The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (25 page)

It all came down to logical deduction. And so I stopped in front of the archway of rock that hugged an imposing door made of cedar. It was Sybil Tath’s room. Two guardsmen, as always, were posted there. Their faces where sheathed in brushed steel that wrapped around their necks and sat upon a suit of silver plate. A protective slit grate covered their eyes, which stared ahead without yielding.

“Commander Wilhelm,” one of them said, with a slight nod.

Not too raw, not too ragged
, I thought. “Step aside, men,” I said, thrusting each word out from deep within my chest, parroting Wilhelm’s voice the best I could. “I have an audience with the queen.”

I saw the whites of both men’s eyes as their pupils slanted toward Vayle.

“She may be joining you as the newest royal guard,” I said. “If Lord Chachant and Lady Sybil permit.”

Even if my voice may have lacked the visceral edge of Wilhelm’s, my manners were spot-on.

The guard to the left spoke. “The queen has forbidden entry until the morning.”

And in predictable fashion
, I thought. The royal guard was part of Wilhelm’s city guard, but the commander held little sway in their lives. Directives issued by the Verdan family trumped Wilhelm’s orders.

“How long have you men been here?” I asked.

“Since the morning, sir.”

“Impressive.”

I turned to Vayle and asked if she thought she had the endurance to stand on her feet for a day straight. While she answered, I took a gander. The remaining rooms were far down the hallway, beyond large swooping walls that interrupted your vision.

Poor planning there by the architects of this city. Of course, they probably didn’t envision anyone assassinating a couple royal guards and freeing a king inside their illustrious keep.

I slapped a gloved hand on the steel breast of each guardsman. “Good men. You do your commander proud. Remove your helmets. I wish to see your faces. The Pantheon knows I could use a good reminder of what some of my men have gone on to accomplish.”

Without hesitation, without questioning authority, the guardsmen took their helmets off and curled them in their arms.

I shook the hand of the young man in front of me and said, “Good man, indeed.” Then I pulled him close, his steel frame crashing against my chestplate, the pimples on his chin bopping up against the softness of my beard.

His nostrils flared at the sound of ebon singing its lovely song as it scraped against the leather innards of its scabbard.

He yanked himself back, but my fingers were coiled around his wrist. I was latched onto him like an iron clasp. The panic of finding himself seized, unable to wrestle his own blade from its sheath — it paled his face to the color of cold milk.

This was all part of the job, the very thing he signed up for: giving his life to the kingdom he loved in a bid to protect her. But when the end comes — and it often comes so early for men like him — the courage, the bravado, every brash emotion shrinks in the shadow of death and the embrace of fear.

His warmth coated my fingers and my wrist and my arm. It sputtered, spat and splashed into my face, dotted my hair in red paint. The taste of burning iron leaked into my mouth as his eyes rolled and his mouth filled with blood.

I eased him to his knees and then to his stomach. Vayle had done the same with her guardsman.

Unwanted thoughts about this young man, his blond hair soaking in a deepening red pool, infiltrated my mind. Was he forced into the city guard as a slave? Were his parents still alive? Did he have a sister or a brother? I quickly pushed those thoughts aside as the two bodies bled out into a river that slowly snaked its way down the marble hallway.

The door to Sybil’s room opened without resistance, and a small, squat man jumped off the bed in surprise. I removed my helmet, revealing my face.

Dercy Daniser put a finger to his lips and waved us in.

“Help me pull them in,” I whispered to Vayle.

We lugged the dead-weighted bodies inside and shut the door.

Dercy stood near a tiny opened window, no larger than a slit for a squirrel to fit in and out.

It overlooked the snowy courtyard that lay behind the keep. Dressed in thick wools and Verdan regalia, Chachant and Sybil were sitting under a tree whose vast arms of needles and pinecones kept its trunk mostly free of snow.

They talked. I listened.

“It’s not right,” Chachant said. “Magic is uncontrolled. It’s unpredictable.”

“It’s not magic,” Sybil said. “It’s a state of mind. It’s something you already have inside you! You haven’t learned how to use it, that’s all. Do you want me to prove it to you?”

Shadows hid the features of Chachant’s face, but I watched him pick his head up slowly from the ground, a mix of curiosity and concern.

“Come on,” Sybil said, jumping to her feet. She grabbed his hand and helped him up. “Come out here, in the open.”

I leaned in to Dercy and whispered, “I think you’re meant to hear this. She wants to break you. She’s going to show you what the conjurers are capable of. She wants to strip the spirit from your fight. I’m told they go down easier like that.”

