Darkblade Justice: An Epic Fantasy Murder Mystery (Hero of Darkness Book 7) Read online

  Darkblade Justice

  Hero of Darkness (Book 7)

  By Andy Peloquin

  Copyright. First Edition

  Andy Peloquin

  ©2018, Andy Peloquin

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. All rights reserved.

  Any resemblance to persons, places living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.

  Life for a Life

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  Acknowledgements

  A special thanks to Phil Tucker. You know what you did.

  Chapter One

  King Ohilmos definitely needs better guards, Ilanna decided as she slipped past the fourth pair of sentries in five minutes. The Praamian Guards patrolling the Royal Palace could have been less attentive, but only by sleeping on the job, blindfolded, with sacks over their heads. If Ilanna had truly intended the King harm, the soldiers in their drab olive-colored uniforms and silver armor would have been about as effective a deterrent as a paper door in a hurricane.

  Ilanna slithered through the shadows with less noise than the wind whispering across the stone courtyard. The tinkling of the water in the triple-tiered fountain in the heart of the grand avenue leading up to the palace drowned out any sound of her passage. Her dark grey cloak, tunic, and breeches blended with the darkness, rendering her all but invisible to the night-blind guards doing their rounds.

  Even in the darkness, the red sandstone walls of the palace seemed to shine. The building rose an impressive sixty paces over Ilanna’s head, stretching three hundred paces from east to west. Atop the palace, crystal domes crowned lofty towers and offered a spectacular view of the city—she’d made it a point to sneak up there on one of her visits to the King.

  Now, however, her attention turned away from the tall walls and broad double doors at the front of the palace. Instead, she slipped through the gardens toward a small window set into the base of one stone wall. Steel bars secured the window, but they only appeared solid. She’d sawn through them long ago, then replaced the grate every time she slipped in and out of the storeroom. A hefty bribe to the right scullery maid ensured the window remained unlatched.

  The smell of dried herbs, old onions and garlic, and dusty sacks hung thick in the storeroom, but Ilanna ignored it as she slithered through the unlocked door and into the darkened halls of the lower level—the level where only palace staff roamed. She knew the kitchens would be empty at this time of night, save for one baker standing by in case King Ohilmos’ famous sweet tooth overcame his self-control. Tonight, the baker dozed in a corner of the kitchen, and Ilanna had the stone passages all to herself.

  Within a minute, she found the staircase that led up to the palace’s main floor, directly in front of the study where King Ohilmos spent his evenings. With a grin, she slipped up to the unguarded door and slid it open, then shut without a sound.

  The King, a slim, middle-aged man with an angular face and sharp chin, sat in his favorite overstuffed armchair, a book clasped in his long fingers. Duke Phonnis looked a polar opposite of the King: dark-haired where King Ohilmos was blonde, his shoulders broad, strong, and his jaw a hard square. Though his gut sagged—the mark of a warrior gone soft—his hands still bore the scars of battle and a not-quite-decorative sword of office hung from his belt.

  “Good evening, Your Majesty,” Ilanna said in a quiet voice.

  “Keeper’s teeth!” Duke Phonnis whirled, his hand dropping to his sword. His dark eyes blazed as he saw Ilanna leaning casually against the wall beside the now-closed door. “Damn you to the darkest hell, Master Gold!”

  King Ohilmos actually smiled. “I’d forgotten how much you hate being startled, Brother.” His rasping voice, barely above a whisper, held a surprising strength—a strong contrast to his unimpressive appearance and the Red Blight scars crisscrossing his face and neck.

  “Your security needs work. Even the youngest Serpent apprentice could have gotten in here and put a dagger in your backs.” Ilanna stifled a grin at seeing the Duke’s discomfort. Duke Phonnis, Chief Justiciar of Praamis, had more than earned her ire. After what he’d done to the Night Guild a decade ago, he deserved every shred of misery she could heap on his head. As long as it didn’t break the fragile peace between the Crown and the Night Guild, of course.

