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Auberon rushed into the theater. The stage was illuminated by the countless candles he had left burning, their flames casting dancing light across the still forms slumped on the stage. The corpse closest to the front lay facing the aisle, his sightless eyes fixed on Auberon as he approached. The blood pooling beneath him ran over the edge of the stage and dribbled down into the pit.
Auberon stalked up the stairs, the candles guttering as he passed. The emerald-hilted dagger lay a few feet away, near the body of the man who’d stabbed Riona. He picked it up, wiped the blade clean on the dead man’s trousers, and then grabbed a lantern and scanned the floor of the stage. The fleeing coward had been badly wounded, and he wouldn’t have been able to run far. It didn’t take Auberon long to find the bloody trail he’d left in his wake—droplets here, part of a footprint there, a streak on the edge of a box of costumes… He could imagine the coward staggering through the darkness, tripping over props while trying to hold the gash in his stomach closed.
The wounds he had sustained in the fight throbbed as he made his way through the backstage area. Most of the lesser cuts had clotted already, but the gash in his bicep still leaked blood. His doublet was soaked—a mixture of his and Riona’s blood—and the cold, wet fabric clung to him. When he passed a rack of costumes, Auberon grabbed a wool overcoat and pulled it on over his ruined doublet. It was late, but there would still be people walking the streets, and he couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself.
The trail led to a door in the side of the theater, a discreet entrance for the dancers. Part of a bloody handprint was smudged across the doorframe, where the man had stumbled and caught himself before stepping out into the night. Auberon left the theater and followed the droplets of blood along a narrow road and down a tight alleyway.
Soon, he found himself standing before a tavern, music and raucous laughter spilling through its open windows. The trail of blood led around the side and to a door at the rear of the building. Auberon tested the handle and found it locked, but a pass of his dagger’s blade through the gap between the frame and the door was enough to unlatch the simple mechanism. The door swung open to a dim, low-ceilinged storeroom, filled with shelves of food and casks of alcohol.
A man was sprawled on the floor, clutching a decanter of whiskey in a white-knuckled grip. His chest was bare, his bloody shirt crumpled on the floor beside him, and a woman was kneeling at his side. Her back was to Auberon, and it appeared that she hadn’t heard the door swing open.
“Hold still, you bastard,” she muttered as she wove a needle through the skin of the man’s stomach. “I can barely see in this light, and your squirming doesn’t help.”
“Oh, don’t worry about making those stitches pretty,” Auberon said as he stepped into the room. The woman started, accidentally pulling on the thread, and the man hissed a curse. A cruel grin spread across his Auberon’s. “He won’t need them for long.”
* * *
“I-I swear, I can’t tell you anything!” the coward blubbered, the words slurred from the whiskey. Auberon tightened his grip on the man’s arm and dragged him up the steep stairs that led to the top of the city wall. The coward stumbled, pitching dangerously close to the edge. Auberon yanked him back. He couldn’t let the bastard die. Not yet.
“Can’t or won’t?” Auberon inquired. “One means you can be persuaded. The other means you’re disposable.”
The man looked up at the wall, his throat bobbing. “P-Please. I only followed orders. Have mercy.”
“Mercy,” he scoffed, pulling the drunken coward the rest of the way up the stairs. When they reached the top of the wall, the man sucked in a breath as a cold wind swept over them, slicing straight through their clothes. Braziers at each tower glowed brightly against the night. There wasn’t a guard in sight, but one was sure to come by on his rounds soon enough.
Waist-high crenelations ran along the outer edge of the wall, and Auberon shoved the man toward one of the gaps. The coward’s knees cracked against the stone so hard he whimpered. Auberon gripped his collar and pushed him so he was leaning out over the wall, staring straight down at the dizzying fifty-foot drop below.
“Let’s try this again,” he snarled. “Who hired you to attack us?”
“Please.Please.Just take me back to the tavern. We can talk this out.”
Auberon grabbed the man’s shoulder and spun him around. With his dagger, he sliced through the bastard’s shirt, exposing his pale, narrow torso. The gash in his stomach slashed an angry red crescent from the bottom of his ribcage to his opposite hip.
“You try my patience,” Auberon snarled, setting the point of his dagger under the first stitch. The man’s breathing hitched, Auberon cut through the first several inches of stitches. Blood immediately poured out of the wound, running in crimson rivulets down the man’s stomach. “Tell me: Do you have a family?”
“A wife and a…a daughter.”
“How old is your daughter?”
His throat bobbed. “Five.”
“If you’d like to see her again, I’d advise you to carefully consider your answer to my next question.” Auberon moved the point of his dagger to the next stitch. “Did the king hire you to attack us?”
“It was some lord from the court. I don’t know if he was acting on the king’s orders or not. His name— His name is Farquar. Lord Farquar.”
Surprise jolted through him. “Farquar? Are you sure? Do you have proof?”
He nodded frantically. “Those men I was with… We’re sell-swords. We go to a man named Vick for work. He’ll have a record of the deal.”
“It hasn’t been destroyed?”
“I don’t think so. Vick takes a deposit first and only gets the rest of the money after the job’s completed. He wouldn’t destroy a contract if it hadn’t been paid yet—especially one he could use for blackmail. He owns the Crow and Crown tavern, over on Ravenwood. Go there, and you’ll find the contract.” The man glanced over his shoulder at the steep drop below him. “That’s all I know, I swear. I can’t tell you anything else. Please let me go. I need to see a healer.”
Auberon’s gaze roved over the man—the blood marring his stomach, the tears shining in his eyes, the dark stain growing across the front of his trousers. He could see by the way the coward was trembling that he had spoken true. He was only a hired hand; he had no loyalty to Farquar, no reason to lie. More than anything, he wanted to get home to his family. Auberon smiled and tucked his dagger into his belt beside his sheathed sword. “Do you love your daughter?”
“More than anything,” the man gasped, his expression softening with relief.
“And your wife, you love her, as well?”
