The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (6 page)

T
here’s
nothing quite like riding in the back of a wooden cart with your hands roped together behind your back. Every bump sent my ass into the air, only to come crashing back down on the splintery seat. Turns were great fun. Without a hand to brace myself, my head would careen into the side posts. Hopefully I wouldn’t be dribbling and answering questions with grunts by the end of this journey.

The despair my brother and I displayed didn’t go unnoticed by nature. The sun had gone into hiding and took the warmth with it. The clouds shifted from a milky white to a gloomy gray, spewing out fat drops of rain. This was the kind of rain you feel exploding on the back of your neck, ice oozing out and shivering across your shoulders.

We’d left Erior first thing in the morning, loaded into a cart like fish plucked from the ocean and on the way to cutting boards. Braddock wasn’t even kind enough to make an appearance and wish us well. Neither was the enigma, Rivon Eyrie. So many questions for that man. The easy way out was to call him treasonous, hold a grudge till I died — which very well could happen sooner than later — and be done with it. But the danger at looking at the world through a black-and-white lens is that you miss the grays, and it’s there, in that bleak prism, you find the twists and turns that give reason to the unreasonable, imagination to the unimaginable, and logic to the illogical.

Anton sat across from me, head slumped like a knight unseated during a joust. Dull-eyed and droopy-faced. It was eerily similar to the way he looked when our father and mother were at our feet, bloodied and lifeless. The only thing missing was tears.

I was always stronger than my brother. It seemed like nothing could undo me. An assassin doesn’t live for thirty years without finding himself in a few… unfortunate situations. Retaining control is vital.

Even when it seems like everything has been stolen from you and your well of luck has gone dry, there’s always a way out. I usually knew of those ways, although sometimes they snuck up on me, like Sybil freeing me from Edenvaile’s prison.

But Writmire Fields — my destination — made my situation grim. Slavers controlled the fields, populating them with rapists, murderers, thieves and other societal misfits that get shipped to them for free. In exchange for the humanitarian aid, the donors get reduced rates on goods bought from the slavers. It’s the game at its finest.

“My face itches,” Anton said.

“Why are you telling me? I can try to kick you to relieve the itch, if that’s what you want.”

“You’ve done quite enough.”

“Thought I could trust an old Rot.”

Bump went the wagon, and smack went our heads. Anton grumbled. “An old Rot?”

“Rivon,” I explained.

“He’s a bloody rooster keeper.”

“Look out!” I hollered, sliding across the seat and into my brother. A long patch of dimpled mud lay up ahead. The wagon plodded over it, rickety wheels tumbling into the deep dimples and rocking the cedar frame like an angry gale spurning a baby bird’s first flight. Sitting close to my brother allowed us to hook our legs together, centering us on the seat so we wouldn’t end up with cracked skulls and be dead behind the eyes before we arrived at the slavers’ camp.

The barren field leveled out again. “Anyway,” I said, “he was a Rot before he was Erior’s lead fowl attendant. He’d never do this to me willingly… Pristia likely had her grubby hand in it.”

My brother sighed disgustingly. “Oh, would you stop with the nonsense? Pristia’s not a conjurer, you dolt.”

I offered up my best admonishing grin. “Just like you, Anton. Pretend the world’s a perfect little haven. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s well and good.”

“Better than living my life in raging suspicion, you unstable, paranoid fuck.”

Oh, if I had my hands free. “Paranoid?
Paranoid
? If you heard the mess I was told about Vileoux’s death—”

“Hear, hear, hear,” my brother said. “Did you actually
see
anything?”

I spun around so hard and fast, my knee slammed into the side of the cart. “Did I see anything?
Did I see anything
?”

“Shut your bloody mouths,” one of the transport guards said. “Fuckin’ road’s hell as it is, I don’t need a splitting skull to go along with it.”

Anton laughed quietly at me. “You didn’t. Tell me otherwise. Go ahead. Tell me you saw evidence that Edenvaile’s king was murdered. Don’t even go into all the things you heard. Just tell me you at least saw him lying in a sarcophagus, dead.”

“Something big is coming, Anton. I’m sorry you don’t have the wherewithal to perceive that.”

