Tales of the Greatcoats

1. An Excellent Time For a Murder

1

AN EXCELLENT TIME FOR A MURDER

The assassination was to take place at the fourth bell after midnight. An excellent time for a murder, for the taverns had already cleared out, the city constables had started sneaking sips of throat-burning liquor from silver flasks secreted on their person to keep out the cold and wet, and with dawn coming so soon, even the wariest of victims might fool himself into believing that he was safe for the night.

And make no mistake about it: Falcio val Mond was a wary individual.

Gavalle Sanprier ended his third perambulation of the abandoned library’s exterior, giving the dying building a brief salute before slipping inside. Even in its decline, there was something darkly beautiful about the decrepit old building. Three stories rose up from a sagging sidewalk that years ago had begun to dip into the canal waters. The City Masters had deemed the cost of restoration too great, and libraries – even the beautiful ones – unworthy of such vast expense.

Still, though, the decision can’t have been easy.

The sweeping arches of the arcade fronting the ground floor conjured images of a better time, when artists and scholars might sit in the shade beneath those arches while painting their masterpieces or debating the finer points of philosophy, the latter no doubt periodically racing inside to find just the right book with which to score an intellectual victory over their opponents. Now the arcade was four feet underwater. Gavalle, garbed in specially oiled night-black trousers and duelling vest to keep from becoming soaked himself and imperilling his movements when the moment of val Mond’s death arrived, made slow, methodical progress so as not to slosh the muck too much and risk alerting his victim.

‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ Lucinda, his agent in these matters had asked for the third time yesterday before Gavelle had finally signed his name to the contract. ‘Killing a Greatcoat is no easy thing and this one—‘

‘This one is frailer than you think,’ Gavelle had told her, tracing a finger down her naked back as they lazed the day away in her bedroom. Gavelle had tapped a fingernail between Lucinda’s shoulder blades. ‘He took a rapier blade here last year,’ he said, then let his hand trail down and inch to the right. ‘The spiked ball of a morning star nearly shattered the bone even beneath his greatcoat here.’ His hand drifted down further. ‘A stab wound almost reached his kidney and ended him for good during the war with Avares, or so I’m told.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Lucinda asked sleepily. ‘I’m the one who provided you with the intelligence the client gave us, remember?’ She sounded annoyed at Gavelle’s presumption, but when she turned her face towards his, her smile suggested she already knew where all this was leading.

‘I’ve been contemplating where to put the blade that finally ends the legendary Falcio val Mond,’ he said, ‘for it seems to me all the obvious targets have been tried before.’ His finger slid down past her buttocks and between her legs. ‘Perhaps somewhere here?’

Lucinda laughed, so brightly that were his eyes closed he would’ve taken her for a woman of seventeen instead of nearly seventy. For an assassin’s agent, she had a remarkably sunny disposition. She crossed her ankles and squeezed her thighs together – damn, but the woman had strong legs! – trapping his hand between them. ‘There now, you see?’ she asked tauntingly. ‘You’ve fallen into my trap, my gullible young assassin. Who’s to say the Greatcoat won’t trick you the same way?’

Gavelle waited until she’d released his hand before bringing it up to his face and inhaling. ‘Then I pray to the Good God Death that his arse smells as sweet as your nethers.’

Truth be told, Gavelle didn’t like the smell of Lucinda’s nethers all that much – or anyone else’s, for that matter – but it seemed a romantic thing to say, and both his future prospects and his current ones relied on Lucinda’s goodwill towards him.

The stench of the canal water brought him back to the old library. His progress through the stinking ocean of rotted pages and moulding leather covers that floated along the surface was slow but silent.

Silence was his gift.

Despite the claims Lucinda sometimes made on his behalf during fee negotiations, Gavelle wasn’t, in fact, a Dashini. But he’d spent nearly a decade researching their ways, consulting those few scholars who knew something of their habits, following the gruelling and soul-crushing regimen they recommended.

Patience – that was the key. The Dashini didn’t simply study their target before killing them. They moulded themselves to their victims, uncovering every detail of their lives: every childhood accident might have left one knee infinitesimally less steady than the other; every duel won or lost; every flower whose scent they were reputed to find nauseating.

Thanks to the exhaustive research the client had provided them, Gavelle now knew Falcio val Mond better than his own wife did – better than the man himself, he reckoned. In a way, they were like brothers now, and this building like a childhood home to them both. Gavelle had memorized every inch of the ruined library, not merely from plans but by several reconnaissance missions prior to val Mond’s arrival in the city. He could navigate all three floors blind, not merely knowing its halls and chambers, but every crack in the tiles of each floor, which ones could take his weight without making a sound, and which ones could not.

At last, he reached the stairs at the back of the waterlogged floor, felt inside his pockets for the very special collection of tools the client had provided to Lucinda, and she in turn to Gavelle, so that he could accomplish what no assassin, no Knight or Duke, no Saint nor even a God had ever been able to do: tonight, in exactly fourteen minutes, Gavelle Sanprier would kill Falcio val Mond.

Gavelle set off up the stairs, removing from his pocket a tiny piece of folded cheesecloth no larger than his thumb. He unwrapped it quickly and popped it into his mouth. The Greatcoats called it ‘The Hard Candy’, and the moment it touched his tongue his senses exploded around him. Even in the dim light afforded by the moon through the broken mortar of the galleries, it was now bright enough for him to see every detail of the second floor as he left the stairwell. The smell of the canal water, unpleasant before, was now almost painful to him. He didn’t mind, though, for the way his muscles played beneath his black garments promised a speed and strength beyond that of normal men. The first time the client had procured a sample, Gavelle had thought himself transformed into a Saint. Now he better understood its workings, and would not be swayed to arrogance when the moment came to face val Mond.

He could smell him now from the reading chamber at the end of the hall. The client had spent what Gavelle expected was a small fortune to get word that the former First Cantor of the Greatcoats would be in the city tonight, seeking out an old duelling text among the rot and ruins, apparently.

I hope you’ve found your book, Gavelle thought as he drew the narrow-bladed smallsword from its sheath, the unnatural length not especially suited to his reach, but a full inch longer than the rapiers Falcio wielded – another of the client’s revelations. Because someone wants you to die very badly tonight, my brother.