The Relic Guild Read Free Page A

Violent spasms shook the assassin’s body, bending his already twisted form to hideous angles. The hissing was replaced by a multitude of dull cracks, as if every bone in his body was breaking. Still, he emitted not one single cry of pain. Finally the assassin collapsed to the ground where his heaped bulk lay unmoving on the cobbles.
    With the dagger still in her hand, Marney moved forwards cautiously. She inspected the remains. A knot formed in her stomach.
    The souls of the dead could still talk, but even the most adept necromancer would get no information from this assassin. The creature had once been human, she was sure, but now it was not even made of flesh and blood. The cassock lay as rags upon the alley floor, and within its black folds the assassin’s body had shattered into small pieces of powdery stone. Not enough of the face and body remained intact to suggest that they had ever been part of a humanoid shape.
    They said that empaths could never forget, though the Timewatcher only knew Marney had tried. The situation suddenly smacked of something from a long time ago. The assassin’s emotions had not been shielded to her senses; it no longer had any. Her magic was useless against creatures such as these. She could not feel them coming …
    Her basic instincts kicked in. Spiky pulses of warning rushed up Marney’s spine and stabbed into her head. From the corner of her eye she caught the swish of a cassock and the violet glint of a power stone as a second inhuman assassin rounded the corner into the alleyway. Marney rolled to one side and the dagger flew from her hand just as the assassin’s handgun spat out its bullet.
     

 
    Chapter Two
     
    Retrospective
     
     
    Samuel had spotted the assassin, passed close enough to see the flash of a power stone and hear the vague spitting sound made by the killer’s handgun, but he did not stop to see if Marney had lived or died.
    Some fifteen feet above the Great Labyrinth’s cobbled ground, he ran along the ramparts atop the alley walls: slick, moss-covered walkways, flanked on either side by low and crenellated barriers. Breathing hard, his hair matted with sweat and drizzle, Samuel pushed his ageing legs with all the strength he could muster.
    Samuel was an old bounty hunter and he understood well that those who allowed sentiment to dictate action did not last long anywhere in the Labyrinth. There were no loyalties, no bonds of friendship and honour in this place – not anymore. He had made headway in this chase, and wasn’t about to surrender it. Marney’s business was her own. Old friendships were dust to him.
    In his hand, Samuel carried a spirit compass. The needle ticked and turned and steered his direction true as it tracked the life energy of his prey. The mark was a whore, young, barely eighteen. Oh, she had a name, but that meant nothing to the old bounty hunter; she was a murderer, and the reward for killing her was almost too good to be true. That was the only important detail.
    With Marney out of the running, the night’s work should have been child’s play for Samuel. But someone must have issued a second contract on the whore; there were a bunch of amateurs running around the alleys playing at assassins. Samuel still had the advantage. Here and there, narrow bridges formed shortcuts through the Great Labyrinth by connecting one rampart to another. Like a maze upon a maze, the bridges led to places where those on the ground could not go. While the attention of these amateurs was focused on the ground, they had no reason to suspect that Samuel shadowed them from up on the ramparts – and nor would they, until it was too late.
    He came to a halt as the rampart stopped at a T-junction. Down below, the alleyway on his left side came to a blind end; down on the right, the cobbled pathway led to a contained courtyard. There were no bridges at this intersection, and the rampart split into two paths. But which should he follow – east or west?