Assassin's Apprentice
Page 18
A minute later—or was it only a second?—he blinked his eyes, his real, physical eyes, and saw the purpled rim of the setting sun reflected back to him, broken into prisms by ripples and wavelets.
The pond. Noises from the shelter encampment behind him. The faint smell of burning tallow …
Was he back on this side of the Veil?
Someone slapped him so hard his head snapped to the side, away from the blow. He shouted and grabbed his cheek against the sting. Fluid ran out of his nose and eyes and ears, and his teeth danced and jittered together, fighting off what felt like dead-of-winter chill.
“What were you thinking?” Dari’s angry hiss made Aron turn his head back toward her, his fingers still pressed against his throbbing cheek. “Were you trying to die? Fool. Fool!”
She gazed at him, mouth open, dark eyes burning with anger and concern.
Aron couldn’t look away from her.
She was just so pretty.
No, more than pretty.
Dari was as beautiful as a rare, perfect jewel, and her fury only made her more so.
He pulled his palm away from his face and realized the warm fluid he felt was blood.
Dari moved so quickly Aron perceived nothing but a blur. He felt the pressure of her palms against the sides of his head, then a white-hot light burned through his mind, searing his awareness, blasting heat through every inch of his flesh.
Somehow she knew what he had been planning to do to the soldiers, didn’t she?
And now she was killing him because he was too dangerous. He couldn’t be allowed to live.
If anyone else had attacked him, Aron would have fought back, but not against her. Not against Dari.
She was killing him, and maybe it was for the best. He tried to think, to form some logical resistance that wouldn’t harm her, but he was dying and he couldn’t even fight her.
After a long, agonizing moment, Aron knew nothing but darkness deeper than the void he had seen on the other side of the Veil—and pain worse than anything he had ever experienced.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NIC
The woman sitting above him smelled of almonds, which frightened Nicandro Mab beyond reason.
Torchlight from several dancing flames staked around the wagon set her shadow to dancing like some wine-maddened fool. If he could have shifted away from her, he would have, but spikes of pain nailed him to the wagon in which he lay.
Where am I?
Am I dead?
A cool breeze chilled his burning skin as he tried to raise his fingers and touch his own cheek, but his arms had been pulled straight and bound to heavy pieces of wood. Torch flames hissed as he realized both of his legs had been treated in similar fashion, and cloth straps held him to a wide, smooth board. Even the thought of movement brought tears of agony. Nic groaned before he thought to hold back the sound.
“Be still, boy,” the woman said without turning toward him. “You have many wounds and broken bones.”
Nic blinked at the stars and twinned moons above him.
Since he first began waking, an hour ago, maybe longer, he had been expecting the woman’s voice to sound rough and harsh, but this—this was the sound of ancestors gone to the Brother, wings restored, singing joyous praises on a hilltop at sunrise. This was a voice that dulled minds with its sweetness, that stole awareness even as a hidden dagger crept toward its target.
Nic’s chest ached more fiercely.
Had the woman moved?
He didn’t think so.
She continued to sit motionless, some sort of silvery statue bathed by the frenetic torchlight, holding her hands and the reins in her lap.
He couldn’t see her face for the cowl pulled up to hide her features. He wasn’t certain of the color of her robes in the darkness—but he thought they might be gray.
I’m giving myself night-scares.
His mind struggled to gather the pieces of his life and make sense of what was happening, but he could not. The last thing he remembered was speaking to a boy on a mountaintop—a boy who glowed sapphire blue, almost as bright as the midday sun.
Had that conversation truly taken place?
I flew.
I think I flew away from the castle, from my mother in Can Rowan. I flew away because … because Kestrel died.
The sound of wind in cloth startled him, and when he turned his eyes to where the woman had been, he saw only the reins from their team of oxen, knotted around the wagon’s board seat.
“I’m here,” the woman said from Nic’s other side.
Brother save me. She’s in the back of the wagon with me now.
