The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (5 page)

“Just a figure of speech,” I explained, allaying the concern in his voice. “
Seems
almost magical to assassinate a king and get away with it nowadays.”

“Right, right,” he said. He pinched a nostril and snorted, sucking back up snot that his failed attempt at swallowing had shaken loose. “Does seem strange, grant you that. Wish you luck and all that, finding the killer. Nice of you stop by, Astul. I appreciate it.”

He gave me a friendly nod, stood and began tidying up.

“Rivon,” I said, remaining seated, “we’ve hardly talked.”

“Haven’t we? So sorry. Lose track of time nowadays. Days blend together with nights, nights with days, sun with the moon, moon with the sun.” He rambled on, miming the clash of astral bodies with his hands. Tea spilled over the rim of his cup and splashed onto the floor. He didn’t seem to realize.

Scooting out of the chair, I went up to him and steadied him with an arm around his shoulders. “Easy, old man. Come on, now, have a seat. When’s the last time you slept?”

He counted his fingers. “Oh… oh, been three days, I think.”

Must’ve been triple that since he had last showered. The must of slimy sweat caked on his skin and through the layers of his thin hair stung my eyes and made them water. I dropped him off in his chair and retreated to the other side of the table, where the stench wasn’t so noticeable.

“Must be exhausting,” I said, “tending to all these chickens. Do you supply all of Erior with eggs?”

“Oh, Gods, no. No, no. Only the royal family.”

“Lotta hens for one family.”

“Lotta mouths for that one family,” he countered.

I leaned in sympathetically and touched his arm. “Rivon, this wasn’t your dream, playing slave to a king. What happened? You were supposed to come here to the richest city of the world with all the coin you made as a Rot, and you told us — you said, I’m gonna live like a king, fuck like a rabbit, drink like I’ve got five mouths, ten stomachs and twenty livers, and I’ll raise my roosters in peace. Instead, you’re livin’ like a glorified farmer and drink like an old man whose stomach can only handle weak tea. And you probably fuck like a eunuch, don’t you?”

He thumbed the wiry bristles on his chin. “Priorities,” he said vaguely, “they change, and…”

“Fuck off with all this bullshit. You’re leavin’, man. And you don’t want anyone to know. Why?”

He touched his forehead to the table, sighed heavily, and picked his wary eyes up. His mouth moved, but nothing came out.

“Talk to me,” I said. “I allowed you into the Rots when you couldn’t fight for shit. Tried training you to swing a sword, and you never could grasp the concept. But damn if you weren’t good at organizing the Hole, keeping morale high, procuring goods — you were like a fucking nanny and requisitions officer rolled into one. But that’s not what the Rots have ever needed. I could’ve booted your ass out, but I let you stay. Because I liked you.

“And I let you leave our brotherhood to go live your golden years out in the capital of the world. Didn’t ask for the gold back, the horse, the swords… nothing. Now I’m asking for something: what has you so scared that you’re willing to abandon your roosters and your home?”

He covered his face with pruned hands and began weeping. “You’ll… you’ll never believe me.” He struck the table with a closed fist. “You’ll think I’m an old coot.” Another fist, another strike. The table wobbled. “I’m not a fuckin’ old coot, you got that?” His trembling lip curled out, and a row of bony teeth grimaced at me. “I know what I fuckin’ saw!” He pointed a leathery finger at me accusatorily and shouted, “I know what I fuckin’ saw!”

Tears sledded down his cheek and into his mouth. Born from fear? Or anger? Maybe both. Probably both.

“I believe anything these days, Rivon.”

A louring scowl darkened his face. The room felt cold, bitter. Long gone was my friend’s witless eloquence and the childlike playfulness. He looked like the kind of man beaten into submission by grief and tortured by horror.

“Always wondered why Braddock married that poor woman, Pristia,” he said. “He had his pick of the lot. Could’ve gotten Mydia if he wanted. Or Dercy’s girl. No, no, he takes the hand of a fisherman’s daughter.” He clenched his teeth and added, “And now, I
know
why.”

This was not heading in a pleasant direction. I swung the cup of tea up to my mouth, throwing every drop of it back. Throat was still dry.

