Chapter 2: Blood Inheritance
The servant’s passage was a vein of grit and shadow, running behind the castle’s stone heart. The air was cold, smelling of wet mortar and mouse droppings. Their guide, a trembling elf named Finn, led them by the dim light of a single tallow candle, its flame guttering with each hurried step.
“The larder lock is simple,” Finn whispered, his voice scraping against the silence. “But the guards… they take their break in the mess hall just down the main corridor. You can’t miss the noise.”
Conor nodded, his mind already working past the problem to the next. “Keys?”
Finn produced a heavy ring from his belt, selected a narrow, blackened one, and handed it over. “For the larder. The rest are for storage rooms. Nothing useful.”
“We’ll see.” Conor took the ring. His fingers, usually so steady, felt cold. Not from fear, but from a terrible, focused calm. The image of Vaughan’s hand reaching for Shianni played behind his eyes, followed by the empty space where Nesiara had stood.
They reached a stout oak door, banded with iron. Finn nodded, his eyes wide in the gloom. “This is it. I… I can’t go further. They’ll know my face.”
“You’ve done enough,” Soris said, his voice surprisingly firm. He placed a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Get somewhere safe.”
Finn melted back into the darkness. Conor fitted the key. The lock turned with a clunk that echoed like a shout in the narrow space. He pushed the door open.
The larder was a closet of shadows, lined with shelves holding sacks of flour, wheels of cheese, and barrels of salt fish. The smell of spices and dust was thick. Conor’s eyes scanned, dismissing the food. In the corner, on a low shelf beside a trap, sat a small clay jar, crudely labeled with a skull. Rat poison.
He pocketed the jar. “Now we wait for the break.”
The muffled sounds from the mess hall soon confirmed Finn’s word. Raucous laughter, the clatter of tankards, the booming complaints of men at leisure. Conor cracked the door to the main corridor. Four guards lounged around a scarred table, playing at dice, a bottle of amber liquid between them.
“Boy!” one barked, not even looking up. “The brandy’s dry. Fetch another from the cellar. And be quick, or I’ll have you polishing my boots with your tongue.”
Conor lowered his head, adopting the servant’s hunch. “Yes, ser.”
He retreated, heart hammering a rhythm of pure fury. In the larder, he uncorked the brandy bottle he’d seen on a shelf. The rat poison was a coarse grey powder. He stirred it in with a finger until it dissolved, then recorked the bottle.
He returned, placed the bottle on the table with a submissive bow.
“About time,” the same guard grunted, pouring four generous measures. They toasted to nothing and drank deeply.
Conor and Soris watched from the crack in the door. It didn’t take long. First, one guard clutched his stomach, his face paling. Then another gasped, a thin line of spittle tracing from his lip to the table. They choked, their eyes bulging in confusion and pain, hands scrabbling at their own throats as if they could claw the fire out. They slid from their benches, convulsing on the flagstones until they lay still. The silence after their gurgling ends was profound.
“Andraste’s mercy,” Soris breathed, his face ashen.
“No mercy here,” Conor said, his voice devoid of emotion. “Only us.”
They moved swiftly. Conor stripped the most suitably-sized guard of his sword belt, sheathing the fine rapier and long dagger it held. He tossed Soris a crossbow from a wall rack and a quiver of bolts. From a weapons stand by the door, he chose a flail, its spiked iron ball cold in his hand, and a small, dented buckler shield.
Together, they dragged the four bodies, one by one, into a nearby cleaning closet, heaping mops and buckets over them. The smell of death clung to their clothes.
Conor turned to Soris, gripping his cousin’s arm. His voice was low, urgent, but layered with a terrible affection. “Listen to me. From this second on, you have to be ready to kill any of them. All of them. Every moment we’re moving is a moment they have with the women. Every breath we waste is one taken from Valora, from Nesiara. Do you understand?”
Soris met his gaze. The fear was still there, swimming in his eyes, but beneath it something had solidified, turned to flint. He gave a single, sharp nod. “I understand.”
They became ghosts in the castle’s lower belly. The next room held two guards playing cards by a guttering torch. Soris’s bolt took the first in the side of the throat before he could rise. Conor was a blur of motion, crossing the space, his dagger finding the home between the second man’s ribs and up into his heart. A wet sigh, a slump, and it was done. They dragged these, too, into shadow.
A third post, a solitary guard yawning by a cellar door, died with Conor’s hand clamped over his mouth, the razor edge of the elven dagger doing its quiet work.
They were a machine of silent death, oiled by desperation. Until they weren’t.
A shouted curse from the direction of the mess hall. A pause. Then the sound of running boots, and a cry of discovery. A moment later, the deep, mournful blast of an alarm horn reverberated through the stone corridors, shaking dust from the ceiling.
Conor and Soris looked at each other in the dim light of a wall sconce. The fantasy of stealth was over, shattered by the horn’s call.
“Now it’s kill or die,” Conor said, hefting the flail. The chain rattled, a lethal promise.
Soris nocked another bolt, his jaw set. “For Valora.”
They rounded the next corner and ran headlong into the first wave. Five guards, swords drawn, faces twisted in confusion and rage.
“Elves! In the halls!”
Soris fired. The bolt punched into the lead guard’s chest, dropping him. Conor didn’t break stride. He surged forward, the buckler deflecting a wild slash, the flail whirring in a short, vicious arc. It wasn’t swordplay. It was butchery with rhythm. The spiked ball connected with a kneecap, and the sound was a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage. The man screamed, collapsing. Conor spun, using the momentum, the flail wrapping around another guard’s sword arm. A sharp yank, and the man stumbled forward, meeting the rising buckler edge-first. The impact shattered his nose. Before he could fall, the flail descended again, caving in the side of his skull.
He moved like a storm, drawing their aggression, becoming the center of their violent world. A sword thrust was parried by the buckler, the impact shivering up Conor’s arm, and his instant, graceful follow-up with the flail smashed the attacker’s elbow, bending the arm the wrong way. He flowed past a clumsy overhead chop, the flail whipping out to crush a shin. Men fell around him, not from clean wounds, but from the brutal, structural failure of their bodies. It was a terrible, efficient ballet.
After the seventh guard fell, limp and broken, the dance changed. A desperate lunge wrapped the flail’s chain tightly around a blade. At the same moment, another foe, roaring, brought his own weapon down in a two-handed chop. Conor caught it on the buckler, but the force was tremendous. The small shield buckled, the straps biting into his forearm, numbing his fingers.
He let go. Let both the ruined buckler and the entangled flail fall.
The remaining three guards hesitated for a fraction of a second, seeing him weaponless.
It was all he needed.
His hands flashed to his hips. The rapier slid free with a soft ring, a needle of silver. The long dagger appeared in his left hand. A new tempo began.
The rapier was an extension of his will, a flickering tongue of light. It darted past a guard’s guard, pricking his throat before he could blink. As the man clutched his neck, gurgling, Conor was already turning, the dagger in his offhand parrying a frantic stab, the rapier’s point driving up under the next man’s chin. The final guard swung wildly. Conor dipped inside the arc, the dagger plunging deep into the man’s side, twisted, and withdrew. The rapier finished the motion with a clean thrust through the heart.
Silence, save for the ragged sound of Soris’s breathing. He stood over a guard he’d felled with a borrowed mace, his face spattered with blood, his chest heaving. He looked at Conor, standing amid the carnage, rapier and dagger held loosely, his silver hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and other men’s lives.