Wylie handed a book to Paige. It was the Rules of Engagement. “Have her look it over one more time,” the wizard said. “I don’t want any missteps tomorrow.”
“She has it memorized,” Paige replied. “It’s like breathing for her. There won’t be any problem.” He was full of confidence.
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Wylie said with a trace of a smile. “Better get some sleep. I have some meetings yet tonight.”
Wylie continued on down the corridor, and Paige turned past Jack, passing close enough to touch. Jack followed him at a cautious distance. Paige took a few more turns, and then they were in a short corridor that dead-ended into two doors at the end. He knocked sharply on one of the doors. There was a long pause, and then Ellen opened it. She was wearing a short silk nightshirt and had taken her hair down. Jack approached as close as he dared. She had only opened the door a little, but Jack was in luck, because Paige shoved it open the rest of the way and plowed into the room. Jack managed to slip in after him.
“You feeling all right?” Paige glared around the room. “You didn’t eat much at the banquet. We don’t want to take any chances so close to the event.”
“I’m fine,” Ellen replied, putting her hand out for the book. “I didn’t want to break training with all that rich food.”
Paige handed her the book. “Are you clear on strategy?”
“I’m clear,” Ellen replied, not meeting the wizard’s eyes. She was obviously ill at ease, eager for her trainer to leave, and trying hard to hide it.
Paige persisted. “The boy is stronger, so that’s what you have to watch out for. Plus his reach is longer. Don’t let him get inside, not even once. If you can’t get at the body, go after his sword arm. He won’t expect that. He’s green, inexperienced. Don’t go for the throat immediately. Try for a gut wound. Once you have him incapacitated, bleed him.”
“Bleed him,” Ellen repeated dutifully.
“You know, take your time. Cut him up slowly. The crowd will love it. Only, as I said, don’t take any chances. Cut out his heart to finish him off.”
Jack was finding he liked Simon Paige less every time he opened his mouth.
“Is that all?” Ellen looked at the floor.
The trainer reached out, caught Ellen’s chin, lifted it so she was looking at him. “You won’t disappoint me.” It was not a question.
“No,” she whispered, pale as ashes, gray eyes clouded by some memory of pain.
“I’ll be next door.” The wizard backed out of the room and Ellen shut the door behind him. She slipped the dead bolt into place and rested her face against the heavy wood of the door. The dagger she’d worn at dinner lay on a table next to the bed. Her sword leaned against the wall. Jack sat down at the table between Ellen and her weaponry, arranging himself carefully in the chair. First he dissolved the noticeability charm. Then he spoke a charm to secure the door.
At his first words, Ellen spun around, grabbing for a weapon that wasn’t there. “Jack!” she whispered. “How did you . . . ?” She turned and released the dead bolt and yanked at the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It won’t open,” said Jack. “Don’t get Paige involved. I want to talk to you.”
Ellen flattened herself against the door, still searching the room. “Are you looking for this?” Jack held up the dagger by the point, and then laid it back on the table. “Please, sit down for a minute. I won’t take much time.”
Ellen finally sat down in an armchair across the room from Jack. She perched on the edge, palms braced against the seat as if she expected him to spring at any moment. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “How’d you get in here?”
“I need to ask you a few questions,” Jack said.
Ellen was regaining some of her confidence. She looked him over carefully. “You’re either crazy or stupid. Paige is right next door.”
“Call him in if you want.” Jack sat back in his chair, affecting indifference. He really had no idea what Ellen would do, but he’d seen her interaction with her trainer, and he took a chance.
After a moment, she said, “What did you want to ask me?”
“Why did you come to Trinity?” Jack asked bluntly.
She stared at him for a moment, then rolled her eyes as if he were an idiot. “I came to kill you, Jack.” She flexed her hands in front of her. “Or capture you, rather. Only, I didn’t know it was you, at the time. Wylie found out the White Rose had a young warrior hidden in Trinity. So I came to the high school to find you.
