“Who are you?” the gleaner rasped. “Do you work with Cadel?”
The man reached for the blade strapped to his belt. Drawing on his own magic, Grinsa conjured a flame, which he held to the man’s arm.
“Damn you, Weaver! Kill me already, and be done with it!”
“Not until—” Grinsa stopped, gaping at the man. “Weaver,” he repeated. “You knew from the start that I was a Weaver—I sensed no surprise from you when I reached for your magic. In fact, you were prepared for it. You were warding yourself. You’re with the conspiracy, aren’t you? You were sent by the other Weaver.”
He felt the man struggling to use his magic, not as a weapon, Grinsa realized, but against himself.
“You’d rather die that talk?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.” And speaking the words, Grinsa pressed hard on the man’s mind.
Usually Qirsi with mind-bending magic only used it on the Eandi. It
worked best when the person at whom it was directed didn’t suspect that any magic was being used, and most Qirsi could tell immediately when the power of another touched their minds. But the practice of this particular magic was predicated on two notions. One was that the Qirsi wielding the power didn’t want his victim to perceive that any magic had been used. And the other was that he didn’t wish to do any lasting damage to the victim’s mind. In this instance, neither was true.
The man cried out in pain, his head cradled against his good hand.
“The other Weaver sent you,” Grinsa said again. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.” It came out as a sob.
“Who are you?”
“Tihod jal Brossa, a merchant.”
“How long have you been with the conspiracy?”
“Since the beginning.”
The gleaner squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to clear his vision. Then he looked at the man more closely. “Since the beginning,” he repeated. “When was the beginning? When did all this start?”
“Long ago. The Weaver spoke to me of taking the Forelands from the Eandi before Galdasten.”
“You mean before that madman brought the pestilence to Galdasten Castle?”
“Yes.”
“Was the conspiracy responsible for that?”
“No. But we saw in it the opportunity for which we’d been waiting.”
“So the Qirsi did kill Filib of Thorald.”
“Filib the Younger, yes.”
Grinsa exhaled though his teeth. Eight years the Weaver had been planning this. Every noble who had died since Galdasten might well have been a victim of his movement.
“I take it you’re one of the Weaver’s chancellors?”
The man stared at him. “You aren’t supposed to know about the chancellors.”
Grinsa lashed at the man’s mind with his power until he screamed in anguish. “Are you one of them?”
“No. I’m more. I take his gold and pay his couriers.”
The gleaner gaped at him. “What?”
“He can’t pay them directly. He needs me to do it for him, so that no one can trace the gold back to him.”
“So you know where the gold comes from!”
The merchant clamped his mouth shut. Grinsa felt him struggle once more to take control of his own power.
He tightened his grip on the man’s magic and pounded his mind with mind-bending power.
“Tell me where it comes from! Is it Braedon? Is that where the Weaver is?”
The merchant screamed again, his head lolling from side to side.
A clap of thunder made the ground tremble and a moment later it began to rain in torrents.
Tavis! The gleaner had forgotten for a moment that the young lord was fighting the assassin. For all Grinsa knew, he was dead already.
“Tell me!” he shouted at the man. He pushed ever harder with his magic, heedless of the man’s suffering. “Tell me, and I’ll end this!”
Tihod said nothing, his mouth open in a silent wail. A trickle of blood seeped from his nose and was washed away by the rain.
“It’s Braedon, isn’t it?” Grinsa demanded, thinking it through. “That’s why he needs a merchant, so that he can convert imperial qinde to common coin.” He grabbed the man by the throat with his good hand and shook him. “
Answer!”
A strange smile touched the merchant’s lips, as blood suddenly gushed from his nostrils. “Never,” he whispered.
Grinsa let go of his neck and forced open the man’s eyes. The whites of his eyes were shot through with blood. One pupil was far larger than the other, and neither changed when the eyes were opened.
“Damn you!” the gleaner roared. “Tell me where he is!”
Even as he berated the merchant, however, Grinsa knew that the man was gone. His chest still rose and fell, though slowly and with great effort. But the gleaner still held his mind and his magic, and so could feel Tihod’s life draining away.
