Assassin's Apprentice

by S. R. Vaught; J. B. Redmond

  Her eyes flew open, suddenly wide and horribly, painfully alive. Nic startled, almost pulled away, but kept his head—and stayed by her side. She opened her cracked lips, but no sound issued forth.

  Despite the protests of his chair, Nic leaned forward, heart clenching and pounding all at once. “What is it? Do you want to tell me something?”

  Yes! screamed her eyes. Everything. My life, from beginning to end. My secrets. My truths!

  Yet she said nothing. Nic had none of the Mab legacy, none of the special talents of thought and mind, none of the unusual abilities that sometimes blessed members of the ruling Fae families. The rectors had declared him Quiet in the mind many years ago, so he could only guess at his sister’s purpose.

  “Do you know who did this to you?” He moved closer, until he was nearly touching her small nose with his larger one. Determinedly, he kept her gaze and ignored the clucking of the rectors.

  Kestrel blinked once, then twice. She seemed to be measuring him with her stare, judging him for eternity. Nic found himself shaking with despair and eagerness.

  “Tell me, sister. Speak.”

  A fusty puff of breath brushed Nic’s cheeks. Then Kestrel looked past him. As he stared desperately into those feverish depths, the light inside his sister faded away.

  “Wait!” Nic grabbed for her other hand, kissed her cheek—still warm, still warm. “The sun isn’t up yet. Don’t you want to see the light? The rectors will open your shutters and pull back your sheets so you might feel it. One more morning, sister. See the start of day with me.”

  She made no response.

  One, two, three, four …

  An impossible chill laced through the hot chamber. Nic gripped her fingers harder and harder, as if to squeeze some of his own life into her motionless body.

  Eight, nine, ten …

  A gnarled hand closed over his shoulder. “Be easy, Lord Mab. This watch has ended.”

  Nic eased back from Kestrel’s face but shook off the rector’s grip.

  Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen …

  His gut twisted. His jaw throbbed from clenching, and his eyes ached to cry. Still, he didn’t let himself unravel. He counted even though no breath came to start the numbers over again.

  Nic refused to surrender his hold on Kestrel’s hands until he reached one hundred, and another hundred beyond that. Even then, he had difficulty releasing her, despite the fact that her skin had chilled beneath his beseeching touch.

  “So sad,” one of the rectors said in a voice like the crackle of parchment. “To die in the small hours, only minutes before seeing the sun’s splendor one more time.”

  A rush of heat blurred Nic’s vision. He let go of his sister and wheeled on the three healers. “Get out! Out, you Brotherless idiots!”

  They ignored him, of course. Even in his crazed state, he knew they had no real choice, no matter his barbs and slaps. They had to stay. Deathwatch was deathwatch, and after that, deathguard until Kestrel’s essence could be properly dispatched so it wouldn’t transform into a mane and kill everyone in the castle.

  Sometime later, minutes, maybe longer, Nic writhed in the grip of the eldest rector as the other two methodically closed Kestrel’s unseeing eyes. On the darkened lids they placed silver pieces, then lodged a third piece of silver in her lips. Without speaking, they folded her hands around a silver scepter to further ward against her spirit rising as a mane. This was more custom than necessity, since this was a dynast castle. Unlike goodfolk in outlying villages, Eyrie’s ruling Fae always employed those who could immediately dispatch the essence of the dead.

  No sooner had Nic finished that thought than the door to the bedchamber opened. A blue-skinned Sabor, a creature human and yet not human, bound by a promise of loyalty to the line of Mab, entered as the two rectors stepped away from his sister’s body. The two displaced men came over to stand next to Nic and his captor at the fire. He had stopped struggling, at least for the moment.

  The Sabor spoke ritual words to free the spirit, then tapped the ruby-studded Mab cheville on Kestrel’s left ankle. The jeweled stone band sprang open and broke into two pieces, disrupting the subtle energy field emitted by all precious stones. At the same moment, the chill in the room swept upward in a breath-snatching rush.

  The Sabor waited a few more moments, then collected the broken cheville. “Kestrel Mab’s essence has departed,” he said in that maddeningly calm voice used by all servants of the horned god. His unsettling golden eyes contracted at the center until he was studying Nic with a lionlike gaze that made Nic want to shout and beat the blue man, demand that he restore his sister’s spirit, fasten back the cheville, and let the powers of the stone hold her essence close to him.

