Assassin's Apprentice

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

  “Thank—” he started, but the Lord Provost silenced him by grabbing his collar just below the neck. The man’s grip was forceful, and he was so strong he lifted Aron from the ground with only one hand and pulled him close, close to that brown-egg face of his.

  All Aron could do was kick and sputter against the choking sensation, but he stopped moving altogether when he realized he was just hastening his own loss of air.

  “In the matter of dangerous legacies, judgment is mine and mine alone as Lord Provost of the Stone Guild.” Lord Baldric held Aron suspended, speaking to him in a calm, yet terrifying tone. As if he were instructing him to set the table, or sweep away some crumbs. Black spots danced at the fringes of Aron’s vision, but he didn’t struggle. “If you ever use your mind-talents to harm anyone, if you even attempt it again, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you before you ever know another night’s sleep, or another morning’s waking, and I’ll do it with cold steel, not gentle poison. Do not use your graal at all, except at my bidding, or Stormbreaker’s, or those training you in the arts of the mind.”

  With that, he set Aron back on the floor and released him—though he still wasn’t finished.

  Aron gulped a mouthful of air even as he lifted his hands to his belly, imagining the slice of a blade in his guts and the way Lord Baldric’s eyes would blaze as his blood spilled on the man’s boots and breeches. He would watch Aron die with the same cold detachment Aron had heard in his voice.

  “Using unfair advantage, that’s not the way of Stone.” Lord Baldric actually smiled at him, but there was no way Aron could take the expression for friendly, or the least bit kind. “We hunt, fight, and kill with hands, feet, and teeth. We employ weapons and wits and wiles, but never mind-talents the Judged can’t learn for themselves, even if they choose to dedicate themselves to the task. Do we have an understanding about that—and the consequences of disregarding me on this point?”

  “Yes, Lord Provost,” Aron said, then clamped his teeth shut again.

  Lord Baldric’s tone remained pleasant, but his eyes grew more deadly with each sentence. “You will have none of the leeway given other apprentices. If you’re to remain here, it will be on my terms, and my terms are this: you will serve me whenever I demand it, however I demand it. And if ever once you’re brought before me for your conduct, you will be culled from Stone, then immediately sent to judgment for your attempted crimes.” He leaned close to Aron, so close Aron could almost feel the man’s big hands choking him again. “I’m asking for nothing short of perfection. Think hard, boy. It might be better to take your judgment now and have done with it, because I assure you, I will be watching you.”

  Aron knew his eyes had gone as wide as milk saucers, but he could do little to suppress the lightning jolts stinging his insides. What the Lord Provost asked—Aron was no fool. He knew it was impossible to be perfect. But what chance did he have at judgment? Even a first-year apprentice could cut him down in a battle.

  But Lord Baldric was not his father, and deep within Aron’s raging depths, he knew he had done more than speak back to his mother or upset his little sisters.

  What he had tried to do to the Brailing Guard, that was no childish misbehavior.

  Oathbreaker…

  The word hung in his mind, thin as a woman’s fancy hair ribbon, as if showing him the impossibly slim difference between what he was, and what he had almost become.

  Lord Baldric didn’t seem inclined to rush his decision, this choice Aron now found himself making between immediate death and one more day, one more week, one more cycle of life. Between no chance, and a small chance. A chance likely purchased by pity inspired by the slaughter of his family.

  Aron fought down a ragged breath, then found himself searching the face of Stormbreaker, then Dari. Both seemed very worried, and very invested in what he might say next. The corners of Stormbreaker’s eyes glistened as if he might be battling back tears. As for Dari, she looked ready to use her bared teeth to kill something.

  “I accept your terms,” Aron said, bracing himself for the Lord Provost’s next arguments or pronouncements.

  Lord Baldric turned to Stormbreaker instead. “I don’t like this, Dun. The fact we’ll have to hide his abilities from the others or risk attack from Brailing. I don’t want secrets between Brothers and Sisters. Secrets could destroy the Stone Guild faster than any army could lay siege and bring us down.”

  This time, Stormbreaker did lift his head and met the gaze of his mentor. “Thousands of secrets live within Stone’s walls, and thousands more are buried with the bones of those Brothers and Sisters dead before us. What will two more matter?”

