Born Assassin Saga Box Set

by Jacqueline Pawl

  “Thank you, my friend.”

  A pause. “You’re welcome.”

  The elves, handkerchiefs tied over their mouths and noses, heft the stretcher and start down the length of the room. The nobles recoil as if burned, a few hissing with disgust. Tamriel stands and offers a hand to Mercy, which she accepts, and he squeezes it once before letting go. The crowd watches with wide eyes, a week of city-wide celebration felled by one woman. After a moment of searching, Mercy spots Emrie and Elise near the table of food. Leon—looking uncomfortable—is standing next to Narah, and Elvira is watching from the back. The room is quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

  “Get everyone out of here now,” Ghyslain says to Master Oliver. “Make sure every single person is off the property and safe. Answer no questions and instruct the slaves to do the same. We’ll meet in the council chamber when you’re finished.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Master Oliver pivots on his heel and, arms stretched wide, begins pushing people from the room, shouting commands to the guards who stand in the doorway, alerted to the commotion by the noise. They jump into action immediately, and soon the throne room fills with confused and angry objections as nobles are escorted outside.

  Seren Pierce and Landers Nadra sidestep Master Oliver, who lets them pass without a second glance. “Your Majesty, allow me to help,” Pierce says. “My daughter and I will accompany the soldiers and ensure everyone is delivered home safely.”

  “Very well. Landers, you and Leon head to the council room and prepare a strategy. I want a plan to contain this as much as possible. We’ve enough to worry about as it is, we don’t want to incite a city-wide panic, especially during a Solari year.”

  Tamriel turns to Mercy. “Lady Marieve, go home. Your handmaid, where is she?” He cranes his neck and spots Elvira across the room. “Go with her. I’ll send a messenger when we know what’s happening.” He grips her arm and starts leading her away, but she jerks out of his grip.

  “Tamriel, wait. How serious is this? What did she mean, Fieldings’ Plague?”

  “I—I don’t know. I’ll tell you as soon as I do.” He rubs a hand across his forehead. “She was looking for you, I think. You might be important to . . . whoever she was channeling.”

  “What is the Sight?”

  “It’s a gift held by the more powerful priestesses in the Church. They believe the Creator sends them visions to help others.”

  “Come, my lady.” Elvira has pushed her way to the front of the room and now takes Mercy’s elbow, tugging toward the great hall. “We must return to Blackbriar.”

  “But—” she objects, but Tamriel has already turned away.

  Elvira leads her from the quickly-emptying throne room, but when they reach the great hall, instead of heading outside with everyone else, Elvira points to a closed set of double doors father down the wall. “Through those doors and down the hall. There’s a staircase leading down to the infirmary. Go there and learn what you can about the priestess. I’ll head to a nearby clinic and bring what supplies I can.”

  “And the guards?”

  “With so many civilians on the grounds, most will have been called away to clear the premises. There might be one or two guarding the infirmary, so tell them you were sent to assist the healer. Even without a sash, they won’t question you.”

  “Okay.” Mercy nods. “Go, quickly. You have the daggers?”

  Elvira nods.

  “Good. Keep them with you. Once word of this spreads, that medicine will be worth more than your life. Make sure you don’t lose it.” Heart pounding, Mercy opens the doors and walks calmly through them, aware of Elvira’s eyes on her back. When the doors click quietly shut, she breaks into a sprint.

  28

  Sure enough, two guards stand watch over the infirmary, and neither bats an eye when Mercy announces she’d been sent by the prince to help. In fact, neither really looks at her at all. One with sallow, pock-marked cheeks and a too-large uniform holds the door open for her, and closes it behind her without a word. It strikes her as absurdly funny how, despite the nobles’ distrust for one another, the elves are given free reign of the castle—the humans only see the pointed ears and not the mind which lies between them. It’s probably never occurred to them that the elves are anything but completely loyal to their captors; arrogant assumptions like those create the gaps in security which allow Mother Illynor’s Assassins’ Guild to thrive. Perhaps all this posturing isn’t necessary to get close to the prince. Perhaps all Mercy needs is a white sash and a breakfast tray, and she’ll be escorted into Tamriel’s bedroom by one of the hundreds of soldiers sworn to protect him.