She paused. “There was a huge flare-up of power the day of the soccer tryouts. Paige and Wylie came after you, but I guess practice had already broken up. So we knew for sure that it must be someone on the team. But after that there was nothing, not a hint.”
“I . . . ah . . . met Wylie in Coal Grove,” Jack admitted. “He tried to take my sword away from me.”
“That was you?” Ellen studied him speculatively.
“Paige told me about that. Wylie had been reading the history of the Seven. He hoped to find me one of the blades. Wylie was sure you were Anaweir since he could detect no stone. He credited the sword with all the fireworks. Are you the one who did that to him? Burned up his face, I mean?”
Jack shook his head. “It was burned when I first saw him. Looked fresh.”
Ellen studied him, as if not sure whether to believe him. “Wylie left town after that. Paige said he was hunting an enchanter, some agent of the White Rose who had stolen the blade. I guess that was your aunt. Wylie never connected you to Trinity. Then Hastings arrived and Paige went into hiding. I was the outside man. The spotter. And all that time you and the sword were under our noses. It’s kind of funny when you think about it.” But she didn’t smile.
“I didn’t spot you, either,” Jack pointed out.
“After all these years, I’m good at keeping my power under control. How else do you think I’ve stayed alive? I guess you never think your enemy is as clever as you are,” she added.
She dropped her hands into her lap. “Eventually, I convinced myself it wasn’t you. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it was you. And I was really getting into the whole small-town scene, the soccer team and everything. I’d never lived anywhere like Trinity. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever lived nine months in one place.”
“So you knew about Hastings?” Jack persisted.
Ellen nodded. “We assumed he must be trying to get to you first. We thought that was why he was focusing on the soccer team. But he was working with a number of players, and then there was the Chaucerian Society. That threw us off, because you weren’t involved with that.” She shrugged. “I thought for sure it was Will. He’s built, you know, and it took a while for you ...for you to ...” She seemed to lose her train of thought. She was looking at Jack’s chest and shoulders.
“Was that why you hung out with Will?”
“At first, yes. But I finally realized he was Anaweir, and he became a friend. Fitch, too.” She looked up at Jack. “I was surprised to see them at the banquet.”
“They were brought here as hostages, to make sure I perform.”
Ellen frowned. “Hastings?”
Jack shook his head. “Longbranch. She’s pissed I’m playing for Hastings.” The conversation died for a moment. “Where are you from?” Jack asked.
Ellen shrugged. “I don’t know.” She got up and started pacing back and forth. “They’ve never told me. I must’ve been kidnapped as a baby. As far back as I can remember, Paige has been my coach.” She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.
Jack thought about what Hastings had said. You know what they do to warriors to get them ready for the Game. She was obviously scared to death of Simon Paige. He wanted to do something, to put his arms around her, or at least to take her hands, tell her how sorry he was, but he sat stupidly, knowing she might not react well to such a gesture.
“All the time you were tucked away in Trinity in your wonderful old house with your wonderful quirky m
other, I’ve been on the run. I’ve seen the world. I can speak seven languages. I belong nowhere, and I have no one. I always leave in the middle of the night. No good-byes for me. Meanwhile, you’ve had the same friends all your life.”
“It’s not my fault,” Jack whispered. He was finally realizing what Aunt Linda’s intervention had meant. She had saved him from that life so he could stay in Trinity, with Becka, and grow up as he had. Things could have been very different. He thought of Jessamine Longbranch, and shivered.
Ellen was still pacing, still angry. “And all this time I’ve been training, week in, week out, since I was three years old. You have no idea what they’ve done to me.” She paused, swallowed, then went on. “Not only was I born for this, I was raised for it, too. Tomorrow is the payoff,” she said, dropping back into her chair.
Jack felt the need to change the subject. “So it was the fight with Lobeck that tipped you off?”
Ellen nodded. “I still can’t believe you took that shot to the face before you let him have it. I was trying to help you out without giving myself away. You have a lot more control than I do.”