“Damn you,” he muttered.
He released the man and sat back, even that slight movement bringing another rush of pain. He needed to find Tavis and the singer, but first he had injuries to heal. His shoulder pained him more than the broken leg, but he could walk with a shattered shoulder. He placed his good hand on his leg and closing his eyes, probed the flesh and bone with his mind. He was weary beyond words, and the break wasn’t a clean one, but he poured what power he still had into setting and mending the bone, grinding his teeth together as he fought the pain. It grew
so bad that he had to stop once and vomit. But at last, as the bone fragments began to knit together, his torment eased, as did the nausea.
Soon he could stand and, though his leg still ached, and a fire burned in his shoulder, he found that he could walk as well. He gazed out toward the shore and the gulf waters beyond, straining to see through the rain that still pelted the coastline.
At first he saw nothing, but then he realized that there were figures standing on the rocks. Two of them. Neither appeared to be moving, although the distance was great and the storm still obscured his view. Were they both still alive, then? Was that possible?
He quickened his pace, shielding his eyes from the rain. But only when a third figure suddenly appeared, seeming to rise from the rocks and the water like some beast from Amon’s deep, did the gleaner break into a hobbled run.
He held the boy fast, forcing his head down into the dark water and trying to keep the rest of his body still. Tavis was stronger than he looked, but he was no threat to Cadel, at least not anymore. He could thrash his arms and legs all he liked—it would only steal his breath. A few moments and it would all be over.
“Corbin.”
He started at the voice, recognizing it immediately. He shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Go away,” he said, over the rain and the keening wind. “You don’t want to be here for this.”
Tavis twisted his head suddenly and managed to get his mouth out of the water for just an instant before Cadel strengthened his grip once more. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. Not now.
“Let him go.”
“I can’t do that. He’s as intent on killing me as I am on killing him.”
“Why? Because you killed Lady Brienne?”
Cadel turned at that, keeping a firm grip on the boy, whose struggles grew more frenzied by the moment.
Kalida’s hair and clothes were soaked, and rain ran down her face in rivulets. But her blue eyes were fixed on his, her brow furrowed.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Because I killed Brienne.”
“You’re an assassin.”
He turned his back on her. “You should leave.”
“I followed you from Ailwyck because I wanted to be with you, regardless of what you are. I still do. But you have to let him go.”
“This isn’t some innocent boy I’m murdering for no reason, Kalida. He came here to kill me. He nearly succeeded in killing me a few turns back. If I let him go, he’ll just try again.”
Tavis’s movements were becoming slower, weaker. A few seconds more and the boy would lose consciousness. It wouldn’t be long after that before he was dead.
“In Ailwyck, when we were together, you were trying to change. I know that now. You didn’t want to do this anymore.”
“And you saw how that turned out.”
“At some point you just have to stop. You can find an excuse for each new murder, be it gold, or revenge, or the need to defend yourself. But when does it end? Do you want to keep doing this for the rest of your life?”
He said nothing.
“Please, Corbin.” A pause, and then, “Cadel.”
It was his true name that reached him, that finally convinced him to relent. He did so knowing precisely what would happen, how all of this would end. But still, he didn’t do it for love. He didn’t even do it for Kalida, though he wasn’t foolish enough to think that he would have released the boy had she not been there. He did it because he knew that none of this would ever end. Already he had told Tihod that he would take this newest job. They wanted him to kill the king of Eibithar, on a battlefield, surrounded by thousands of armed men. And he had said yes. He did it because of the brigands he had been forced to kill on the road leading from Fanshyre to Ailwyck, and because of the questions that had followed. He did it because of Brienne’s ghost, whom he had encountered in the Sanctuary of Bian at Solkara.
“By this time next year, I expect you’ll be dead,” she had told him on the Deceiver’s Night, her words carrying the weight of prophecy. After Mertesse, and his narrow escape in the tavern corridor, he had allowed himself to believe that the girl’s wraith had been wrong. But no.
