Eve Forward - Villains by Necessity

"Boring!"

Sam barked the word aloud. It rang hollow in the empty room. He sat down with a thump in a chair and looked about the once-teeming hall of the Assassin's Guild. It was utterly, utterly empty. The assassins had all left months ago, turning in daggers and poison for a peaceful way of life, one that wouldn't trouble their sleep at night and, above all, one at which they could make a living. No assassin had had a contract in months. Members would go out on missions and would never return, only to be seen later, elsewhere, wearing relaxed smiles and working at peaceful professions. Finally the Guildmaster had stepped down, no one wanted to take his place, and the Guild, hundreds of years old, dissolved overnight. The building had been politely bought by the Town Council, which planned to turn it into a school for young girls. But now it was empty, except for memories and the last assassin in Bistort, possibly in all the Six Lands. Sam adjusted his collar so that it hid the small, star-shaped birthmark at the juncture of his shoulder and his neck.

Sam had "left" when the others had; it wasn't wise to defend yourself as the last remaining assassin. Not while there were still town guards. The emptiness of the room echoed at him. It made him angry, made him want to kill something. He got up and paced silently around the room. His black cloak swirled about him, despite the numerous weapons concealed in it, and his dark but rich clothing absorbed the light of the single candle that lit the wood-paneled room. He ran his fingers through his unnaturally black and greasy hair and sighed. He was in his mid-thirties, with rough-cropped neck-length hair and world-weary hazel eyes, built slender but deceptively strong. Average to attractive, without being distinctive in any way, with a lifetime of training but still unhindered by age, he was at the peak of his skills ... but there was no call for them.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. Old instincts, drummed into his mind and body since he was young, sang a shrill note of warning; someone was approaching from behind. Fast and silent as a shadow-slipped he twisted and caught the figure, nearly as invisible as he, as it turned, too late to flee. With a grunt he lifted the struggling being out of the shadows by the neck. It was a small scruffy figure, perhaps three and a half or four feet tall. He snarled the snarl that had been the last sight of many men and was greeted with a twisted smirk and a pair of bright blue eyes that sparkled from under a mop of reddish curls, frosted here and there with silver, and a leather cap. With a faint noise of disgust Sam dropped the intruder onto a nearby table and wiped his hands fastidiously on the hem of his cloak. The intruder rubbed his neck and grinned at him.

"Now, then, Sam, such are a poor way for ye to be greeting your old friend!"

Sam glowered. "You're right, Arcie ... I should have run you through." He paused. "Why is an old weasely thief like you poking around the forlorn yet proud halls of the Guild?"

Arcie sat himself comfortably on the table and took out a pipe. "Well, laddie, I'll tell ye. For cause that the Guild, in which of course I do mean my Guild, is now just dissolved, and I but wanted taste come over an' gloat o'er the much longer the trade o' sneakthief are outlived yer trade o' cutthroat." He grinned that infuriating grin again. "I ken ye'd be back here moping." He started to clean his pipe, using one of the blowgun needles Sam had had hidden in his sleeves. Sam ignored it.

"Right, longer by a whole, what, two months? Things have been happening, Arcie, and now they're happening fast." Sam glared, looking around the room with a hunted expression.

"What are ye going taste do, Sam? That are truly why I comed over here ... I ken ye wouldna go whitewash.

Och, they used taste call ye ... what were it? The Adder?"

"Viper," muttered Sam. "Long time ago."

Yes, he mused, a long time ago. Back when a thief would be killed instantly if he dared step foot inside an Assassin's Guild, and vice versa ... animosity between the two trades was... was quite fierce. Then the Victory came, and things slowly fell apart. He knew Arcie from those days, when on the occasional job some small crawling was required that his own five-foot-eleven height couldn't fold to. It was a breach of protocol to ask another assassin for help on an assignment, so he'd turned to a thief who was not only one of the shortest people around, but one of the few who could be bribed by an assassin. They'd been a sort of team, when Sam had needed him; Sam would plot the route and get the target, hunting in his cold, methodical, superhumanly unstoppable way, and Arcie would cheerfully loot the target's house. It was all still a tremendous embarrassment to the assassin, and the other man's incorrigible attitude had never helped.

Arcie was one of the many folk of Bariga to leave his rural home and seek his fortune in the cities of the Six Lands. In the harsh cold and scouring winds of the northern province of Bariga, humans had adapted and were small, dexterous, and well-insulated. Even so, Arcie was small among his people, who more normally stood at around five feet. Short, clever, and with a certain bloodyminded selfishness, he would smile even as he robbed you blind or slit your throat. He'd done well in the big city and had become the Guildmaster of the Guild of Thieves, and actually managed to survive the office. He was older than Sam, how much he'd never said; Sam would judge him, physically, to be in his mid-to-late forties, and mentally, to be about twenty summers; far removed from the stoic, responsible inhabitants of Bariga. The black sheep of his family, no doubt. He'd lived as a thief much of his life and never really had to grow up. It made him extremely annoying at times.

"D'ye think as we're the only ones?" asked Arcie after a moment, sounding almost plaintive. Though he was pushing fifty, he still kept that certain innocence of appearance, useful in his trade. Sam took a chair and sat down.

"The only ones of what?" he asked.

"As haven't whitewashed. What haven't become good folks, law-abiding folks, little-old-lady-helping decent folks." Arcie spat on the floor for emphasis.

"I don't know..." Sam pulled his cloak around himself defensively. "Well, of course not. I mean, there's been evil ever since there's been sapience ..."

"Och, laddie! I wouldna call us evil..." interrupted Arcie, his eyes wide and offended. "Self-sufficient, aye, lacking in a compassion, perhaps ..."

"I wouldn't either. But you realize that that's how we're seen. Just because a fellow takes pride in his work he's branded as a villain." He threw up his hands in exasperation.

"I'm an assassin! It's what I do! It's all I know!"

He sighed. "I don't know if we're the only ones, Arcie. I don't really care. Let's just get out of here. This place is getting me depressed."

"More so than as usual?"

Sam ignored him. "Let's go," he said, standing up, black silk billowing.

"Go? Go where?" Arcie tapped out his pipe and pocketed it.

"Where else?"

"Och, aye. A tavern."

The Frothing Otter was a good tavern, with fine tables and clean straw on the floor. Arcie and Sam sat in the far table in the shadowy corner. Of course. Merchants and townsfolk eyed Sam's assassin blacks and whispered nervously among themselves. Happy bar noises drifted through the scent and smoke of the room. Arcie chugged his third pint of ale and peered at his sullen companion, who was nursing a goblet of dark red wine. The Barigan furrowed his red curly eyebrows at Sam, making his face crinkle up into its numerous small wrinkles.

"Ye really ought taste change clothes, Sammy. Folk are talking."

Sam snorted softly. "Let 'em talk. Not going to change clothes. Only thing I've got left. Everything I own in these clothes. And ..." he hiccupped. "Everything I am." His black hair was dull in the lamplight. "I snuff, therefore I am." He giggled.