It was time for the jackpot question. He pulled the mirror from his waistband and toyed with it, then turned it so he could see Ellen’s face. “So you told Paige, and then he tried to poison me at Cedar Point.”
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “Swift, you are so stupid sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wylie wanted to make sure of you before he called a tournament, so he could win the cup by default. Why risk his warrior unnecessarily? But they wouldn’t have killed you unless they had to. They planned to capture you. With the two of us, he and Paige could start a . . .” Here, the words seemed to catch in her throat. “They wanted to start a breeding program, all right? Raise warriors for the Game.” She stopped again, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. She poked a glittering strand of hair behind her ear. “God only knows why I’m telling you all this.”
Jack didn’t know what to say. This was the girl who sat in front of him in homeroom. Someone whose biggest problem should be whether she’d make the soccer team, or how she would pay for college. He took a deep breath, then cleared his throat. “If Paige and Wylie didn’t try to poison me, then who did?”
“That was me.”
“You tried to kill me?” Jack stared at her, speechless. She would rather see me dead, than . . .
“Idiot.” She blew out her breath in disgust. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. And I wouldn’t poison you. That’s not my style.”
“What is your style, then?” Jack demanded. “Forgive me if I’m a little lost, here.”
She pointed at the dagger on the table. “That’s more like it, I guess.” She tilted her head, studying him. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you were discovered. Trinity just isn’t that big. I poisoned your drink and then dumped it into the lagoon. That was supposed to scare you away, make you leave town. I thought I’d give you a taste of what I’ve been through. But you didn’t leave.”
“I wanted to run,” Jack admitted. “But I had nowhere to go.”
“You don’t run toward anything, Jack, you just run away. That’s how it’s done. Anyway, the next thing we know, fireworks are going off at the high school and you and Hastings are hip-deep in it. We couldn’t figure that out. The kidnappers, I mean. We thought we had everyone accounted for.”
“Traders,” Jack said bluntly. “Leesha Middleton was working with them.”
“I should have known!” Ellen scowled. “So Paige is finally clued in, but now you and your family are completely inaccessible. Wizards and wards everywhere. When you disappeared, the story was, you’d gone to England. The Red Rose assumed you’d gone to fight, so they called a tournament so they could set the date and location.”
“You could have avoided this,” Jack pointed out. “You always had access, even after the kidnapping failed. “It would have been easy enough, a blade in the throat, a quick getaway. Why am I still alive?” He looked down into the mirror and waited for her answer. For the truth.
“I don’t know! Paige was always pestering me about it. He made things . . . very unpleasant. I kept telling him there was never an opportunity, that Snowbeard or Hastings were always around. I just kept thinking of your ...your mother finding you, all that mess. I guess I’d rather have a fair fight, one with rules. And now we’re going to have one.”
She picked up the Rules of Engagement and began leafing through it. “It’s time to get going, Jack. Considering I have a ten-year head start, I’d suggest you study hard,” she said mockingly. “Don’t think Shadowslayer will save you. I’ll have your blade when this is all over. And get that thing away from me!” She pointed to the mirror.
Jack shrugged and returned it to his place under his sweatshirt. He considered what he had seen. “I don’t want to fight you, Ellen,” he said.
“Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?” Her voice was cruel. “Lots of people will be disappointed. They’re looking forward to seeing someone killed.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” Jack said.
“I hardly think that will be a problem,” she said coldly. She gestured at the weapon on the table. “Maybe you’d better take your advantage while you can.”
Jack stood up. “Good night, Ellen.” He moved to the door, dissolved the locking charm, slipped silently through, and was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
The Game
Jack slept fitfully the first part of the night, but in the early morning hours he fell into a deep and healing sleep. He awoke to a commotion outside and then the sound of Will swearing at the window. Partisans of the Red Rose were pre-enacting the tournament outside the cottage. As might be expected, Jack was getting the worst of it.
