A Clean Death is the fourth in the Tales of The Lesser Evil and this is the eighth chapter.
This is a fantasy series—not quite grimdark, but dark nevertheless—with complicated and believable characters doing their best to survive in a world simply indifferent to their existence.
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An Odd Joy
Pepper was bored. She had cleaned herself, eaten, rested, been massaged, then cleaned herself again. Comfort and opulence had its place, but not when it interrupted a murder.
Over her meal, she had listened to the gossip and business shared around her, filing away anything she felt may later be useful—talk of plague east of Annezi Gap, of how the silk merchants were planning on searching for a new, overland trade route between Funnelside and the Greatsand Gulf, bypassing the Telkian taxes, but risking the ire of the secretive and fiercely-protective mountain peoples. Rumours of raiding, talk of death, of violence here and violence there. Of new technologies achieved and then lost, of a white whale which had been sighted in The Trench, a sign of coming destruction. A mountain had exploded somewhere to the east, a whole city swallowed beneath molten rock.
All very interesting, but not what she was there for.
Pepper was sitting in the salon once more, cooling down and waiting, sipping from an ornately-swirled blue glass of elderflower cordial.
There was no sign of Rinc.
She knew, however, that you did not become a good assassin if you were easily bored. Instead, Pepper played through her earlier encounter, trying to think if she had missed anything.
The woman’s clothes had been nondescript, her mask narrow and tight around her eyes, giving away nothing of her origin. Pepper stopped with her glass halfway to her mouth, a thought flickering across her mind—the knife. It had been serrated, designed for cutting into a wound with one sharply-bladed edge, ripping as it was withdrawn with the other. It was a cruel weapon, but that was not what why she paused.
Time, Pepper knew, has a habit of seeming to slow down when life is threatened; details appear in odd orders, small things the unconscious mind usually missed or ignored are blindingly obvious, seared onto the memory. She closed her eyes and visualised the attack again.
There had been a maker’s mark, a metal stamp, on the blade, just near the hilt. Pepper suspected the reason her mind was now recalling this was simple; she knew that mark, knew the exact smithy where the blade had been made. It was barely ten minutes’ walk from Merie’s business in The Sixth District. In Eastsea.
The woman had somehow followed her from the city or gone on ahead, perhaps she had even been on the Southspray Maree. Could she have been working for the Bamboo Bear Clan? It was a definite possibility, but why attack her in the street? Why not simply wait until Pepper came for the kill? Why follow her all the way to Youlmouth—if they knew she was killing influential members of their organisation, why not attack in Eastsea, where they were more powerful, with far more resources?
She frowned—if an assassin had been sent to kill an assassin, the chances that someone had also gone after Hedda were strong. She looked to the window and gauged the sun would still not set for several chimes. It was too early to leave, no telling if Rinc the Fourth would still appear.
‘No,’ she said, firmly and aloud, startling a purple-clad servant, ‘Sorry, thinking aloud,’ she said, this time in the local language. She really must stop talking to herself, it was a bad habit.
Pepper stood and moved to the antechamber where her clothes were stored in a locked cupboard, the tiny key hung around her neck. Locks were expensive, and this room had dozens. There was no wonder the entrance fee was exorbitant.
Time to go, time to check on Hedda. Pepper shook her head, as she dressed quickly. She could wait no longer. The thought of potentially ruining the whole reason they had journeyed to Youlmouth, just because she was scared of her apprentice’s safety made her pause.
‘Getting soft. Getting older.’ This time she whispered the words to herself, although she smiled as she said it, realising she did not care. She loved Hedda like her own little sister. The realisation that the depth of this love meant she would risk failing a contract was eye-opening, something of true power, something that filled her with an odd joy, tempered with a nagging fear. There would always be another opportunity to kill Rinc, but there was only one Hedda.
From the way he staggered to the toilet, Hedda knew Rinc had eaten too much. He was uncomfortable, unused to the spices, unused to the heat of the steams. He had also drunk far too much wine and far too little water.
She sat waiting for him to return but, as she did, an idea crossed her mind—maybe this was the opportunity she needed.
The other guests had all seen Rinc leave in the direction of the toilet, they had all seen his belligerent and rude behaviour, all witnessed how much he had eaten and how uncomfortable it had made him. An opportunity, an opening. She had waited long enough.
She stood and followed him.
Entering the room, there was only one stall door closed and a strong scent told her Rinc was still in there. She had to work fast and swiftly removed her hairpin, her dark, damp curls dropping below her shoulders. Rinc grunted from his stall, shifting around, straining, trying to push and empty himself.
Hedda could see his feet appear under the door as he moved—this was her opportunity.
She wasted no more time, walking silently to the stall, twisting the needle free. The toxin was visible as a damp smear on the outside of the metal, more would be trapped in the hollow centre. One more step, a crouch and a stab. She caught him on the inside of his foot, near a network of purple and blue veins.
