Shadows of the Soul

Chapter 4

Click liked knives. Skinny, slender knives. Short, fat knives. Any knife, really, so long as it was sharp and edged and came to a point. So long as it could cut.

He hefted the weapon in his hand affectionately, caressed the grooved ivory handle. Dalyla, he called her. One of his favorites. She was a lovely lass, long and willowy, curved in all the right places. Just as pretty as you please, and sharp enough to shave with. But oh, what a temper!

With a savage grunt he buried the blade once more into the already well perforated corpse beneath him. Not that it needed another; the body was well beyond that. But sometimes he just had to keep stabbing. It was so seldom he truly got to enjoy himself, nowadays, and he always hated leaving before the hunger was well-satiated. Sometimes that took hours.

But what else could he do? She just couldn’t keep her nose out of the boys, his Dalyla.

A high pitched chortle squeezed its way up his throat to spill bubbling from his lips. A giggle.

Knives were for wise men. People who noticed a sword often didn’t look twice at a man with a belt knife, however large. Sometimes two knives caught eyes, though. And six, well, six tended to catch more attention than any sword at his hip, but who cared about eyes, anyways? Only fools.

One knife or twenty, people didn’t seem to care much for Click, which was fine, as Click didn’t care much for them. He liked his knives far better. And he never wanted for company, not with six lovely ladies circling round his waist, waking or sleeping. Invested steel, too, every one. High class, his girls. They took good care of him, and he was more than happy to return the favor.

They did like to have their fun now and then, though.

Another giggle threatened, but this time he stifled the sound as he caught a hint of golden light creeping through the stone arch to the courtyard. The sun was starting to rise. With a sigh he eased the blade out of the corpse. The soft sucking sound made his breath quicken, but he repressed the desire to sink the blade in again. And again. No more time to spare indulging.

With deliberate care he wiped Dalyla off on the corpse’s green and gold Guild robe. The sight of the slender blade sliding through fine silk made him smile. Did he not take splendid care of his lady? Swaddled in silk, and no less than she deserved.

Click slid the blade into the leather sheathe at his waist and stood. He spared the corpse at his feet a final look.

The wizard hadn’t been an easy kill. Always had to be careful with that sort, and this one in particular had taken a lot of preparation. Patience. Then again, it hadn’t been exactly been a hard kill, either, not once it came down to the wet work—the man hadn’t been a fighter, though he’d put up a bit of a struggle there at the end. But Click always welcomed that. It had been a good kill, he decided, and the look of shock on the wizard’s face as six inches of steel slid into his guts a deeply satisfying thing. He was content.

Click snarled. Wizards. Magi. Cultists. They were all the same, arrogant to a fault, so sure of their own power they never thought to glance over their shoulders. Well, this one had learned. All the fancy shields and wards in the world didn’t mean shit to a man with a properly Invested blade. Or six.

The staccato click of wooden shoes on stone tiles had Click pressed against the garden wall in a heartbeat, Edith appearing in his hand quick as any wizard’s conjuration. He spared a glance for the knife in his grip, smiled. She wasn’t as pretty as some of the others, nor quite as deadly, but she made up for it in wisdom. She knew all sorts of things, and the faint tingle in his hands told him everything he needed to know for the moment. Whoever was walking around in there, they were a magic user. Edith could smell that sort a mile away. And they wouldn’t likely be too happy with him if they found him standing over the corpse of one of their own, either.

Chances were that he could handle things, even unprepared as he was—there were few things he couldn’t handle with the help of one of his ladies or another—but the job was for the dead man.

Anyway, he was satisfied for the moment. His ladies were happy. He was happy. Whoever was tap, tap, tapping around in there was luckier than they’d ever know.

Besides, additional casualties had been…discouraged. 

The contract had been simple and the payment extravagant. Kill the wizard, messily. Leave the corpse somewhere easily found. Don’t be seen.

Normally Click considered a contract little more than a nagging voice wriggling away in the back of his head as he went about his merry business, but this time around he thought it best to keep as close to the letter of the agreement as possible. The man had implied there’d be more business to be had in the future if tonight’s activities went smoothly. Only a fool would risk steady, well paying work just to have a little extra fun.

Click was no fool.

Time to go, then. Sheathing Edith, Click darted along the bottom of the vine-covered garden wall until he came to the corner furthest from the main Guild building. Left foot, right foot, left again, and Click caught the weatherworn top of the fifteen foot stone wall with his fingers. A moment later he was up and over.

He landed soundlessly on the other side. A quick scan up and down the street found no unwelcome eyes. As he started forward, the shrill note of a woman’s scream rose behind him, breaking the early morning quiet.

He giggled. Well, that’s one lady who wasn’t being properly taken care of.

He pulled his cloak tight as he started down an alleyway, covering the array of knives at his belt, and, after a moment’s concentration, the cloak’s thick material shifted from a crimson splashed black to a pristine, unsullied white. The cloak of a man who’d never been within a hundred feet of bloodshed.

Click smiled. He didn’t much care for wizards, but sometimes their tricks were useful.

He turned another corner and disappeared into the morning crowd.