“Don’t encourage them, Will,” Jack said, without moving. He felt strangely at peace. He lay back on the pillows and said a prayer for the day ahead. He’d finally left behind the dreadful whiplash of possible outcomes for the tournament. He knew what he was and wasn’t capable of. And now he had a rudimentary plan. It was not a great plan, nor one that was likely to get him out alive. But it was a kind of template, nevertheless.
Jack slid out of bed and got into the shower. He made the water as hot as he could endure, and stood under it for a long time. Then he pulled on his T-shirt and shorts, towel-dried his hair, and measured out his medicine and swallowed it. Everything had the divinity, the significance of a ritual being carried out for the last time.
He pulled out Blaise’s mirror and turned it so it reflected back the light. He was afraid to look into it, unable not to.
When Jack looked into the glass, he saw a young man standing in a clearing. His hair was a red-gold color and hung to his shoulders. It gleamed in the shafts of sunlight that poured through a rooftop of trees. He was arrayed for battle, in gleaming chain mail and carrying a sword. The Shadowslayer. He carried a helmet under one arm.
But then perhaps the battle had already occurred, because the warrior was surrounded by bodies. Hundreds of men lay about him, some of them cut to pieces, men who had died fighting. There was something uncannily familiar about the features of the man. Jack lifted his hand, ran it over his own face.
The bodies on the field. Were they friends or enemies? Jack didn’t know.
Hastings had already gone. Will paced from room to room like a caged animal looking for a way out. Fitch was morose, his face a study in dread. It didn’t look like they’d slept much. When Jack came back from Ellen’s, Will and Fitch had asked him about the visit. Jack said only, “It’s Ellen, all right.”
After breakfast, Jack sat down at the little desk in the front room and found some paper and envelopes in the drawer. He began writing letters—to his parents, to Aunt Linda, Will, Fitch, Nick Snowbeard—and Ellen. He sealed them up and addressed them neatly. He tried to leave them with Will and Fitch in turn, but they backed away, looking panicked.
“You’re crazy, Jack,” Will said. “Stop thinking like that.”
Jack shrugged and left them on the desk. He wondered how his death would be explained if he died at Raven’s Ghyll. Fortunately, that was not his problem.
Hastings returned, stamping wet grass from his boots in the entryway. He had been down at the lists, surveying the field conditions. “Bloody wet, but it’s still in the shade. The weather’s fair, so it should dry off by afternoon.” Jack and Hastings had been over the field a number of times the day before. It was relatively flat, considering the terrain surrounding it, but made treacherous by small gullies and streambeds that tunneled through it. Stands of tall grass and small bushes made them difficult to see. Jack estimated the entire field of play was about the size of a soccer field. It seemed overgenerous for two people.
Hastings was uncharacteristically edgy. Maybe he’s regretting the bargain he made, Jack thought. Given all of Ellen’s years of training, Jack didn’t exactly look like the horse to back. Unless you were betting on a legendary sword.
The wizard fussed over Jack’s weaponry. He’d laid out Shadowslayer along with a short dagger, a small shield, a mace, and a sling. There was also a razor-sharp axe, similar to the one Jeremiah Brooks had carried. The weight and use of it was familiar to Jack, courtesy of the frontiersman.
The cottage hummed with tension. Will was so angry with Hastings that he could hardly look at him. Jack spent a half hour reviewing the Rules of Engagement, but he found himself reading and rereading the same paragraph. Fitch tried unsuccessfully to concentrate on the Weirbook. It was almost a relief when it was time to get ready.
Jack methodically pulled on the heavy canvas breeches, tunic, boots, and a bishop’s mantle made of chain mail. The Rules of Engagement permitted little in the way of armor. He slid his arms into leather gauntlets, laced them up using his teeth. He belted his sword around his waist and picked up the small shield. “This is all I’ll need,” he said, and left the rest where it was.
Hastings frowned. As Jack pushed past him, the wizard put out a hand to stop him. “This plan only works if you win,” he said quietly.
The Heir Chronicles Omnibus Page 30