  The castle’s infirmary is so different from the Guild’s, it takes Mercy a moment to gather her bearings as she hovers just past the threshold. The infirmary at the Keep is dark and well-used, jars and bottles of the medicines Sorin makes with forest materials lined on crooked shelves with handwritten labels, the commercially-available tonics and tinctures sent by her contacts in the nearby towns mostly full on the desk, rationed to last as long as possible. There are stains on the bed linens from blood which hadn’t completely washed out, and always a pot of sewing needle boiling in water over the fire, waiting for the next wound to stitch. Mercy has spent hundreds of hours in the dank little room, both as Sorin’s apprentice and as a patient. When she was younger, the tutors had thought infirmary work was a fitting punishment for whatever mischief Mercy found herself in, until her natural talent for the craft blossomed. After that, Sorin had loaned Mercy her books and taken her out on special herb-gathering expeditions, and it became apparent she expects Mercy to take over the infirmary when Sorin becomes too old.

  That is, if Mercy lives that long.

  Myrellis Castle’s infirmary is sparkling clean, with jars of medicine the size of the buckets the apprentices use to haul water from the Alynthi River to the Keep. Each jar has an artfully calligraphed label and a colorful concoction inside, sparkling by the light of the hearth’s fire. A long set of shelves stands in front of Mercy, and she can glimpse the rest of the room through gaps between the jars’ lids. Something thuds against the opposite side of the shelves and sends a fine cloud of dust raining from above, the bottles and jars clinking against each other as the wood shudders.

  “Whoever ye are, don’t just stand there! Get yer ass over here!” a voice thick with a Rivosi accent calls.

  Mercy hurries around the shelves to see a short, stocky woman pinning a gagged Pilar to the mattress of one of the four beds. She looks Mercy up and down with a sour expression, ignoring Pilar’s bucking beneath her gloved hands, which are clasped like talons around Pilar’s arms. The priestess’s eyes are wide, darting back and forth, and her feet kick at the air. One of her shoes lies on the floor in front of the shelves.

  “Sent me one o’ you, did they?” the woman says. “Probably picked the first knife-ear they saw skitterin around the halls. Hold her down so I can do my work.” Mercy starts forward, and the woman grimaces. “Not wi’ yer bare hands. Grab the gloves.” She jerks her chin to the nearest table, and Mercy quickly slips the gloves on. There’s no point in arguing.

  “Grab here an’ here, and be ready for ‘er to put up a fight. They’re stronger than they look when they’re crazed like this.” The second the healer lifts her hands, Pilar bolts upright, and Mercy scrambles to push her back onto the pillow. Even through robes and gloves, Mercy can feel Pilar’s skin burning with fever. Mercy shoves her back, gripping her shoulders tightly, and straddles her legs so she cannot kick.

  Pilar squeezes her eyes shut and shouts against the gag in her mouth, the tendons in her neck standing out. She whips her head left and right, squirming, and several of the blisters on her face pop from the friction, oozing yellow liquid onto the pillowcase. Her eyes snap open, and—for a moment—she does not recognize Mercy. Then the pupil of her good eye contracts as she recognizes the face above hers, and her eyes widen again in terror and desperate hope. She cries into the gag, tears streaming down the si
des of her face. She looks to Mercy like a cornered animal the way she thrashes and jerks, aware the end is near but choosing to not go down without a fight.

  In Pilar’s case, that end is literally the sharp end of a syringe as it slides into the flesh of her upper arm.

  “What did you give her?” Mercy shouts at the healer, but it’s clear it’s a sedative by the way Pilar’s gaze slides from her face and the fight leaves her limbs. Her entire body goes limp at once. Her head lolls to the side, and two unshed tears slip from between her lashes and glisten as they trail down her face. Mercy clambers off the bed and throws the gloves onto the bedside table, pushing away a strand of hair which had stuck to the perspiration across her forehead. She glowers at the woman, who measures a full foot and a half shorter than she, but stands solidly. “I was sent to speak with her!”

  “Oh, ye were? The king chose a pixie to check up on me, then, did ‘e?”