“They?”

“Those whose minds the conjurers want for their own. Look, if you feel yourself slipping into a void or falling or not at all present in this world anymore, bloody do something, will you? Flail your arms, shake your head, whatever, and I’ll shut the window. When it happened to me, this realm slowly slipped from my grasp… you won’t mistake it for anything else.”

Dercy’s eyebrow inclined. “You were taken by a conjurer? You seem fine now.”

“I am fine. Now. I think. Long fucking story. I’ll keep talking to you, prevent her from reaching inside your mind farther than she already has.”

“Does that work?”

I shrugged. “I’ve no bloody idea. Can’t hurt.”

Sybil and Chachant stood in the middle of the courtyard.

“Hold me,” she said.

Chachant stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her belly. She leaned back onto his shoulder.

“Do you see that raven there, in the tree?”

“Yes.”

“Close your eyes,” she said. “Are they closed?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to imagine something.” She rolled her head from side to side on his shoulder, looking into the sky. Finally, she stopped. “I want you to imagine the raven just as you saw it,” she said. “Imagine it perched upon a snowy branch. Suddenly, it’s flying. It soars against the midnight sky, your eyes barely able to trace its blurry black outline. Imagine it slowing, as if the wind is pushing it back.”

In the midnight sky of Edenvaile, a raven drifted across the sky like a barrel across the sea, slowly rolling along the black waves.

“Now,” Sybil said, “it’s resting before the moon. Imagine, Chachant: this insignificant speck suspended in the sky, this marring of the moon. But you have its mind, my dear. And you can turn its insignificance into brilliance. It seems to be growing larger now, engorging itself on the brightness of the moon that’s suddenly shrinking under the raven’s massive wings and its elongated talons that are ripping at the curtain of the night, pulling it closed, shuttering the moon into oblivion.”

The moon was no longer visible. A single entity of wings blotted it out.

“It moves as you will it,” Sybil said. “It pitches down, screaming toward the ground. As it plunges, the moon becomes visible again, but it looks so small, so… insignificant compared to this creature. This creature that now powerfully lifts itself back into the air. Its yellow eyes spark like a freshly struck fire. Its wings of ink are burning now, melting off as the yellow flames chase away the night. It combusts! An enormous bird of fire, blue flames rippling across the surface of the yellow ones. It gently eases itself to the ground, the fire drinking up the snow and ice as it lands softly in a frozen courtyard.”

Sybil’s head rolled lifelessly back onto Chachant’s shoulder. She gasped.

“Now, my love… open your eyes.”

Chachant jumped back, but curiosity pulled him in again. “That can’t be real. It’s just like I imagined.”

Sybil sidled out of Chachant’s embrace on wobbly legs, toward the phoenix whose fiery tail swooshed about.

“It is real,” she said. “I know you felt it.”

“I felt it in you,” Chachant said, trailing through the snow after her.

“It was in you too,” Sybil said. “You helped shape it. You helped fly it. You helped create it.”

“It’s magnificent,” Chachant said, childlike excitement drowning out the fear that had thickened his voice.

“Touch her. She won’t hurt you. Your mind influences her.”

The phoenix’s fiery body illuminated Chachant’s face. He sported the stupid grin of a man who had no idea the evil he was touching. The flames receded as Chachant’s hand passed over the bird’s body.

Sybil curled her arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “The conjurers
chose
us. They
trust
us, the Verdans and the Taths — the families of divinity! That’s why we must do this. I’m sorry I hadn’t told you the truth before, but… I was scared. Scared of the gifts they’d given me, scared of what you would think. Scared of war.”

“There’s still a war to be had. You said so yourself.”

“Yes, but it will all be over soon. Conjurer spies have eliminated the Rabthorns; the South is in disarray. My father is confident his bannermen will join him, and with your father returning, much of the North will fall in line. The only fight lies with Braddock.”

“Not all of the North will fall in line,” Chachant said. “My father will pull in a few, but my brother’s abdication fractured the North. He has the allegiances of several families… powerful ones. And the North is always fickle. If they see power sway his direction, all of the families may join him.”

Sybil traced her nail down along Chachant’s jaw. “The needle of power will never point toward your brother. Not when the conjurers show their hand. But it will be a lot less bloody if you could maybe… mm, convince your brother to see our point of view.”

A wind caught hold of the phoenix’s flames, ruffling its spine of blue flame. Chachant smiled at it maniacally. “I could fly there tonight.”