“About a week back,” he explained, “I took my usual midnight stroll before lying down. Near the fountain, up there by the keep, she come running out. Mad running, like a woman gone batty. Arms were flinging up and down, her hair’s going everywhere, her dress is flying up into her face, and she’s got no britches on. Her eyes, Astul, they were white. I’d never seen white like this.”

“Like snow?” I asked.

“No, no. Whiter than snow. Whiter than the hottest fire I’ve ever seen. So white, I couldn’t see the pinpoints in there, just a solid… it looked like nothingness. Dead, maybe. Yeah, that’s the word. Dead. Looked damned dead. But she was alive, Astul. She shrieked, hurt my ears, made my roosters crow. And then she saw me. She knew I’d witnessed it all. Guards shooed me away, ushered me back to my coop here.”

I trailed a finger down my pimpled arm, hoping to push the bumps back into my skin. Didn’t work so well. We’re all children inside, scared of the unexplainable monsters of the night. Or in my case, the very explainable.

“Suppose that’ll keep anyone up for a while,” I said.

His head swung back and forth like the twine of a pendulum. “Not me, not then. You believe I fell right asleep after that, in my bed, in the arms of my lover?”

“Er,” I stuttered, having a quick look around. “Your lover take the bed with her?”

“I burned the bitch.”

I instinctively scooted back away from the table in surprise.

“Not her,” he clarified. “The bed.”

“Oh. Your lover already get a head start on you?”

“You could say that,” he said morbidly. He wiped his nose and stared at the grains on the table. “Jumped right off the cliff four days ago. Out back here. Hit the cobbles below. Splattered into chunks and pieces and—”

“Rivon,” I said, touching his shoulder.

“Shards of bone everywhere. Brain bits between the cobbles.” He picked his head up and looked past me like I wasn’t even there. “Do you know how much blood is in a body?”

There’s no damn good answer for that question.

“A warning is what it was,” he speculated. “Pristia seemed to follow me after that night. Any conversation, she was nearby, watching. Glaring at me. She took my lover’s mind and ruined it… a warning that if I couldn’t keep a secret, I was next.”

The secret, of course, was that the queen of Erior was a conjurer. If conjurers aren’t careful, their attempts at rooting around in another’s mind can make them lose their own temporarily. Their eyes roll back, blood gets sucked right out of their face, and insanity grips them.

I drummed my finger on the table. “Fuck me.”

“Yeeeuup,” Rivon said. “Been sayin’ that myself.”

“Braddock Glannondil is a scary enough man without a conjurer riffling around in his mind and pulling his strings.”

Rivon clapped his hands and got up. “I’ll be off soon. Faster I can get out of this terrible place, the better.”

“I need your help.”

He sighed and sat back down. “I was afraid you’d say that. I’m not killin’ anyone, Astul. Positively refuse to do it. Absolutely under no circumstance will I—”

“I’m not asking you to kill someone,” I said. “I’m asking you to help
me
kill someone. If you tell Pristia that you’ll divulge what you saw, unless she gives you, I don’t know, some sort of monetary gift — do you think she’ll pay you a visit and take your mind?”

“That would be a likely scenario, very much so, yes.”

“Good. Do it, tonight.”

He held out a pair of placating hands. “Astul…”

“I need this, Rivon. Vileoux Verdan is dead and Braddock Glannondil is under the control of a conjurer. Something big is happening, old friend, and I’m not eager to see it come to fruition. Whatever the conjurers are planning, we need to stop them.”

He cleared his throat. “Leaving here and going far, far away, I believe, is a fantastic solution, wouldn’t you agree?”

“You can run as far as you want,” I said, “but you’ll still be living in a world where a bunch of misbegotten fucks can steal your mind at a moment’s notice. If they can take a king, they can take a world. You don’t want that.
I
don’t want that.”

He tilted his head back and then let it fall forward, sighing. “Will you kill her here, in my cottage?”

“That’s the idea. Before she has the opportunity to take your mind, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” he said soberly.

You sever the connection between a conjurer and their victim when you sever the conjurer’s head from their shoulders. Or cut open a big blue vein on their neck, whatever results in death first. Soon as I’d incapacitate Pristia, Braddock would regain the domain over his own mind. Whether he’d know what his wife had done to him, or even that his mind was ensnared, was another question entirely. That made this little plan slightly hazardous, given the punishment for murdering a queen would probably be… well, something very, very foul.

