Page 19 of Shadows and Flames
She pointed to him while the rest groaned.
Meline and I stayed still, leaning against crates of liquor while contract after contract were read. There was only about fifteen of us, and with a considerable number of jobs presented, a few were doubling up.
And we waited.
Despite this village’s size, the company of two dozen mercenaries alluded to the danger of assumptions. This town was small, but it was as dangerous as a crowded city.
There was no magic stirring in this room, sure, but I could feel the dark expertise pulsing. The well-worn and well-kept weapons that were enough to equip a small army. The calculating cuts of our competitions’ eyes.
Because that’s what my cousin had taught me. They were competition.
And judging from the wary glances in our direction, they saw us as the same.
The moderator whistled while she trailed her finger to the bottom of a page. “Assassination of the good governor himself, the chief solicitor, and head of the central bank. Clean jobs, the lot of them. Natural causes. Two thousand gold pieces.”
I straightened. Surprised by the size of the task, excitement bubbling. It was just the thing. In an instant, my mind flicked through the possibilities. The poison tonic I could concoct for at least one of them. Mottleroot? Its properties caused a slower decline to make the death come on like a seasonal illness. But swift enough to meet our needs. Most of my experience was with healing, but I was fairly certain I could influence the blood enough to trigger a heart attack, at least in a human. That just left the other, but that could be Leenie’s choosing, and then we could use those funds to?—
“Done.” I whirled around, following the point of her finger to someone who was certainly not us. “Next is draining of the reserves from said bank.” The moderator went on, describing the particulars of the task, but I focused instead on my cousin.
Her brown and gold eyes stared forward, brow furrowed. She stared across the room.
“A retrieval. Will take you out of town, expenses not paid but final payment is—” Meline’s hand went up before the master assassin could finish.
And she didn’t, pointing to my cousin who took the job without even knowing with the bloody payment was! And that much travel would definitely incur hefty costs.
The moderator continued through the last contracts, and I nudged Meline with my elbow. “Care to share?”
She angled my way, and I eyed the edges of her tight dark curls that mirrored my lighter ones. We were mistaken for sisters even more now, but the mischievous lightheartedness we once shared was a faint memory of the old Meline.
Before she could answer me, I detected a new presence at my back, one that wasn’t focused on the bidding before us. Meline’s brown and gold gaze went over my shoulder, holding a note of familiarity that left me turning slowly.
“Fancy meeting you here, lass.” A bald male with black skin and gold teeth smiled down at the two of us. Though he was certainly the least human-looking mercenary in the room, no one seemed surprised or interested in his presence.
Aside from my cousin.
“Grimm,” she nodded, “you have something you’d like to share?”
His leathers shuddered as he mimicked her posture, arms crossed. But that smile never fell. “Let’s go get a drink.”
“So, what can a Mind Walker do, exactly?” I sipped from my mug of ale, filing away all my cousin’s old friend and mentor deigned to share with us. It was quite fascinating and more evidence about all that I just didn’tknow.
He leaned back heftily in his seat, bulky body making the wood groan. His pointed ears held thickly-gauged rings, and his eyes had no lashes. “Bit of old magic, said to be of this realm but more of the next one over.” I frowned in confusion but didn’t interrupt. “A taste a’ yer blood, and I can search the memories. Sense ‘em as if I were there.”
“Wow,” I breathed. My mind was already whirring with the possibilities a type of power like that could open. “And do you pull on the aether for that? A certain spell?”
The Mind Walker waved his large hand and drained his full mug in three swallows. He licked the residual froth with a swipe of his black tongue and motioned toward the barkeep for another. “No. Like I said, it’s a gift from elsewhere. A little glimmer that passed through me da’s line.”
“Grimm,” my cousin cut in tightly, “explain why we had to take that contract.”
I straightened, shutting down the list of questions I had for Grimm about his powers. He’d been the reason she bid on the retrieval job?
After the bidding was ended, we’d hung back to gather our individual reports of relevant information from the moderator. It was a lengthy process, the recitation of instruction, proof of deed required, meeting point with employers, et cetera. None of it was written, I’d learned after our first contract, but a good mercenary’s memory ran long. The details of our contract, to find and take a merchant by the name of Paschal Von Herron, were already filed away in my thoughts.
“Funny thing, that. When ye wrote me about yer missing friend, I paid her mate a visit. Didn’t make much sense, but I was bored.” He shrugged. “Poor fellow was willing to try and see what I could find, what with the city guards turning up with nothin’.”
Meline and I both sat forward, arms propped on the sticky tabletop. Ever since leaving Ralthas, we had been training and taking contracts, yes, but all the while, we’d been trying to piece together the mystery of Francie’s kidnapping. I faintly remembered her from our lives in Versillia before The Killings. Kindhearted and frazzled, she was a bit of a kindred spirit, and her mate Whitley was one of the kindest people I’d met. Theircalm fit well with her buzzing energy, but how were they fairing now with her gone this long?
Last Meline had written them, they still had their marks. They described looking down at their hands every other moment, mating marks reminding them that she was still out there. Maybe staring at her marks too.
