Honour Under Moonlight

Book 0: God Fragments

by Tom Lloyd

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

A new standalone novella set after the traumatic events of STRANGER OF TEMPEST. Lynx and the rest of the mercenary group he has reluctantly tied himself to find themselves with a little time to kill. Luckily, the city they've ended up in is holding a festival. And nothing spells fun more than a group of bored mercs and a lot of booze. But Lynx has his own plans. A quiet evening with Toil, a woman he hasn't quite worked out yet. Nothing difficult or serious. No fights. No trouble. So it's a shame there's a dead body on her floor. And Toil is missing. And the police are on the way up the stairs... Bridging the gap between novels, but entirely stand-alone, this novella throws Lynx and his companions into a plot which threatens them all.

Release date: October 20, 2016

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 79

Sample

Lynx opened the door and hope died at his feet.

‘Ah shit.’

The gentle white glow of moonlight slipped past him into the room beyond. It was dark inside, but he could make enough out that he didn’t want to see more. A sickle-shaped pool of blood gleamed blackly just past the door. Across it was an arm, outstretched towards him, fingers slightly curled. It looked to be both an invitation inside and a plea for help.

Lynx looked back down the steps to the cobbled courtyard, through an open archway to the street. The sky was clear and the moon sat behind the gauzy veil of the Skyriver. Tonight was the midwinter solstice, one of two nights in the year when the moon followed the Skyriver’s path all night and had its light amplified by that great ring of dust and rock. There were plenty of people passing, most costumed and walking in pairs towards wherever they planned on enjoying the night’s revelries. No one seemed to be paying him any attention so Lynx gingerly stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him.

Without the moonlight it was hard to see, but the strip of light sliding through a pair of window drapes was enough to guide him towards them. He flicked those open and skirted another corpse to reach a balcony door of paned glass, which he also uncovered. That done, there was more than enough light to see by. For half a minute he just stood amid a scene of bloody destruction, wondering what in the deepest black had happened.

The surprise was distant and fleeting. While a corpse or two was hardly a welcome sight, Lynx had encountered enough death to move rapidly on to how much trouble he was in. His fingers twitched towards his hip before he remembered he was also in festival garb – it was the reason he was here in the first place – so no sword hung there.

‘Guess this Knight of Blood costume wasn’t such a stupid idea as it first sounded,’ he muttered, looking down at himself.

Granted the red and white tunic was on the ridiculous side – and a white, wide-brimmed hat pinned with a long red feather skated close to daft if he was honest – but there were upsides. Traditionally the Knight had four diagonal slots for weapons on his chest – a pair of daggers on the left-hand side, a pair of pistols on the right. His hand went to his chest and thumbed open the clasp around the handle of one short-barrelled mage-pistol. Lynx flicked open the breech of the gun to be sure he’d loaded it before heading out, then closed it again and moved to inspect the room.

He twitched open a cupboard door that was ajar to check it wasn’t actually another room, then stepped into the kitchen to confirm it was empty of assassins, living or otherwise. There was a narrow stairway that led up to a bedroom where the bed was neatly made and no one was hiding underneath, after which he returned to the scene of the crime.

He’d not been here before, had hardly spoken to the room’s owner in over a week, but there were little touches in the room that spoke of her all the same. Her brass-bound, black-glass Duegar lantern sat on a shelf in the far corner, and a red and white costume that matched his own hung from a peg nearby.

Lynx looked again. It had to be said that the bloodied dagger rammed into the breast of the costume wasn’t entirely part of the traditional get-up, but it still suited the room’s owner. And he would be forced to admit the two dead assassins on the floor weren’t beyond the bounds of things to expect around Toil either. Perhaps not on a daily basis, true, but death was more than just a passing acquaintance of hers. More of a close neighbour who often popped in for a glass of wine and a joke.

The costume on the peg was that of the Princess of Blood – whether it was a joke with herself or not, Toil was a cheerfully violent woman in some sort of clandestine employ of the Archelect of Su Dregir. She might not be an enthusiast of Tashot, the game that was a favourite among Lynx’s mercenary company, but the Princess of Blood card was a widely-known and powerful image nonetheless.

Her letter containing instructions to come dressed as the Knight of Blood had seemed as fitting as it was in poor taste, coming from a woman willing to enrage ancient monsters from the belly of the earth when it suited her. The Princess was the highest card in the suit of Blood, the Knight often called her consort.

He holstered his pistol and took a closer look around. There was a polished dining table between the kitchen and balcony door with half a dozen sturdy chairs around it. Unlit oil lamps hung from every wall and a fainting couch, of all things, stood to one side of the fireplace. Faint embers were all that remained in the grate, just the ghost of warmth lingering as the chill of winter intruded. It was a surprisingly refined room – leaky corpses aside – with a patchwork of thick, patterned rugs covering the floor and pictures on the wall.

The two largest of those were portraits hung together over the fireplace – the first of a middle-aged woman with a glittering smile Lynx recognised all too well. Alongside her was a great slab of a man painted warts and all, not to mention the scars, but wearing a roguish grin and a ruby at his throat.

Lynx breathed in deeply. The faint scent of night jasmine rose from the couch and some sort of sweet pork stew called to his beer-filled stomach from the kitchen, though the dead bodies added a less welcome flavour to the air. Upon inspection those also turned out to be a man and a woman, although probably not related to Toil as he was sure the portrait subjects were.

Curiously, both corpses were also in costume; black and white with thick black capes and hoods swept back. He would have assumed it was just to blend in on festival night, but it was strange for them to both choose the same look. As for what the costume was, Lynx didn’t recognise it so he crouched to inspect the badges on the chest of the nearest body. Simple diamond shapes; the first a black 2 on a white background, and the other a device he didn’t know. It seemed to be a black moon, the lower half of which was crumbling. Something about that rang a faint bell, but Lynx couldn’t place it.

Both assassins – assuming they were such, but they carried long-knives and pistol-bows, which were more conducive to quiet murder than extremely loud mage-guns – had died of knife wounds. One, the woman, had a hilt protruding from just below her jaw line – driven with great force up into her head. The weapon didn’t have a guard and all he could see was a rough, rounded wooden grip that made it probably a kitchen knife. Certainly it hadn’t been worth retrieving by the killer. The other body bore long slash wounds that looked like they had come from a larger weapon, more akin to the short-swords Toil preferred.

Lynx walked around the room, picking his fe. . .