Sybil laughed. “Dercy and I are going to enjoy this girl tonight. He needs to see the power of the conjurers with his own eyes. But ride for your brother in the morning. I will meet you there.”

Chachant pulled her in and kissed her lips, his fingers burrowing into her back.

Not one to play voyeur, I closed the window and looked at Dercy. “Feel all right?”

“Slightly ill,” he admitted. “Never mind the fact I was under the assumption conjurers were almost extinct, I did not know they had the power to do… this.”

“There’s plenty more you don’t know,” I said. “Commander Vayle can inform you of everything while the two of you fly to Watchmen’s Bay.”

“Er, fly?” Vayle said.

I smiled. “We’re going to steal a bird.”

P
eople generally do not go
around stealing birds. Even in the remote villages where relationships with wildlife are questionable at best and promiscuous at worst, and where fowl are valuable commodities, thievery of the feathery things is not something that often occurs. The reason for this is simple: birds are bloody hard to steal. Try to steal something that can fly, squawk, tear into your skin with talons, peck your eyes out with terribly sharp beaks and shit all over you
and
themselves without second thought. Sounds like a sort of insanity most would much rather stay away from.

Thankfully, phoenixes were not like most birds. They seemed highly intelligent, affectionate, lively. Perhaps they could be reasoned with. I didn’t have much of a choice but to risk it. This bird was a weapon, one that could not fall into the hands of Sybil or Chachant.

I crouched down inside the decrepit tunnel. Stale air whirled around me. “To the kitchen,” I told Dercy. “When we exit the kitchen, we’ll come to a courtyard. Lots of guards around. Stay sandwiched between Vayle and me when we come out. With any luck, we won’t pass an officer.”

“I can do you one better,” Vayle said.

I looked in her general direction but saw only shadows. “Then lay it on me.”

“Take Dercy yourself. I’ll bring you a horse.”

“A horse?”

“I’m sorry,” Vayle said. “Did you intend to fly as well?”

“I’ve had my fill, thank you. There’s not enough room anyway.”

“Right. So you need an escape.”

“Well… I was, er — you see, my plan—” I cleared my throat. “Fuck it. I can’t think of a good excuse. I was too focused on ensuring freedom for both of you.”

A small hand patted my shoulders. “Isn’t he growing up so fast, Dercy, putting others before himself?”

“Shut it. If you find yourself in trouble—”

“You’ll know it,” Vayle said.

My hand swam in the darkness, till my fingers curled around the collar of a mesh shirt. Vayle clung to my plate, and we whispered the Rots hymn to one another.

“Strong sword,” I said.

“Strong sword.”

“Sharp eyes.”

“Sharp eyes.”

“Cold blood.”

“Cold blood.”

“Healthy fear.”

“Healthy fear.”

I shook her gently. “See you on the other side.”

“I’ll be there first,” she said, and I imagined she was grinning, like always.

She shuffled past me, and she was gone.

I unhooked a dagger from my leg. “How long’s it been since you held a blade?” I asked Dercy.

“A few nights ago,” he said nonchalantly.

“Ceremonial blades don’t count. I’m talking true steel, something you wield with the intention of cutting deeply into flesh.”

“As am I. A vagrant stumbled onto our caravan camp on the way here. He was caught stealing salted boar flanks. I took off both his hands so he could never steal again. Beyond that, I practice my swordsmanship for one hour every day in Watchmen’s Bay; a king cannot afford to lose the wit of his blade, just as he cannot afford to lose the wit of his mind.

“I know you regard my crown as weak and pacifying, Shepherd. But my reluctance for skirmishes and distaste for war does not speak of my weaknesses. I am seated on a coast where bandit ships prowl, where ancient tribesmen hold a special hatred for people like me, where vassals and lords of ancient strongholds and villages grow in power every day and so often wish to take the crown the Daniser name has clutched for two hundred years.

“I am seated in a kingdom where our stone walls are fortified with a mixture of steel because they were under siege eternally during my grandfather’s reign and during my father’s reign. I am seated in a kingdom that for the first time in its history has seen peace soothe its plains and its mountains and its shores for the thirty-some-odd years I’ve sat in that seashell-constructed throne.
Peace.
Do you hear that word? It’s a word my people did not know for more than a few weeks at a time. Anyone can swing a sword, Astul: a conjurer, a drunk vagrant, a hopeless wanderer. Anyone can stab, blunt, poke. Real strength comes in pacifying those whose existence is driven by bloodshed.”

I never thought I’d be lectured in a crumbling castle keep passageway, but here I was, beaten down by the king of the sea.

