A Night at the Black Mule

The kid caught my eye the moment he walked into the Black Mule, though that doesn't speak much to my powers of observation. He made it two steps beyond the front door when he tripped over the inert leg of a passed out bum and almost joined him on the floor.

Even the one-eyed hag in the corner noticed him after that.

I had a map of some wine merchant's house south of the city spread out in the candlelight on the table before me. My southward journey wasn't going to be easy, and I had to set off soon. Everyone with a badge was looking for me, and my pockets were dangerously light—so light that a decision between a simple bribe or a simple murder would be tough. Bribes cost coin. Murders cost nothing. Desperation has a way of clarifying things. If a city guardsman thought he recognized me, pity for him. My knife would be across his neck before he was sure.

The wine merchant's house looked like a fine, simple job. It was beneath my talents, but a windfall of stolen goods on the road would help ease things along. Even a murdering bastard is nothing without some solvency, and although theft wasn't my usual forte, I didn't anticipate any problems with this merchant's mansion. It was easy money, and low profile. My plan to break in through a second floor window was coming together when the kid tripped over the wino and drew the attention of the whole tavern.

I hadn't seen an easier target stroll into the Black Mule in months.

With his sheepskin overcoat and what looked like a velvet shirt beneath it, the boy had made a sizable error of judgment coming to a dive like this. And the worried expression he was carrying didn't help his cause. He couldn't have been a day older than fourteen, his bearing reminiscent of a pup that's never felt the cruel end of a master's rod. Something was wrong, which would be the only reason a well-to-do young man would ever risk coming here. But as sure as the stink in the air, nobody in the Black Mule was going to make it right, whatever this kid's problem was.

All of the petty thieves and out of work blood warlocks who weren't already swimming in their black grog or the hallucinations of their silky Loryx smoke watched him with a communally opportunistic stare. A few dozen eyes summed the boy up at once—every one of them discerning what could be gained from his unwise arrival.

Robbery. Kidnapping. Extortion. Black ritual.

Of all the things this crowd lacked, ingenuity wasn't one of them. The guileless little shit's expression pissed me off as he looked around for the barkeep. If the kid thought Brash was any less of a criminal than his disreputable patrons, he was in for the quickest shakedown in written history. The grog at the Black Mule was cut with Brash's own piss, or I was born to a nobleman in Chartreese.

"Hey kid!" a bruiser with a mean look yelled from the haze of languorous smoke in the corner. "Come sit with us. You can buy us a round."

The boy nodded to the man, deferential but set on finding the barkeeper. It didn't take Brash long. The big barkeep rounded a corner from the kitchen and rushed past my table. I always took the same seat at the Black Mule. It had a clear vantage point of the front door and an easy access out through the kitchen. There was an encrusted window beside me too, in case things really got messy. One toss of a stool and I'd be out in the darkness of the streets.

The Black Mule wasn't a stranger to raids by the Ministry Guard, but they only came here in force. Without a full regiment and a few hardened priests, no captain with half a mind would come anywhere near this snake pit. But most of the scum around tonight weren't worth the effort, so I wasn't too worried about a raid.

I was worth the effort, but with my fake beard and eyebrows of black cow hair I was just another filthy lowlife following the boy's trail across the tavern. No one would ever suspect me of being the assassin from the stories and the Ministry Guard wanted boards—the most wanted man from the eastern desert to the Kendran peaks.