“I’ll see you back here tonight. Keep safe.” I got up from the table and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To have a meet-and-greet with my long-lost brother.”

“Oh. Where?”

“… at the Stag Tavern.”

“Ah. When?”

I cocked my head. “Uh, now?”

“I see. What for?”

“Why are you so damn inquisitive?” I asked. “To catch up on the past five years.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I’ll be waiting for you. Twiddling my thumbs.” His voice trailed off into a faint whisper. “Counting my blessings. Praying to the gods. Writing down my last words…”

“Rivon,” I said. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I’m good at assassinations. It’s what I do, remember?”

His mouth fidgeted. “Have you ever assassinated a conjurer acting as a queen?”

“A first for everything.” I smiled reassuringly, opened the door and left.

The thing about killing a conjurer is you never quite know what you’re getting into. Most of them can only conjure thoughts in a person’s mind, and even then only when their victim is overcome with some sort of emotional malaise. Fear, guilt, sadness, that sort of thing. But there have been some incidents, including the involvement of myself and the Rots, where a conjurer has delved into unsettling conjurations, including but not limited to riving the ground, collapsing a roof, and turning a playful fox into an orange-faced murdering fiend responsible for the partial loss of my little toe.

Point is, it’s generally beneficial to bring along some help when fighting a conjurer, just in case. Which is where my brother would come in. I didn’t need him so much for information anymore, but rather as an extra sword.

I just had to convince him the queen he swore allegiance to was a conjurer.

V
ayle had once told
me that if you look hard enough at the bottom of a mug, you’ll find the answers to all your problems. And if you don’t, well, you’ll fall into a drunken stupor and won’t have to deal with them until the next day, in which case you can try again. I believe philosophers call that a logic loop, or perhaps a vicious circle.

After downing a third mug of oyster ale, the answer to my problems walked through the creaky door of the Stag Tavern. Or rather
an
answer.

He was bigger in the shoulders than I remembered, carried himself well. He had the long, sullen face of my mother and the crooked nose of a soldier who’d gotten busted up a few times.

I waved at him from a secluded corner of the tavern.

He looked around, probably contemplating whether he should skip out, but then resigned himself to the fact that I’d chase him out the door like a gull after bread.

He trudged across the wooden floor of the tavern, squeezing between rowdy drunks and whizzing barmaids. Candles and torches throughout the tavern illuminated his pale face, ghostly as always. It was as if he was born allergic to the sun.

“Another storm?” I said as he approached. Water puddled under his soggy rags.

He crossed his arms, tongued his cheek and held my eyes for a long time.

Finally, he said, “Thought I’d made it clear that I didn’t want to see you again.”

I snapped my fingers at a passing bar hand. “Two more oysters.”

My brother turned to protest, but the bubbly boy was already bounding into the crowd again.

“Come on, enjoy yourself,” I said. “Have a seat and talk to your long-lost brother.”

“You haven’t been lost long enough,” he said.

Look at him now,
I thought. Standing there with all sorts of confidence, throwing out snappy quips — why, it could make an older brother’s heart swell with love. Not mine, of course. I wasn’t the loving type. But he could always earn my respect, even if he did have that stupid grinning jackal fastened to his cloak.

“I don’t have much time,” Anton said. “So if you were passing through to say hello, well… hello, goodbye and it would probably be better if you skipped this kingdom on your way back.”

The bar hand pranced by and traded two mugs for payment. I slid him an extra gold piece upon noticing the ale sloshing against the rim; you always appreciate a filler.

“Mmm mmm!” I mummed, inhaling the charred nautical fumes. “Makes you feel like a pirate. Sit and drink with me, and don’t lie to me again. Soldiers on leave might worry about their next assignment, if it’s going to be in the sunless jungles of the Sedan Woods or the relentless sandstorms of the Desert Hills, but they don’t worry about time, because they’ve got lots of it.”

Anton swung his long mane behind his ears, sighed and kicked the chair out from the table. “Lord Braddock knows we’re brothers. If I’m seen with you after what you did to his uncle…”

I snorted. “
Lord
Braddock?” He licked his lips incredulously. “All right, all right. Fine. You call him whatever you wish. He
is
your lord now.”

