Assassin's Blade (31 page)

“When you want to unsheathe the blades,” the inventor said, taking a large step back, “it’s a downward sweep, and an extra flick of the wrist.” He demonstrated the motion with his own scrawny arm, and Celaena echoed it.

She grinned as a narrow blade shot out of a concealed flap in her forearm. Permanently attached to the suit, it was like having a short sword welded to her arm. She made the same motion with the other wrist, and the twin blade appeared. Some internal mechanism had to be responsible for it—some brilliant contraption of springs and gears. She gave a few deadly swings in the air in front of her, reveling in the
whoosh-whoosh-whoosh
of the swords. They were finely made, too. She raised her brows in admiration. “How do they go back?”

“Ah, a little more difficult,” the inventor said. “Wrist angled up, and press this little button here. It should trigger the mechanism—there you go.” She watched the blade slide back into the suit, then released and returned the blade several times.

The deal with Doneval and his partner was in four days, just long enough for her to try using the new suit. Four days was plenty to figure out his house’s defenses and learn what time the meeting would take place, especially since she already knew that it was occurring in some private study.

At last she looked at Arobynn. “How much is it?”

He pushed off the wall. “It’s a gift. As are the boots.” She knocked a toe against the tiled floor, feeling the jagged edges and grooves of the soles. Perfect for climbing. The sheepskin interior would keep her feet at body temperature, the inventor had said, even if she got them utterly soaked. She’d never even
heard
of a suit like this. It would completely change the way she conducted her missions. Not that she needed the suit to give her an edge. But she was Celaena Sardothien, gods be damned, so didn’t she deserve the very best equipment? With this suit, no one would question her place as Adarlan’s Assassin. Ever. And if they did … Wyrd help them.

The inventor asked to take her final measurements, though the ones Arobynn had supplied were almost perfect. She lifted her arms out as he did the measuring, asking him bland questions about his trip from Melisande and what he planned to sell here. He was a master tinkerer, he said—and specialized in crafting things that were believed to be impossible. Like a suit that was both armor
and
an armory, and lightweight enough to wear comfortably.

Celaena looked over her shoulder at Arobynn, who had watched her interrogation with a bemused smile. “Are you getting one made?”

“Of course. And Sam, too. Only the best for my best.” She noticed that he didn’t say “assassin”—but whatever the tinkerer thought about who they were, his face yielded no sign.

She couldn’t hide her surprise. “You never give Sam gifts.”

Arobynn shrugged, picking at his nails. “Oh, Sam will be paying for the suit. I can’t have my second-best completely vulnerable, can I?”

She hid her shock better this time. A suit like this had to cost a small fortune. Materials aside, just the hours it must have taken the tinkerer to create it … Arobynn had to have commissioned them immediately after he’d sent her to the Red Desert. Perhaps he truly felt bad about what happened. But to force Sam to buy it …

The clock chimed eleven, and Arobynn let out a long breath. “I have a meeting.” He waved a ringed hand to the tinkerer. “Give the bill to my manservant when you’re done.” The master tinkerer nodded, still measuring Celaena.

Arobynn approached her, each step as graceful as a movement of a dance. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “I’m glad to have you back,” he murmured onto her hair. With that, he strolled from the room, whistling to himself.

The tinkerer knelt to measure the length between her knee and boot tip, for whatever purpose that had. Celaena cleared her throat, waiting until she was sure Arobynn was out of earshot. “If I were to
give you a piece of Spidersilk, could you incorporate it into one of these uniforms? It’s small, so I’d just want it placed around the heart.” She used her hands to show the size of the material that she’d been given by the merchant in the desert city of Xandria.

Spidersilk was a near-mythical material made by horse-sized stygian spiders—so rare that you had to brave the spiders yourself to get it. And they didn’t trade in gold. No, they coveted things like dreams and memories and souls. The merchant she’d met had traded twenty years of his youth for a hundred yards of it. And after a long, strange conversation with him, he’d given her a few square inches of Spidersilk.
A reminder
, he’d said.
That everything has a price
.

The master tinkerer’s bushy brows rose. “I—I suppose. To the interior or the exterior? I think the interior,” he went on, answering his own question. “If I sewed it to the exterior, the iridescence might ruin the stealth of the black. But it’d turn any blade, and it’s just barely the right size to shield the heart. Oh, what I’d give for ten yards of Spidersilk! You’d be invincible, my dear.”

She smiled slowly. “As long as it guards the heart.”

She left the tinkerer in the hall. Her suit would be ready the day after tomorrow.

It didn’t surprise her when she ran into Sam on her way out. She’d spotted the dummy that bore his own suit waiting for him in the training hall. Alone with her in the hallway, he examined her suit. She still had to change out of it and bring it back downstairs to the tinkerer so he could make his final adjustments in whatever shop he’d set up while he was staying in Rifthold.

“Fancy,” Sam said. She made to put her hands on her hips, but stopped. Until she mastered the suit, she had to watch how she moved—or else she might skewer someone. “Another gift?”

“Is there a problem if it is?”

She hadn’t seen Sam at all yesterday, but, then again, she’d also made herself pretty scarce. It wasn’t that she was avoiding him; she just didn’t particularly want to see him if it meant running into Lysandra, too. But it seemed strange that he wasn’t on any mission. Most of the other assassins were away on various jobs or so busy they were hardly at home. But Sam seemed to be hanging around the Keep, or helping Lysandra and her madam.

