Born Assassin Saga Box Set

by Jacqueline Pawl

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Involuntarily, Mercy barks a harsh laugh, then bites it off when Tamriel and Calum exchange a look of alarm. “If only. No, it’s nothing.”

  “Might there be something I could help with, my lady?” Calum asks, and Mercy’s forced smile turns bitter.

  “Do I know you?”

  “My cousin,” Tamriel explains, “although Calum’s lived in the castle almost all his life. My father took him in after an unfortunate incident claimed his father’s life.”

  “That’s terrible,” Mercy says, and frowns. “But you must have developed a really special bond after spending so much time together.” In the corner of her eye, she sees one of the soldiers shift his weight from one foot to the other, and the panic rises inside her once more. She doesn’t want to return to the infirmary, doesn’t want to face the horror of what she had just tried to do. Keep them talking. “It’s good you’re here to support His Highness.”

  Calum smiles. “I’m nothing if not loyal to my family.”

  “Your Highness, it’s not safe for her to be out here—”

  “Let me speak to him! Let me speak to him, please!” A wail rises from the throne room, followed by muffled sobbing.

  Tamriel and Calum bolt into the throne room. Mercy’s guards stare at each other for a moment, torn between returning her to the infirmary and their duty to protect the prince.

  They choose the prince, gripping Mercy’s arms tightly and dragging her behind them.

  The first thing Mercy sees when they enter is Elise sobbing on the floor. There are streaks in her makeup and she uses a crumpled fistful of her skirt to wipe away her tears. Seren Pierce stands beside her. The only comfort he offers her is a hand on her shoulder as he stares blankly at the floor, his face haggard and haunted.

  When Elise lifts her head and spots Tamriel, she lets out another hiccupping sob and reaches out to him. “Your Highness, he’s locked inside! They’ve locked my brother—You’ve locked my brother inside Beggars’ End!”

  “Elise,” Tamriel says in a low, sorrowful voice. “I’m sorry. Truly, I am.” He sinks to his knees beside Elise. He pries the wrinkled fabric out of her fist, then clasps her trembling hands in his. “I know how much your brother means to you, but your anger is misdirected. I did not order him to remain in Beggars’ End.”

  “Wh-Who, then? Who ordered him to stay?”

  “No one.”

  Elise’s eyes widen. She shakes her head quickly, her curls bouncing. “No. That’s not right. He would never choose to stay in that—that pit! You ordered him to stay—you or your father!”

  “Elise, you know your brother. If he has the chance to help people who need him, he’s going to choose that over his safety, hands down. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but— It wasn’t his decision to make! We need him here; his family needs him!”

  “Your Highness, please—” Seren Pierce begins. “Imagine how your father would feel if you had stayed behind.”

  A sudden and inappropriate smirk crosses Tamriel’s face, as if he knows his father wouldn’t be a tenth as concerned about him as Atlas’s family is now. He hides it before anyone but Mercy notices, frowning instead. “In a couple days, when we’ve begun to get a handle on the situation, I can arrange for you to send him a letter. I doubt it will sway his decision, but you may try.”

  “Oh, Your Highness! Thank you!” Elise jumps to her feet and throws her arms around Tamriel’s neck. She chokes out a relieved laugh.

  Tamriel stands stiffly while she embraces him, his arms straight at his sides. After a pause, he pats her back awkwardly until Elise blushes and steps back.

  “H-How inappropriate of me. I-I beg your forgiveness, Your Highness.”

  “Of course.” Tamriel nods, looking relieved. “Go home now and rest.”

  “Y-Yes, Your Highness. Thank you.” She bows and runs from the room, shooting a sheepish look at Mercy and Calum as she passes. In the quiet following her exit, Seren Pierce steps forward and rests a hand on Tamriel’s shoulder.

  “Thank you for understanding, Your Highness. The situation with her brother has been hard on all of us,” he says, “but has hit her worst of all.”

  “Take care of your family, Seren. Make sure Elise returns home safely, then find Landers for your assignment. We need every pair of hands we have.”

  “Of course.” Seren Pierce follows his daughter out of the room, calling her name as his footsteps fade into the hall.

  One of the guards sets a heavy hand on Mercy’s shoulder and pulls her back, away from where she and Calum had been watching from the doorway. “Show’s over, m’lady.”

