"Snakes always find their way to me, and they seem content here, from what I can sense of them. The greenroom is peaceful. Even the most dedicated assassin will not venture here to find me."
"Then they're not very good assassins," said a rough, smoky voice.
"What—" Culebra broke off as Midori let out a startled cry and fell to the floor, landing on Culebra's feet. "Midori!"
Rough hands grabbed him and clapped a rag over his mouth. Culebra struggled, but the fumes made him dizzy, made it hard to breathe. He threw his weight back, sending him and his captor toppling and then rolled away and ran deeper into the greenhouse.
The snakes—why weren't the snakes attacking? He could feel the hum of their feelings in the back of his mind, but they were dulled, as though the snakes were drugged somehow. Why hadn't he noticed sooner? Midori was a delicious distraction, but that was no excuse for being careless.
Now Midori might possibly be—
No. He could not think that. They'd just knocked him out.
Culebra met glass, the back wall of the greenroom, and spun around. "Who are you?"
"That is irrelevant," said the ragged voice. It reminded Culebra of the sound of broken glass, or a throat clogged with smoke. "You're immune to the dream wine, I'm impressed, highness. Come, now. Cooperate and it will all go much easier for you."
"Cooperate?" Culebra demanded. "To the depths of the earth with you and your cooperation!"
The intruder laughed and suddenly Culebra was pressed hard against the glass, a firm, leather-gloved hand squeezing his throat. "You have no choice, highness. Your man is out, and short of removing those bandages, you have no way to fight me. Let's try this again, shall we?"
Culebra tried to protest, but all he got out was a choked gasp before something hard and heavy slammed into his head and the world went dark.
He stirred briefly, shivering in the cold night air. His hands and feet were bound and to judge by the smell and feel, he'd been thrown over a saddle. Fear washed over him, the fear he had battled all his life: he could not see, did not know where he was, or what was around him. He did not know where to go, even pretending that he could get free.
He was lost and helpless, and if he could have, he would have cried. Everyone was afraid of him, and he never really understood why. Reincarnation of a god or not, he was a blind man easily defeated simply by leaving him in a strange location.
Slumping, Culebra let unconsciousness take him away again, half-hoping that he would never wake up.
Cortez felt bad for the little prince. It was annoying because she was not inclined to feel bad for anyone, but there it was all the same.
People had often asked her why she never took the most notorious contract in the country. Everyone knew the Brotherhood had a perpetual bounty out for the death of the Basilisk Prince. But like so many jobs she had been offered, killing him had not felt right. She didn't need the bounty, anyway. And Yago had needed her too badly for the other jobs and the money they brought the Brotherhood.
There was also the fact that the notoriety of the impossible bounty did as much good, if not more, than actually killing Prince Culebra. Yago had never been above taking whatever victories he could find and squeezing every drop from them.
Once, Cortez had been happy with that. She had never believed the dogma of the Brotherhood, did not think the Prince was any more evil than another person, but she had liked having a relatively safe place to go. She liked that Yago trusted her, looked out for her, favored her.
Then she had encountered Fidel, a lifelong Brother. Somehow, they had never managed to cross paths previously. Cortez had not known how quickly a world could change, how much it could change, simply by the addition of one person.
Sometimes she hated Fidel as much as she loved him. Before Fidel, she had felt nothing. Since him, especially since leaving him, she had felt far too much. Habit helped muffle some of it, and alcohol drowned more, but by and large she still felt more than she ever wanted.
But she never thought she would fall so low as to feel sorry for a pampered little prince. Still, there was something about him ...
After making certain the campfire was set, Cortez went to check on her captive. The blow to the head she had given him seemed harmless enough; the knot it left would be gone in a matter of days. He was certainly a pretty little thing, if vaguely unsettling with all that bone-white skin and hair. She wanted to rub some dirt into it to give him some color.
She hesitated, hand hovering over the black bandages around his eyes. Everyone had heard of the Basilisk Prince, the mortal reincarnation of the Basilisk himself. This fragile little boy was all that remained of a god? She found it hard to believe.
