Wulfgard: Speak No Evil - Whisper's Tale - Part 3

Part 3: Keeping Quiet

Whisper did not come out from beneath her covers until all of the students had gone to bed and the room had fallen quiet. Now she poked her head out to utter blackness and silence, broken only by a few snores. More than ever, she felt trapped. The walls seemed closer than before, the room smaller. She felt she was being suffocated in this horrible box, this school for murderers.
 
She had to get out.
 
Now her natural talents and all of her training truly would be put to the test. First, she waited and listened. Surely some of the assassins would be watching the children. But if they were, she could not detect them. After a few minutes, she slid out of her covers and dropped quietly to the floor. Crawling on all fours, she moved between the beds, trying to remain invisible as she headed for a door to the main room.
 
Fortunately, there were no actual doors on the openings, so she was able to slip right out. Now the main “box” yawned before her – a great void, lit only by some stray candlelight trickling in from the sleeping quarters. The torches on the tall stone walls sat dead. For several minutes, she waited quietly, her eyes and ears adjusting to the gloom. Yet once again, she caught neither sight nor sound of any watching assassins. All she heard was the faint squeaking of mice on the rafters up above.
 
The rafters. They crisscrossed the ceiling above, some tied with ropes, the ends of which dangled over the children’s heads every day. Whisper did not know if she could reach one, but she had to try. It would not be as easy as running up the wall in the maze. But once she was up there, perhaps she could find a way into the upper rooms, where they were never allowed. Perhaps she could find a way out…
 
For a minute or two, she searched the walls for the best location, finally settling on a rope that dangled high above a torch mount. The sconce was too high for her to reach, but she was able to do it with a running start, like she had done in the maze. She ran two steps straight up the side of the wall and then caught the torch and hauled herself up.
 
Now perched precariously on her tiptoes atop the narrow bit of metal, she carefully stood, scanning the wall for handholds. The stonework was nearly perfect, smooth as any she had ever seen. But she could handle it. First she leaned against the wall and took off her shoes, one at a time. Then she pressed her toes into a shallow crevice, taking great care, testing her body weight before she continued.
 
It did not take her long. One foot, one hand, and another and another, and soon she could see the shadow of the rope dangling just overhead. She reached out and grabbed it, keeping her feet on the wall as she climbed. It was almost like walking vertically. Now she could see the rafter clearly. A mouse sat atop it, staring at her with tiny black eyes. It scurried away when she put her arm up around the beam.
 
She hauled herself up. There it was: the hole in the ceiling that the rats were using to come and go. It was just above the point where the rafter connected with the stone wall. Lying on her back on the wooden beam, Whisper put both her feet on the plank above – the one with the hole – and pushed.
 
To her surprise, it snapped immediately, the sound echoing through the room. She caught the board and set it down on the rafter, before it could plummet to the floor far below. Her position had surely been announced already, but she didn’t want to make any more noise. She didn’t like noise.
 
Up she went, through the hole and into the room above.
 
Moonlight. This room had windows, looking out over the City below. She ran to one and gazed out, taking a deep breath of the free air. Never before had she felt so glad to see those filthy grey streets and the long faces of the dark, narrow buildings of the Iron Ring. Yet she knew she could not look for long. The assassins might be headed to her now, investigating the sound she’d made.
 
Turning her eyes back to the room itself, she quickly saw it was a storage area. There were crates and chests everywhere, and one very well-crafted writing desk with a chair. Whisper only saw one entrance, which she quickly moved to barricade. Putting her shoulder against one of the large crates, she pushed with all her might, sliding it slowly in front of the door to block it. Hopefully that would delay them reaching her.
 
The boxes were very heavy. Looking around the room again, she spotted a long knife atop one crate and used it to pry a box open. Inside were yet more knives, but these were unlike any she had ever seen before.
 
They were solid black, from the tip of the blade to the end of the hilt. The hilt itself was misshapen, more like a ring than a handle. Each was one solid metal object, its “blade” pointed but the edges dull. They were symbols, not weapons. She knew exactly what they were.
 
These were the emblems of the Silent Messengers.
 
The Silent Messengers were legendary, so much so that Whisper had thought them merely a myth. Stories said they were a cult of assassins that had originated in the deserts of the far South and then spread throughout the West, for there was always someone in need of their services. They were famous for slipping into a target’s home completely without warning, leaving no trace of their presence… except for a single, signature black dagger near – or in – the body of their victim.
 
