“She’ll be all right,” Kari assured Jol, holding tightly to him.
“What happened?” he asked again, and his voice threatened to break.
“I’m not really sure,” she answered. Once the priests finished their work, they came over to hear the specifics of the captain’s injury. “We were escorting a prisoner to the campus of my Order, and this assassin just… I don’t know, it was like she was waiting for us, invisible. She just appeared out of nowhere and laid the captain… Damansha low. It all happened so fast; one moment we were walking, and then the captain’s blood hit my face and she fell to the ground.”
Jol put his hand to the end of his snout, and Kari laid her hand on his shoulder. “She wasn’t after Damansha,” she explained. “The assassin wanted our prisoner; Damansha was just in the way. I’m so sorry this happened, Jol. It should’ve been me.”
“No!” he almost shouted, and with the depth and power behind his voice he shocked the priests. “No, do not say that. Do not ever say that!”
He pulled Kari into a bone-crushing hug, and she stroked his long black hair and sighed. “I’ll tell Kyrie what happened,” Kari said, and Jol drew away slightly so he could meet her gaze. “I guess everyone else figured you were seeing someone when you started working late all the time, Jol. But everyone wants you to be happy; nobody is going to bother you about it until you’re ready to tell them, okay?”
Serenjols nodded and kissed Kari on the side of her snout. “Thank you,” he whispered, and Kari patted his back before they separated.
“Take good care of her, and let me know if her condition changes,” Kari told the priests, and they both bowed to the veteran demonhunter. “Also, send a runner to the watch commander if you haven’t already. They need to know that one of their captains is injured.”
With their agreement, Kari bid her brother-in-law goodnight so he could stay with Damansha, and she left the temple to tend to her own problems.
The appearance of an assassin on the same day Kaelin Black arrived in DarkWind asking for help with a serial killer couldn’t be a coincidence. Had it been members of the Blood Order trying to kill Black, it would’ve been the duke's problem. Kari disliked the guild and didn’t understand why her Order—and more pointedly, the duke—did nothing to disband it. It had to have something to do with political connections; that much she knew. Thankfully, it hadn’t been guild members that attacked and nearly killed a captain of the guard—and Serenjols’ girlfriend, no less. Had that been the case, Kari guessed the duke would’ve found his hand forced, and Kari would’ve been all too glad to see the Order called upon to help.
The assassin had been a winged syrinthian, something Kari had never even heard of, much less seen. The woman’s speed and reflexes were incredible, even for the agile snake people, and her skill with blades was sharp enough that it gave Kari pause. It was clear the demoness was trouble of the kind that would not be long in rearing its beautiful head again.
What puzzled Kari was that this was likely the same assassin that was killing people in Black’s city; why, then, had she helped him kill three members of the guild? Black tried to deny that he was involved in the killings but had implicated the syrinthian assassin. And yet she had the opportunity to kill him but chose not to; none of it made any sense to Kari. If the syrinthian woman wanted to kill Black, why didn’t she make an attempt on his life in the inn once the three guild members were dispatched? Or helped the guild members kill Black? Kari turned the thoughts over in her mind as she walked east toward the demonhunter campus.
Her swords were in her hands near-instantly when someone approached from her left. Kari returned her scimitars to their sheaths when she saw it was Aeligos.
The rogue fell into step beside her and kept his voice low. “Eryn says no attacks were ordered on Black; the guild granted him immunity because he’s a noble, and they know he’s under the protective eye of your Order. Those guild members at the inn were there for food and drink, it would seem. But now that they’re dead, the guild has put a price on Black’s head. You’d better get him out of the city as soon as possible.”
“How high a price?” Kari quipped. “I might just kill him myself.”
Aeligos chuckled and his hand appeared from the folds of his cloak to scratch his snout absently. “Fifty thousand gold coins,” he mumbled.
“Fifty thousand?” Kari repeated. She wasn’t good at math—she hadn’t received anything resembling a formal education until she was in her late teens—but she understood it would take decades to earn fifty thousand gold coins working for the Order, if she ever could.
“It’s a long story, and I know you hate politics,” Aeligos said. “To make it simple, the guild, like everyone else, believes that Black is the head of the Black Dragon Society. Suffice to say that Black’s syndicate and the guild are direct competitors, and now that he has guild blood on his hands, any mutual respect between them is gone. They want him dead, earl or no, and badly enough that risking the wrath of the duke seems of little concern to them.”
“Are you talking war on the streets?” Kari asked as they passed through the front gates of the campus. The guards turned to listen in on what they’d overheard. Despite the lapse in decorum, Kari didn’t bother to discipline them; possible war on the streets of DarkWind was everyone’s business.
“No, not that type of conflict,” the rogue assured her, and the guards turned back to their watch. “The guild and Black’s syndicate work in much more subtle circles. His influence is primarily in the south, and the guild’s influence doesn’t extend much out of Brunswick. It’s unlikely we’ll see direct conflict; it’ll mostly be posturing and threats unless something like this happens again. I doubt even someone as skilled as Eryn wants the blood of a major noble on their hands. Fifty thousand gold coins don’t do much for a dead person. So as much as the guild may want him dead, it would be a huge political risk to kill him, since it would also draw the eye of the Duke of Sutherland this way, putting political pressure on Duke Bosimar… but, I know you hate politics, so that’s as much as I’ll bore you with.”
Kari sighed and wondered again why the Order didn’t just make a concerted effort with the watch and the duke’s militia to wipe out the Guild altogether. Although she didn’t want to see Eryn get hurt, Kari had little respect for organized crime, even the kind that seemed to help keep the peace. She resolved in her mind to look into smashing the Guild if and when she became Avatar of Vengeance, or if her brother-in-law, Erik, got the post before her. It was an entertaining notion in one sense, but Kari understood the loss of life that would no doubt come with such an endeavor. It made her consider what price she was willing to pay for freedom, and what her mate—who worshipped the god of freedom—might have to say on the matter. It was certainly a topic of conversation for a less hectic time.
Kari and Aeligos passed into the administrative offices of the Order. At the rear of the building was a conference room where the heads of the Order’s departments met to discuss policies and procedures. Black was at one end of the polished wooden table, and a balding, slightly overweight human sat a few seats down from him, apparently the owner of Charlie’s Boarding House. Several demonhunters and lower-ranking priests of Zalkar saluted Kari when she entered and then went back to asking their questions.