Yet she still hesitated to touch those bandages. Annoyed with herself, Cortez finally touched them, telling herself she was only checking they were secure and that it was not morbid curiosity.
All seemed well, however, and she sat back on her heels feeling a bit ... flummoxed. What had she been expecting? More ... well, more of everything. A looming presence, someone fierce, even scary. Surely the mortal reincarnation of the god of death should have been more ominous?
Instead, he only seemed somehow sad. He had not even been able to put up much of a fight. Even back in her darkest days, before Fidel, she had preferred opponents who could fight fairly. Not that anyone really had a fair chance against a talented assassin, but she generally avoided killing the defenseless.
She sighed and withdrew, leaving Prince Culebra to his sleep. He would need it, as they had a long, hard road ahead of them. The journey to Belmonte was not an easy one, especially as she had heard the Bello Bridge had been lost to the last storm.
Cortez went to her saddlebags and pulled out dried meat and fruit. Moving to the fire, she alternated the meat and fruit with sips from her water skin.
It was the unusual quiet that alerted her first. Forests were never quiet, even in the dead of night. She whipped around and threw a dagger all in one smooth move. She heard a choked cry, and a second voice cursed softly. "Get out here, corpse-eaters," she said.
Two men stumbled out of the dark and into the flickering light of the campfire. Mercs, if not very good ones. At least, she hoped they were only mercs. Whatever they were, she was not feeling bad about their deaths—well, the death of the one, the pending deaths of the others. She would still try to avoid it, but her instincts told her their deaths loomed. "Who are you?" she asked, standing up and drawing her sword.
The men did not immediately reply, their eyes fastened on Culebra. "Is that really him?"
Definitely not mercs, then. "He is not your concern," Cortez replied. "The only person that need concern you right now is me. Tell me why you are here or I will kill you now and find the answers another way."
The taller of the two men stepped forward—then halted when he nearly met the tip of her blade. He held up his hands, clearly attempting to placate. "Come now, big sister, is that any way to treat your little brothers?"
"I have no family," Cortez said.
"You may have left the fold, but you will always be our most revered big sister," said the second man. He unlaced his shirt, and in the weak light of the campfire she could just see the tattoo below his sternum: a black rose in full bloom.
The tattoo on her thigh seemed to burn. "I am nobody's sister. I will kill you the same as I kill anyone if you get in my way. I already killed the third man in your party."
"Brother Alonzo was weak," the first man replied.
Cortez ignored that. "Why are you here?"
"We heard you were going to kill the Basilisk Prince. Imagine our surprise when we saw you leave the palace with him."
"Where did you hear that?" Cortez asked.
"Why, from Father Yago of course."
Did they really expect her to believe that? Even if he had known what she was doing, which she doubted, Yago would not betray her like that. Not when he had let her go after she had killed Goyo. After so many months, the entire situation still turned her gloomy. His death had not felt right; she had not meant to kill him. She would never let her temper consume her that way again.
The old adage that an unnecessary death brought ill fortune certainly seemed to hold true in her case.
"Yago sent us," the man repeated. "We came to help you—"
Cortez killed him, shoving her sword through his gut and then pulling it out. She caught him as he fell and threw him so he would not land in her campfire. Rounding on the other man who was frozen from shock, she dropped her sword in favor of pulling a knife from her belt.
Knocking him to the ground, face down, she yanked his head up and pressed the razor sharp edge of her dagger to his throat. "Who are you? Who sent you? Yago would not act this way."
"We are your brothers."
"Tell me something useful and I might let you live," Cortez replied. When the man only continued to sputter and bluster, she slit his throat. Cleaning the blade, she sheathed both it and her sword.
Contemplating the bodies, she gave in to an impulse and began to strip the man she had gutted. The black rose tattoo was on his chest, but she was not surprised to find it was false and that there was another tattoo on his back: two white roses in partial bloom.