“I’m sure,” he said in a patronizing tone. “War
is
pretty big, after all. If you want my theory, it’s that the Verdans are playing a game of keep-away with Vileoux, pretending he’s dead. They don’t like that the Glannondils are so powerful, so they’re going to play the assassination card, blaming it on Lord Braddock. A few agreements later, alliances are made, war breaks out, and the world is restructured. No conjurers, no silly magic. Just old-fashioned bloodlust.”

The horses at the head of the cart snorted, and an inquisitive rabbit hopped out of the way. “Just one problem,” I said. “Rivon Eyrie.”

“Would you let it go? He played you, brother. He’s not a Rot anymore. He’s trying to climb the ranks, swindle himself into the court. He did himself a big favor by turning you in. I respect it, actually.”

Poor Anton, one eye black and the other white, forever and for always, it seemed. “I saw the hopelessness in his eyes, heard the loss of life in his voice. I felt the dread, the primal terror in his words. This wasn’t an act. Something —
someone
— disturbed him, deeply.”

“Acting is a skill,” Anton said. “Like a blade, one can sharpen it till it sings.”

“Even if that were true, he would never forget the Black Rot.”

My brother shifted in the seat. “Climbing the ranks is more important to him than old friendships.”

“That’s not what I mean. Have you wondered why, if your dear Lord Braddock seethed with so much hatred for me, he never sent a small excursion to the Hole? Why, if anyone else had the mind to off his uncle, he’d bring the wrath of the Glannondils down upon them. But he gift-wrapped me nothing more than a thinly veiled threat.”

“You always told me the Hole is impregnable.”

“It is,” I agreed. “But what’s stopping a small platoon of cavalry from waiting nearby, till I clamber on down from my hill.” I leaned close. “
Fear
, that’s what. Do you know why spiders instill such fear in so many?”

Anton looked annoyed.

“They’re the true embodiment of darkness,” I said. “They lurk in the emptiness, the dank, the shadows, the places your eyes can’t see and your mind doesn’t like to go. They’re silent as a wisp, despite skittering across your floors, spinning their webs, spawning their alien young. And they’re everywhere, in every nook of the world. Worst of all, they’re unpredictable. You never know in which direction they’ll scurry, where they’ll move to next. But they’re always there, aren’t they? And so it is with the Black Rot, with one tiny difference.”

“Your assassins don’t have eight legs?” Anton said.

I smiled. “If you hunt us, the entire colony will swarm you. Kill me in action? Fair enough, but don’t you dare make an example out of me. Don’t you dare hunt me down. Kingdoms have rotted away from the inside out because some pompous lord wanted to make an example of the darkness. But you cannot control what your eyes cannot see. Rivon knows this. He was a part of it. He wouldn’t risk his life to climb another step up the royal ladder. Something bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than the five families is brewing right now. I just hope we live long enough to see what it is.”

“Living isn’t in our future,” Anton said. “I would have taken the beheading if I could. I’ve heard of these slavers before. You won’t get out of here alive, Astul. No one does. Not even the Shepherd of the Black Rot.”

I nodded, and not sarcastically. I had my faith, but sometimes that’s just a nice thing to have. It doesn’t really do anything.

During the night, we continued on into the Dead Marshes, where the seaside mountains vanished, replaced by thick curtains of trees, some stretching so far into the air it looked as though they wanted to give a reach-around to the moon.

By morning, the road we traveled turned from overgrown grass and weeds to a still swamp. The cart would stop every fifty feet it seemed, and our Glannondil escorts would get out, clean the caked-on mud from the wheels and swear at the gods when they stopped again minutes later.

Small stretches of vomit-colored clay eventually lead us through the marshes, surrounded by submerged blades of grass, circular gatherings of lilies and more water than mud. The horizon suffered a mangled death as we drew closer, with a massacre of splintered and limbless charred trees smudging the blue from the sky. Vines and thorned creepers hung from them, some so big and knotted you’d swear they were eldritch serpents lying in wait. The whole land had a subtle green tint to it, whether from the bile of bogs or something more perverse.

The marshes soon ended, and our royal caravan came to a stop, in front of a gate. Even if you were born in a piss-poor village and hadn’t ever ventured outside until now, you would have a word to describe this gate, and that word, undoubtedly, would be lame. It was nothing but a bunch of wooden stakes crookedly pounded into the ground, topped off with spikes for good measure.

