After several minutes he emerged from the deeper shadow of a chimney stack, smiling a strange and terrible smile.
Nothing the examiner could do could possibly be unfair. An assassin’s clients were invariably rich enough to pay for extremely ingenious protection, up to and including hiring assassins of his own[5]. Mericet wasn’t trying to kill him; he was merely trying to make him kill himself.
He sidled up to the base of the tower and found a drainpipe. It hadn’t been coated with slipall, rather to his surprise, but his gently questing fingers did find the poisoned needles painted black and glued to the inner face of the pipe. He removed one with his tweezers and sniffed it.
Distilled bloat. Pretty expensive stuff, with an astonishing effect. He took a small glass phial from his belt and collected as many needles as he could find, and then put on his armoured gloves and, with the speed of a sloth, started to climb.
‘Now it may well be that, as you travel across the city on your lawful occasions, you will find yourselves in opposition to fellow members, even one of the gentlemen with whom you are currently sharing a bench. And this is quite right and /what are you doing Mr Chidder no don ‘t tell me I’m sure I wouldn’t want to know see me afterwards/ proper. It is open to everyone to defend themselves as best they may. There are, however, other enemies who will dog your steps and against whom you are all ill-prepared /who are they Mr Cheesewright?’/
Mericet spun round from his blackboard like a vulture who has just heard a death-rattle and pointed the chalk at Cheesewright, who gulped.
‘Thieves’ Guild, sir?’ he managed.
‘Step out here, boy.’
There were whispered rumours in the dormitories about what Mericet had done to slovenly pupils in the past, which. were always vague but horrifying. The class relaxed. Mericet usually concentrated on one victim at a time, so all they had to do now was look keen and enjoy the show. Crimson to his ears, Cheesewright got to his feet and trooped down the aisle between the desks.
The master inspected him thoughtfully.
‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘and here we have Cheesewright, G., skulking across the quaking rooftops. See the determined ears. See the firm set of those knees.’
The class tittered dutifully. Cheesewright gave them an idiotic grin and rolled his eyes.
‘But what are these sinister figures that march in step with him, hey? /Since you find this so funny, Mr Teppic, perhaps you would be so good as to tell Mr Cheesewright?’/
Teppic froze in mid-laugh.
Mericet’s gaze bored into him. He’s just like Dios the high priest, Teppic thought. Even father’s frightened of Dios.
He knew what he ought to do, and he was damned if he was going to do it. He ought to be scared.
‘Ill-preparedness,’ he said. ‘Carelessness. Lack of concentration. Poor maintenance of tools. Oh, and over-confidence, sir.’
Mericet held his gaze for some time, but Teppic had practised on the palace cats.
Finally the teacher gave a brief smile that had absolutely nothing to do with humour, tossed the chalk in the air, caught it again, and said: ‘Mr Teppic is exactly right. Especially about the over-confidence.’
There was a ledge leading to an invitingly open window. There was oil on the ledge, and Teppic invested several minutes in screwing small crampons into cracks in the stonework before advancing.
He hung easily by the window and proceeded to take a number of small metal rods from his belt. They were threaded at the ends, and after a few seconds’ brisk work he had a rod about three feet long on the end of which he affixed a small mirror.
That revealed nothing in the gloom beyond the opening. He pulled it back and tried again, this time attaching his hood into which he’d stuffed his gloves, to give the impression of a head cautiously revealing itself against the light. He was confident that it would pick up a bolt or a dart, but it remained resolutely unattacked.
He was chilly now, despite the heat of the night. Black velvet looked good, but that was about all you could say for it. The excitement and the exertion meant he was now wearing several pints of clammy water.
He advanced.
There was a thin black wire on the window sill, and a serrated blade screwed to the sash window above it. It was the work of a moment to wedge the sash with more rods and then cut the wire; the window dropped a fraction of an inch. He grinned in the darkness.
A sweep with a long rod inside the room revealed that there was a floor, apparently free of obstructions. There was also a wire at about chest height. He drew the rod back, affixed a small hook on the end, sent it back, caught the wire, and tugged.
There came the dull smack of a crossbow bolt hitting old plaster.
A lump of clay on the end of the same rod, pushed gently across the floor, revealed several caltraps. Teppic hauled them back and inspected them with interest. They were copper. If he’d tried the magnet technique, which was the usual method, he wouldn’t have found them.
He thought for a while. He had slip-on priests in his pouch. They were devilish things to prowl around a room in, but he shuffled into them anyway. (Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.) Mericet was a poisons man, after all. Bloat! If he tipped them with that Teppic would plate himself all over the walls. They wouldn’t need to bury him, they’d just redecorate over the top.[6]
The rules. Mericet would have to obey the rules. He couldn’t simply kill him, with no warning. He’d have to let him, by carelessness or over-confidence, kill himself.
He dropped lightly on to the floor inside the room and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few exploratory swings with the rods detected no more wires; there was a faint crunch underfoot as a priest crushed a caltrap.
‘In your own time, Mr Teppic.’
Mericet was standing in a corner. Teppic heard the faint scratching of his pencil as he made a note. He tried to put the man out of his mind. He tried to think.
There was a figure lying on a bed. It was entirely covered by a blanket.
This was the last bit. This was the room where everything was decided. This was the bit the successful students never told you about. The unsuccessful ones weren’t around to ask.
Teppic’s mind filled up with options. At a time like this, he thought, some divine guidance would be necessary. Where are you, dad?’
He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day.
He unslung his crossbow and screwed its greased sections together. It wasn’t a proper weapon, but he’d run out of knives and his lips were too dry for the blowpipe.
There was a clicking from the corner. Mericet was idly tapping his teeth with his pencil.
It could be a dummy under there. How would he know? No, it had to be a real person. You heard tales. Perhaps he could try the rods- He shook his head, raised the crossbow, and took careful aim.
‘Whenever you like Mr Teppic.’
This was it.
This was where they found out if you could kill.
This was what he had been trying to put out of his mind.
He knew he couldn’t.
Octeday afternoons was Political Expediency with Lady T’malia, one of the few women to achieve high office in the Guild. In the lands around the Circle Sea it was generally agreed that one way to achieve a long life was not to have a meal with her Ladyship. The jewellery of one hand alone carried enough poison to inhume a small town. She was stunningly beautiful, but with the kind of calculated beauty that is achieved by a team of skilled artists, manicurists, plasterers, corsetiers and dressmakers and three hours’ solid work every morning. When she walked there was a faint squeak of whalebone under incredible stress.
The boys were learning. As she talked they didn’t watch her figure. They watched her fingers.
‘And thus,’ she said, ‘let us consider the position before the founding of the Guild. In this city, and indeed in many places elsewhere, civilisation is nurtured and progresses by the dynamic interplay of interests among many large and powerful advantage cartels.
‘In the days before the founding of the Guild the seeking of advancement among these consortia invariably resulted in regrettable disagreements which were terminated with extreme prejudice. These were extremely deleterious to the common interest of the city. Please understand that where disharmony rules, commerce flags.