The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (24 page)

I caught the underside of his blade with the top side of mine, lifting it away from the precious cargo inside my belly. With a powerful thrust, I pushed him back.

He stumbled unevenly as he awkwardly fell from the platform.

Now it was time to bring color to this room.

I dropped the greatsword. Before it hit the floor, I already had the hot wax candle from Wilhelm’s desk in one hand. And then, as the sound of steel crashing against marble echoed throughout the room, I had the sheep’s horn in my other. Cool wine sloshed against the rim, spilling out between my fingers.

Wilhelm saw what would unfold. Terror stampeded across his face. He charged onto the platform wildly.

I stepped back. Just far enough to avoid his reaching arm, the rushing summit of his silver blade.

It all seemed to happen so slowly, like a ballad of human frailties that erupts from the hauntingly laggard beat of snapping fingers and knuckles tapping against wood.

Imagine:

Snap. Tap.
And the candle’s raised.

Snap. Tap.
And the flames burble.

Snap. Tap.
And the fire draws jaggedly around Wilhelm’s rugged face.

Snap. Tap.
And the horn is hoisted back.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

Snap. Tap.
And my hand flings forward.

Snap. Tap.
The melody ends.
Silence.

Unavoidable, all-consuming silence as the fire intersected the wine and spewed forth a stream of flames into Wilhelm’s beard. The orange warmth ate the thick hair like acid eats flesh. The flames spilled onto his neck, dripping off of his chin and nose like droplets of stagnant river water permanently infused by the color of the sun.

A shrill shriek brought me out of whatever stasis I’d been trapped in. Time moved normally. Maybe even too fast.

I grabbed a cloth sitting at Wilhelm’s desk, jumped off the platform and tackled the burning man. Wrapping the cloth around his face and his hair, punching it into his throat and cheeks, I suffocated the flames. More importantly, I stuffed the cloth into his mouth, silencing his cries. The vibration of his wails trembled up my arms.

“Accepting an honorable duel with a dishonorable man doesn’t make you honorable,” I said. “It makes you stupid. Now, then, if you will stop crying, I’ll let you up.”

Wilhelm continued to moan.

I motioned Vayle over with my head.

“Sit on his legs when I flip him,” I told her.

I turned Wilhelm over. Vayle sat on his legs, and I pinned his arms to the ground with my feet, keeping my hands free to ensure the homemade gag of burnt cloth didn’t slip out of his mouth.

I flicked his singed beard and the hairs scattered like the petals of a dandelion in the wind. “Could have been worse. Your flesh could be melting off. As it is, it’s just red. Turning white, maybe — blisters, you think? Probably.”

Wilhelm grimaced. He tried hollering at me, but I stabbed the cloth deeper into his mouth.

“Let’s set some rules, shall we? No yelling. No kicking. No punching. Be a good boy and it’ll get you far, yes?”

Beneath the pain — beneath the hot, grotty blisters that were beginning to bubble on his cheeks and chin and neck and forehead and nose — Wilhelm regarded me with revulsion. Scowling, frowning and all other expressions of hatred were impossible for his disfigured face to form, but I could nevertheless sense it.

“I’m going to remove this cloth from your mouth. If you scream, I will rake my fingers across your face until your burnt skin piles high beneath the beds of my nails. Do you understand?”

Wilhelm said nothing. He expressed nothing, except perpetual pain and imperceptible hatred.

I plucked the cloth from his mouth and laid it on his chest. He was breathing heavily, lightly groaning with each rasp.

“Do you have rope in these barracks?” I asked.

No answer.

I splayed my fingers and lightly touched my nails to his cheeks.

“In the armory,” he said hastily.

“Commander Vayle,” I said. “Would you mind?”

Vayle got up and hurried out of Wilhelm’s quarters and into the hallway, toward the armory we’d passed on the way here.

“Torture?” Wilhelm said, his teeth clenched. His lips were raw and crimson. “Is that when you intend to do to me?”

I chuckled. “Torture you? What would that gain me?”

“Enjoyment,” he said.

“I take no enjoyment in this.”

Vayle returned with a bundle of rope. We got Wilhelm to his feet and escorted him over to his table, sitting him in his chair. I stripped him of his golden cloak, then looped rope around his chest, his arms and his legs, binding him to the chair. I balled up the blackened cloth, stuffed it in his mouth, and secured about two feet of rope around it, tying it in an unbreakable knot around his head.