Some people called the dagger ‘the Message,’ but that was not the real message that the Silent Messengers delivered for their employers. It was something utterly silent, yet louder than words. The true message was death.
 
Whisper quickly began prying open more boxes, finding yet more weapons inside each, along with many other things: food, candles and scrolls, lengths of rope…
 
Then her eyes landed atop the writing desk. There lay the very same contract she had seen earlier that day, in the black-gloved hands of the Mother. She could not read it, of course, but she recognized it instantly: the contract for a little girl who was probably fast asleep right now, blissfully unaware that someone had signed her death warrant. The sight of the little scroll made Whisper sick, but it also steeled her resolve. She rolled it up and took it with her.
 
She also took nearly everything else she could carry. She strapped a quiver of arrows to her back, took a bow and a long leather whip, some food, and a pair of tall black boots. Finally she took a long black cloak and pulled the hood up, tightening it over head to cover her ears. She left the obsidian daggers where they lay.
 
And then, without another look back, she slid out of a window and into the night.
 
Returning to the rooftops of the City felt like coming home after a long and harrowing journey. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the putrid urban air – putrid, but free. She could go anywhere she liked, and she knew just where she would go first. What was it Willem had said?
 
She lives in a manor at the corner of Gold Way and Wallshadow, overlooking the slums from the heights of the Silver Ring.
 
Whisper began moving in that direction. She knew most parts of the city like the back of her hand, and up on the rooftops she could travel more quickly than anyone walking or even riding the streets. Besides, it was easy to find the way to the Silver Ring. Each circular district of the City, moving inward, was slightly higher than the previous one. The Silver Ring loomed so far above that the nobles had even built bridges right over the breadth of the Iron Ring so they would never have to pass through its squalid streets.
 
The Gold Way was one such bridge boulevard, stretching all the way eventually to the City’s innermost Gold Ring; and Wallshadow was a road that ran right along the edge of the wall separating Iron from Silver. Whisper could see them even now, the shadows of wall and bridge standing out against the starry sky. As she drew closer, she could make out the upper floors and pointed towers of the great manor where the Messengers’ target must live. They overlooked the slums quite literally.
 
Whisper’s great eyes widened, her pupils fully adjusted to the darkness, able to make out every detail of the distant house high above. A window was open. She silently thanked whatever gods might be, for making her job easier. She knew of only one way to send a message to the family inside… a much friendlier message than the one the assassins wanted to send.
 
She brought out the contract, the one for the little girl’s death. Then she drew an arrow and wrapped the scroll around the shaft, tying it tight with a bit of string. Finally she put the arrow to her bowstring and drew it back. She was no expert archer, but she had experimented with bows and arrows before. One of her friends – the ones who had all moved on in life and left her behind – had been a great hunter. He had taught her how to shoot birds right out of the sky.
 
The well-lit open window was a more stationary target, though much farther away than most of the birds she’d shot. There was no wind, for which she was thankful. Aiming high, she tried to imagine the flight of the arrow… and then she let it go. It sailed straight up toward the window, fell slightly, and hit it on the edge, bouncing right into the house.
 
Whisper let out her breath. At least that had worked. She could only hope some servant would find the arrow with the contract and would take it back to the master of the house, or someone else who could respond appropriately. It was the best she could do for the girl and her family.
 
Now Whisper had to worry about herself.
 
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw them. Most would not have noticed, but her every keen sense was on high alert for just such a sight: a dark figure, moving through the shadows of her rooftop domain. The figure was many buildings behind her, on a lower roof, but she knew there would be more. The assassins were following her, and they would catch her eventually.
 
She had to go somewhere safe, but where?
 
There was but one real answer to that question. Whisper’s eyes turned away from the Silver Ring, roving in the opposite direction: the outer wall, the edge of the City. There were many watchtowers along the wall, and she knew just which ones were well-garrisoned. The main tower of the city’s night watch was just where one would expect it: at the main gates. She could see the pointed towers of the great barbican from here, decorated with the mostly crimson flags of the Achaean Empire, Coronaria, and the First Legion, among others.
 