“Being part of this army has given me purpose. It’s given me direction. These men are my brothers. My
real
brothers. Not whatever you masquerade around as.”

I drank. “Still stuck on that knife I put through your shoulder?”

He cast a glance off to the side and shook his head. “Just like you, Astul. Pretend all the shit you put me through after mum and dad died didn’t happen. You sit here and drink your fill, insult the way I’ve lived my life. Don’t you dare pretend I was given a different opportunity in this world.”

I leaned back, letting pent-up years of ire and resentment roll off my shoulders. “Well, you could have—”

“I couldn’t have done a thing! You ran off into the wilds and left me behind with Aunt Jo and Uncle Timmon. What could they possibly give me except stale bread and some tea? Poorer than mum and dad and just as drunk, that’s the kind you left me with.”

I drank. “You were a pipsqueak, and I was fifteen. Fuck me for trying to protect you. I expected to die out there, running around in the trees and mountains of fuck knows where. Never intended to establish the Black Rot. Just so long as I sniffed some freedom and keeled over somewhere other than home, that was fine by me. I wanted better for you, Anton.”

He threw his arms onto the table. “Then why not let me join the Rot?”

I drank. No, chugged. The faster this ale went to my head, the better. “Killing’s a dangerous game.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“You really want the truth?” I asked, dumping the rest of the ale into my bloated belly. “Truth is if you bungle up one time, you’re a dead man. You think we’ve got it all. Our pick of whores, vaults full of gold, bellies full of tender meats, and pure, unadulterated freedom. You wouldn’t be far off. But one slip of your hand, a simple miscalculation of one’s intentions… and your head’s cut clean off. Or you’re sitting in a dungeon, taking kicks to your balls till your cock spurts blood. Who would want that for their own kin?”

He folded his hands. “Especially a kin who isn’t good enough. That’s the reason you never wanted me.” He shrugged indifferently and added, “I know. I was the kid who couldn’t run through the woods without hitting his head off a branch, couldn’t scale a tree without crying about the heights. Awkward as they come, clumsy as they make ’em. But look at me now.” He spread his arms proudly and began shouting. “Just look!”

The tavern quieted and its patrons regarded us hopefully, mugs and skins in hand, waiting for the outburst to flare into a brawl they could pick sides and join in on.

“Emotional outbursts,” I whispered to my brother, “are unbecoming of a Red Sentinel officer. Congratulations for the rank, and please, don’t mistake my praise for satire.”

He lowered his head and scooted closer to the table. Realizing that fists wouldn’t be hurling into jaws anytime soon, the drunks went back to drinking, laughing and adding aitches to esses.

“How’d you know?” Anton asked.

I stretched across the table and flicked the pin fastened to his cloak. “Grunts don’t wear these. Also, I know everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve accomplished since you joined this army. And, if you don’t mind keeping this between you and me, it’s made me proud.”

He scratched his cleanly shaven face. “I appreciate the… the gesture. Even if it doesn’t sound much like you. But I know you didn’t risk coming here to tell me this.”

“Who the hell here knows my face? Braddock and maybe a couple lords and ladies of the court? I’m not much for meandering up to the third plateau and kissing rings or whatever it is they force you to do up there to show respect, so I feel pretty fucking safe. Invincible, you might say.”

Anton finally took a sip from his mug. “I’d say the drink has a lot to do with that.”

Speaking of which. I flagged a barmaid down and had her bring me another ale. I’d sleep well tonight. “But you aren’t entirely inaccurate. Stopped by to see an old friend.”

“And who might that be?”

“I’ll spell it out for you,” I said. “Eye tee apostrophe ess. Eh ess ee see are ee tee.”

Anton scribbled the letters onto the table. Then he chuckled. “You’re a bastard.”

Smiling, I winked. “Haven’t been here for a few years, but it’s changed. A lot more… force is present. Looks like you’ve got an army up there on the third plateau.”

“Sentinels were all ordered back. Same with the Red Guard. You oughta see some of the cities around here. They say red tents are gushing out of the walls like blood.”

The barmaid brought me my ale, and I quickly wetted my lips. “My brother’s one of the lucky ones, is he? Gets to sleep in the capital of the world, instead of one of its boroughs.”