And he couldn’t move.
Fiery bolts of misery traveled through his face and head as his teeth clamped together.
The woman knelt, head bowed, attending to several small leather goatskins belted at her waist. She selected one, then lifted her hand and her head as she offered it to Nic. Torch shadows and moonslight played off her face, but he thought he caught glimpses of black marks beside her eyes and white-blond hair brushing the sides of her chin.
When Nic made no effort to open his mouth, when he pressed his lips together so tightly it would have taken murderous force to open his mouth, the woman laughed.
Once more, the sound nearly wrecked Nic’s nerves, because it was so mellow and beautiful.
But what had he been expecting instead? Some sort of deadly hiss?
This woman could be some rector’s errand runner, ferrying him away to the Thorn Guild for healing.
Or maybe she’s Cayn in disguise. If I could sit up and shove back her hood, I might find the god of death’s terrible stag horns, waiting to gore me until manes come to feast on my blood.
For some reason, Nic found himself more comfortable with thoughts of Cayn than the idea that he might be going to Thorn to be nursed by rectors and their apprentices.
The woman offered the goatskin to him again, but that ever-present hint of almonds in the air made Nic shake. He whimpered from the pain of the movement, but still refused to open his mouth.
“I’m not offering you Mercy, boy.” She raised the skin to her own lips, took a sip, swallowed, then offered it to him again. “It’s a mix of water and nightshade wine, proportioned for you. Drink. It’ll ease your pain.”
Mercy.
As in, a peaceful death extended to those who suffer.
Nic squinted at the woman’s robes again, and he decided the cloth might be gray after all.
He was in the company of a Stone Sister.
No wonder the air seemed thick with the scent of poison.
But she drank from the goatskin she was extending toward him, and she told him she wasn’t offering him Mercy.
Nic wished he could see the woman’s eyes, to judge her trustworthiness for himself.
As if hearing his silent plea, she pushed back her cowl. The darkness around them seemed to lighten, as if clouds had cleared away from the moons, and Nic saw the woman more clearly now. She was small-boned, thin, with dark blue eyes that studied him without mirth or judgment. At the corners of both eyes, reaching down to her cheeks, two black spirals had been tattooed into her brown skin.
Brown skin—like she might be from Dyn Cobb, but her white-blond hair, cropped at her shoulders, looked more like Fae bloodlines from Dyn Vagrat. This puzzled Nic. An unusual combination of traits, but then, he had met many Fae of mixed heritage.
Even in the semidarkness, Nic could see that the woman’s arms were lined over with dav’ha marks.
A woman?
Tattooed like a soldier?
On impulse, or maybe out of sheer awe and confusion, he sipped from the goatskin she offered. The thick sugar-potato taste of nightshade flowed over his tongue, burned down his throat, and rushed into his aching, growling belly. Moments later, relief edged outward, touching first his spine, then his arms and legs, then his fingers and face. First a warm, soothing tingle, then a blessed partial numbness that helped his tears stop flowing.
Nic gaped at her, and she shrugged. “Some can smell the almond scent, some can’t. I rarely use it anyway. I prefer hand-to-hand combat when I deal with my Judged. Most men—and women, too—underestimate me.”
“S-stone,” Nic managed, trying his voice for the first time, and grateful to find he still had the capacity to talk. Then his thoughts and education combined to tell him the rest of what he should have known. “Benedets.”
The woman touched one of the spiral marks, then the other. “Yes. I’m marked with two full benedets. That’s because I’m Tiamat, Third High Mistress of Stone, though most call me Tia, or use my guild name, which is Snakekiller. And you are?”
“Nic—” Nic broke off before giving a full response. His mind raced over possibilities, finding many, settling on none, but he was suddenly certain of one thing more than all others. He did not wish to be returned to the castle. To his mother. To the destiny that awaited him there.
He closed his eyes—and seemed to fall.
Fly…
Nic cried out and lurched against his bindings. Confusion hit him so hard, so fast he wondered if the Stone Sister had given him Mercy after all.