She headed in that direction, running and leaping and climbing, all while keeping her eyes on every shadow for movement. Yet she knew her plan was shaky. Even if she begged the watchmen to help her, they would probably just chase her away. Street urchins were always playing pranks on the watch, and they didn’t care enough to risk their already difficult job on the word of a dirty little orphan. Whisper almost wished she had taken one of the Silent Messenger daggers, though even then they might not believe her. They might even arrest her for questioning.
 
At length she arrived. She found herself gazing down at the city’s great Southwestern Gate. Though perhaps ‘gazing down’ was not the best way to put it, for though she stood on a rooftop, the towers of the gate fortress still loomed far above her. She could see lights in the towers’ arrow-slit windows, and far below, the watch patrols kept arriving and departing like clockwork. Most of the guardsmen wore full suits of mail, with short swords and steel helmets, axes and halberds. The assassins with their leather and daggers would stand no chance against them in a real fight.
 
But how to get their attention?
 
She was just beginning to ponder this question when she heard the slightest sound behind her. It was soft, so soft that it would have been inaudible to most ears. Even Whisper almost dismissed it. But at the last fraction of a second, she whirled… and the assassin’s knife cut a hole in her cloak, barely missing her skin.
 
She did not turn to fight, or even look long enough to identify her assailant. She simply fled, right over the edge of the roof. Somehow, operating almost purely on instinct, she made her way down safely. First she landed on the neck of a gargoyle, then leapt off to grab a flagpole sticking horizontally out of the wall, then dropped down into the branches of one of the few trees that decorated the street near the gates.
 
Just then she saw a cart passing by. It must have been a merchant who had just entered through the main gate, his wagon was loaded down with boxes of goods. On a whim, Whisper ran gracefully along one of the old tree’s long limbs, and then leapt right into the back of the cart. The driver did not even have time to turn and face her before she had grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him down onto his side. Then she stood up, planted a foot on his hindquarters, and pushed him right out of his seat and onto the pavement below.
 
“Stop! Thief! Help! Guards!”
 
 Whisper ignored the merchant’s shouting as she sat down and looked for the horse’s reins. Yet even with the reins in her hands, she had no idea how to make the animal speed up. In fact she hadn’t the slightest idea how to drive a cart or ride a horse at all. But she did have a whip.
 
“Sorry about this,” she said to the unheeding beast as she uncoiled the whip from her belt.
 
It only took one crack, and she was nearly thrown out of the cart as the steed whinnied loudly and took off at a gallop. She pulled hard on the reins, trying with all her might to steer the horse toward the assassins’ hideout. It took all her concentration to try to drive the animal in the right direction while clinging desperately to the bouncing cart; she could not bring herself to glance over her shoulder to see if any guards or assassins were giving chase. She just hoped the shouting behind her was coming from guardsmen on foot and not knights on horseback, or else she’d be caught and killed in an instant.
 
Fortunately, the old tower where the assassins had made their dwelling was not far from the southwestern gate. It was decrepit, abandoned – a relic, perhaps, of older times when the walls to the City had been shorter and the Empire half its current size. As she drew close to its shadow, she turned around and, with all her strength, pushed one of the merchant’s wooden crates out of the back of the cart. Then she pushed another, and another, and at last she fell right out of the wagon along with the last one.
 
The fall nearly knocked the wind out of her. She stood up, gasping for breath, smelling the rich aroma of smashed fruit coming from the boxes she’d dumped. Looking back the way she had come, Whisper saw the rushing horde of guards. To her eyes, they looked like a charging army, all clad in glinting steel and red tabards. Behind them, further down the street, she could just make out a few men on horseback coming to help.
 
That was her cue to run. Again operating on instinct, she grabbed the first visible handholds on the wall of the assassins’ tower and started her ascent. Luckily, the stones of the old building were uneven and easy to climb. She was more than halfway up by the time the guards with bows and arrows arrived.
 
The first arrow startled her, bouncing off the wall right beside her head. The second actually imbedded itself in a crack between two stones, where it stuck tight, quivering before her eyes. She could hardly believe that they would actually fire on her. Perhaps they couldn’t see she was just a little girl, because of the long black cloak and quiver of arrows. Or perhaps she wasn’t as little anymore as she still thought. Or perhaps they just didn’t care.
 
But the gods must have been looking out for her that day, for none of the arrows struck true. The closest one lodged itself in her cloak and dangled there, upsetting her balance slightly, but she paid it no heed as she finally reached the window at the top of the tower and hauled herself inside.
 
