The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (20 page)

Chachant rubbed a small pill of snow between his thumb and forefinger and cast it into the market square. It disintegrated in midair. “Have I ever been one to succumb to greed?”

“Greed takes many forms. It’s not all about gold, you know? The annals of time are rich with those whose greed for knowledge undid them in the end. And greed for power. And respect. And
pride
.”

There’s a trick about broaching a dicey subject with someone who holds the power to have you dismembered at the time of their choosing, even if they used to be your friend and they still consider you theirs. You do not present the issue to them by taking it as if it were a wooden board and smacking it upside their head. You dilute it and serve it to them as if it were an abstract piece of art from which they can see the bends and turns you’re attempting to take them on. If they decide to join you on the path, fantastic. If not, you drop the subject altogether, or you don’t live long in this world.

Fortunately for me, Chachant wanted to tag along.

“It was strange, Astul,” he told me. “I’d never felt the kind of hatred I did when my father was assassinated. It — or
something
— drove me to declare Braddock Glannondil responsible. Something drove me to damn near beg for Dercy Daniser’s hand in the fight. I look back on it now, and—” His eyes cooled. They looked like dead steel that had been lying on the battlefield for centuries. “It was madness. I would never repeat my actions. The hatred then… it stole something from me. As a consequence, the North has become a laughingstock. All the respect my father garnered? I obliterated it.”

I never imagined I’d have something in common with a king. But I knew the thief he spoke of. The one whose nails dig deep into the soft tissues beneath your skull. The one who picks apart your thoughts and infiltrates your mind. Sybil still had him in her grasp. She’d allowed him to think he had control again, but soon she’d reel him right back in.

“Hell,” he said, “I expected this wedding to be ignored. Dercy’s here, asleep. So is Edmund Tath. Nearly every lord of the North is here too. I hope to mend my careless gaffes of the past over spiced mulled wine.”

“And Braddock Glannondil?” I asked, wondering how much Chachant knew of his whereabouts.

He smiled. “Not here. Neither is my brother, but that…”

“Is hardly a surprise,” I said.

“Hardly a surprise,” he agreed. “But enough about me. What brought the Shepherd and his lovely commander here? Perhaps news of my father’s assassin?”

Vayle forced out an uneasy smile in response to Chachant’s compliment.

“Little progress on that front,” I said.

“I see.” Chachant’s demeanor shifted from warm and congenial to icy and inauspicious. He shoved his pale fingers into his knees and heaved himself off the steps. “The wedding comes soon. There is much to do. Forgive me.”

“Or perhaps even the king of the North isn’t so fond of his weather?” I put in.

“The cold does make leaving my bundles of linens and thick blankets difficult. But I ventured out here to see my father for the first time since his death. Sybil thought it better that I view him after the wedding, in case it would stoke the hatred in my heart once again.” He considered this proposition for a long while as the temperamental wind once again spewed forth a cheek-numbing blast of air. “I think she’s right.”

The boy king of Edenvaile tugged his yearning eyes away from the small mausoleum indicated by the statue of a sword-bearing king. It lay tucked away beyond the outcropping of rock and dirt the keep was built upon, far from the stable and market square. From our viewpoint, you could see only the tip of a masonic sword rising into the air.

Vayle watched Chachant drag himself back into the throne room like a lynx watches its prey meander away into the tall grass. Suspicion weighed down her thin brows.

“Sybil didn’t move the wedding up because she was concerned we’d find an assassin,” she said. “She was concerned about Chachant discovering his dead father isn’t dead. Or discovering that he's here.”

I buried my face in my hands. “Let’s pray to every god that he
isn’t
here.”

T
he last wedding
I had attended was one that involved one hundred skins of wine, a barrel of ale, a rooster and a hen. Rivon had decided Griffon the rooster and Lory the hen had engaged in plenty enough promiscuous acts that it was high time the two exchanged vowels and begin a proper life together. Between the drinking, the duels, and a competition to see who could run the farthest balancing Griffon on their head, it was great fun.