  When Mercy looks up at him, all she sees are Pilar’s terrified eyes bugging out, her lips moving soundlessly as they had turned a faint blue. Then she remembers the three priestesses waiting for her downstairs, chanting in their strange language, and her blood turns to ice water as white-hot shame burns in her stomach.

  “Please, Tamriel, don’t let them send me down there again!” she begs, clutching the front of his shirt. “I’m not sick, see?” She gestures to her bare legs, peeking out from under Alyss’s tunic, then at each of her arms, wiggling her fingers in the air. “Nothing. Please, don’t let them take me back.”

  “Lady Marieve, you’re hysterical—” Calum begins before she fixes him with a glare.

  “Tamriel— Your Highness, please!”

  “He’s right, Marieve,” Tamriel says. “You need to calm down. Take deep breaths.”

  “You’re not listening to me—”

  “Marieve.” Tamriel cups the back of her head with one hand, staring into her eyes intensely enough to stop her midsentence. “I wish I could help you. I do,” he whispers, his breath warm on her face. “By order of the king, you’ll be released tomorrow, as soon as Alyss confirms you have no sign of the disease.” He steps back and rubs his temples, closing his eyes. “Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  Faint shadows hang under his eyes, Mercy realizes, and she wonders how much rest he’s had since Solari. It’s been almost a day and a half since Ghyslain had ordered her quarantined, and Tamriel looks like he’s been awake for every one of those thirty-six hours, but is trying hard not to show it. He’s put on a clean shirt but missed one of the buttons. A stray strand of hair sticks out below his ear; he’s been running his hands through it as he thinks.

  Mercy’s frown softens. “Fine. But please, you must stay safe, as well.” She allows the guards to pull her away, but before they walk out of earshot, Calum calls in a mockingly cheerful voice, “It was lovely to meet you, my lady!”

  She doesn’t respond.

  The priestesses are in the midst of their prayers when the guards drag Mercy into the infirmary, except this time, their mouths move in silence. Alyss has returned and is working at the desk, but when Mercy peers over her shoulder to see what she is working on, Alyss grunts and moves to block her view.

  “Stay in here,” the guard says. “At this rate, you’ll have infected half the city within the week.”

  “I haven’t infected anyone.”

  A glass shatters.

  Alyss curses as she fumbles for a pan to collect the pieces of the jar she’d dropped, picking the dried leaves out of the shards of broken glass.

  “Let me help,” the guard says, and starts to kneel beside her.

  “No! No, it’s alright. I’m too clumsy for my own good sometimes. It’s done already, see?” Alyss wipes her hands on her tunic, then winces and pulls a shard from her finger. She drops it in the pan, where it shines with her blood. “Nothin I haven’t done a hundred times over the years.”

  The guard watches her warily, then turns to Mercy. “Someone will be here to escort you home in the morning, once you have been cleared to leave,” he says, and she nods.

  The guard hesitates, as if he thinks Mercy is going to bolt then and there. She’s not, of course, even though the sight of the three priest
esses whispering in the corner sends chills crawling up and down her spine. The guard glances at them uneasily, then walks out the door.

  “Alyss, are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

  “Course I am. Don’t be an idiot.” She scowls. “It’s just those three. I don’t like ‘em whisperin like that. Gives me the creeps.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Alyss waves Mercy over to the desk. She seems conflicted, drumming her fingernails on the table, but at last, she comes to a decision and lifts a wooden box for Mercy to see, a sheer fabric bag full of dried black mushrooms inside. “Listen here,” Alyss says in a low voice. “These mushrooms are the most poisonous in the world. Ye have no idea how many connections I had to use and how much money it cost me to have these few sent here so quickly. If anyone realizes I have these, I’ll get the hangman’s noose. They’ve been outlawed since His Majesty’s great-grandfather’s youngest son accidentally ingested some while playin in the fields. Anyway, I want ye to use them. On me.”

  “What? Alyss, are you insane?”

  “Shhh! Look, you’re right—I haven’t been feelin quite a hundred percent lately. If it turns out I have the disease—this Fieldings’ Plague—I want ye to grind ‘em up nice and fine and mix ‘em into my food. Will ye do that for me?”