In she tumbled, rolling along the floor, and then she jumped to her feet, dagger drawn. But to her shock, there was no one inside. The storage room at the top of the tower seemed to be exactly as she had left it.
 
Still, Whisper wanted the guards to follow her inside. So she grabbed one of the black Messenger daggers and prepared to drop it out the window, hoping they would recognize it. Then she paused. With sudden fury, she put the dagger back into its crate and picked up the entire box instead. With a great groan of effort, she lifted it to the window and dumped them all out, dropping the box behind them.
 
The crash of the cascade of metal daggers died away amidst the clamor of the guardsmen shouting and moving about in their armor. Whisper dared a peek over the edge to see one of the mounted knights taking charge. A guardsman handed him a dagger, and he began shouting orders, so loud that she could hear.
 
“The Silent Messengers!” he said. “Open those doors! We’ll tear this place to the ground!”
 
The soldiers gripped the iron rings to fling the doors open and found that there was no lock, no bar blocking their way. The doors swung out quite easily on their hinges. But they were not expecting what waited behind them.
 
“There’s no door, sir!” cried a watchman. “Just more stone walls! All the doors are fake!”
 
The knight paused, perhaps feeling a twinge of fear, and then said, “Captain, send a runner to inform the First Legion! We need a battering ram! And inform the Paladins as well! We’ll purge this scum from our city!”
 
Whisper withdrew back into the tower. Her job here was done. She could leave now, and let the Watch and the Legion handle the rest. And yet, something compelled her to stay. Was she worried for the fate of the children in the tower? Or did she just desire closure? A part of her wanted to put an arrow through some of the Messengers herself, at least through the Mother… and Hanan al-Saffah.
 
Almost against her own will, she found herself crouching on the floor, finding the same hole through which she had climbed earlier that night. She slid down onto the rafter again and listened. Immediately she could hear the voices below. The children were all out in the main room, in the Box. And at least some of the assassins were there as well. Whisper drew out an arrow and nocked it to her bowstring, then peered down as cautiously as she could.
 
“You have all failed,” the she-elf assassin Seona was telling the assembled children. “Do you realize that? We’re leaving now, and you will never see us again. You will die wondering who we might have been, what your life might have been like had we selected you. But we will be like a memory of a dream to you… something that was real one moment and gone the next, never to return.”
 
Willem stood beside her on the raised platform, smiling down at the children. “But don’t fret. Some dreams are not meant to be. In truth, only one or two of you, if any, would have passed our final trials. Some of you would have died. Perhaps a few of you will try to seek us out again. Perhaps one will show enough promise that we might reveal ourselves to him. But it’s better not to chase dreams. Far better for most of you to live your lives as if this had never happened. I, for one, wish you good fortune.”
 
 Whisper looked at the faces of the children. A few were angry, but most were confused or even sad. A few had tears in their eyes. And there was Shade, looking utterly distraught, as if the sun might never rise again. Whisper felt disgusted at how easily this cult had brainwashed him, and all the others. So, settling herself into the most secure position she could manage, her back nearly flat against the low rafter, she drew back her arrow and sighted down the shaft.
 
She aimed first at Willem… but she could not shoot. There he was, smiling his smile of twisted benevolence, of willful ignorance of the evils he was committing. She could not put an arrow through that smile. So she moved her sights to Seona, the tall and regal Ljosalfar. There she stood, her hair and face so fair, her features as cold and beautiful as the finest marble statue. Whisper’s kindred – the only other elf she had ever known. She could not shoot her either.
 
Why did it have to be them? Why couldn’t it have been al-Saffah? She could have put an arrow through one of his black eyes as easily as breathing. But as she lay there imagining it, she felt another sensation grip her: fear. What if she missed? If al-Saffah showed himself, and she gave away her position to him, he would hunt for her. He would make her feel as helpless as she had felt that day he had interrupted her fight with Shade… when he had pinned her to the floor and hurt her.
 
Whisper cursed herself. Perhaps she was brainwashed too.
 
Suddenly the voices of the assassins and the children were all drowned out by the reverberating boom of a battering ram against the building’s stone wall. Whisper held on tight as the rafter began to shake beneath her. Dust and debris tumbled from the ceiling. Some of the children screamed.
 
Whisper heard the voice of the Mother coming from the next room, out of sight: “Seona! Willem! Time to leave.”
 
