The Nameless Assassins

Kamilin

For security reasons, our crew reconvened in a pub controlled by Cortland's people. Over a few perfunctory objections from Faith, Ash appointed himself chairman of the meeting. (As consolation, she commandeered an entire side of the booth and toppled back across the length of the bench, stockinged legs sticking out like carrots from her lacy petticoats.)

"I suggest that we form a crew with Kamilin and then kill him while he's distracted," Ash told us, his matter-of-fact tone indicating that he'd already spent quite some time weighing our options.

I nodded noncommittally, reluctant to divulge more about my thought processes than strictly necessary.

"We can tell him that someone hired a Whisper miscreant to deal with a haunted house, but the miscreant was incompetent and died. We get Kamilin to take the job."

From under the table, Faith's voice drifted up to us. "That's so delightfully twisty and treacherous. I knew I liked you."

Interpreting that as assent, Ash continued, "We do need to find a haunted house."

When the Whisper of the crew remained silent, I proposed cautiously, "How about somewhere in Six Towers?"

It was, after all, the logical choice, and hence revealed little about myself or the knowledge I'd accumulated. A mausoleum of abandoned estates and manors, Six Towers lurked on the east side of the city, blessedly far from me (or rather, from anywhere I could afford to live). Citizens who were just well off enough to flee the killing fields of Crow's Foot, but who weren't quite bohemian enough for Silkshore, squatted uneasily in Six Towers, where they more or less co-existed with all manner of ghostly echoes and savage specters. Personally, I questioned the sanity of anyone who chose rogue spirits over artist communes.

Striving to sound like any normal – i.e. hopelessly ignorant – resident of Doskvol, I added entirely redundantly, "I'm sure we can find a nice abandoned mansion that's already full of ghosts."

Taking an interest in the proceedings at last, our resident Whisper contributed from under the table, "It doesn't even need to be haunted already. Find one that's good for an ambush, and I'll pack it to the brim with vicious, starving ghosts ready to pounce on whatever deliciously snackable soul walks through the door."

And that was why we kept her around.

"That's a good idea," approved Ash. "We'll need to find someone to pretend to hire us, though. A noble, perhaps?"

Preemptively steering him away from anyone connected to the Iruvian Consulate, I volunteered my sometime employer. "I know a Lady Irimina Kinclaith over in Brightstone."

Faith promptly popped up like a jack-in-the-box. "Why, Isha, you know a lady?" she asked in a sultry tone, suggestiveness practically dripping off her tongue.

I skewered her with my best if-you-interrupt-the-fencing-mistress-one-more-time-she-will-run-you-through glare. Nothing daunted, she giggled, waggled her eyebrows, and flopped back down. "I work the odd job for Lady Irimina," I addressed Ash directly. "I trust her." For some definition of trust, anyway.

After thinking it over for a moment, he nodded and said (guilelessly, as far as I could tell), "Then I suggest we contact her and ask for a favor. Unless one of us is hiding noble blood, that is?"

I gave him a perfectly blank stare.

Passing through busy Nightmarket, Doskvol's commercial district, we scoured Six Towers until we found the perfect trap – a dilapidated mansion whose former elegance still showed in the graceful swoop of its tower and the remnants of delicate wood trim around the eaves. A narrow porch with broken railings ran around two sides of the building, the better to slow our quarry in case he escaped outside, and the battered front door opened onto a cramped foyer that would restrict his movements inside.