  Instead he hung his head and stared at his own cheville. The ruby band, created by masons who still had enough mind-talent to imbue the stone with the ability to grow with the leg it adorned, seemed unnaturally bright in the light of the fire. Nic imagined that it was glaring at him, chastising him for his unreasonable wishes. Sabor worshipped the horned god of death, Cayn, and they carried so much of Eyrie’s old blood. They could command the spirits of the dead, but they could not raise the departed. No one could raise the dead, except maybe the Stregans, the strongest of the shape-shifting races that had once existed—but the mixing disasters had killed the Stregans and all the shape-shifters except the Sabor, just as surely as poison was killing the line of Mab.

  Nic squeezed his eyes shut against the truth for another long moment. The murderers have ceased to care who sees their dark design. They know we cannot stop them. The line of Mab is doomed, and me with it.

  With Kestrel dead, with no other heir remaining to Mab, Nic knew he would have only duty henceforth, the endless labor of a dynast lord, for as long as he managed to live. And his sister wouldn’t be there with him, no matter how strongly he willed it. Nic might have many powers when he became Eyrie’s high king, but even kings couldn’t command the relentless turn of fate.

  Elhalla.

  In the Language of Kings, spoken by Fae and those trained by the Thorn Guild.

  Elhalla.

  “Fate turns,” Nic said aloud, calling the meaning of that bitter, bitter word. Half in a dream, he opened his eyes and realized the Sabor had approached him. Cayn’s servant knelt and extended one bony blue hand, offering Nic the two pieces of his sister’s broken cheville. His dark golden pupils had become pinpoints against a field of lighter yellow, and Nic knew the Sabor was ready for anything, even an attack.

  Nic blinked as the rector restraining him finally let go of his arms.

  He’s bringing her cheville to me because I’m the last remaining heir to the ruling line of Mab, through my mother. I am Lord Mab now, and I will be King of Eyrie.

  The thought numbed Nic yet more.

  He almost reached for the dull red relics of his sister, but thought better of it at the last moment and shook his head.

  “Take them to my mother,” he instructed, doing his best to muster some authority in his voice. “She will need them.”

  To go with all the other bits of cheville she carries. To endlessly handle and stroke, to rattle in the bag of doom she keeps bound to her waist.

  The servant of Cayn lowered his head in a formal bow, then obeyed without comment or question.

  After a cold, quiet length of time, long enough for the blue man to descend with his sad offerings, the queen’s wails pierced the heavy wooden walls.

  Nic grimaced.

  The rending and crying drew closer.

  With a dull lurch, Nic realized that his mother was headed toward Kestrel’s chambers. She would come to shriek and cradle her only daughter. Her weak, broken mind would trick her into insane suspicions, and she would curse Lord Ross, the dynast leader she believed to be conspiring against the throne and bribing murderers to poison Mab’s heirs.

  Given long enough, she might end up cursing Lord Brailing, Lord Cobb, and Lord Altar. She might even extend her venom to the Lady Provost
of Thorn, the Lord Provost of Stone, even Lady Vagrat, and Nic didn’t think he could stand the battering of his mother’s invectives. As for Nic—to Lady Mab, high queen of Eyrie’s six dynasts and holder of the Circle’s seventh vote—she scarcely knew he existed. She, like everyone else, had dismissed Nic as unimportant in the workings of Eyrie’s highest royal family, and she would little notice his absence.

  So, wordless and overcome with private grief, Nic Mab escaped his mother’s agony and his sister’s corpse by following the black-cloaked rectors out of the bedchamber, down the long castle hallway leading away from private quarters, through the massive reception room, and up a twisting, turning staircase to the castle’s highest tower. The rectors were deep in conversation and did not look back to see him, which was fortunate. He certainly could not have hidden himself from view. Nic kept his footfalls as quiet as he could, and did his best to breathe without gasping, even when he lost his wind on the narrow tower steps. Outside smaller and smaller windows, he could see the branches cradling the castle growing thinner.