As it turns out, matrimony between a king and his lady is taken a bit more seriously.

Firstly, there’s the matter of clothes. While I was quite comfortable and considered myself sufficiently formal with layers of wool concealing my leather armor, Wilhelm informed me that was not appropriate attire for a wedding. I would instead wear, with great reluctance, mind you, a brocade cotehardie with rich mauve and tinges of gold woven throughout.

The servant girl, whose name I learned was Vivie, took me to a room within the keep. She sat me on a chair and meticulously combed the clomps of knots from my hair and then helped me out of my leather armor and into a white silk kirtle. She laid the cotehardie on a table and flattened out the wrinkles before dressing me with the lavish clothing. I felt distinctly uncomfortable during all of this. It seemed unnatural for anyone except the broken and the old to need assistance in clothing themselves.

Decorative golden buttons the size of cherries adorned the front of the cotehardie and the sleeves that stretched slightly beyond my wrists. Vivie pinned the excess fabric back.

To put on the final touches of this outrageous outfit, I stepped into cerulean-blue hose made of fine silk and a pair of burgundy leather boots that rose up to my knees.

When I finally emerged from the keep, carrying my old outfit in my arms, I found Vayle stroking the snout of a blond mare in the stables.

She looked at me and her nostrils flared. She desperately fought back a smile that carried on with unrelenting momentum, plastering a grin on her lips that I thought would eat her entire face. She cupped her stomach, hunched over and laughed hysterically, tears flowing freely from her eyes.

I blinked and waited for her to finish.

“You,” she said, bursting into laughter again. She wiped her arm across her snot-covered nose. “You look a jester did you from one end and a rainbow drilled you from the other!”

Again she doubled over with giggles. Even the horse she was petting thought she’d seen the funniest goddamn thing a horse could see, tossing her head up and blowing air through her jowls.

I fingered the flamboyant buttons, moving them in circles as Vayle held her hands out as if she was pleading for the gods to not let her die of laughter.

“Do you need to me to find the chap who did this to you?” she asked. “The jester? I’ll tell him to go easier on you next time so you don’t have colors bursting from your arsehole.”

I yanked my ebon blade from its scabbard. It hissed as it seared up the leather casing. “I may look the part of nobility, but I still am quite proficient at putting pointy things into fleshy stomachs.”

Vayle wiped her nose again. “Are you threatening your commander?”

“Making myself feel better,” I said, placing the blade back in its sheath. “Maybe you should be the one standing on the balcony and talking to these fucks instead of me.”

We’d decided — or Vayle had decided — it would be best for only one of us to be present for the wedding. The other would play the part of a watchman. Or, in my commander’s case, watchwoman. Vayle would stage herself between the crenellations of the wall and provide vigilance in case something unexpected were to befall the ceremony. And with Vileoux Verdan alive and well, my expectations hinged on the unexpected.

I hid my leather armor in the excess roughage of the stables. I didn’t trust anyone here enough to keep it secure.

A short time before noon, Wilhelm led me to the keep. I’d faintly recognized most of the passages within the keep from my previous visits to Edenvaile. But there was one that looked new. The stone was freshly polished, the banners freshly ironed and stitched.

It was a dimly lit hallway that led to a door. Standing in front of this door were at least thirty colorful bastards just like me. Interestingly enough, none of them, except the guards interspersed throughout, bore swords.

We remained in the hallway for a very long time, which probably wasn’t actually a very long time, but spend more than a few seconds with these jolly noble bastards and you feel your life slipping away five years at a time.

The brother of Edmund Tath was there, and he explained in excruciating detail about how his son — you know his son, of course, Quinn the Third — had begun archery late last fall. He could already hit the center of a target from fifteen feet out.