‘What the fuck?’ He gasped, immediately followed by a crash and then another as the toxin entered his bloodstream, capillaries and veins warmed in the steams, widened by wine, swiftly carrying it to his organs which responded by instantly shutting down, one by one.
The door behind her began to open and Hedda quickly replaced the needle within the other half, knocking on the door to Rinc’s stall as she did so.
‘Hello? Hello? Are you alright in there, sir?’ she asked.
A woman entered, one of the other guests she had seen in the dining room.
‘I think he is having some sort of seizure!’ Hedda said, ‘Quick! I can’t get the door open to help him.’
The other woman looked shocked, then looked over her shoulder at the door, considering a possible swift exit, before finally coming to try and help open the stall. Inside, Rinc’s struggles were stronger, increasing in ferocity before they slowed, a bang, a scratch, a sigh.
The door would not come open.
‘Keep trying, I shall call for help,’ Hedda ran to the exit and flung it open, revealing one of the staff, hand poised to open the door, a startled expression on his face.
He took a half-step back, then opened his mouth to speak, but Hedda interrupted him.
‘Please help, there’s a man in here who isn’t well. We can’t get the door open to help him.’
The man followed her inside and ran to the stall, where the woman was still trying to force it open with her shoulder.
‘Hello, sir? Hello?’ He knocked, then turned, ‘He isn’t answering.’
Hedda resisted a sudden and surprisingly strong urge to reply sarcastically, or to laugh, instead somehow managing an expression of deep worry. She took a step back and raised her hand to her mouth, as though involuntarily in horror and certainly not hiding a smile.
‘Stand back,’ the attendant said, moving away from the door, then taking a run at it, shoulder carefully aimed.
The latch broke and the door flew inward, bouncing off the legs of Rinc the Fourth. The attendant fell into the stall, shoulder sliding from the wood and momentum forcing him to land on the corpse. And corpse it was.
Rinc’s eyes were open, staring wildly, head tilted back, foaming drool still hanging from his mouth, flecked with blood. He was naked and the sight was disturbing, even without the bulging bloodshot eyes and deep, self-inflicted scratches down his face.
The man pushed himself off him and leapt back, squealing loudly.
‘What if it is disease?’ he asked, eyes wide.
Hedda and the other woman stepped further away, their movement in perfect unison, the attendant quickly following until they all stood with their backs to the wall.
‘I shall go get my superior. I suggest we leave him here for now.’ It was clear the man was on the verge of utter panic, and Hedda knew it would only take a small push to send him over the edge. She considered it, mind quickly running through the options before settling on her direction.
‘I heard…’ she coughed, raising her pitch, clearing her throat, finding just the right cadence for near-terror, ‘I heard a rumour that a horrible disease had come to Youlmouth. They said it affects the skin first,’ she cast a swift glance at Rinc, the other two following her gaze. The woman had certainly witnessed him scratching and belching and his raw, scratched pink skin was obvious. ‘They said…’ Hedda took another step back towards the door, then another.
The effect was instantaneous. People are easily fooled when you know where and how to lead them.
The man and woman both ran for the door, with Hedda close behind them. The pair did not slow but ran down the corridor to the dining room without looking back.
Hedda pulled up and swiftly changed direction. Strictly speaking, she did not need proof of Rinc’s death, but she thought it might help. Reaching for his sweaty hand she tugged and twisted the ring from his little finger, grimacing at both the effort and the curl of his skin she dislodged from beneath his long, unkempt nail. The ring bore the sign of the Bamboo Bear Clan, with the eyes of the bear set in tiny green stones. She knew each Clan officer carried such a ring, each sigil slightly different, perhaps a different colour eye, or the head twisted the other way. To lose the ring would result in dismissal, often dismissal through death.
Quickly pushing the ring on to the hairpin, she twisted her hair back on to her head and hid her evidence in unruly curls.
Then she ran as fast as she could, directly for the robing room.
Panic reigned everywhere, most having no idea what was going on, but certain words spread swiftly were potent enough to ensure a mass exodus. Plague. Death. Disease.
‘You cannot leave without paying! Wait! Did you not order food or wine? You cannot take the robe!’ Fra the Doorman was also panicking, but for different reasons, as a horde of customers in various stages of undress pushed past him into the street beyond.
Hedda was not the only one to have simply pulled on her boots, donned her mask, and carried her clothes in her arms, leaving the dead man’s coat hanging where the Robemistress had placed it. Both the Robeguard were nowhere to be seen. She ran out of the building and continued for several streets, surrounded by others doing exactly the same, before she ducked into an alley and swiftly dressed.
Hedda smiled. For some reason, the fact she had kept the oh-so-comfortable robe seemed even better than successfully killing Rinc the Fourth.
Still smiling, she turned out of the alley and almost collided with a hurrying Pepper.
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