“This'll work well,” I said, holding up his golden cloak. I looked at Vayle. “Go find yourself a fancy suit of armor from the armory. It’s time to play dress up and free Dercy Daniser.”

D
eception
. Deception. Deception
. What a lovely lady she is. An easy one too, if you’re using your tongue. I, however, was using my entire body. Or to be more accurate, passing the living sculpture that was Astul off as the old, weathered man the good folks of Edenvaile knew as Commander Wilhelm Arch.

This sort of deception isn’t for the goat-brained and the scrambled-eyed. It would take ice in my veins and a steely resolve to even attempt. It also required a knife, a full suit of plate armor, a steel helmet with a straight nose piece and the ability to contort my voice into something more grizzled and raw, all of which — save the voice — were easily procurable within the barracks.

The knife chopped off half my beard that’d run rampant the past few weeks. Vayle helped me trim it down so the peppery spokes matched the length of Wilhelm’s prior to his fiery accident.

Then it was on to the suit of armor, which was heavy and cold. The helmet squeezed my ears and amplified all sounds.

Vayle was dressed in a coat of mail and steel greaves she had obtained from the armory, along with a square shield streaked with oil and grease. A skullcap rested atop her head, her chocolate hair flowing out the back and down her shoulders. Looked like the quintessential guardswoman.

I approached Wilhelm, who was tied mercilessly to his chair and table. “Do I walk like a commander?” I asked, standing tall and absolutely straight as I paced. “Do I look like a commander? Do I talk like a commander?”

His eyes fell away, to the floor. Small blisters were stitched across his puffy, rosy face. His cheeks had a sort of shine to them, the kind your finger gets after a close encounter with fire.

“Where’s Dercy being held?” I asked. He swallowed. “I know he’s not in your lovely dungeon. Didn’t see him being escorted into it, and if he was there, your entire city guard wouldn’t be posted up by the keep. So where in the keep is he being held?”

He swallowed again, then clenched his jaw.

I shrugged. “All right. Have it your way, Wilhelm.”

I stepped onto the raised platform, grabbed his skin of wine and poured a small amount into the sheep’s horn. I lifted it indolently over Wilhelm’s head and tilted it with a lethargic roll of my wrist. It spilled over the rim, a small stream of liquefied grapes, red as blood. Wilhelm gasped as the wine trickled onto his head, wetting his hair and drenching his face.

“Always a shame,” I remarked, setting the horn on the table and reaching for a candle. “Seeing friends take this kind of path, I mean.”

I crouched in front of the commander, held the candle up to his eyes and swept my finger leisurely through the flame. He twitched.

“I am a purveyor of information, Wilhelm. I will never rest until I get the information I desire. I will hurt for that information. I will kill for that information.” I pushed the flicking flame closer to his face. “I will
burn
for that information.”

Sweat dribbled into his eyes. Or was it the wine?

Vayle joined me on the platform. She put a hand on Wilhelm’s damp shoulder. “Tell us where is. Pride isn’t worth the pain.”

Wilhelm’s chest swelled. His arms trembled against the rope binding them.

“Fine,” I said, sighing. “Trial by fire it is.” I shoved the candle to where his face should have been. But he threw himself back against the chair, scooting inches away from a very painful ending.

“Wait,” he pleaded. “Please. I don’t want to burn.” He licked his lips. Heaving, he whispered in a voice drenched in desperation, “I don’t want to burn. He’s upstairs. In the royal quarters.”

I placed the candle back on the table and patted his knee. “Good. I’m going to stuff a rag in your mouth, keep you quiet. If you try to bite me…”

“No… no,” he rasped. “Have the decency, Shepherd… have the kindness, I beg you. Cut me. Make me bleed out. If I’m found like this, I… I don’t want to be tortured for my failures.”

I stepped back and crossed my arms in quiet contemplation. Vayle nudged my elbow and gave me an affirming nod.

Seconds lapsed. But time regrettably did not pass silently. No matter your blade, it’s never sharp enough to cut without making a sound.

We walked out of the commander’s room without a word spoken between us. Vayle gulped down the skin of wine she’d snatched from his table and tossed it in one of the supply rooms. She seemed better.
Good for her, I suppose
.