  The rectors moved out onto the open turret, which rose far atop the trees supporting the castle. Pinks and oranges painted the dawn sky. Soft blue-white light broke over the horizon as Nic crept behind the rectors, savoring a first view from the tower he had never been allowed to climb, where no Fae usually visited for obvious reasons of risk and safety. The top of the tower held only three square huts full of birds, joined by fencing and circled by a scant wooden platform.

  It wasn’t until the healers reached the first of the three huts in the rookery that they glanced back and noticed Nic. Their duties were clear and urgent, and they couldn’t stop now to scold him and force him back down to the castle proper. The rectors were charged with releasing the tidings of tragedy to goodfolk and Fae in cities far and near, and delays went against customs much older than Nic.

  “Have care, Lord Mab,” said the eldest rector, who had restrained Nic in his sister’s bedchamber. “You should not have come here, but be still and cautious, and we will escort you down from the tower as soon as we have finished.”

  Nic ignored the man and his worrisome scowl and made his way around the platform of the open turret as the rectors worked. He positioned himself where he could look up to the sky to see the birds, then watch them soar across the city below. He wanted to see them fly. He had to. It would be like watching his sister’s spirit hurtle into the sun.

  Metal creaked. Wood shifted. The roof of the third building opened.

  Nic heard the excited chittering of birds. Then one, then two, then all of the passerines exploded from their nests, a whirring cloud of wings and feathers that made his aching heart pound.

  Light from the rising sun gleamed off the birds, turning them to swirling jewels in the sunrise. Jewels that would be seen for leagues. At other watch towers and rookeries, lesser flocks would be released. Like flash signals of old, the message would travel all through Eyrie in just hours, a day at the most to the far reaches of Dyn Brailing and Dyn Ross.

  White passerines. Tears in the sky! A Mab of Mab has joined the clouds.

  “The heir to the throne didn’t make it to morning,” Nic whispered into the rushing wind, feeling the chafe of tears on his cheeks. “My sister is gone.”

  Were it his mother who had died, the rectors would have set free the black flock to summon dynast lords and ladies to the Circle of Eyrie for a thronemaking. Brown birds would have summoned the nobles to Circle, but with less urgency, for a regular meeting of government.

  I’m alone, and soon I’ll be made king, and all of Eyrie will laugh—or wail—at such a misfortune.

  A gust buffeted Nic, and he leaned back fast against a bit of rookery fence. Above him, the white birds circled, making wider and wider patterns. Nic watched them, nearly oblivious to the risk that the rector had warned him to avoid. The castle at Can Rowan, suspended in massive, ancient heartwoods above the city it commanded, had been rendered ages ago, when the Mabs of Mab would have been winged like the birds they kept. For many long centuries after the Migration, and before the mixing disasters that destroyed the shape-shifters, the Fae could fly and speak with their minds across infinite distances. No rails had to keep hobbledehoy princes from falling from the trees.

  Better days in better times, Nic had heard his mother say in lucid moments. Freedom of body, of mind.

  The winds eased. Nic stepped forward again and gazed down at the beauty of Can Rowan to give himself comfort. Houses sat snug in welcoming trees. Towers rose off the ground like fists reaching toward the trees. Shops and barrows and homes, some landbound, some branch-cradled—the Tree City seemed to stretch forever in all directions.

  Cutwinds stung his cheeks and blew his hair into his face. As he reached to swipe the golden curls from his eyes, shadows fell across his view, and cold, firm fingers closed on Nic’s shoulders. Nic caught his breath, then realized it must be one of the rectors, worried that he might fall.

  “Leave me. I’m fine.” Nic started to turn—but whoever had his shoulder began to shove him forward.

  “Stop!” he yelled.

  The wind turned his cries into whispers. Nic’s heart squeezed into a tiny, pounding fist.

  He tried to struggle, tried to throw his weight backward or turn around, but he could only stumble forward. Toward the edge. On the edge!

  Swaying high above Can Rowan, Nic screamed for help.

  He thought about the rectors. Just a moment, but long enough to realize that the rectors in the rookery might be the murderers who poisoned his sister and his brothers, too.