  Mercy crosses her arms. “No, his son did.”

  “So who’re ye t’be so special, hm? His latest infatuation?”

  “I am Lady Marieve of Feyndara.”

  She snorts. “Ye might be a lady in Feyndara, but I’m queen of this ward. Name’s Alyss.” She crosses to the shelves and begins gathering jars and bottles in her arms. She sets them on the desk and uncorks one, sniffing the contents. “Are ye goin to stand there all day lookin at me, or are ye plannin on helpin anytime soon? Get the kettle off the fire and add some marroway leaves to it. They’re in that chest under the table. They’ll keep her docile.”

  Mercy quickly finds the short, pointy leaves and adds them to the kettle. Alyss grinds dried mushrooms into powder and scrapes them into the kettle with the flat of her knife, then pours in a shimmering golden oil Mercy recognizes.

  “Oil of Ienna.”

  “She’s not going to last long. I’d like to give ‘er some peace before she goes, but I’m not going to waste valuable medicine on someone who isn’t goin to get better. Best she gets some rest without bein in pain for the little time she has left.”

  “She called it Fieldings’ Plague. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “No, never. Never seen a case a Fieldings’ Blisters this bad, either. It’s not uncommon for the common folk to come down with a rash at the start of summer, now ‘at they’re workin outside day in and day out. But she’s a priestess, and it’s not usually more ‘an skin deep. I’ve never seen it attack vision.”

  “You mean her eye wasn’t like this before? That her blindness happened recently?”

  Alyss crosses her arms and nods at Pilar’s unconscious form. “I used to see this one in the market when the shipments of herbs came in from Bluegrass Valley. She liked to preach near the docks and serve tea to the workers on their breaks. Must’a seen her this past spring, healthy as an ox.”

  Pilar’s brows twitch and she mumbles something in her sleep.

  Alyss peers at Mercy from under furrowed brows. “You didna touch ‘er with yer bare hands, did ye?”

  “No,” Mercy lies, still feeling the ghost of Pilar’s blistered palm against her. A traitorous shiver of fear runs down her spine, but Alyss is too distracted to notice.

  “Good. Ye’d see symptoms within the next few days: redness, blisters, ye know the drill. At the first sign, I want ye in here, not traipsin around court where ye can get everyone infected. Got me?”

  “Understood.”

  She clears the desk of the scraps of papers and apothecary books and pulls a heavy granite bowl from one of the drawers. “Alright, now come here an’ mash this wallobhy root into a paste.” She holds out the pestle in one meaty hand. “Just because you’re a lady doesna mean ye can’t do manual labor. The prince sent ye down to help, and by the Creator, I’ll take any help I can get. If ‘er babblings are to believed, things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.”

  “That’s why you gagged her, then? What was she saying?” Mercy picks up the pestle and begins mashing the root, the sound of granite grinding against granite joining the crackling of the hearth. It reminds Mercy of working alongside Sorin, and a sudden, unexpected wave of homesickness washes over her. She frowns and focuses instead on Alyss’s hands as she lays out cloth bandages on the warped wood of the desk. “Did she say anything specific?”

  “Nothing that made any sense t’me or the slaves who brought ‘er in. She started screaming an’ kept going until ‘er voice started breaking—didn’t even stop then. Didn’t shut up until one of the elves shoved that gag into ‘er mouth, and it surprised ‘er enough it made ‘er quit.”

  “She could hardly stand in the throne room. How was she strong enough to fight you off?”

  “The fear gets ‘em. Their hearts start poundin, adrenaline pumpin through their veins, and the haze breaks long enough for them to realize they’ve got no memory of comin down here. They think I’m going to hurt ‘em. They don’t want to admit they’re dying,” she says. “I’ve seen men hardly more than skin and bone insist they’re healthy up to their dying breaths.”

  Mercy looks at Pilar, huddled under the blanket. Her brows are drawn low and her eyelids twitch every few seconds. “She was speaking like she had been given a message. She said ‘stop him,’ and told us to go north. Any idea why she would say that?”