Eyes of the Basilisk. Cortez checked the other man just to be thorough and found the white roses on his stomach. So the Order had gotten wind of her assignment, or at least enough of it to shadow her. If they had done that well enough, it would not have been hard to deduce that she was trying to get into the palace—and someone like her would have only one reason for doing that.
Interesting they had not tried to stop her. Where had they heard something that made them trail her? She had not told even Yago what she was up to, nor her old friends in the brothel. She'd spoken to no one about it. Only the men who hired her knew her assignment.
Far more troubling was the fact that they had found her so easily. They could only have done that if they had been watching her all along, which was problematic on two levels. One, she had not noticed she was being followed. Two, more people were involved in the matter than she cared.
Huffing in irritation, Cortez cleaned the bodies of anything useful and tucked the items into her saddlebags. Then she carried the bodies into the woods where the animals would make quick work of them.
Returning to the fire, she finished the fruit and meat she had abandoned. A pity she was traveling with someone who was both a captive and blind. More than ever she wished she still had Fidel. He might have been her only weakness, but he had also been her greatest strength. He had brought her out the dark.
A pity she had remembered that far too late. She stabbed viciously at the fire, wishing the entire matter was over already. If Fidel was dead, she almost felt pity for the men responsible.
But almost wasn't enough to keep them alive, or to give them easy deaths.
She was pulled from her bloody thoughts by a soft groan and swore softly because of course Culebra would choose that moment to finally stir. "Good evening, highness."
"What is going on?" Culebra asked.
Though his voice was steady, Cortez could hear the undercurrent of fear in it. People were always scared when they faced her—and for good reason—but that fear seldom ran so deep as it did in Culebra's voice, and Cortez's guilt cut deep. Terror was the word—the prince was terrified. "It's called a kidnapping, highness. I have been hired to steal you away from the palace and deliver you to some men very interested in meeting you."
"All they had to do was request an audience. I hardly have my brother's waiting list," Culebra replied. "My companion, did you kill him?"
"No, highness. The fish should suffer nothing more than a severe headache."
"How did you get into my greenroom without the snakes attacking you?"
Cortez snorted in amusement. "I used a faerie child who shifts into a snake. He's very adept and helped keep them calm. I've used similar tricks before, though not with snakes and certainly not so many."
"Where are we?" Culebra asked.
She started to tell him something flippant, but that genuine terror tore at her heart. It reminded her of that moment when that bloody fire child had nearly taken her eye. She had been terrified of losing half her vision.
Unable to see, his bearings lost ...
If Fidel were there, he would have been furious with her for taking the job and would not have spoken to her for days. But if he had been there she would not have taken the job at all.
Cortez sighed. "We are a few hours from the city, not far from the Black Woods, highness."
Culebra nodded and seemed to relax, though Cortez wasn't certain what she had said that soothed him. "What are you going to do to you?"
"Deliver you," Cortez said shortly. She stood up and went to her saddlebags, pulling out more dried fruit and meat. Returning to the fire, she placed a handkerchief of the dried food in front of Culebra. "There's food in front of you. Eat it. We've got a long, hard journey and having you along is not going to make it easier. You'll need your strength."
She expected a smart remark about how she should feel free to leave him, but Culebra only tentatively searched out the food and began to eat it. After a few minutes of silence, he said, "So who were the three men you killed?"
"What makes you think I've killed anyone?" Cortez asked, puzzled. The deaths had been quiet, and the conversation had not been loud enough to wake Culebra. There was no way he could know she had just killed three men.
"I can taste it," Culebra said flatly. "Violent deaths, bitter and sweet all at once. The third one is not quite dead yet, but he will be soon." His tongue flicked out, tasting the air, reminding Cortez unpleasantly of that room full of snakes.
For the first time since the assignment had been forced upon her, she felt afraid. Not just the fear she felt for Fidel, that he might already be dead. Bone-deep terror. She'd never heard that the Basilisk Prince could taste death and that it apparently tasted bittersweet. "Eat your food, highness. We must be on our way. There is no time to tarry."