  “I’ll take that under advisement.” Duke Phonnis’ face darkened to a furious scowl. He had no great affection for her, either. He’d come so close to ridding the city of the criminal guild—his men had raided their tunnels, rounded them up, and dragged them off to be hanged—only for Ilanna to thwart those plans. Ilanna could see the truth in his eyes: if he had his way, he’d run her through with that fancy sword of his right now.

  “Easy, Brother.” King Ohilmos placed a restraining hand on the Duke’s arm. “I have asked the Guild Master to attend me this night. I simply didn’t expect her to be so…devious about it.”

  Ilanna swept a mocking bow. “I live to serve, Your Majesty.”

  King Ohilmos snorted. “If we’ve learned anything from your eleven years as Guild Master, it’s that you definitely do not serve anyone or anything. Master Gold does what is best for her Guild. But perhaps that is as it should be. After all, your people would not have chosen you to lead if they believed you had only your own self-interest at heart.”

  “I’m certain you didn’t invite her here to exchange such banal pleasantries, Brother,” Duke Phonnis snapped. “Tell the thief what you want so she can return to her business of despoiling the good people of Praamis.”

  Thief. Ilanna hadn’t been called that in more than a decade. Not that she minded—as a Hawk apprentice and Journeyman, she’d been the best thief in the Night Guild. Now, few people dared to call her anything but Guild Master. Her days of thieving might be far behind, but as she’d proven with her entrance tonight, she hadn’t lost the skills developed over fifteen years as a Hawk.

  “Of course.” King Ohilmos sighed and shook his head at his brother’s barely-restrained fury. “Tell me, Master Gold, what do you know about these bodies cropping up around the city?”

  “Bodies?” Ilanna cocked an eyebrow.

  “Six of them, correct?” King Ohilmos glanced over at his brother for confirmation.

  “Seven.” Duke Phonnis’ face creased into a snarl. “A new corpse was found earlier this afternoon abandoned just outside the Praamian Wall.”

  “Seven bodies, all in the last three weeks.” The King leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “Four men, two women, including a prostitute from The Gilded Chateau, and now a child.”

  Ilanna’s gut clenched at that last one. Who would kill children? Sadly, during her years in the Night Guild, she’d learned the list of potential suspects would be far longer than she’d like.

  “Such things are less uncommon in Praamis than I care to admit.” King Ohilmos’ eyes darkened. “Which is why the Guild exists in the first place. You organize crime, thus preventing such wanton cruelty and death.”

  Duke Phonnis gave Ilanna a cold, hard-edged smile. “If you can’t keep your thugs and cutthroats under co
ntrol, Guild Master, your existence will no longer be tolerated.”

  Ilanna didn’t respond to the Duke’s ire; he’d been making the same empty threat for the last eleven years.

  King Ohilmos waved the Duke down. “I might be tempted to allow my brother to lay the blame for their deaths at your feet, but for the strange circumstances surrounding them.”

  This piqued Ilanna’s curiosity. “Strange circumstances?”

  “Two of the men were found dumped in a back alley, their throats slit.” King Ohilmos grimaced in distaste. “But the other five were discovered in a curious state.”

  Duke Phonnis scowled. “Their faces were encased in smooth plaster, and a strange-looking symbol was carved into their chests.”

  King Ohilmos pulled a scrap of parchment from the pile on the table and held it out to her. “Do you recognize this?”

  Ilanna studied the symbol: an almost-complete circle connected to two lines that bent outward in a perfect right angle. The center of the circle depicted something that resembled a sun and moon in close alignment.

  She shook her head. “No, Your Majesty. But I’m certain my people can find out where it comes from.”

  “Precisely what I expected to hear.” King Ohilmos gave a satisfied nod. “The Crown has tolerated the Night Guild’s existence all these years because of their usefulness to maintaining order in Praamis. But only if crime is controlled.” He didn’t need to finish his sentence to make his meaning clear.

