Damian FINUCANE's Arc

Chapter 37 of 57

Damian dragged the last dead man off the porch as gray light spread. The strange mark sat on the collar, black and unfamiliar. He knew the temple's enemies. He knew the city's. This mark belonged to neither. Without a name behind it, he could kill wave after wave and never reach the hand that sent them. He needed the man they had left alive. One attacker had gone down bound instead of dead, dragged inside and tied to a table leg. He was the only lead they had. Rolo crouched by the bound man and turned his sleeve. "Same mark on his wrist. Burned in, not sewn." She looked up. "That means he chose it. Or paid for it." Damian knelt in front of the man. Ginger hair. Blue eyes. A round face slick with sweat. For one cold second he saw Parker's face over him again, the swordsman who had spared him in the grove and later died at the juice shop. This was not Parker. But the resemblance turned Damian's stomach. "Who marks you?" he asked. "Give me the name." The man spat on the floor. "You'll get nothing. Rude of you to ask." Damian drew the poison bundle from his coat. He held one dart before the man's eyes, the green tip bright. "These are yours. Your friend reached for them last. I only need one." He set the dart against the man's throat. He would not use it. But the man did not know that. The sweat ran faster. "Wait." The man's voice cracked. "Wait. The drafthouse. Two crossroads north. The one with the wide porch and the old brew sign. That's where the pay comes from. A woman collects there. She hands the marks. She hires the swords." He swallowed. "I never saw her face. I swear it." Rolo leaned close. "A drinking hall for a drop point. Just like the juice shop." She had followed Damian through every step of the last hunt. She met his eyes now, the same warning in them. "He gave it up fast. Same as Parker." Damian lowered the dart. He wrapped it back in cloth and pushed the bundle deep in his coat. "Then we don't walk in blind." He rose and went to the door. His raven waited on the porch rail, feathers glossy in the dawn. Damian lifted his arm. "North," he said. "The drafthouse with the wide porch. Watch who comes and goes." The bird lifted and cut across the pale sky. Rolo bound the man tighter and stood. "So now it has a place." "A place, and a person who pays," Damian said. "Not the swordsman I swore to beat. But the one who keeps sending them." He looked at his students, bruised, upright, watching him. The hunt had a direction again. The name still waited at the end of the road, two crossroads north, behind a wide wooden porch.