  Aron rubbed his tight, aching throat as the High Master spoke, slowly realizing this battle had been won, that Stormbreaker’s honesty and silence might have been the very tactic that ensured the victory.

  Dari shifted from murderous to impressed.

  Lord Cobb looked amused, and the food trays on the table once more seemed to beckon to him. He kept glancing at a pile of dates near his left hand, and finally claimed one and popped it in his mouth.

  “You’ll keep a close watch on the boy,” Lord Baldric demanded of Stormbreaker. “Her, too.” He pointed at Dari as he glanced toward Lord Cobb. Aron realized Lord Baldric didn’t want to call Dari’s proper title and name or acknowledge Dari’s status aloud, as if that might make her presence more real, or more dangerous.

  Lord Baldric returned his gaze to Stormbreaker. “She’ll have to reside here as if she is a Ross pigeon. Others will make the same assumption I did, which is all the better for us. Just a sheltered pigeon, nothing more. Even though she’s sheltered, she’ll house inside the walls of the High Master’s Den with the boy. We’ll make whatever explanations we must, but I’ll have it no other way. And I want them both to keep quiet. No standing out, no gathering attention.”

  “I’ll stay far out of the way and assist with Aron’s training,” Dari said, then seemed to regret speaking as the Lord Provost glared in her general direction.

  “Dari has great talent with managing legacies,” Lord Cobb said around his chewy mouthful of date. The smell sent bile up the back of Aron’s throat. “She can bring Aron along faster than most teachers.”

  This seemed to help sway Lord Baldric, who waved one hand in front of his face. “Fine, fine. So be it, then. In the morning before archery and knives, and in the evening after dinner, work with the boy, Dari. That will be one of the tasks you do to earn your keep here, and I’ll hold you accountable for his mishaps.”

  Aron rubbed his sore neck. This threat, even more than the fear of a sword through his belly, would hold him in check.

  Don’t worry, he tried to tell Dari with his eyes. I won’t let you down.

  She nodded as if she heard him, word for word.

  “She’ll have to be banded,” Lord Baldric said as he pointed to Dari’s bare left ankle. “An unfettered legacy, and all that from the third law of the Code of Eyrie. The dynast lords will be calling me an oathbreaker if they hear I’m breaking that law and letting a girl with no cheville practice her legacy within these walls.”

  Dari’s eyes narrowed and her mouth came open, but Stormbreaker spoke before she could say anything. “We’ll arrange something, Lord Baldric.” To Dari, he added, “Something for show, easily removed at your discretion.”

  Aron watched as Dari calmed down, but Lord Baldric grew more tense. His smile seemed more predatory than friendly as his gaze swept over all of them, one at a time. “Now, do any of you have any more surprises or bad news?”

  Lord Cobb grinned, then picked a bit of date from his teeth with his fingernail. “Just one. I suspect Dari’s personal protectors will be arriving any moment.”

  Aron looked at Dari, puzzled, but she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed the sides of her head like her mind might explode.

  “They won’t be admitted,” Lord Baldric blustered, starting to turn red again. “I’ll not have—”

  “What you’ll have is n
o choice, not in this matter, unless you want a battle that costs you much of your guild.” Lord Cobb seemed to be enjoying himself overly much at Lord Baldric’s expense, and Aron was once more powerfully reminded of his older brothers, and how they sparred and spatted. “Her protectors are Sabor, two of them, and one’s bound to her by a birth-promise. The other’s on some sort of spiritual mission. You can either let them in or let them fight their way in. They won’t be kept from her.”

  Lord Baldric’s jaw went slack even as Aron felt a cool rush of surprise.

  For a time, everyone stood without speaking.

  Aron managed to forget his own predicament as his mind raced through the possibility of meeting his first Sabor, of actually talking to one of the powerful shape-shifters he and some of his brothers used to imitate when they played at battle. He wanted to know if they really had yellow eyes. He wanted to see one… change. He wanted to see a Sabor take somebody on in a fair match, to know if they really were as unbeatable in single combat as all the stories made them out to be.