  “I will deal with it, Your Majesty.” Ilanna inclined her head. “I can assure you that if anyone in my organization is responsible for the murders, they will be hand-delivered to the Duke for punishment.”

  Duke Phonnis’ face grew smug, like a fox after raiding a henhouse.

  He’d love nothing more than to see every man, woman, and child in the Night Guild hang, Ilanna thought. And me most of all. She numbered among a doubtless very select few that had crossed the Duke and lived.

  “But I know my people,” Ilanna said in a hard voice, “and I can tell you that they are not behind this. The Night Guild will find out who is dealing death in our city and put an end to them. You have my word as Guild Master.”

  King Ohilmos nodded. “Good. I expected no less.” His lips quirked upward. “Your tenure as Guild Master has proven…beneficial to the city. I’d hate for that to change.”

  “Your Majesty.” Ilanna swept a respectful bow, then shot Duke Phonnis a wink. “I’ll try not to kill any of your guards on the way out. Though, given how easily I slipped past them, I doubt I’ll need to. You really should do something about that.”

  Duke Phonnis growled and opened his mouth to retort, but Ilanna was already out the door and into the darkened hallway.

  Ilanna left a different way than she’d entered—she enjoyed the few occasions she was able to practice her thief skills, and breaking into the King’s palace was one of her truest pleasures. Her greatest asset as a Hawk had been her ability to find the vulnerability in any structure. This just happened to be the most heavily-guarded, fortified structure in Praamis. A challenge, to be sure, but Ilanna had had eleven years of practice. King Ohilmos had no idea how many entry points his palace truly had.

  The way back to the kitchens was empty and dark, as she’d expected. It took less than a minute to slip into the storeroom, close the door behind her, and clamber out the window back into the Palace Gardens. From there, it was a simple matter to crawl through the tunnel her predecessor, the former Master Gold, had evidently dug beneath the high walls of the Royal Palace.

  As she slipped into the darkness of the Praamian streets, she couldn’t help smiling at the Duke’s scowling, rage-filled expression.

  A decade hasn’t made the bastard any easier to deal with. Though, she had to admit that made it all the more enjoyable to bait him. Similar to a cat sitting on a high shelf hissing at a leashed hound, safe on its perch and unafraid of consequences. As long as I keep the peace, there’s nothing he can do to me.

  But now someone threatened that peace. People died every day—life in Praamis tended to be hard, cruel, and bloody—but seven bodies in three weeks far exceeded the usual rate.

  Whoever you are, I will find you. Anger flared in her gut. And when I’m done with you, not even the Long Keeper himself will recognize what’s left.

  Chapter Two

  There’s a demon in Praamis.

  The Hunter leaned back against the over-stuffed seat and tried not to growl in frustration as the coach hit what felt like its thousandth rut in the last five minutes. The ten-day journey across the Windy Plains had been uneventful—a sort of boring that verged on frustration, given what awaited him both in Praamis and back home in Voramis.

  He picked up the parchment in his lap and read it again, as he had so many times on this teeth-grindingly dull journey.

  As per your instructions, I’ve had my contacts in Praamis’ Hidden Circle keep an ear to the ground for anything that might indicate the presence of a demon in the city. I believe this fits the bill.

  The note was as concise as it was neat. Graeme, the fat alchemist who ran The Angry Goblin Bookstore in Voramis, tended toward brevity and wrote in a script that bordered on compulsive precision—a far cry from the typical chaos that reigned in his shop. The shelves of his hidden back room looked like they’d been decorated by a hurricane. Yet when it came to information, he was as methodical and organized as a priest of the Coin Counter’s Temple.

  Which explained why the note came accompanied by more scraps of parchment, each describing the details of bodies that had turned up around the city of Praamis. Three corpses, two men and a woman. One of the men had his throat slashed, but the other two victims had been found with their heads encased in plaster, a strange symbol carved into their chests.