He snorted. “Not terribly lucky. You should see the keep up above. Surrounded by tents and fire pits. Not enough room here, either.”

“Must be a reason for all this mobilization,” I suggested.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll spell it out for you. Eye tee apostrophe ess.”

I reached across and gave him a brotherly punch in the shoulder. “You don’t know shit anyway.”

He furrowed his brows. “Don’t be so sure.”

It wasn’t worth pressing him farther. There’s only one reason a king mobilizes his entire army, and it’s sure as shit not to play parade the troops through the streets and hand sweets to little boys and girls. Braddock had a history of clashes with minor families in nearby provinces, but he’d always send a few outfits of cavalry to deal with the problem, never the full weight of his impressive army.

He was readying himself for war. Or more accurately, Pristia was readying him for war.

“Pristia,” I said, “you know her well?”

“The queen? No, not at all. I’m an officer of the Red Sentinels, not a member of the court.”

“So you don’t have, oh… feelings of love or devotion or any of those sappy emotions for her?”

With squinted eyes and a cocked head, he asked, “What are you getting at?”

“She needs to die.”

He pushed his mug away, groaned and went to stand. “I can’t hear this. I can’t listen to this sort of—” He wanted to say treason. It lay at the tip of his tongue, but instead he swallowed it and replaced it with “this sort of talk.”

I grasped his wrist and yanked him back into the chair. “Your queen is a conjurer.”

He blinked, allowed the word to register in his mind, and then closed his eyes. “I knew you had an ulterior motive for being here.”

“She’s got your king by the balls, or by the mind, really. And I think she’s responsible for Vileoux Verdan’s disappearance.”

“You’re whacked,” he said. “Straight out of your mind, brother. Completely whacked.”

I ignored him and continued on. “I don’t know why, and I don’t know what the endgame is. Won’t have a bloody chance to figure that out, either, if we don’t free the most powerful king in the world from her grasp.”

He threw up his hands and stood. “I’m done.”

“Anton! I need your help.”

“Done. Goodbye, Astul.”

“I’ll prove it you,” I said.

He licked his chops and chuckled. “I’ve gotta hear this. How do you prove that the queen of Erior is a”—he chuckled again and rubbed his temples—“a conjurer?”

Just before I could explain the details of this glorious plan, a bizarre hush fell over the tavern. Silence among drunks is about as common as singing among mutes: it takes no small miracle for it to occur. Well, a miracle, or, as I discovered, the appearance of a king.

Braddock Glannondil waddled into the tavern, flanked by a contingent of the Red Sentinels. Been a while since I’d seen that puffy face, those blubbery arms and fingers full of heavy rings.

The floor planks cried under his weighty frame. His crimson cloak dragged behind him as he hobbled through the red-faced drunks who fanned out in respect, or fear.

I hid my eyes behind my mug and swore silently. The jackal himself staggered toward me, a hunter sniffing out the scent of his prey effortlessly.

Anton stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. His jaw shivered as the lumbering footsteps behind him thudded closer.

“A brotherly chat?” Braddock asked, his weathered voice stabbing inside my skull like a harrowing headache. He slapped his hand on my brother’s shoulder.

“Lord Braddock,” my brother said. “I was…”

“Going to bind his hands and bring him to me?”

Anton swallowed. His brows twitched. “Yes, my Lord. Of course.”

I rose from the table. “Leave him alone, you fat fuck. You wanted my head, and now here I am. My brother doesn’t have a part in this.”

A wicked grin split Braddock’s lips. “The truth is much more interesting, Shepherd. Every morning the roosters crow, and on this morning, one of them told me I might find you two here. Brother and brother, planning a coup. I’m afraid your old friend, Rivon, swears allegiance to me now.”

Betrayal needled itself into my flesh, numbing the tips of my fingers, sucking the feeling from my toes, wringing the air from my lungs.

“Are you afraid?” Braddock asked. “Afraid to die? Don’t be. I’m not going to make good on my promise to string my banner up through your guts. Rivon suggested a much better idea for punishment.”

“Are you going to torture me?”

Braddock pointed to himself innocently. “Me? No. But those I send you to… I cannot speak for them.”