  Why did no one else seem thrilled by this prospect?

  When the Lord Provost regained his voice, he addressed himself to Stormbreaker with, “Sabor. Cayn’s teeth. With Lady Mab and the cursed Thorn Guild waiting for any hint we’re taking sides in this conflict.” He let out a fresh string of curses, some of which Aron had never heard before, but the tone made the meaning clear. “I’ve had dozens of different messengers between Thorn and Mab, the two of them making demands, asking for concessions, pledges of neutrality. Thorn is turned on its ear because the greater dynasts are marching into Dyn Vagrat without so much as a fine greeting or an if-you-please—and we’re to have Sabor sheltered behind our gates? They’ll accuse us of harboring spies, of siding up with Lord Cobb, here, and our old friend Lord Ross.”

  Stormbreaker kept his own counsel, as did everyone else, though Aron wondered if that wasn’t exactly what Lord Baldric was doing, by taking in Dari and letting him stay as well.

  “Low profile, my left cheek, and not the one on my pretty face.” Lord Baldric shook his head as he gazed first at Dari, then at Aron, until Aron’s heart tried to squeeze itself to death, and finally at Stormbreaker. “Very well. Our Sabor guests will be your responsibility, too, and you’d best start thinking of a first-rate explanation for their presence.”

  Stormbreaker continued his silence, and Dari and Lord Cobb remained just as quiet. Aron wondered if this was the best way to handle Lord Baldric when the man was in a temper, then hoped he would never try the Lord Provost’s patience again and have to find out.

  Lord Baldric ran his hand across his bald pate, then down across his face, touching each tattooed spiral as he went. “May fate favor the foolish, Dun, and I fear that you—or perhaps we—are very much in that category now.”

  PART III

  Elfael

  FATE CIRCLES

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ARON

  Late the same day as his arrival, Aron found himself trying to drag his heavy, aching limbs up Triune’s main road, due north toward the strange keep-within-a-keep he had noticed on his arrival. He didn’t bother to ask Stormbreaker what it was. He was too afraid the High Master would question him about it, and that he might have to endure more walking or running, more weapons practice, or more hauling water and grain to increase his strength and bulk. That, or something else equally exhausting.

  Aron had expected to be shown to his living quarters after Lord Baldric dismissed them, perhaps be allowed to clean himself or see Tek, or even sleep after such an exhausting ride the night before. As it was, Dari had parted company with him just outside the main gate and keep, and gone off to make her farewells with Lord Cobb. Then, without regard to how long they had been awake and on the road, Stormbreaker had walked Aron all over the sprawling castle grounds. For hours. Stopping only to “rest” by having Aron throw daggers at various targets, run sprints to buildings he couldn’t remember to name, or carry pots or bags for people they passed on the roads.

  “Carrying and hauling is good for the muscles,” Stormbreaker told him each time he stopped a traveler and had Aron relieve them of their burdens. “You need much work in that respect.”

  Aron had complied and done his best, and all the while, Stormbreaker pointed out structures and areas Aron was responsible for knowing—the first time he was told, without any repetition—unless Aron wanted to run a bit more. There were stables to the west, and talon barns, grazing fields, the horseman’s armory, and the archery and knife ranges. When Aron failed to immediately remember a site, Stormbreaker had him run sprints, and doubled them, sending him up and down the well-kept graveled byways again and again, until Aron felt the impressions of a thousand small stones across the bottoms of his feet, straight through his leathery boots.

  “No. Again. Run to that tree.” Stormbreaker’s voice grew as monotonous and grinding as the tasks.

  “Here, Aron. You must do better. Sprint to the edge of the talon barn and return to me.”

  “You were slow. Run the route again, and make it smart this time.”

  Endless. It was endless. The day would never finish itself, Aron was convinced as he stumbled back from a flying run to the mock battlefield beside the main byway. He reached Stormbreaker and had to double over, hands on his knees, holding himself up as he tried to breathe, had to breathe, yet couldn’t quite seem to do it properly.