  Alyss shakes her head and dumps a handful of multicolored pills into the mortar. “Grind those into the paste,” she says. “They’re bitter as hell, but they’ll lessen ‘er fever. I can’t help ‘er much, but I’ll do what I can to keep ‘er lucid when she wakes so ye can speak to her again. As for what she said before, fever can make people believe some strange things. It probably twisted ‘er Sight into some corrupt vision. That and Solari happening on the same day probably scared ‘er out of her wits.”

  Mercy frowns. “I don’t know. She said he’ll come for us in the end. What could—” She stops, her eyes going wide as she remembers the map on Seren Pierce’s desk. “Beggars’ End!” she cries. She jumps away from the desk, sending the heavy pestle crashing against the side of the bowl. “She wasn’t talking about a point in time, she was talking about the slums. That’s where this is originating.”

  Alyss’s face goes slack with shock. She sets her heavy hands on Mercy’s shoulders and pushes her toward the door. “Go, tell the king to double his guards around Beggars’ End. Tell him to close the gates immediately. If this disease is as bad as it looks, we have to contain it.”

  Mercy twists away from Alyss, but she doesn’t relent, even when Mercy trips over Pilar’s shoe, still resting on the ground beside the shelves. “I will. My handmaid, Elvira, will bring whatever she can to help.”

  “Yes, fine, good,” Alyss says impatiently. She opens the door and shoves Mercy through, closing it in her face. “Remember to close the gates!” she yells through the wood.

  The two guards start and look first at each other, then at Mercy with confused expressions.

  “Take me to the king,” she says in as regal and unwavering a voice as she can manage. Again, the guards don’t utter a word, but their silence speaks volumes as they exchange another glance. The confusion on their faces morphs into curiosity, then horror as they consider the infectious terrors lurking behind the inch-thick wood separating them from the infirmary. Face pale, one of the guards turns on his heel and bolts up the stairs, Mercy one step behind.

  29

  “You must seal Beggars’ End immediately.”

  The chatter halts as every pair of eyes lift to Mercy and the guard, both breathing hard after running up three flights of stairs to the council room. They stand in the open doorway, having burst in without so much as a knock—which is probably the reason for the scowls on more than half of the faces in the room, including Ghyslain’s, but Mercy couldn’t care less. She lifts her chin and stares at him defiantly, waiting for him to give the order.

  Landers speaks first.

  “On what grounds would you have us do that?” he scoffs. “Half the guard is clearing the premises, and the other half is with Hi
s Highness, scouring the city for infection.” He frowns, deep-set wrinkles carving canyons around his mouth and eyes. He turns to the king. “Are you going to allow an elf to order you like this?”

  “Father!” Leon says sharply, surprise and embarrassment coloring his cheeks. The other councilmembers, strangers to Mercy, whisper to each other from the fringes of the room.

  “She arrives at the city unannounced—a foreigner, an enemy—demanding peace negotiations despite her lack of authority, and now she has the gall to speak to you as such—” Landers snaps his mouth shut, then turns to Mercy. “Last night, I tried to welcome you as best I know how, my dear, but I will not allow manners to supersede my loyalty to my country. Her arrival, Solari, this priestess—the timing cannot be simple coincidence.”

  Ghyslain watches her reaction, and when she offers none, turns his gaze to Landers. He speaks each word separately, his voice low and cold. “I think it best you not forget your place on this council, Nadra,” he says, and Landers’s face flushes to match his son’s. “And neither should you forget your place, my lady.” His dark eyes focus again on Mercy, and she feels his regard like a physical weight, making it difficult to breathe. His eyes bore into hers; they are not the starry, wandering eyes of a madman, but deep and bold, the challenge plain in his eyes: I’ve hired you to kill my son. Do you think you can manage that, little girl? Truly?

  The voice in her head is so goading, it grates Mercy’s nerves and she clenches her fists. It takes her a second to realize the voice is not the king’s, but Lylia’s. Uncanny. Mercy speaks through teeth bared into a smile when she says, “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  “Wonderful. Now tell me why the End needs to be sealed.” He steeples his hands and rests his chin on his fingertips, waiting. Everyone else in the room watches her, but Mercy ignores them.