How utterly amazing! He obviously had a precocious boy on his hands. How many other princes trained by a lord’s master-at-arms in archery could possibly hit the center of a target from fifteen feet out when the weather is calm and there are no bowmen pointing back at you and no predators chasing you to grind you up as their third meal for the day?

And then I was privy to some lord of the North’s proclamation that his hunt for this weekend had been cut short because of this wedding and that if the wine wasn’t to his liking, he would hunt outside the Edenvaile walls because Chachant wouldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Nice to see Chachant have his bannermen so solidly behind him. That could bode well for me, though, if I could still go through with the plan to supplant the northern king with someone who could rally the men to my cause in exchange for his ass on the throne. Someone like… Patrick Verdan, who I very much hoped to see after this wedding.

I wondered how the Rots were doing on that front in the Golden Coast and Hoarvous.

Finally, the door opened and we filed out onto the balcony.

The veranda seemed considerably larger in person than it did from the ground, and far more regal. The floor was made of polished marble set with precious gems: rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, amethysts and opals that harmonized with the marble in an admittedly alluring glint.

Having a look around, I began wondering how much the bank of Edenvaile had spent on this wedding. The banisters were indeed made from fine gold as I’d suspected from below. The silver balusters were intricately cut into varying shapes and sizes of swords and shields; every third sword was interrupted by a shield, to signify that you were indeed in the presence of the Verdans, in case the biting cold failed to remind you.

There were an array of tables covered with rich black cloths trimmed with gold, the center of each affixed with the Verdan trio of swords.

We were not permitted to sit, however. Not yet. Commander Wilhelm — or Wedding Planner Wilhelm — explained we would stand until the ceremony was complete.

I was positioned by the door, presumably to stick any assassin who wanted to try his hand at putting his name at the forefront of history. Next to me was an acquaintance who had apparently seen the monstrosity that was my attire and decided to outdo me.

He was a tiny man, with short stubby legs and even stubbier arms. The color of rich Tyrian purple dominated most of his regalia, including his cotehardie and a silk-trimmed hat. His tights were dyed indigo and his boots woad, two dyes which were acceptable. Purple, though? Ah, I suppose he could be forgiven. The mollusks which produce the dyes are plentiful where he is from, and his coat of arms is, after all, a purple shark thrashing about in an angry sea.

He was Dercy Daniser, Lord of the Daniser family, King of Watchmen’s Bay, and Admiral of the Ships. Their family used to have a saying that went something like this: “He who controls the oceans commands the world.”

They later discovered it is the man who is smart enough to discern an ambush from your closest ally who commands the world — something Enton Daniser failed to do. It’s quite difficult for your ships to assist when the enemy is marching across your lands, unless your ships develop feet.

Dercy had a grizzled gray beard that looked like twigs and leaves had often nestled inside. His hat covered up the worst kept secret in Mizridahl. Some say he’s been bald since his mother pushed him out.

He spoke deliberately and slowly, a master of stories and a commander of everyone’s attention. “Shepherd,” he said, his thick accent bellowing out the
p
. “Of all the men I thought I would find myself standing before at this matrimony, you were not among them.”

“I am like mold,” I said. “I appear in places you least expect, and desire.” I smiled. The cold sunk into my teeth.

Dercy silenced his grin with a thoughtful forefinger across his lips. “Have you managed to take care of the savant who I requested eviscerated?”

“As I previously informed you, I do not eviscerate bodies. I simply ensure they can no longer breathe. And yes, he has been dealt with. He was not cooperative with my poison, I’ll have you know. He almost got me caught.”

“If you are pushing for a greater payment—”

“No, no,” I said, quelling his worries. “Not this time.” It was useless to negotiate payments when you’ve already been paid. That’s the downside of demanding money upfront as an assassin. The upside is if the person who made the request kicks the bucket before you get around to putting their target down, you made off like a bandit. Admittedly, that happened about once every hundred times. But it happened.