In a sense he did it because of all his wraiths. How many spirits could one man face on the Night of the Dead? How many kills was too many? He felt no sympathy for the boy, but he didn’t want to stand before Brienne and Tavis together, not after what he had endured this past year.
Slowly, he eased his grip on the young lord, pushing himself off the
boy’s back until he was kneeling on the rock rather than on Tavis. The boy made no move to leave the water and so Cadel grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him out of the pool and onto the slick stone. Immediately Tavis began to cough and sputter, and his eyes fluttered open briefly before closing again.
“Thank you,” Kalida said.
Cadel looked up at her. Perhaps he had been wrong a moment before. Perhaps he did do this for her. Their time together had been brief, but it had been the longest romance of his life. Such was the life of an assassin, the life he had tried so hard to leave, the life that had clung to him as Kalida’s wet hair clung to her forehead.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said. “About my name, about who and what I was. As you say, I had hoped to change.”
“I understand.”
She smiled at him, and his chest began to ache.
“I have gold,” he said, standing. “I’ve made a good deal over the years. I carry a bit of it with me, but there’s far more of it hidden away.”
He glanced down at Tavis. The boy was coughing less and had opened his eyes again, although he still looked dazed.
“I don’t care about your gold, Cor—” She stopped, looking embarrassed. “I’m not sure what to call you.”
“It doesn’t matter, Kalida. Just listen a moment. The gold is in Cestaar’s Hills, near Noltierre.”
“All right, we can go there.”
He shook his head. “No, listen to me. There’s a pass just north of the city that leads into a narrow, grassy valley. A river flows through it, and there are a few trees, though it’s fairly open. At the south end of the ravine there’s a pair of oak trees—they’re the tallest by far in the entire valley and easy to spot. The gold is there, buried between them.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this?”
“Do you understand what I just told you?”
“Yes, but I—”
“Repeat it to me.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tavis staring up at him. His color had returned and he seemed far more aware of his surroundings. In another moment, he would remember the thing he’d seen, the thing Cadel had seen as well, but had ignored.
“The . . . the pass north of Noltierre,” she said, her brow creased. “A
narrow valley with two tall oaks at the south end. The gold is between them.”
He nodded. “Yes. That’s right.”
“But surely you want the gold, too. It’s for both of us.”
Only someone who had never killed for hire could think as she did. She was strong-willed, and she possessed a fire, a passion, that her sister lacked. But she was far more innocent than she could ever know. That was the only way to explain the hope he heard in her voice, the belief that they might actually have a life together. Had she spent the last several turns as he had, trying to escape from all he had done over the past eighteen years, she would have known better.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, seeing Tavis plunge his hand into the icy water.
Kalida said nothing. By this time she too had taken notice of the young lord. But she seemed unable to do more than just stare, her mouth falling open, her eyes widening in horror, as Tavis retrieved his lost sword from the water.
Even knowing the attack would come, even having resigned himself to his own death, Cadel was caught off guard by the speed with which the boy struck at him, the grace with which Tavis stood and spun. He held himself perfectly still, wondering that he should feel so calm, noting the way water ran off the gleaming steel, like small rivers flowing off the steppe. He saw rage and hate and bloodlust in Tavis’s eyes, in the fierce, feral grin on his face. And he watched the blade accelerate until it became little more than an arc of silver light, like a ghost sweeping through the rain.
Only then, marking the trajectory of the young lord’s sword, knowing where it would meet his flesh, did Cadel Nistaad close his eyes. At the end, he was aware only of the storm around him, and of Kalida’s anguished cry.
The first blow sliced into the assassin’s neck, nearly severing his head. Blood spouted from the wound, darkening Tavis’s blade and pouring down Cadel’s shirt. The assassin toppled to the rock, landing on his side and then rolling lifelessly onto his back.
Cadel made no sound, no movement, but still Tavis didn’t hesitate. Drawing back his weapon a second time, he drove the point of his steel
into the man’s heart. Lifting his arm to strike again, he heard the woman cry out, saw her rush at him, her fists raised, her face contorted with fury and grief.