She stopped me before we reached the door that led back into the city. She grabbed my hand and wiped off dollops of Wilhelm’s blood from my fingers.

“You missed a few spots,” she said.

“Thanks,” I muttered, pulling away to leave. She yanked my arm, rooting me in place.

“You were going to burn him. Why are you upset at giving him a proper ending?”

“You’ve known me for fifteen years. You really think I was going to burn him? I knew he’d turn away. I could’ve punched the candle farther if I wanted.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I have known you for fifteen years, and I know that this isn’t like you.”

I put on a fake smile and said, “It’s this fuckin’ North. No sleep, always cold. Does things to you. I’ll be all right.”

Vayle remained unconvinced, but said nothing more. She’d prod me later, and maybe I’d tell her the truth then, but not now. No need to alarm her. Plus, I didn’t know how to articulate it. All I knew was that seeing my brother die in my arms was not good. Watching my Rots butchered in an arena was worse.

Things were being taken from me. I knew what happened to people when everything they knew, everything they had, slipped from their grasp, leaving them alone and cold. That’s how monsters form, how the dead look behind the eyes comes about, how madness takes over. It’s how an assassin can go from killing for business to killing for pleasure. That terrified me.

I touched the hilt of my ebon blade as we paraded into the openness of Edenvaile. I sucked in a breath of frozen black air, held it deep in my lungs and let it slowly escape through drawn lips. There’s something about the suddenness of the cold slamming into you like an unrelenting tidal wave as you exit the warmth of a building. It gets everything going. Sharpens your senses. Makes your heart thump a tad faster, beat a little harder. Makes you forget things, or at least allows you to stow them away in a deep, secluded compartment for a while. A compartment with a good lock that takes a while for demons to break.

Vayle and I climbed the steps to the keep, my golden commander’s cloak — Wilhelm’s golden commander’s cloak — blowing in the wind. Every soldier straightened himself and herself as I walked past the ranks.

Don’t make eye contact
, I reminded myself.
Don’t look at them. Don’t give them the opportunity to question you.

Of course, nothing I would do, save removing my helmet and showing them my true face, would make them question me. They were taught from a very young age to never question authority. The instructions were clear: tap your foot to the beat, nod your head and follow along. It makes for a mighty army and an enviable society that is highly organized. Question not, learn not, worry not. But there’s one great susceptibility, and that’s when the authority fails. Sometimes it’s corruption that makes it fail, and sometimes, as in this case, it’s deception.

Vayle and I moved effortlessly past the guardsmen and guardswomen, beyond the keep doors and to the kitchen attached to the side of the keep. Four guards moved aside, each saluting me with a nod. I returned the gesture as I stepped out of the naked cold and into a kind of cold that was mysteriously deeper and broader than that of the outside.

The stone walls of the kitchen seemed to snag the iciness throughout the day and suffuse it like pollen from blooming amaranths at the end of a southern summer. The door shut behind Vayle and I, and we drifted through the dark kitchen, avoiding the blunt silhouettes of cutting tables and mantels. Some of the embers in the hearths still smoldered, but most were blackened ash.

We moved through familiar rooms. The smell of bloody meat met onions and cinnamon and pepper. My stomach pitched and yawed like wine in a barrel, telling me in no uncertain terms it wanted food. Now. I’d gone without eating for longer than this, but I hated it every time.

A trio of voices whispered softly through the stone walls.

“Dangerous man like that ought to be chained and smoked,” a woman said.

“Smoked? You don’t know what you’re talking about,” a man said.

“Oh? And I’m sure you do?”

“My granddad worked in the prison fields of Ollaroy, way up North. Says they’d never smoke any prisoners they got till they beat all the information out of ’em. All that smoke kills you. Most of the time.”

The voices grew more distant. “That’s what he needs, to be killed. Kidnapping kings and starting wars.” Gray stone separated us, but I envisioned the woman shaking her head unabashedly. “If that don’t get you death, then nothing will.”

“No wars yet,” the man said.

“Won’t be long,” another voice said. “I pray to the Pantheon it will be short.”

“Her boy’s of age,” one of the women said.

