Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(25)

He thought of the fisherman’s screams, and almost felt guilty.

Almost.

When all was ready, Barrabus gathered up his cloak. He passed a small mirror on his way to the door and was reminded of Alegni’s order that he trim his beard and hair.

He walked out of the room, just another visitor to Neverwinter on a fine night with a warm sunset over the water, a simple, small man, walking openly and apparently unarmed. He had just one belt pouch, on his right hip, which lay flat against the side of his leg, seeming empty, though of course it was not.

He stopped at a nearby tavern—he didn’t know its name and didn’t care—to get a single drink of harsh BG rum, the Baldurian concoction that had become the favorite of sailors all along the Sword Coast since it was quite inexpensive, and tasted so wretched few would bother stealing it.

For Barrabus, who downed it in one gulp, the rum served as his transition, the moment when he moved himself into a higher state of being and consciousness, when all those years of training and expert work crystallized in his thoughts. He closed his eyes a few moments later and felt the inevitable cloudiness of downing so potent a drink, and refocused his attention many times over in tearing through that dullness, in coming to the very edge of preparedness.

“Ye want another?” the barkeep said to him.

“He’ll be on his back if he does!” one smelly brute insisted, to rowdy laughter from his three companions, all of whom outweighed Barrabus by a hefty amount.

Barrabus looked at the man with curiosity. The fool obviously didn’t understand that Barrabus was wondering if he might kill all four of the ruffians and still complete his task as planned.

“What’re ye thinking?” the man demanded.

Barrabus didn’t blink and didn’t let a hint of a smile, of any expression, come forth. He placed the glass down on the bar and started to walk away.

“Ah, but go ahead and have another,” one of the man’s friends said, stepping up beside Barrabus. “Let’s see if ye can swig it and still stand, eh?”

Barrabus did stop, for a heartbeat, but never bothered to look at the man.

And for that insult, the drunk shoved against Barrabus’s shoulder, or tried to. The moment his hand touched the assassin, Barrabus knifed his own hand up behind it, over it, and hooked the man’s thumb with his own then jerked down with such force that the ruffian lurched to the side and down, his hand twisted right over backward.

“Do you need two hands to pull fish into your boat?” Barrabus calmly asked him.

When the man tried to wriggle free instead of answering, Barrabus expertly added another quarter twist and re-angled his pressure just enough to keep his opponent from gaining any balance.

“I suppose you do, so for the sake of your family, I will forgive you this once.” With that, he let the man go. As the fool stumbled, Barrabus started for the door.

“I got no family!” the man shouted at him, as if that was some kind of insulting retort, and Barrabus heard the charge.

He turned at the last moment, his hands coming up to deflect the awkward grabs of the drunken fool, his knee coming up to abruptly halt the man’s bull rush. The many tavern patrons watching the incident weren’t sure what happened, just that the ruffian had stopped suddenly and was clenched with the much smaller man.

“And likely now you’ll never have one,” Barrabus whispered to the man. “And the world will be a better place.”

He gently moved the man back and even helped him regain his balance, though the man’s stare was blank and his thoughts surely spinning as his hands moved center and down as he bent, trembling fingers trying to help secure his crushed testicles.

Barrabus paid him no heed and just walked out of the tavern. He heard a crash as he exited, and knew that the fool had tumbled. Then he heard, predictably, the outrage of the man’s three companions as the shock of his bold move wore thin.

They burst out onto the street, all spit and curses, leaping up and down, looking this way and that and shouting into the empty night. They shook their fists and promised revenge, but went back inside.

Sitting atop the tavern, legs dangling over the edge of the rooftop, Barrabus just watched and sighed at their utterly predictable idiocy.

He was at the lord’s grand four-story home soon after, in the shadows and trees behind the back of the house. Hugo Babris was a careful man, it seemed, and Barrabus was surprised to see so many guards patrolling the grounds and moving along the balconies. Barrabus had seen that sort of thing before, where a leader perceived as weak had surrounded himself with substantial protection. What that usually meant, the assassin knew, was that the leader served as a mouthpiece, a puppet, for the true powers behind him, though what those powers might be in the strange and fast-growing city of Neverwinter, Barrabus could not be certain. Pirates, likely, or a merchants’ guild getting fat off the policies of Lord Hugo Babris. Certainly someone was paying a hefty sum to provide that level of protection.

Barrabus glanced around, thinking that perhaps he should be on his way. He understood why Herzgo Alegni had gone out of his way to send for him, but it occurred to him that perhaps the tiefling had set him up to fail.

With that thought in mind, Barrabus moved, but not away. He wouldn’t give Alegni the satisfaction.

The assassin slithered up the wall and peered into the courtyard, noting one patrol in particular, a pair of guards each with a very large, angry-looking dog.