The Archon's Assassin Read Online Free PDF Page B

because the last thing he needed was to rile the Archon; partly because he knew there was nothing to scoff about. He’d seen Kadee—or her ghost—that first time the Archon had appeared to him in the Anglesh Isles. She was the carrot to the Archon’s stick, but if there was some chance she was really alive, some place he might find her, then he saw no choice but to play along. At least for the time being.
    “It is perilous,” the Archon said. “Always perilous where she endures. But fulfill our agreement, and piece by piece we will restore the rightful order and let the dead go back to being what they are.”
    “Shog’s that supposed to mean?” Shadrak said. Let the dead go back to being what they are! Dead is what they are. What Kadee was. He’d seen her waste away before his eyes. Every instinct told him what the Archon had shown him was some kind of trick, like the illusions in the wizard’s quarter. But he couldn’t help it. What if there really was some hope? Hope he’d see her again. Since she’d passed, he’d been nothing. Nothing save a hitman, and that wasn’t anything Kadee would have been proud of.
    “Give me more. More to go on, or I’m through.” It was tough talk, and Shadrak knew he was messing with fire, but sometimes you had to goad your enemy to find out what he had.
    Rather than the explosion Shadrak had expected, the Archon’s blaze retreated into the shadows of his cowl. He let out a long, sibilant breath and then nodded. “The creature that came for you on the rooftops, before you left for the Perfect Peak—”
    “The thing with the gun?” Even now, he often saw it out of the corner of his eye, started at the slightest movement from the shadows. It had been fast, so fast, and yet he’d beaten it. Just. That was the thing about years and years of killing. You became honed to it, took every glimmer of opportunity, even if it wasn’t exactly playing by the rules. Surprise had been on his side, but in a fair fight, he doubted he’d still be there to tell the tale.
    “A Thanatosian, captured by Sektis Gandaw,” the Archon said. “A harvester from Thanatos, the dark world, the stealer of souls.”
    “That’s where she is, Kadee? On this Thanatos? But how—”
    “The passage of the dead has been dammed since the dawn of time, by the formation of the Abyss. None of you go where you should when you pass from this world. The worst are held fast by the Demiurgos in the deepest strata of his realm, but those who resist his pull lie closer to the surface. There, they are vulnerable to the poachers. More than that, I do not know.”
    So, the Archon had limits. That was good to know.
    “In the way I measure time,” the Archon said, “Thanatos is a newcomer to this cosmos, and it had no existence in mine. It is… a mystery.”
    “But you’ve been there, right? You know how to get me there?”
    A round of applause came from the auditorium, and by the sounds of it, people were starting to leave.
    “Quickly,” the Archon said, “your target will be among the first out.”
    “Tell me about it,” Shadrak said. “He’s probably backstage feeling up that tart of a wife of his by now.” Truth was, Morrow was more than likely choking in his own vomit while his internal organs turned to soup, but he needed to see for himself.
    “Your real target,” the Archon said. “Mine.”
    The ruffle of the curtain behind him alerted Shadrak to Albert peering out with eyes as big as plates.
    “Oh,” Albert said. “Sorry.” With that, he slunk back inside the box.
    “Yeah?” Shadrak said, turning back to the Archon. “And who’s that, then?”
    “The man this play should have been named for.”
    “The Demiurgos’s Disciple?”
    “Indeed,” the Archon said. “The newly elected First Senator. Mal Vatès.”
     

THE NEXT HIT
    “H urry!” the Archon’s voice urged inside Shadrak’s head. “The timing is perfect.”
    Shadrak glided past the open doors of the dressing rooms, no