  The Hunter held up the parchment that depicted the symbol: a crescent moon and star set in the middle of a circle with two right-angled lines connected.

  Graeme had failed to identify it, though he’d reached out to all of his Hidden Circle contacts across the continent of Einan for information. That would take time, however, and the Hunter wasn’t the sort to wait around.

  The Hunter might not understand the symbol, but he thought he recognized it, at least partially. He’d seen similar runes carved into the walls of the stone tunnels beneath Voramis, again in the twin temples of Kara-ket, and last in the lost city of Enarium. Serenii runes, the writing of the ancient race that the world believed had disappeared from existence thousands of years in the past.

  He knew the truth of the Serenii, however. A truth that no one on Einan knew, that no books would tell, and few could believe.

  Three years ago, his world had changed when he stumbled into Enarium, bleeding and dying from an iron-poisoned wound. In the Lost City, he’d learned that the gods were nothing more than Serenii worshipped by ancient humans. The Serenii had sacrificed themselves to stop the Devourer of Worlds, a being of pure chaos that sought to destroy Einan and every other world in existence. The Hunter, like all of his kind—Bucelarii, the offspring of the foul Abiarazi demons—had sworn to help the Serenii in their fight against the Devourer. He alone remained alive to continue the battle.

  To seal the rift against the Devourer of Worlds, the Serenii needed the magical energy that existed inside all living things. Humans had served as the primary source of power for thousands of years, until the Hunter freed them from their prison. Now, he sought the Abiarazi, for the life force coursing within the demons was almost as powerful as the magic within the Serenii.

  He’d dedicated the last three years of his life to hunting down the demons around Einan. In Kara-ket, the Sage had had a map that depicted his Abiarazi agents in every city on the continent. That map had pointed the Hunter in the direction of Praamis, but he hadn’t found even the barest hint of a demon’s presence until now.

  Demons were vicious, bloodthirsty creatures, driven by an innate lust for battle and death. He’d seen them kill men, women, and children without he
sitation. He’d lost friends and loved ones to the demons’ cruelty. Where dead bodies and cruel murders abounded, he would always find the hand of an Abiarazi at work.

  I’m coming for you, demon. He dropped a hand to the dagger at his belt. It was a practical weapon, with a gently curving double-edged blade, an extra-wide crossguard, a gemstone set into its pommel. The dagger, a gift from the Serenii he had sworn to serve, would aid him in his quest.

  “Praamis ahead, sir!”

  The voice of the coachman snapped the Hunter from his thoughts. He twitched aside the curtain and peered out the tiny window.

  About bloody time!

  The western and southern sides of Praamis were sprawling messes of shacks, canvas tents strung onto rickety wooden structures, and buildings that looked slapped together in a hurry. The reek of the thick mire and muck coating the road drifted into the Hunter’s carriage in nauseating waves. Filthy, dust-covered men, women, and children in torn and threadbare clothing watched his coach rattle past with dull eyes.

  Beyond the sea of shanties, the ancient Praamian Wall rose around the city proper, a crumbling barrier that served as a memento of a war-torn time long past. As the Hunter’s coach rattled beneath the high, arching gateway, he found the buildings of Praamis itself a little more solid. These were built with brick and stone rather than wood and canvas, but the dull clay roof tiles and whitewash peeling from the walls lent it an air of poverty and dilapidation.

  Warehouses bordered the broad avenue, giving way to busy avenues where carts and wagons hauled produce, goods, and casks of Praamian wine and beer. The driver maneuvered expertly through the crowded lane and rattled up along the main thoroughfare that led deeper into Praamis.

  He drew in a deep breath, glad for the myriad scents that marked life in a busy city. His sensitive nostrils had grown tired of the boring smells of dust, dry grass, animal carcasses, and more dust that hung thick on the Windy Plains. Here, a thousand people with a thousand different unique scents moved through the streets.