Chapter 138: Twenty-Four

They came on the third night, a little after the bells rang two.

Aren felt them long before he heard anything. He was sitting where he had sat every night since he watched Teeth go in at the kitchen gate, at the foot of the cellar stairs with his back to the wall, and at the edge of Iron Sense, a hundred paces out, metal began to move along the harbor wall.

Swords. Crossbow locks. Buckles, a great many of them, and the iron and bronze bands of a whole company. They came in a long quiet line along the foot of the wall, below the fish docks, where nobody ever walked at night because the stones were slick with weed.

’Twenty-four. And the one at the back carries more steel than the rest.’

The man at the back wore bronze like the best of them, but his sword was longer and older.

[Unknown. Rank C. Hostility: 0%.]

They stopped below the warehouse, at a place where an old drain came out of the harbor wall, half under the water at high tide. It ran in under the fish warehouse, along a low brick tunnel, to a rusted grate in the floor of the back store, behind the barrels where he kept his furnace. He had followed that drain to the harbor on his first night in the Cellar and left the lock alone. If they came, they would come this way.

Now someone at the bottom of the tunnel had a key that fit it.

’Teeth.’

He stood and went to the back of the cellar without a sound. Seren was still asleep at her bench. He let her sleep. He put out the lamp.

Then the smell came up through the grate.

It was sweet and heavy, like old honey and wet flowers, and it rolled across the floor of the back store and out into the cellar in a low grey sheet. Seren stirred in her sleep and went limp over the bench.

Aren held his breath. On the left side of his chest the Scar woke.

It woke hungry. It went out from him through the dark of the cellar, and the grey sheet on the floor thinned and tore and was gone.

[Familiar of Nothing has fed.]

’Good. She stays asleep. She doesn’t see any of this.’

The grate lifted.

The first man came up out of the floor with a crossbow, then the second, then the third. They wore Veil green under black leather, with rags tied over their mouths against their own smoke, and they came up fast, crouched and spread out along the barrels. They had done this before. Behind them came two more with clay jars of oil strapped to their backs.

’Not near the furnace. That was three hundred crowns.’

They couldn’t see him. He was standing in the dark between the back store and the cellar, against the wall, and to them the cellar was black and still, and the smoke had done its work.

[Fault Line.]

The room filled with lines.

There was one through the first crossbowman’s neck, and one across the second man’s knee, and a long bright one down the back of the oil carrier’s leather, where the straps crossed. Every one of them was a place that would give.

Aren took the first one.

He came out of the dark and the eel blade went along the line in the first man’s neck, and the man sat down against the barrels without a sound. The second turned at the movement, and Aren kicked the knee along its line and felt it break, and caught the crossbow as it fell, and put its bolt into the third man’s chest from two paces.

The fourth and fifth had time to shout.

They shouted, and down in the tunnel the shout went back along the line of men, and the rest of them began to come up through the grate, all but one, crowding, crossbows first. Eight. Ten. In a breath the back store was full of men and steel.

He didn’t wait for them to find him.

[Nullstep.]

He was behind them, at the mouth of the drain. The eel blade went through the two who had shouted before the others knew which way to turn. Passing the man with the broken knee, he finished him too. A sword came at his head and cut empty air. He was already at the far end of the room, by the barrels, and the man who had swung was looking at an empty floor.

They were good, Veil house guards chosen for this night, Rank D and Rank C, and they fought well together. Against anything they had trained for, they would have been enough.

He went through them anyway.

Every time one of them moved, Fault Line showed him where the movement would open, a quarter of a heartbeat before it did. Every time three of them closed on him, he was somewhere else. He didn’t hurry. The eel blade went out and came back and went out again, and men fell against the barrels and over each other, and the back store filled with the smell of blood and lamp oil.

By then his nose was bleeding into his mouth. Fault Line showed him every strap and joint and buckle in the room at once, more than his head could hold, and he let most of it go and took only the lines he needed.