“Smell that?” I asked my brother.

“I’d rather not,” he said, shielding his nostrils with a shoulder.

“I’ll give you a guess as to what kind of shit it is you’re smelling. Here’s a hint: it ain’t coming from no cow.”

Boy, was it rotten. Like a heap of city garbage warmed by the sun, drizzled with a few cupfuls of infected pus and garnished with chopped-up, liquefied necrotic flesh.

A man clad in leather armor and with goat horns for shoulder spikes opened the gate. “Two? That’s it? Lost six this week and I get two to replace ’em?”

His voice sounded as though he was digging into the pit of his stomach for the deepest tone he could muster.

“All Lord Braddock could send,” answered the driver. “He needs his own slaves.”

“I’ll fuckin’ not doubt he does,” the man said. “But you tell ’im if he keeps sendin’ me this horseshit, there ain’t gonna be a discount no more. I want five next time. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll tell him. These two are brothers.”

The slaver welcomed us with a toothless grin. “Brotherly love, eh?”

He walked up to the cart and put a fist into my shirt, pulling me off and so graciously tossing my face into the stiff ground. Another hand slapped my shirt, and just like that, back on my feet.

Anton and I found ourselves inside the walls, sitting against a building streaked with white stains that looked awfully similar to bird shit.

“Sit,” the slaver said.

Next to us were a few other unfortunate souls, staring with wide eyes at an outrageously large slaver who approached. Those slavers, I didn’t know where they came from, but I assumed they were crafted out of mountains. Goddamn giants. He asked each man and woman their names and their story. They all answered with a whimper, licking their lips and giving a nice, hard swallow at the end. Some were thieves, others rapists, and one had murdered a lord’s son.

Finally, the big man’s eyes fell on me. “And you?”

“Some call me the fat skinner on account of how I have a penchant for stabbing fat bellies like yours. Say, do you have a brother? I remember poking a blade in a man who quite resembled you—sweaty, oily face, two chins, scraggly patch of hair on his neck that looked like it belonged on the bottom of his ass. I bet he was your twin.”

“Look at this,” the slaver said, cackling. “A funny man we got with us. I need to laugh, it’s good for you, yeah?” He cracked his whip across my face and bellowed a laugh that shook his shoulders. “Oh, it does feel good to laugh!”

The whip snagged a thin film of flesh from my cheek. I touched it with my finger, only to receive another lashing, this time on my hand. I grunted, but managed a smile. “Tell me, when’s the last time you saw your cock?”

The slaver closed that stupid, oversized mouth of his and nodded. He went off behind the building and emerged with an orange-tipped iron poker.

“Usually we do this after, but you’re a special case, I see.”

He walked up, leaned in and pressed the poker into my chest. I heard a sizzling sound, like skewered bacon with grease dripping into a fire. And then I felt it. And smelled it. The putridness of scorched skin made me retch, but bending over pushed the poker deeper into my chest.

The pain… unimaginable. Felt it in my fingertips, burning in my eyes. It spread, coursing through and broiling every nerve in my body. I was being cooked alive, and wriggling, screaming, shrieking… none of it helped.

Finally, the hissing fled and the poker was yanked away. And I lay on my side, gritting my teeth and crying.

“You won’t last the week,” the slaver said. “Rise up, you’re all getting it now.”

I lay there as those around me stood. My brother was first. He squealed like a stuck pig and jumped back, driving his foot into my shoulder and falling on top of me.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” he asked me.

Anton and I were thrown into the fields within the walls. Our first job was to group logs according to size. The logs had already been cut and hauled in by other slaves. Fairly easy job, except when the logs are thicker than you. From what I gleaned, the slavers didn’t much care if we talked, so I kept close to my brother.

“Look for a way out,” I said.

“I’m
sure
I’ll find one,” he snapped back.

“There’s a reason I did what I did. Look around you.”

His head swiveled around, jauntily looking every which way. The boy had the brain of a dog whose parents were siblings.

“Subtly,” I snapped.

“They’re looking this way,” he said.

“At me. They’re watching me, not you, not anyone else. I didn’t take an extra ten seconds of a hot poker in the chest for the hell of it. You have a bit of freedom in here because of me. Scan the wall, check for weaknesses… look for a way out.”