“Easy.” Her smooth tones broke through the rattling in Nic’s skull, and her cool touch to his shoulder cooled the raging heat on his face, in his mind. “Breathe slowly when the pain hits you, boy. Nic, if that’s your name. Just keep your mind on the flow of air, nothing else, nothing outside of that motion.”
Her words made concentration possible, and Nic did as she instructed, moving air in through his nose and out through his mouth. The pounding, tearing throb in his muscles and bones eased, then eased a bit more, until he once more opened his eyes to see the woman called Tia Snakekiller kneeling by his side. Her small, graceful fingers rested on his shoulders, and the light that had allowed Nic to see the details of her features had receded, but not completely died away.
She was gazing at him, not smiling, but not coldly or harshly either. Her expression seemed kind, and somewhat concerned.
For a time, they sat in silence.
When Nic thought he could speak coherently, he said, “I’m Nic Vespa,” borrowing a surname he had heard on one of his many trips to the castle kitchens.
Snakekiller raised one eyebrow, then seemed to accept this offering. “Vespa. I know many Vespas in Dyn Mab. Goodfolk, one and all. That’s a fairly common family name, is it not?”
“Yes,” Nic said, since he couldn’t nod with his head barely mobile.
“It’s a serviceable name. We found you on a deserted side street while riding to Harvest, Nic Vespa. You were broken and bleeding, as if some brute beat you within an inch of your life. Did someone beat you?”
Her gaze was so intense Nic wished he could roll away from it. He didn’t know what to say, what to tell her, so he said nothing. Some things were so clear, and others, so muddled. He might have been beaten. Was he beaten after Kestrel died?
Or… did he fall?
Trip and plunge from the castle?
I flew.
The thought stuck in his mind and he almost closed his eyes again. Only terror of that terrible plummeting sensation kept him from making that mistake twice.
Snakekiller’s tone was both soothing and accepting. “It’s no matter if you don’t wish to explain. You’re a child and you needed aid, and Stone gave it. The low-town rectors wouldn’t take you for healing, as your wounds were well beyond their abilities, so we didn’t ask them.”
She paused and looked off into the night, and Nic couldn’t help shuddering at the realization that he had been so near death. So close to breathing his last breath that only the dangerous medicines of Stone could help him. Then the rest of what Snakekiller told him penetrated his mind. Low-town. How had he wound up so far from the castle? The rectors who pushed him wouldn’t have looked for him there. They must have assumed him dead, and by now passed another body off as his own. Since Snakekiller asked no one’s permission, no one in Can Rowan knew he had survived.
When Snakekiller once more gave him her full attention, he shifted his eyes to hers, though that took more courage than he thought he possessed. “Am I a Harvest prize, then?”
“No. We’ve secured our Harvest in the other wagon, the one pulled by mules.” She pointed into the night, to a spot Nic couldn’t see. “We’ve been on the road nearly three weeks since we found you, but—well, I suppose you may as well know. War has begun.”
Nic once more hurt himself by trying to sit up, and Snakekiller gave him another sip of relief.
As he swallowed the sweet liquid, trying to focus on the taste rather than the burning throb of his entire body, Snakekiller said, “Lord Brailing has joined his forces with those of Lord Altar. Rumor says they’re both marching on Mab’s western border—but Mab seems to be turning the bulk of its forces south and east, as if to make a charge toward Dyn Ross. We had to flee into the Wenhorn Mountains to avoid the armies. Now we’re making for the border of Dyn Cobb, where rumors and whispers hold we’ll be given safe passage back to Stone.”
“Why have we stopped?” Nic asked, his words slurred from the nightshade wine. “Because it’s night?”