Somebody at the rear screamed for a volley.

Six of them had got their backs to the far wall in a line, crossbows up, and they loosed together, all six, at the place where he stood.

’Absent.’

[Absent (Lv. 1).]

For three seconds he stood on nothing, and nothing struck him. The bolts came at him and through him without a breath of air, and went on across the room into the men coming up out of the grate behind him.

Two of them went down screaming.

The three seconds ended, and he could feel the floor again.

The six crossbowmen were already reaching for fresh bolts.

He drew New Moon up from the ring behind his breastbone and threw it flat along the wall.

[New Moon.]

It went through all six of them at chest height, and through the crossbows they were holding, and into the brick behind them, and along its edge for one heartbeat everything it touched forgot that it was whole.

They fell in pieces. The brick behind them cracked from end to end.

[New Moon. Mastery: 71% → 78%.]

Then there was only one left in the room.

He had come up out of the grate last, and he stood alone in the middle of the back store among the bodies of his men, a broad, grey-haired man in Veil green with a long sword and no crossbow. He had taken the rag off his mouth. He had a hard, tired face, the face of a soldier who had done this kind of night’s work many times and always come home.

He looked at the dead, and then at Aren, standing among them with the eel blade, and Aren watched him understand it.

"How many of you are there?" he asked quietly.

[Unknown. Rank C. Hostility: 86%.]

"One."

The captain nodded once, and raised his sword.

He was fast. He came across the room in two steps, and the long blade came at Aren’s head, and halfway there it became three blades, three edges in the air at once from three directions, so close together that a man would need three hands to stop them.

Fault Line showed him that two of them were empty. There was nothing in them to break.

Aren stepped inside the real one and took it on the eel blade.

The force of it went down his arm, and the floor cracked under his boots.

He held it. Then he pushed, and the sword went back toward its owner’s face, and the captain’s tired eyes went wide.

He tried to pull back. Fault Line showed Aren the line where his guard would open when he did. Aren was already there.

The eel blade went in under the captain’s arm and came out at his collarbone.

The captain stood with the sword still in his hands. Then his knees went, and he sat down on the floor of the back store, and leaned back against a barrel, and didn’t get up again.

Aren stood in the middle of the room and listened.

Down in the tunnel, one man was running away, splashing toward the harbor. He had stayed at the bottom of the ladder and seen enough through the grate.

Aren went to the grate and looked down into the brick tunnel. The grey of the harbor showed at the far end, and against it he could see the man, twenty paces down, and the dry ledge beyond him.

[Nullstep.]

He was on the ledge, in front of the running man. The man had time to see him and open his mouth.

’Not one of them goes home to tell how it went.’

When he came back up through the grate, he was carrying the body over his shoulder, and the back store was quiet.

Twenty-four men lay on the floor, among the barrels and the broken jars of oil that had never been lit. Not one of them had reached the cellar. Behind him, in the dark, Seren was breathing deep and even, and she had not heard a thing.

He knelt beside the captain and went through his coat.

There was a purse, a Veil warrant with no name written on it, a captain’s seal ring cut with the name Leoric Dane, and in the inside pocket, on a loop of string, an iron key. It was a House key, the Twins’ work, he could see that at once. Near the bow, someone had filed a small notch, sharp, like a tooth.

He turned it over in his fingers.

’Every Hand has his own key, and his own mark, Auntie said. Teeth gave them his. And he’d have been the first one down those stairs in the morning, to count the dead and take it back.’

He put it in the Deep Purse, beside the folded page from Tarquin’s ledger.

He wiped the eel blade clean on a strip of Veil green and put it away in the purse too.

Then he went back to the foot of the cellar stairs, where a man sitting by the door would have fallen, and lay down on the stone on his side, with one arm flung out, like a man who had been sitting there when it reached him.

His right hand was shaking. He left it that way, and left the blood on his face, and closed his eyes.

Now he only had to be the man who slept through it.