  Then Nic was screaming again, this time without words—and flying with no wings to bear him into the sky.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ARON

  Aron knew the rest of his family was hard at task in the vegetable patch and hayfields, so he worked his muck rake, keeping his eyes fixed on the hogs just a body’s length away from him, as his father taught him to do. A body’s length, and no closer. Hogs were dangerous. Aron knew he shouldn’t let his attention wander even for a moment. Even on Harvest.

  The barn cast shadows on his work, and today no scent of stew seeped from the house. They would dine on bread and fresh picks from the garden, and hope no flash of brightness, no tempting smell, no hint or whisper of anything good or unusual escaped their farm to attract attention.

  Aron didn’t mind the work. Hard labor suited him, spent his energy and calmed his nerves. There was no shame in labor, he had learned from his father. Working men were brave, strong, and prepared for what came. Callused hands were honest hands, after all.

  Harvest will end, and I will still be here, where I belong. I will go to Grommonds. I will learn and prosper, and live and die with callused hands.

  As if in answer, a sow rooted and grunted. Mud splashed on Aron’s caked breeches and leather boots. His tunic, handed down through three of his six brothers, reached past his knees to gather its own filth. Still he shoveled, moving with rhythm and purpose, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t go through the Veil. He couldn’t reach the quiet place inside his mind where light turned bright and even the smallest sounds grew loud. That place his father had taught him to seek, where his nerves calmed and his temper eased, where his troubles faded and his awareness focused sharper and sharper, until he saw only the task at hand.

  For a time, Aron tried reciting the Code of Eyrie, to which all citizens of Eyrie gave an oath at the moment they grew old enough to sort right from wrong. He even managed it in the Language of Kings, taught by the Thorn Guild. His father had learned the old words from Thorn initiates and adepts during his guardsman days, and Aron had little trouble speaking the six laws that brought the dynasts out of the mixing disasters that destroyed the shape-shifters.

  So what if his father had no store of wealth, no inheritance of godslight—gold that never lost its value—or treasures like those Brailings farther up the line of succession. Aron accepted that with no grudge. He was content to work the farm beside h
is father, his mother, his sisters, and his brothers. One day, he would have his own large, healthy family, a livestock farm to feed them—and he would teach his many children about the Code, about going through the Veil, and about Wolf Brailing.

  If Eyrie’s blue-white sun would move across the sky and set.

  If Harvest indeed came to an end with Aron safe in his hog pen, mucking and mucking and mucking.

  The entire land felt … wrong to him today, even beyond Harvest, beyond anything rational. He almost expected to see shadows forming above each tree and hill, or darkness breaking through the bright sky to swallow him and the hogs, too.

  Tears formed and waned in Aron’s eyes as he felt the pull of the farm like a tether in his gut, connecting him to the ground he worked. He sensed the mud deep in his blood. He breathed the dust, tasted the dirt, and took in the greens and browns of the nearby tufts of grass. The farm yielded only sparsely, but Aron helped in the planting and tending. They had one ancient ox and nothing else but a few hogs and chickens, but he had raised the pigs and birds almost by himself while the rest of his family saw to other chores.

  Aron glanced at the fence around the hog pen and hated himself for his spineless urges to run away and hide from Harvest. Yet if he crawled through those slats, if he dashed behind the barn and slipped into the trees, he could disappear better than most. No one would find him. He knew the southern reaches of Dyn Brailing better than anyone, from the Watchline to the deep, dangerous Scry.

  Except my father and my brothers. But would they search for me? Guilda i’Guild. To disrespect Stone or Thorn is Unforgivable. Every citizen of Eyrie is sworn to the Code from birth. My family wouldn’t shelter an oathbreaker, or they would become as guilty as me.

  He frowned and forced himself to stare more deeply into the muck. He needed to find his courage, establish his peace. The day was waning, after all. Harvest was half over, at least, and he needed to concentrate. His arms moved. His legs moved. The muck rake started to work again. Aron tried to let his mind sink into the pen’s deep browns and blacks, into the hogs’ contented snuffles, into the breeze and the smack of the rake and the rocking, rocking of his back and elbows as he turned the mud and turned it again, again, again to pull under old slops and make ready for tomorrow’s feeding. Hard work. Good work. Honest work.