she said and pointed to the roof. He nodded and gave a thumbs up sign. She ducked back behind the barn wall, dropped to the floor and leopard-crawled toward the pipe.

  “Let those fragging dogs out, they’re driving me mad,” a guard screamed.

  She heard the growls grow louder as the guard approached and whistled at them, the barking increased in volume and Alara knew that the dogs would be on her in seconds. She got to her feet and ran the last ten metres, jumped up onto the electrical wire and climbed as fast as she could. She sensed Black leap onto the pole and felt it pull away from the wall and then catch again. She breathed deeply, trying to stop her heart from beating out of her chest, and did all she could to calm herself down before reaching up the conduit toward the window above her. The first of the hounds reached the bottom of the conduit and was snarling viciously.

  “Get a move on!” Black hissed from below her.

  Alara gritted her teeth and pulled herself up as fast as she could. As she finally reached the top she could hear the voices screaming at the dogs to stop howling, they were close and as she pulled herself onto the flat roof she reached down and pulled Black over the top. Both assassins lay on their backs breathing hard, climbing practice in the gym was one thing, but climbing as you're being attacked by a pack of dogs was another altogether. Alara threw up a shield to block any sign of their presence and waited for the guards to drag the dogs away, who seemed to have lost interest once the assassins had disappeared. She signalled the all clear and looked around the roof for a way in. There was a single door guarded by another security camera. “We can’t take the chance of knocking another one out,” she said as they hid behind a large air-conditioning motor. Black shook his head. She pointed to a vent, “Then we go in that way.”

  It took Black less than a minute to unscrew the vent cover and open it wide enough so that Alara had room enough to crawl inside. The vent dropped into darkness and for the first time since the finals Alara was afraid. She pressed her hands and feet against the wall and spider-crawled down the vent, the sheer effort involved in the climb made her sweat profusely and her right hand slipped and she lost traction. Her body folded in on itself and she tumbled through the air, bouncing off the sides of the shaft as she fell into the darkness. She hit the bottom with a thud and tried to roll out of the fall, but the confined space blocked her way and she only managed to slam her body into the side of the shaft. Any air that was left in her lungs was forced out and she coughed loudly, trying to breathe. You’re not dying in a frikking ventilation shaft, get it together girl!

  By the time Black had made the climb down Alara was breathing normally, he put a hand on her shoulder and looked at her expectantly and held up a thumb. Alara nodded and set off down the shaft toward a faint light in the distance. They crawled for what seemed to be an age until they found the opening Alara was looking for and she peered through the vent cover into the dark room. She held a finger to her lips and Black nodded in agreement and both assassins lay silently, listening for any signs of life from inside the room. When Alara was sure there was no one present she scanned the room as Black went to work on the screws that held the front of the vent in place. The room was sparsely decorated with only two chairs next to a desk and a single bed. Alara climbed into the room and carried one of the chairs to the middle of the room. She pointed to the light and Black climbed onto the chair and retrieved the bulb as Alara grabbed a pillow and stripped it of its pillowcase. Black tossed her the bulb and she muffled the sound with a shield as she crushed the glass in the pillow case. She sprinkled the glass fragments on the floor in front of the door and below the window. Lord Basel was a master of disguise and was well known for his use of stealth and Alara wanted to use every trick she knew of to protect them from any impending attack. Black crossed the room and waited for her to finish before drawing the curtains back to let the moonlight flood into the room.

  Alara positioned the second chair to face hers and sat down. Black took up a position to the right of the door. “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “She will know we’re here already, either Lord Basel will try to finish it here or…”

  The door opened and Sable strolled into the room with an assassin at her back, he was hooded and Alara couldn’t make out any distinguishing marks. She probed, but Sable had shielded his identity from her. “You should try knocking for a change instead of driving the dogs mad.” She calmly sat down in the chair opposite to Alara, but the angry look on her face gave away her true feelings.

  “I like the new style,” Alara said, looking the woman up and down. Sable was dressed in a black business suit with flat shoes and a matching black and a white blouse, but she had let her hair hang down around her shoulders and the midnight blue hue glistened in the moonlight. Alara couldn’t help but admire the woman’s beauty. “Sorry to interrupt your party.” Alara looked passed Sable to where Black was hugging the wall with a blade in each hand.

  “Perhaps your friend would like to join in the conversation?” Sable said, motioning towards Black.

  Alara nodded to Black who took up position behind her chair, mimicking the pose of his opposition.

  “It’s so refreshing to see two assassins working together. I’ve always thought that it must be such a lonely profession,” Sable didn’t take her eyes off Alara.

  “I’m sure your friend,” Alara motioned at the assassin at Sable’s back, “has a partner around here somewhere.”

  “Perhaps, but let’s get down to brass tacks,” Sable crossed her legs, leant forward and steepled her fingers below her chin. “I thought I made it clear that Lord Osari isn’t a guest in my house.”

  “I was more interested in who the Guild sent to kill you,” Alara replied.

  “Oh my dear girl, why would the Guild send an assassin here? I can best any bounty placed on my head and as you can see I have very
good connections within your Guild.”

  Alara had to agree that Sable made sense. This was probably a dead end and she berated herself for not thinking it through, but at least she had the woman close to her and she needed more information. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but Sable interrupted her train of thought, “Why don’t we continue this conversation in the comfort of my study.” Alara felt Black's hand on her shoulder. “You have nothing to fear from me young assassin,” she added looking at Black.

  Alara stood and followed Sable. She sensed Black raise his hand to deliver a blade to Sable’s back, but Alara reversed a step to stand next to him, “Relax Alex, but keep your wits about you.”

  Sable led them through the house and down the main stairs, armed guards were standing to attention in the hall as they passed by and Alara could feel the heat from their stares, but held her chin high in defiance.

  The blue-haired woman instructed her assassin to wait with the guards and led Alara and Black into her study and sat behind a huge marble topped desk. “Please have a seat.” Alara scanned the room and found that Sable had dropped her shield, “I’ve nothing to hide from you Miss Du Preeze, feel free to probe the house, you’ll not find anything untoward.”

  “Black, maybe you would like to conduct that search while we chat?” Alara asked. Black nodded and closed his eyes in concentration. As Alara waited for Black's report she examined the office, the walls were covered in paintings and it reminded her of Lord Osari’s rooms in the Killing Grounds, the only furniture was the desk and chairs. Three miniature dragons were posed on her desk in the same positions that she had seen in the Millhaven house, “Parian, Trian and Paragon.”

  Sable raised an eye at the statement, “Indeed.” She carefully stroked Parian’s back. “Such beautiful creatures don’t you think? Do you know the story?”