“Ah,” the man huffed. “They won’t need him. North is plenty powerful enough as is. Danisers won’t stand a chance, if you ask me.”

“I’m sure Lord Vileoux will ask his washer of linens for an opinion!”

The women giggled.

“Only here till the summer, thank you very much,” the man said. “Ran out of coin passing through, that’s all. When my father gets enough — and that’ll be this summer, like I said — we’re riding for the beaches. Gonna fish our lives away. I’m not like you. I know things. Got lots of experience.”

The voices trailed off, and I continued on through the kitchen.

“What if Sybil is there with him?” Vayle asked.

Hm. I hadn’t considered that angle.

“Would you kill her?”

Now, the death of Sybil Tath I had considered. It was a muddy mess, though. If I slid my sword across her throat, would that prompt the conjurers to attack immediately? We weren’t ready for such an attack… but neither were they.

Perhaps more importantly:
could
I slide my sword across her throat? This wasn’t an existential question set in a moor of morals and values, as the contemplation of ending Wilhelm’s life had been. It was quite literal. If Amielle could rive the sky, buckle the earth and command the wind, could Sybil do the same?

“I’d prefer to wait until she left,” I said.

Vayle couldn’t possibly understand the unnatural and the macabre world that I’d seen conjured by the hand of Amielle, but she nevertheless nodded knowingly, as if she had some faint notion.

We exited the kitchen into a great hall with wide walls and vaulted ceilings. The castle of Edenvaile was mostly a square monstrosity with five paths to every destination. The royal quarters could be reached from a winding staircase that sat just outside of the throne room, and also by way of a less appealing set of stairs that tunneled deep through narrow halls and low-rising ceilings. There were more paths to be sure, but those were the two I knew.

We would be taking the path less traveled, because I had a premonition of my head falling off my shoulders if we tried cutting through the throne room. The fewer guards we encountered, the better, particularly if those guards were officers. Regular guards may not have the balls or tits to question authority, but officers do… because they are authority.

We walked along the great hallway that led into a smaller snaking corridor with forked paths every twenty feet or so. We passed several roving patrols along the way, all of whom tipped their brimmed skullcaps in recognition and continued on.

The flames from wall-mounted candles whished and whooshed as we walked by, their faint golden glow splashing the silk banners draping the hallway.

One of the forked corridors we walked was suddenly pinched off at the tip. At the end lay a doorway wrapped in a still sheet of blackness. I ducked inside, the soles of my plated greaves touching down on uneven steps of rotting wood. A creak here and a dreadful moan there, the ancient risers crying out under our pressure. If you put your hand above your head, you’d feel the cold wetness of rough stone beneath spongy mold.

The candles had all dried out since my last visit through this pathway many years ago, when the grand spiral staircase was still under construction. It wouldn’t be long before the mold would eat this rising tunnel into rubble.

If you were lucky enough — or put your nose far enough up the king’s ass — you got pampered up here in the royal quarters. Got yourself a nice room with windows overlooking… well, snow most of the time. A nice bed with feathers from geese or ducks and enough pillows that your poor nose would never feel stuffy when it was time to lay your head down to sleep. Got unlimited wine and a handmaid at your service who would bathe you, feed you and maybe even fuck you. What was she going to do? Say no to a powerful lord? But the Verdans did not discriminate. It was all the same with ladies of the court, just put a pair of balls on the handmaid and there you go.

Bunch of worthless fucks. But I wasn’t here to cull them, so I walked right on by their rooms and ignored the orgasmic moaning from within.

All of the ladies and lords of the court resided on the right side of the hallway. Or left, depending on which way you approach. Point is, the Verdan family resided on the opposite side. Yes, there was a sort of invisible line that silently proclaimed,
We are better than you.

Which room would Sybil place Dercy in? Probably not Mydia’s. The chambers of the king and queen were a possibility, but one that I didn’t want to investigate quite yet. Chachant would likely be brooding in there, or sleeping, possibly along with Sybil. I hoped to find Dercy alone.

She very well could have stowed him away in her old room. Or Chachant’s, but that was less likely given Vileoux probably took up residence in his son’s quarters for now. Or she could have put him in one of the various rooms that had been empty for seventy years, since back when a litter of Verdans ran amok. That was unlikely as well, though, given none of the royal guard stood watch over the empty rooms.