Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 10 of 42

Kevintor stepped out of the lane with the sack under his arm and felt the watch settle on him. Two men on a low roof. One in a doorway across the way. None of them moved when he looked. That was the tell. He found Lina a block on and told her the shop had eyes on it now, and on him. She said the word would already be running. Bookster had a bell somewhere, and he had rung it the moment Kevintor took the sack. They kept walking until the lane opened on a small square. Lina tipped her chin at a squat stone building across the way, half hidden behind a slope of rock. A red tile roof. A short tower. An arched door at the foot of a few worn steps. She said the killers were briefed there. She said she had seen men leave it before a death and not before any other thing. If a contract was out on him, it had already passed through those doors. Kevintor took the list from the cord at the sack and folded it into his shirt. He took the gold and pressed it into Lina's hand. He told her to go to Lady Astella Combonia's training lands and put the sack on her desk and tell her the truth of where it came from. He said Lady Astella would hide him for a night if anyone could, in the big house behind her walls. Lina did not argue. She went. He moved through the back lanes alone and watched the roofs. A raised stone walk ran above the shop fronts, a flat path with low edging, clean and level, built for someone who did not want to be seen from the street. He saw the first man on it within a block, then a second a roof behind. They were pacing him. He let them. He turned where they wanted and came up under the eaves of a tea house and waited in the dark of the door. The first one dropped down quiet. Kevintor took him at the wrist and twisted the knife loose before the man knew the wrist was gone. The blade had a mark cut along the flat, a small sigil filled with ink. He had seen its like in books. A contract sign. His name was on this knife the way a hand was on a hammer. He put the man down with an elbow and stepped behind the post as the second one landed. That one he caught at the throat and held until the throat went soft. Two knives now. Both marked. Both his. He left the alley by a back wall and crossed three lanes before he stopped to breathe. The training lands lay an hour out. The conspiracy had named him. The scroll could wait one night. Tonight he needed walls he trusted, and a roof Lady Astella kept.