The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (7 page)

Anton nodded. Finally, he understood. Damn near had to hit him over the head with one of those logs, but he got it.

We didn’t talk for the rest of the day, minding our own business, picking up logs, stacking them in place and wheelbarrowing them over to one of three enormous pits. One was for small logs, one for medium and the last for the large variety.

Simple enough. For a lumberjack. I, unfortunately, was an assassin. My arms were nearly numb halfway into the day, and logs were dropping from my grasp like leaves from a tree in autumn. One almost landed on my foot. The slavers would laugh loud enough for everyone to hear and tell me to pick the damn thing up and get back to work.

At night, we slept on the ground, where we worked. We must have looked like black birds sitting in rows along tree branches. In the morning, it was back to business. Slaves carried in logs from outside the walls, and we separated them again. We ate once a day, carrying shallow wooden bowls we were given during initiation and filling them up once — and only once — with broth. Sometimes the broth had bits of bread, sometimes bits of dirt.

Filling our bowls with water from the wells was more common than filling them with food, but not enough to keep your throat from feeling like sand for most of the day.

When the sun fell, we slept on grass cool and moist from piss and dew. Jagged wood chips littered the ground, always getting caught in the bends of your knees and elbows.

It’d been five days of this shit. My brother claimed this place had no weakness, no way to escape. I was starting to believe him.

On the sixth day, a cart edged along the wall and stopped at the gate. More friends to play with.

There were four of them, and the slavers led them inside the walls. They all looked hopeless, except one woman. Furious would be the best word to describe her. I dropped off a log into the pit and squinted.

Why, I knew that face. Not so much the furious part, but the features. The thin lips, small forehead, plump dimples. And the hair… oh, I’d definitely seen that hair before. Black as a raven’s plumage.

What, exactly, was Sybil Tath doing here?

T
he nice thing
about slavery was that I had time. Time to cry, time to reflect miserably, time to… well, time to watch the sky and wonder, are there always so many birds up there? Was this simply one of those instances when you stand atop a seaside cliff, look out thoughtfully and invariably comment on just how massive the ocean is?

Or was this really just a fuckload of birds? Blue birds, red birds, yellow-tailed birds, big birds, small birds — didn’t matter. They flocked together in droves, smothering the blue sky with their assortment of colors and sizes, and they all came from the east. Sometimes their furious squawks would quiet for a while as they settled into the boughs of the forests beyond the camp, but then more would pass through, thrashing the quiet air above, flapping and crying, shitting on all of us down below.

I watched the birds as I lugged logs into pits. Or more accurately, I watched the sky, waiting for it to darken into evening blush and then the crisp blue of twilight. Soon it would be dark, time to sleep. Not for me, though. For this slave, the day was just beginning.

Exhaustion had most of the camp in its grip. Snores murmured around me, and bodies writhed as the nightmares came. One of the new arrivals wept. As I crawled through the bird-shit-encrusted grass and jagged wood chips, I came upon him. He could have served as a distraction, someone who would inevitably attract the slavers so they wouldn’t have the wherewithal to see me sneaking about. But as it so happens, humanity rises up within me once in a while — wholly unwelcome, mind you.

I put a hand on his ribs. “Stuff your shirt into your mouth,” I whispered. “Or they’ll hear you, and they’ll beat you until you cry all your tears out. You ever try to cry when you don’t have tears?”

He sniffled and shook his shaggy head.

“There’s pain for you. Go on, do it.”

The youngster balled up the elongated neck of his shirt and bit down on it. Then he wailed some more, but he’d only disturb his neighbors now, and they were fast asleep, enjoying their nightmares.

I continued on like a snake through the camp, slithering and coiling around limbs and toes, heads and shoulders. Onward toward the east gate, where during the day the salt miners filled up buckets and lucky lads and lasses would bring them in and fill the beds of trading wagons. Lucky lasses like Sybil Tath.

My breath abandoned me with each risked glance toward the drunk slavers on watch, near the front of the camp. One of the tall ones, all legs and arms, would lurch out of his seat occasionally and rush the front row like an elephant issuing a onetime warning. A slave jumped once. Got himself accused of plotting escape. Never heard from him again, aside from his cries that went on until morning.

All this crawling on my elbows and belly reminded me of a drunken bet with Vayle one night at the Hole, to prove who was more limber and coordinated while tunneling beneath hot-iron spits. That’s also the reason I have a very large burn on the back of my calf.

No spits above me here, though. Nothing but the sky and… birds. They were still at it, flying in from the east, chirping away, as if to apologize for the disruption.

A bit more slithering around and I came to a woman who whispered to herself.

“Sybil Tath,” I said.

She turned on her side and shoved her head forward in surprised delight. “Astul!”

“We tend to meet under unfortunate circumstances.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Long story. And you?”