“Truthfully, I was just curious to know if you could handle yourself in case we were attacked.”

“I’m well aware,” Dercy said. “But I am equally curious if you know the truth as to why the Danisers will be your saving grace in this… what apparently is the beginning of a great war. And that is why you freed me, is it not? You want my army.”

I shrugged. “Better to have you on my side than on the conjurers’.”

“Know that it won’t be for the steel that I bring, the horses I march or the bodies of young men and women who will overwhelm whoever and whatever they face. It will be for the past thirty years of peace; the past thirty years of strengthened alliances; the past thirty years of growth my people have enjoyed. It’s because of that peace that I will have all the steel, the horses and the bright-eyed men and women who thirst to become warriors like their mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. You take care of the North, and I promise you victory.”

A familiar feeling bubbled up inside my stomach. When I was sixteen and met Vayle for the first time, I thought I understood the world and what she offered. Sarcasm and biting wit were the preeminent qualities of my repertoire. It wasn’t until speaking with Vayle that I learned I was very ignorant of the world. She taught me words I never knew, history I’d gotten terribly wrong, cultures I didn’t know existed… things a young boy growing up in the wild cannot hope to know. It was a sobering experience, one that made me feel, at the time, that I was a stupid boy who only survived because of luck. But I taught her how to hold a sword, whet the blade, plunge it straight and true, and through this I learned no one knows precisely how this world operates: the bits and pieces of its inner workings are littered in the minds of all its inhabitants.

Maybe I’d forgotten that over the years, but the conjurers and now Dercy had reminded me of it, and I once again felt like a very stupid boy.

“Let’s work on getting out of here alive first, shall we?” I said.

Dercy smiled and took the dagger. He hid it inside his sleeve. “Lead the way, Shepherd. Or should I say, Commander Wilhelm.”

I grinned, tightened my helmet and crawled out of that hideous tunnel for hopefully the last time.

We passed two roving patrols on the way to the kitchen. Each guard took great interest in Dercy, but they quickly dismissed their suspicious glances when I lashed out at them and told them to focus on finding the assassin.
I’m getting quite adept at this Wilhelm voice
, I thought.

We were halfway through the kitchen when the bells went off. One bell, then two, then four, then ten, all clashing like cymbals in a hollow chamber. It was the annoying, ear-ringing, headache-producing alarm of Edenvaile.

“Two of ’em up here, dead!” the voice screamed, and then trailed off.

It sounded like a stampede of animals with iron greaves on their hooves in the great hallway outside the kitchen.

A panicked voice broke in. “Lord Edmund’s here! Lady Mydia too.”

“The king?”

“Here!” a distant voice shouted.

“Get them into the cellar,” a familiar voice barked. It was the officer in charge of dousing the fiery roughage and horseshit. “Where the bloody fuck is Wilhelm?”

“He passed us, sir, saw him with Dercy Daniser.”

“Get off of me!” That voice belonged to none other than Sybil Tath. Her screech… oh, not pleasant.

“Let her go,” Chachant hollered.

Voices bled in with one another, syllables drowning out vowels, hoarse cries erupting over calm and gentle orders.

“Take your men and find Dercy Daniser,” the officer said. “I want Wilhelm Arch as well, alive or dead. Treasonous bastard.”

“Lady Sybil!” a guard yipped. “Milady! We haven’t cleared that… way… yet.”

“Take
your
men to the royal quarters,” the officer ordered. “Assist the royal guard.”

“Sir! Lady Sybil ran off toward the courtyard.”

“Fuck’s sake. You and you, go chase her down. Now!”

“Let her go,” Chachant roared.

I took off my helmet and sat it near a spice table. “Won’t be needing this anymore. Can’t see shit half the time anyway. Sybil’s going for her bird. Let’s play race the conjurer, what do you say?”

“Go,” Dercy said.

I busted ass through the kitchen, hauling off toward the door and throwing it open, ebon blade in hand. I turned the corner, looked back to make sure Dercy was keeping up, and sprinted through the shin-high snow.

My calves burned. And my chest stung. Someone screeched, but from where? The ground glittered with flakes and ice, but the night seemed to hang extraordinarily low. It was black and cold, visibility blurred by falling snow.

Something crunched from behind. A pair of feet — no, two pairs.

Three pairs.

More than that now.

Their breaths rasped in my ears. Their shouts made my skull tremble. They called for archers. They called for everyone. They’d found us, they said.

“Stop!” they shouted.