Sam crossed his arms. His white shirt was tight enough that she could see the muscles shifting beneath. “Not at all. Though I’m a little surprised that you’re accepting his gifts. How can you forgive him after what he did?”

“Forgive him! I’m not the one cavorting with Lysandra and attending luncheons and doing … doing whatever in hell it is you spent the summer doing!”

Sam let out a low growl. “You think I actually enjoy any of that?”

“You weren’t the one sent off to the Red Desert.”

“Believe me, I would rather have been thousands of miles away.”

“I
don’t
believe you. How can I believe anything you say?”

His brows furrowed. “What are you
talking
about?”

“Nothing. None of your business. I don’t want to talk about this. And I don’t particularly want to talk to
you
, Sam Cortland.”

“Then go ahead,” he breathed. “Go crawl back to Arobynn’s study and talk to
him
. Let him buy you presents and pet your hair and offer you the best-paying missions we get. It won’t take him long to figure out the price for your forgiveness, not when—”

She shoved him. “Don’t you
dare
judge me. Don’t you say one more word.”

A muscle feathered in his jaw. “That’s fine with me. You wouldn’t listen anyway. Celaena Sardothien and Arobynn Hamel: just the two of you, inseparable, until the end of the world. The rest of us might as well be invisible.”

“That sounds an awful lot like jealousy. Especially considering you had three uninterrupted months with him this summer. What happened, hmm? You failed to convince him to make
you
his favorite? Found you lacking, did he?”

Sam was in her face so quickly that she fought the urge to jump back. “You know
nothing
about what this summer was like for me.
Nothing
, Celaena.”

“Good. I don’t particularly care.”

His eyes were so wide that she wondered if she’d struck him without realizing it. At last he stepped away, and she stormed past him. She halted when he spoke again. “You want to know what price I asked for forgiving Arobynn, Celaena?”

She slowly turned. With the ongoing rain, the hall was full of shadows and light. Sam stood so still that he might have been a statue. “My price was his oath that he’d never lay a hand on you again. I told him I’d forgive him in exchange for that.”

She wished he’d punched her in the gut. It would have hurt less. Not trusting herself to keep from falling to her knees with shame right there, she just stalked down the hall.

She didn’t want to speak to Sam ever again. How could she look him in the eye? He’d made Arobynn swear that
for her
. She didn’t know what words could convey the mixture of gratitude and guilt. Hating him had been so much easier … And it would have been far simpler if he’d blamed her for Arobynn’s punishment. She had said such cruel things to him in the hallway; how could she ever begin to apologize?

Arobynn came to her room after lunch and told her to have a dress pressed. Doneval, he’d heard, was going to be at the theater that night, and with four days until his exchange, it would be in her best interest to go.

She’d formulated a plan for stalking Doneval, but she wasn’t proud enough to refuse Arobynn’s offer to use his box at the theater for spying—to see who Doneval spoke to, who sat near him, who guarded him. And to see a classical dance performed with a full orchestra … well, she’d never turn that down. But Arobynn failed to say who would be joining them.

She found out the hard way when she climbed into Arobynn’s carriage and discovered Lysandra and Sam waiting inside. With four days until her Bidding, the young courtesan needed all the exposure she could get, Arobynn calmly explained. And Sam was there to provide additional security.

Celaena dared a glance at Sam as she slumped onto the bench beside him. He watched her, his eyes wary, shoulders tensed, as if he expected her to launch a verbal attack right there. Like she’d mock him for what he’d done. Did he really think she was that cruel? Feeling a bit sick, she dropped Sam’s stare. Lysandra just smiled at Celaena from across the carriage and linked her elbow through Arobynn’s.

CHAPTER
3

Two attendants greeted them at Arobynn’s private box, taking their sodden cloaks and exchanging them for glasses of sparkling wine. Immediately, one of Arobynn’s acquaintances popped in from the hall to say hello, and Arobynn, Sam, and Lysandra remained in the velvet-lined antechamber as they chatted. Celaena, who had no interest in seeing Lysandra test out her flirting with Arobynn’s friend, strode through the crimson curtain to take her usual seat closest to the stage.

Arobynn’s box was on the side of the cavernous hall, near enough to the center so that she had a mostly unobstructed view of the stage and the orchestra pit, but still angled enough to make her look longingly at the empty Royal Boxes. All of them occupied the coveted center position, and all of them were vacant. What a waste.

She observed the floor seats and the other boxes, taking in the glittering jewels, the silk dresses, the golden glow of sparkling wine in
fluted glasses, the rumbling murmur of the mingling crowd. If there was one place where she felt the most at home, a place where she felt happiest, it was here, in this theater, with the red velvet cushions and the glass chandeliers and the gilded domed ceiling high, high above them. Had it been coincidence or planning that had led to the theater being constructed in the very heart of the city, a mere twenty-minute walk from the Assassins’ Keep? She knew it would be hard for her to adjust to her new apartment, which was nearly double the distance from the theater. A sacrifice she was willing to make—if she ever found the right moment to tell Arobynn she was paying her debt and moving out. Which she would. Soon.

She felt Arobynn’s easy, self-assured gait strutting across the carpet, and straightened as he leaned over her shoulder. “Doneval is straight ahead,” Arobynn whispered, his breath hot on her skin. “Third box in from the stage, second row of seats.”