“A longer story. Come closer, I’ll tell you about it.”

We curled up together and removed our shirts, tossing them over our heads like blankets so they would dull our voices.

Her arms were warm and comforting, if gritty and crusted over with grime and sweat. Her green eyes were like verdant candles, a soothing flame inside our little cave.

She was eager to know about my time in Erior, or if I’d made it at all. I provided all the details, minus the bits about Rivon, Pristia being a conjurer and Braddock Glannondil mobilizing his army for war. Otherwise known as the important bits. If she needed that information — something I would judge — I’d tell her. I trusted her, mostly, but the golden rule of being a purveyor of information is that you always keep some things close to your chest.

“How did he know you were there, under his nose?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter now. I imagine your voyage here is a much more interesting story.”

“I was ambushed as I left Vereumene,” she said. “Captured and sold to the slavers. I expected to depart with Chachant, but”—the verdant flames of her eyes flickered angrily—“he lied to me. The meeting of the five kingdoms had been called off when Dercy and Braddock informed the families they could not attend this year. He went to Vereumene solely to ask for Serith Rabthorn’s hand in war.”

Her pimpled arms prickled mine, and a subtle shiver transferred between our pressed shoulders.

“He’s a bloody fool,” I said.

Sybil blinked, extinguishing the flame. Her eyes were a dull leafy green now, empty of excitement, void of anger. Back to being diplomatic, apparently. “He was rushed into kingship at the age of twenty. You cannot blame him entirely. And Braddock is not helping matters. I heard he’s mobilized both the Sentinels and the Red Guard. Is that true?”

“Who told you that?”

“Serith’s advisers. I could not talk to the king himself, because he is…” Her lips moved, as if in search of an explanation, but there was only silence.

My nostrils flared. “What? Serith is what? Please don’t tell me he’s dead. Anything but dead. Catatonic, mute, deaf, addicted to sleepy herbs,
anything
but dead. The last thing I need — that
we
need — is another dead king.”

Her head seesawed from one shoulder to the other as she thought. “Wacky. Yes, that’s it.”

“Wacky?”

“He cries incessantly, becomes angry with the color white and has tried repeatedly to stab himself in the heart with his fingernail. I believe wacky is the proper word. It’s as if his mind has been—”

“Ruined?” I interrupted.

“Yes.”

Old age can ruin a mind, and Serith was an old man. But like aging itself, the process is often slow. A forgotten word here, a misplaced face there, and then you’re forgetting how to get to your chambers from your throne. I did a job for the man several months ago, and his mind seemed all snuggly and pieced together. He must’ve deteriorated quickly, or even instantly. Short of taking a hammer to the skull, there aren’t many ways that happens. In fact, I only knew of one.

“Chachant is on his way to Watchmen’s Bay,” Sybil said, “according to Serith’s advisers.”

“We’ve got to get out of this place, Sybil.”

“How?”

“In the morning. If the three of us can overrun a slaver, grab his weapon, we could make a run for it.”

More birds flew overhead.

“Who’s the third?” Sybil asked.

More squawking and flapping. “Have you noticed how many birds there are?”

“Probably migrating. Who is the third person helping us?”

“From east to west? I know the western shores have nicer beaches, but I don’t think birds concern themselves with the value of land or the softness of sand beneath their feet.”

“Astul,” she said, touching my cheek softly. “Who is the third—”

“My brother.”

She went on about something or another, but all I could hear was the crowing, the whistling and the piercing screeches that sounded off menacingly like drums of war.

Migrating? No, most certainly not. I’d seen migrating birds before. Lazy bunch of fucks they are. They circle in the air, stop to rest for a while in the trees, venture leisurely like they’re taking in the sights. These birds were flying hard, as if away from something that traveled a lot faster than snow. A lot meaner too.

“
F
eet on the ground
!”

That voice was the third sound I’d heard, coming immediately after a solid thud of a boot punching right between my ribs and the subsequent groggy “Ergh” that slipped out of my mouth. I rolled onto my side.

“Feet on the ground!”

Another boot, placed expertly between the ribs once again. I rolled onto my other side, clutching my stomach.

“Put your feet on the ground!”

Another boot, this one catching me right across the jaw. With a now-stabbing headache, stiff mouth and bruised ribs, I got the idea and put my bloody feet on the bloody ground.

It was at that point it came to my attention I hadn’t, as planned, made it back to my brother last night. Apparently Sybil’s warmth had made a sleepy boy out of me.

A big bastard slaver had his chubby arm around her, holding her tight to his blubber. Same fucker who’d branded me. Went by the name of Shroden.

“The fat skinner!” he brayed. “Should’ve known it’d be the fat skinner. Always the one causing me trouble. Fancy yourself a pair of perky tits, do you now?”