“I’d heard a whisper,” I said, keeping my voice low, “involving Chachant, your bannermen and a war. Although from what I’ve been told, you were not eager to march.”

“Only a whisper?” he asked, side-eyeing me with suspicion. “Chachant made no effort to keep it secret when he visited me weeks ago. He marched with full bravado through my gates and loudly proclaimed Braddock Glannondil had killed his father and that the North would like my hand in capturing a king slayer.”

What an idiot the boy king had made himself out to be. Inexperience at its finest. Only the youth think you can string together alliances by dropping your worries off at a friend’s doorstep. Empathy only goes so far.

Chachant failed to understand that the way in which you forge alliances is by giving and taking, offering and receiving under the guise of friendliness.

Dercy, however, understood that quite well.

“I have little faith he can steer this kingdom well,” Dercy confided. “But I am here today on account of tradition.” He paused and smirked. “And to lend my wisdom to the boy.”

I watched as someone important fidgeted in a hunter-green cotehardie. She did not tolerate the cold well.

“And what kind of wisdom might that be?” I asked.

“The finer points of the crown. Rallying your people, stamping out resistances… promising your firstborn son to Dercy’s daughter.”

I chuckled. “The finer points of helping the Daniser crown, I see. Tell me, since we’re being so open with one another, would you have called your bannermen to war if Chachant had brought you irrevocable proof that Braddock was in the business of cutting down kings?”

“War can escalate,” he said, massaging his dingy beard. “It can spiral out of control. I prefer to acquire my needs through a promise here and a debt there, not through force. But, if an ally needed help, things could be arranged. If, for instance, Braddock came knocking down his walls, then… perhaps.”

Dercy had just proved to me why, despite his amicable disposition, I’d made the right decision for my Rots to usurp him. He had a massive army, on par with the Verdans’ and dwarfed only by the Glannondils’. But the man would never participate in war until the threat was pounding on his gate, and that’s simply too late to act when you’re fighting conjurers. He would try to barter with them, which is all well and good, except when you’re dealing with those who can claw their way into your mind.

The small villages surrounding Edenvaile had emptied out and poured into the belly of the kingdom. Thousands of peasants gathered, dressed in the finest clothes they could afford, which were usually nothing more than old cotton woven together and dyed haphazardly with colors they thought resembled those worn by the rich and powerful: deep reds and purples and blues and golds, utterly dull and sheenless. It looked like a sea of colored urchins had been whipped about in the market square and the stables and the forge and the inner ward and the outer ward.

After mostly everyone had settled into place, their bodies quivering as the cold ate through their thin fabrics, a symphony of trumpets and drums and stringed instruments erupted from… everywhere. I couldn’t identify where the musicians were standing, but their melodies seemed to envelop the kingdom of Edenvaile like the gray snow clouds hovering low above the walls.

The ostentatious showing from every face in the crowd, from every note of the instruments and from the pitch of every voice of nobility on the balcony was enough to make me vomit in my mouth. And even if the vomit would have surged into my nose and out of my nostrils and dripped down my chin, that, I thought, would have been preferable to spending one more minute at this bombastic ceremony.

Fortunately, just as I’d had enough, progress was being made. The door I stood beside swung open. All instruments except the trumpets were silenced.

Dressed in a cotehardie black as onyx with gold trim and golden buttons and a matching cloak pinned to his ironed collar, Chachant strode out. He walked evenly and with purpose to the dais at the end of the balcony, where two pronged candleholders stood at either end. He stepped onto the dais, turned around and drew in a deep breath, expanding his already-broad shoulders and barrel chest.

His sleeves were rolled up slightly above his wrists, the underside of the brocade fabric dyed gold.

The boy thought he was hot shit, the biggest and most important bastard in Mizridahl at that very moment. Little did he know that most of his “important” guests were only here either to laugh at him silently or to secure favors his naivety would be all too eager to dole out.

A nagging stillness thickened the air as Chachant put his hands in front of his waist and clasped his wrist.