“We ride through the night whenever we can. Even with mockers and manes, travel is safer.” Snakekiller once more glanced into the darkness, but this time, her smile gave him a fresh set of chills. “We’ve stopped because my companion Hasty—Hastling is his proper name—believes one of his Judged has squirreled himself away on a cousin’s farm nearby. I gave him and his apprentice leave to hunt for an hour. Strange times, strange measures, of course, but for Stone, duty continues even with soldiers skulking behind every tree trunk.”
Nic shuddered again, this time at the image of gray-robed assassins stalking their human quarry. Once a Brother or Sister drew a stone on one of the Judged, that Judged became their personal responsibility until either the hunted or the hunter died.
Nic had never seen any part of a hunt, but his brothers had told him stories of great chases. The Judged could choose immediate combat on the grounds of Triune, which most did, or they could choose flight. Those who opted for flight were given two days’ lead; then Stone came after them. Sometimes the hunt took days. Sometimes it took years. But in the end, Stone always seemed to prevail. The Judged would be found dead, arms folded over their chest, the image of Cayn’s antlers burned into the flesh of their forehead. In their left hand would be the white pebble, the one the Stone Brother or Sister had drawn on the day of Judgment, with the quarry’s name etched into the rock’s grain.
“If I’m not to be a Harvest prize,” Nic whispered, speaking to erase his terror at the thought of the hunt more than any other reason, “then what am I?”
“That will be up to you, Nic Vespa. You’ll go with us to Triune, where you’re welcome to stay until you’ve healed. When you’re well, you’re free to return to your people, and we’ll let you leave on any convoy bound to your home territory.” Snakekiller sounded earnest enough, and Nic realized that despite his education, there was much he didn’t know about Stone, past the myths and stories he had gleaned from rectors and his brothers.
“If you’d rather learn a skill and petition to join a trade lodge, you may do so,” Snakekiller continued. “Some of our rescues eventually seek shelter or training with Thorn, though they turn away most without bulging bags of godslight these days. Others elect to take vows with Stone.”
Nic wished he could sit up so that his next words might carry some force. “I want to take vows with Stone. Can I do so now?”
Snakekiller looked surprised, then bemused, then worried. She shook her head. “With so many of your bones broken and drunk on nightshade wine? No, Nic. Making vows to Sto
ne is serious business—and lifelong. Once spoken, there’s no oathbreaking.”
She left off with that heavy word sitting between them.
Oathbreaking.
Nic remembered hearing from his brothers that a Stone Brother or Sister who tried to flee guild services would be hunted by their own guild mates, not to mention the Dynast Guard—from every dynast. Oathbreakers had no home, no family.
Oathbreakers were enemies to all.
“Give your body time to heal, Nic Vespa.” Tia Snakekiller climbed out of the back of the wagon and settled herself on the board seat in the front, above him. He could barely see her hands and one of her sides from his position, tied down as he was.
“Allow your mind time to clear,” she said as she untied the reins from the board where she had secured them. “When you’re well, you’ll be free to make your own choices about Stone or Thorn or the trade lodges, or some other path. Don’t be so quick to seal your future. The Mother has blessed you with many options. I suggest you consider them all.”
The Mother? Nic stared at the moons and stars above him, surprised. Then this one is from Dyn Vagrat, or she was raised by a parent from Vagrat, at least before she took her vows and the name of Snakekiller.
Only citizens of Dyn Vagrat worshipped the Mother of Mystery. In the other dynasts, nobles and goodfolk alike prayed to the merciful Brother, except in Dyn Ross to the south, where many still followed the old ways and looked to Cayn the horned god for their relief.
How had a woman from Dyn Vagrat come to reside in Triune, with Stone? Had she been Harvested? Run away?
Perhaps rescued, like me.
Nic tried to work up the courage to ask her, but voices rose in the distance, and Nic realized this would be her companion Hasty, returning from his hunt with his apprentice. From the laughter and shouts, Nic supposed the Stone Brother and his helper had been successful.
And somewhere in the darkness, a man lies dead, clutching a white pebble and wearing the mark of Cayn on his brow.
That was the custom of Stone, for sanctioned kills.