We didn’t stop. Dercy and I, side by side now, kicked over the mountains of snow and tripped over hills of ice. We picked ourselves up, and we ran. We ran hard enough to crack the frozen sheets beneath our boots, ran hard enough that we seemed to suck away the blackness of the night. The horizon beamed at us as we turned another corner, dimly lit but growing hotter, fiercer.

Oranger, bluer.

A tail flicked about anxiously, its flames cutting across patches of snow, melting them into puddles.

A shadow flung itself across the crystallized ground. It shed its skin, thinning its fat. It left heavy wool coats in its wake.

Sybil ran toward her bird, determination searing her face. Her arms were bare, her chest almost naked save a thin kirtle. She was faster than us. Closer to the phoenix. She was lightning zipping, shooting, dancing.

But just as thunder chases lightning, a shadow chased her. A much larger shadow with muscular legs that could stomp in a skull. A shadow that exploded through the snow like a rolling boulder.

Sybil spun around. She threw herself to the ground, somersaulting out of the way of a romping steed whose reins were held by my commander.

A platoon of guards banked around the far corner of the keep, closing us in on both sides.

I powered through the snow, urging Dercy on. Vayle and I held eyes for a moment. We both knew the plan had changed.

“Ride!” I told her.

She tugged on the reins. Her steed grunted and wheeled around. A pair of heels struck the horse hard in the ribs. Again and again. She charged toward the guards, skirting around their swords and vanishing beyond the keep.

Heaving and hacking, Dercy and I reached the phoenix. We climbed onto her back, her flames receding. I took the engulfed reins that cooled in my hands like hot steel plunging into ice.

There was a shriek that shivered across my shoulders. I turned to see Sybil on her feet, her face demented and swollen with anger. Had she the time and the energy, she would’ve grasped the phoenix’s mind and likely turned Dercy and me into human pyres.

But finally, for the first time, I had the advantage. I took the reins and I pleaded with the bird to take us far away from here. The phoenix lurched forward, rising into the air. She ascended slowly toward the suffocating black sky.

“How do you control this thing?” Dercy asked.

The bird continued rising straight and slow, her wings flapping steadily. I stuffed my hands into her plumage and held tight.

“Excellent question,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

Suddenly, the bird that was once a raven tumbled toward the gate.

“How’d you do that?” Dercy asked.

I didn’t want to tell him.

Spurts of orange flames lanced out from the phoenix’s smoldering face. She tucked her wings into her body, gaining speed. A moment later she unfurled her wings and flapped them gently, carrying us like a lazy cloud across the sky.

“What?” Dercy said. “Fueled by magic?”

Again I said nothing. It wasn’t that I couldn’t articulate it, but rather that I didn’t want to believe it. It felt very, very wrong.

“Look!” Dercy said, his stubby finger pointing toward the ground far below us.

At first glance, it looked like an agent of the night moved swiftly atop the snow. After a few blinks to clear out the blurriness and teariness that flying apparently inflicts, it became clear this was an agent not of the night, but of the Black Rot.

Vayle guided her galloping steed between the wall-to-wall buildings of the market square, dashing through the thin strip of snow covering the cobblestone streets. Taking advantage of the farce the city guard thought would foolishly lead us into their waiting hands, she bolted for the opened gate.

“She best weave,” Dercy said. “Otherwise those archers on the wall will string her up.”

“She’s waiting,” I said.

The archers thought they had her. I may not have seen their faces, but I was certain proud smirks pushed up the edges of their mouths, and their tongues probably slithered between their lips like snakes. She was heading right for them. Right for their barbed arrows that would sink into the chest of her steed and the flesh of her neck.

Each guard had nocked an arrow. They drew back just as the phoenix carried Dercy and me beyond the wall. I willed us back around, keeping close watch on my commander.

Their aim was on. Their hands steadfast. Their eyes pinned her down, waiting for her steed to take one more step.

Just as the archers of the Edenvaile city guard released a barrage of steel-fanged tips, fletchings and wooden shafts into the night, Vayle tugged on her steed’s reins, vaulting out of the way. Another tug and the horse shifted its weight again, as agile as a cat. Vayle weaved like haphazard lightning through the snow, never allowing the archers more than a guess as to which way she would dance next.

She sped through the gate, continuing to weave as the hooves of her steed pounded the ground into a fine white dust. Once she was far enough away from the gate, she rode hard and straight into the freedom of Rime. Freedom, however, is a fickle lady. Or maybe it’s a man? Or maybe a goat god, hmm? Whatever personification it prefers, it often vanishes just as quickly as it appears.