  “Your life, your success in a hunt, will depend first on the choices you make, and second on what you see and how fast you see it,” Stormbreaker told him as he waited for Aron to stop wheezing. “Details. You must notice every last one, and commit them all to memory. The Judged will give you no second chances, no reading of charges and sentencing—nothing but a swift blade to the heart. The time will come when you’re carrying ten stones on Judged who have chosen flight, or twenty, or more.” He patted a pouch tied around his waist, and the rattle from the bag made Aron wonder how many death sentences traveled with Stormbreaker everywhere he went, every step he took. “At any moment, a man could spring at you to save his own life, to win back his freedom. Never let your mind or your eyes be idle. Even here.”

  Aron had scarcely gathered in that thought when Stormbreaker moved them east, past the House of the Judged and the arena, to the Temple of the Brother, the crop barn, fields laden for harvest, the granary, and the general armory. Aron’s feet tried to drag as he walked, but he managed not to stumble. Sweat coated his skin despite the cool afternoon air, and his muscles burned so badly he wondered if his body could catch fire with no flame to ignite it. In his mind, he tried repeating the list of places they passed five times to himself, then six, then seven, adding on each area Stormbreaker identified. That worked for a few names, but not all of them. When Stormbreaker quizzed him on which crops lay in which fields, he got to dash to each one, and to three of them several times.

  In desperation, Aron moved to using first letters, then associations—like crop-fields-harvest-granary—that made sense and led his memory from one thing to the next. To the north, he was introduced to the quarters for the sheltered, the millhouse, the main kitchens, the fighting paddock, and the forge.

  A few steps away from the pungent sulfur odor of the forge fires, Stormbreaker stopped them. “What was the last structure we passed, Aron?” He gestured to a huge wooden enclosure near the forge.

  Forge-fight, Aron’s exhausted mind flung at him. Forge-fight!

  “The fighting paddock,” he said aloud, his voice forceful enough to surprise him, given the screaming ache throughout his entire body.

  Stormbreaker paused, seemed about to smile, and a wave of elation almost made Aron whoop. For the first time, he had supplied the correct answer and avoided another rib-crushing sprint to a structure he failed to name.

  Stormbreaker turned him toward a well-formed path off the main road. Aron could see the river that ran through the grounds, rock bridges to cross it, and a small stone building. From behind him, meaty smells rose from th
e main kitchens, but he was too tired to feel hunger. He had taken enough drinks to keep his thirst slaked, so the river held little appeal for him, too. He did feel a touch of curiosity about the small building, because it seemed to radiate darkness, like some sort of graal he had never heard of before. It had to be a trick of the light, of shading from the nearby bridges, but the bleakness seemed to ooze out of the stones of the building itself. If Aron hadn’t been too tired to take extra steps, he might have moved away from the sight.

  “Endurance House,” Stormbreaker said, pausing to let the title sink in to Aron’s mind.

  Endurance bridges rivers, Aron told himself, hoping he would remember the association.

  Stormbreaker seemed tense as he gazed at the building. “I hope you avoid it.”

  Aron didn’t understand, and Stormbreaker seemed to realize this. He turned away from the building to face Aron. “Even Stone needs methods to deal with incorrigibles in our own ranks. Those who break major rules or refuse authority spend additional hours at Endurance. I pray that will not be your destiny, for Lord Baldric will give you no quarter.”

  Aron pressed his hands to his aching ribs.

  “He gave me none,” Stormbreaker added, gazing at Endurance House again, this time with distaste.

  Of course Stone would have to have such a place, especially if they took in child-criminals. It followed, too, that since many children were Harvested as he had been, they might remain angry about their own losses and require persuasion to do their duty for the guild. Aron supposed there was no magical force preventing older guild members from committing minor infractions, too. His father had taught him that wherever men and women congregated, there would be brawls, drunken moments, or even hasty words. Outside the walls of Triune, such problems would be the business of the Dynast Guard—but inside Triune, offenders would be brought here.

  Endurance House.

  The sound of it made the pain in Aron’s chest worse. He studied the building with new understanding, realizing that the bleak energy he sensed might be coming from the people inside it—or what was being done to them. No need for memory association now. He would never forget the name of this place, no matter how well he avoided it. Just the sight of it—or rather the sight of the strange essence that seemed to surround it—bothered his awareness.