So the assassins ran to join her, heading into the room with the stairs leading below, and closed the doors on the children behind them. The kids began to panic, their voices echoing off the shaking walls of the stone chamber.
 
Whisper decided it was time for her to leave as well. There was nothing she could do for the children below. The Messengers would no doubt close off whatever secret escape route they were using, and there were no other exits. She could try to help some of the kids up to the rafters with the ropes, but it would be slow and dangerous. The soldiers would breach the wall soon. She just hoped they would treat the kids well.
 
So Whisper climbed back up through the hole and out into the night.
 
She watched from a distant rooftop as the First Imperial Legion smashed through the wall of the assassins’ lair and found the children inside. The orphans were quickly herded out and led down the street, to be taken… somewhere. Probably to temples, like the Temple of Artemis where Whisper had been raised. Whisper kept an eye out for Shade, but he apparently slipped away and disappeared so fast that she never spotted him. He had no intention of being taken to a temple… or a prison.
 
Instead, he joined her on the rooftops. It was daybreak by the time he found her. The sun’s first rays were barely visible in the sky, not yet having touched the city itself, which still lay in the shadow of its great walls. Whisper was looking up at the fading stars when she heard Shade’s signature footsteps.
 
“I’m glad you made it out,” she said, but when she turned around, she saw that Shade was furious.
 
“You should be,” he snapped, stamping his foot and pointing at her, his blue eyes ablaze, “because it’s all your fault!”
 
Whisper’s eyes went wide with shock. “What?”
 
“You ruined everything!” he went on, walking in circles and running his hands through his hair. “I heard them say it! They had to leave and collapse the tunnel behind them because you led the city watch there! And the Legion!”
 
The surprise on Whisper’s face began to fade, giving way to anger.
 
In a low voice she said, “They were murderers.”
 
“You’re so stupid!” Shade snarled. “Do you like this life, scraping food out of gutters and praying a guard isn’t looking? They were gonna teach us to do everything they could do! No one would be able to stop us!”
 
“They ran like cowards when the Legion came.”
 
“Well, go off and join the Legion then! Go murder people for the Empire, under the centurion’s whip! I’m sure they’d be happy to take a skinny little elf pixie girl!” Shade paused then, as if immediately regretting the insult.
 
He was silent for a moment before he added, in his usual low mumble, “Or else you could come with me, y’know, an’ help me find ‘em. The Silent Messengers, that is. They might still take us back; Willem said so. I heard one of ‘em mention a base in Whitehorn east of here…”
 
At that, Whisper stood up, ran toward Shade, and shoved him to the ground. He looked up at her with a confused expression, rather than the angry one she had expected. But she did not relent.
 
“Fine!” she shouted, her namesake quiet tone suddenly gone. “Go then! Go find your cult of kidnappers and murderers; see if I care! But if I ever see them back in my city, I’ll kill them. And that includes you, if you join them. If you go after them then I never want to see you again!”
 
Shade fell silent. He stuck out his lower jaw, hauled himself slowly to his feet, and brushed off his clothes. Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and made a big show of rolling his shoulders, as if trying to shrug nonchalantly. Whisper didn’t buy it for a minute. He was a terrible liar.
 
“Alright,” he said, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand, “you won’t.”
 
For a second or two he stood there, waiting for her to make a comeback, or to take back what she had said. But she just stared at him, her green eyes narrow, cold and impassive. For some reason, Shade suddenly thought she looked more like an elf than ever, standing there proudly in her new dark leather, with her black cloak and bow and arrows. She almost looked like Seona.
 
So Shade swallowed hard.
 
“G’bye, Whisper,” he mumbled, and then he turned around and walked away.
 


Whisper slept the day away in various old haunts of hers, in coarse beds on rooftops and in abandoned corners of the city. Whenever she found she couldn’t sleep well, she moved on to her next hideout and tried again. This continued until the evening, when she decided it was time to go to work. No one would be providing her meals that night, or any night in the foreseeable future. She would have to steal them on her own, like always. But that was okay, she told herself. She was good at it.
 
And so she went out, and she found enough food to be content. And then she made her way to the top of the tallest tower she could reach, just to look down. She looked down on the tall, thin buildings that crowded the narrow streets of the City below. Their long faces were the faces of old friends – her only friends. They were impassive friends, made of wood and stone, uncaring. They were not looking out for her.

But she was looking out for them.