He slid the back of his fingers along Sybil’s chest. She tried to turn, but he held her firmly.

“I’m known to venture great distances in my sleep,” I said, squinting through the sun that just
had
to position itself right in front of my eyes. Bright lights do splitting headaches no good. Learned that many years ago, after my first hangover.

“You,” Shroden said, pointing at me with a grotesque nail sheathed in some sort of rotting yellow, “you like to play games. Big game player where you come from, hmm?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, bowing my head. “I’ll get back to work immediately and go at it twice as hard today.”

He looked around, undoubtedly trying to untie the knot of confusing thoughts in his head.

“Tryin’ to play another game,” he asserted.

“I’m not,” I said, and that was the truth. I wasn’t the sole focus of his ire anymore; I couldn’t afford to play games.

“You won’t fool me.” He peered out into the crowd of slaves. “Brother of the fat skinner, where are you? Come out, now. There you are. Come here, come here.”

Anton wound his way through the bodies, stepping up beside me. White and black dumplings streaked his hair, courtesy of the birds. His eye twitched. Had it always done that? No.

Shroden fisted Sybil’s hair and wrenched her head back. He burrowed a nail into her chest, a smidgen above her breasts and slowly edged it up her neck. “We’re going to play a game, fat skinner. It’s called pick ’em. You pick to save your brother, and I’ll take your little crush here every which way, and after I’m done with her, the rest of the camp can have her.” He tugged on the lobe of her ear with the seductiveness of a corpse. “She’ll be so full of seeds, she’ll be sproutin’ from the mouth.”

He hee-hawed like a cleft-lipped donkey, tits bouncing and flabs jiggling.

Sybil’s neck pulsed, but her face was as cool as a sword swallower at a festival.

“Or you could save her the pleasure,” Shroden said, his brows twitching suggestively. “But the price… it’s expensive, fat skinner.” He palmed the pommel of a sheathed blade and produced a rusted dagger. “Payment is your brother’s life.”

Anton and I glanced at one another. His eyes glistened, and for the first time since we’d arrived at the camp, there was life in them. Hope. The paradoxical kind.

“Do it,” Anton urged. “Save the woman, kill me.”

Crows. Cackling and yapping as they knifed through the sky, blurring the golden morning with the blackness of night. As they fled into the forests of the west, a low rumble drummed from the east.

“Choose, fat skinner,” Shroden spat. “Or I’ll choose for you.”

“Kill me!” Anton pleaded.

It sounded like mountains were moving, shifting rivers and displacing the earth. The ground grumbled into the soles of my bare feet, and the wood chips quivered.

Shroden felt it too. He looked toward the gate and beyond, into the dense forest.

My brother lurched forward and grabbed the dagger from the slaver’s hand.

He pointed the oxidized tip at his stomach. “I start it. You finish it. You won’t have a choice, unless you want to see me suffer.”

“Anton! Wait.”

Big brother instincts kicked in, and my hand swung for his wrist. Little brother was too agile. He leaped back, steadied his feet and plunged the dagger into his belly.

Thunder boomed behind me, and blood spilled in front.

Haziness filtered across my eyes, as if I was looking at the world through frosted glass. A mist of limbs raced through the field like apparitions, seemingly drifting along without heads or torsos. I’d been a long time since I cried. Forgot just how disfigured the world looks through tears.

I blinked them away as Anton fell to his knees, dagger still buried in his belly. A sanguine smile touched his lips, and he pointed a bloody finger at me.

“You were right,” he rasped. “They came for you.”

An army of horses barreled out from the forest, draped with caparisons bearing a red fist. Heading the charge was my commander of the Black Rot, and beside her Rivon Eyrie.

I’d like to say I raised my hand for a sheath and sword to be thrown at my feet. I’d like to say I chased down Shroden, cut him off at the knees and then hacked his massive head clean off, right over the wall. I’d like to say the reputation that preceded me — that brutal, savage reputation that an assassin earns over the years — was reinforced as I ran my fingers over the warmth of slaver blood and tasted my revenge.

But life, she enjoys her irony. Killing going on all around me, swords clangoring, my Rots decapitating limbs and appendages, and there I was, most feared assassin in the world, Shepherd of the Black Rot, a man so dreadful that even Braddock Glannondil waited for me to come to him to make good on his promise — on my knees, eyes welling and nose running into my gaped mouth.

“We can save you,” I told my brother, reaching a shivering hand out and gingerly touching his shoulder.

Slavers shrieked as swords carved them into puzzles of missing flesh. Shrill laments of innocent slaves caught between pounding hooves and serrated blades echoed in my skull.

“It went deep, Astul,” Anton said. “I made sure of it.” He laid a bloody hand over my arm reassuringly. “I wanted this. It was freedom, brother… freedom from this terrible place.”