Aralim was fast asleep when his guards knocked gently on his door. The forty-seven-year-old man rolled back into sleep after first hearing it. A few more raps finally disturbed him enough, and he sat up. With disheveled greying hair and a ruffled linen tunic hastily thrown over his sweaty torso, he hoped it wasn’t anything important. He opened the door to find Grendar bowing his head.
“It’s Gathim, sir,” the man said. “He’s begging to speak with you again. I can tell him off, if you’d like, but I thought we should accommodate his willingness—”
“I agree,” Aralim said. “Give me a moment. And bring the Aura, of course.” He washed his face with a damp cloth in a nearby basin and ran a small bone brush through his hair. Just enough so as not to give the assassin some reason to target his sleepless complexion.
The assassin looked much worse. He was roughed up, though not visibly bleeding from anywhere visible. Big rings around his eyes bespoke his lack of sleep; he was hardly permitted sufficient rest. He regarded Aralim, in the cargo hold, for a moment before blurting, “I need your word that if the information I give you is good, you won’t have them kill me or keep cutting on me.”
Aralim sighed. “If it’s good information, then we’d have no reason to cut you up. And I have no intentions of killing you. So you have my word,” he said, nodding.
Gathim took a deep breath. “The man who hired me… was Ovoe the Keeper.” He leaned back in his chair and continued, “He hired me to kill you whenever you might leave the capital. I was on his payroll for five months! That’s why I turned myself in, because the man is dead. I can’t back out of a contract that I’ve bragged to all my… er, colleagues about for months, and I won’t get hired again by the remnants of Ovoe’s network.” He looked at the guard furiously. “There is no upcoming attack; I’m not part of some scheme, alright?”
Five months… Aralim thought. He quickly thought back. Five months ago lined up with his brief time working for Ovoe, and his botched attempt to fake Zarru’s death. He regarded Gathim with a frown. “Excellent. The only person who can verify your story is dead. When exactly did Ovoe hire you?”
The assassin tilted his head and thought back to it. “The first of the 7th Moon.”
Aralim scratched his head. It lined up accurately, if he could remember right. That didn’t excuse Gathim’s deception. “So the information you planned to trade us for your safety was useless? A dead man hired you so you figured we would be a good escape plan?”
“It was either that or try to kill you.” The assassin nodded and smiled. “I thought we would both prefer this option. And I thought the Emperor might like further proof of Ovoe’s plans.” Gathim bobbed his head toward the orange robed Aura. The quiet man didn’t react, of course.
“You’re…” Aralim couldn’t believe it. He glanced at Grendar. This poor prisoner was being tortured for this? “You’re an idiot!”
“You don’t believe me?” Gathim demanded manically. “Ask me whatever you need to, in order to trust this. I was hired by Ovoe.”
Aralim shrugged. “Everything you’ve said is believable…” he said. “You’re just an idiot. You had your money, more than enough to pay for travel, but you attacked the Royal Ambassador for… free transport?”
“What?” the assassin asked, incredulously. “Gods, no! I did it so that the remaining elements of Ovoe’s group wouldn’t kill me in my damned sleep. In that river town was a man hired to watch transports out of the capital for Ovoe, named White Dog. He reported to Murgal of Maykren, and Murgal’s gang of some forty do-no-gooders under Ovoe’s coin. Just because the serpent lost its head doesn’t mean it’s not convulsing still.”
Aralim sighed. “Snakes like Ovoe don’t die. They find new heads. Sounds like you had plenty of motive to do the job for real.”
“Of course I did, but an organization like that is going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” Gathim explained. “If you drop me in Hawsi or another port, like we agreed, I can work for any other high paying individual. And not whatever syndicate is going to form from Ovoe’s ashes.”
“Would you change your story at all if I told you I have reason to believe Ovoe’s connections are not falling apart, and the serpent has a head again already?”
Gathim raised his shoulders as much as he could in his restraints. His ringed eyes narrowed. “It’s above my pay-grade, but I could believe it.”
Aralim stepped closer to him. “Interesting. Well, rest well, Gathim.” He patted the assassin’s shoulder and turned to Grendar. Gathim let out a sigh as they withdrew. Yovin had been on duty, and remained there.
Once Aralim and Grendar had climbed the ladder, they stopped to whisper together again. Aralim felt a little bad for the assassin, but if the man had demonstrated anything this evening, it was that he had certainly worked in this field a while. He was hardly innocent, and he had willingly surrendered to Aralim’s power. “Wait a week,” he told Grendar. “And then start it up again.”
Grendar sighed. He looked tired too, or depressed. Even as a sergeant. “In what direction, sir?” he asked, through pursed lips.
“Actually…” Aralim ran a hand through his long hair. “Never mind. This must be hard on you and your men. When the time is right, I’ll check his facts.” The poor whelp didn’t deserve to be tortured indefinitely, but Aralim really wanted to know what he didn’t. And he feared for whatever syndicate was now lying in wait for him, either ahead on the road or upon his return. And it was mildly chilling to think that Ovoe had set his mind to Aralim’s death, even if he had not known it until now.
“Thank you, sir,” Grendar said, in reply. He nodded and smiled.
“You and your men do good work,” Aralim assured him, as they walked back toward their quarters.