  “You can’t just give up. You have a duty to these people. You’re their healer—”

  “I’m not givin up. I don’t want to end up some husk of a person. I want to die while I’m still sane, while I’m still me! I’ll give everythin I have to these people for as long as I can, but the minute I outlast my usefulness, put me out of my misery.” She stares sadly at Pilar, Owl, and Gwynn. “Ye don’t like me, and that’s fine. I don’t care. But don’t leave me to waste away. If I’m to die, I want it to be on my terms.”

  “You really want this?”

  She nods.

  Mercy sighs. “Then I will. I give you my word.”

  The relief is plain on Alyss’s face, and the tension leaves her body in one massive wave as she exhales slowly. “Well, I don’t know what to say except thank ye. It’s not worth much, but ye have my gratitude. In the mornin, you’ll be free to go. Just remember what you’ve agreed to do. Sometimes ye high-and-mighties forget about the little people. Remember yer promise.”

  “Of course,” Mercy says. “I will.”

  35

  Elvira is angry.

  Not just angry—she’s fuming.

  Mercy lounges on the couch in Blackbriar’s study, listening to Elvira slam the doors and drawers upstairs as she cleans. After two days spent in the dark infirmary, Blackbriar’s white stone walls and airy design make Mercy feel small and exposed. The windows are closed in accordance with an order from the guards, but not the shutters, and Mercy basks in the warmth of the sunbeam which shines on her half of the couch. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the sun.

  “You could’ve killed him that night.”

  Elvira’s voice startles Mercy, and she cranes her neck to see her standing in the doorway, scowling. They’ve hardly spoken since Elvira had met her at the front steps of the castle when she’d been discharged two hours ago.

  “He was standing right next to you. How hard would it have been?”

  “Should I have killed him before or after the dying woman crashed the celebration?”

  “Don’t joke. You two snuck away from the party, and only you were supposed to return.”

  “Plans change. I’m working on it. I’m looking for the right opportunity to strike.”

  “Look harder.”

  “What’s your problem?” Mercy sits upright and turns to her, her patience wearing thin. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to do your job!” she shouts. It’s so uncharacteristic of her, Mercy flinches. “I want you to do what you’d planned to do three nights ago.”

  “You don’t think I want the same? If I’d had the chance, I’d have taken it.” Only . . . she’d had the chance, hadn’t she? The night of the Solari festival, when she’d held her dagger over Tamriel’s jugular, that strange voice had come out of nowhere. She doesn’t explain it to Elvira, though, because she doesn’t have an explanation for it herself. Instead, she pushes the memory out of her mind. “Why are you taking it so personally?”

  After a long pause, something in Elvira shatters. She sinks onto the corner of the couch, staring at nothing. “Kier and I had planned to sneak away that night. We were finally going to make a run for it. You were supposed to complete the contract, and then you wouldn’t need me anymore. I’d have been free to go.” She fingers the hem of her shirt as she speaks. “But you didn’t, and now I’m terrified Kier is going to fall ill before we can escape.” She closes her hands into fists, and when she opens them again, her fingernails have imprinted little half-moons into her palms. She stands. “I’d appreciate if you took your contract a little more seriously, Mercy. Your future’s not the only one at stake.”

  “Elvi—”

  She walks through the door, and, seconds later, the sound of the front door slamming shut echoes through the house.

  Mercy lets out a frustrated sigh and flops back onto the couch. Has being in the capital softened her? Before, at the Keep, her mind had been consumed every second with thoughts of how to prove to Mother Illynor she was ready to become a Daughter. She’d spent every waking moment trying to impress the tutors—even Trytain, who had looked at her like she were scum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Now, surrounded by so much life and culture, she can’t help wanting to extend the experience, to sate her curiosity which grows by the day. After all, she’d been born here, to people she imagines hadn’t been much different from Elvira.

  For the first time, she wonders what her life would have become had she never been taken to the Guild. Would her parents have fled to Cirisor anyway, abandoned her on some porch or in an alleyway, waiting for a random passerby to take pity on her? Would they have brought her with them? Or would they have simply sold themselves to the next rich nobleman who agreed to feed and clothe them?

  Mercy shakes her head. Whomever Mercy would have become, the girl would have been unrecognizable to the woman she is today. Today Mercy would have sneered at her docility, her softness, her inability to ward off the punishing blows of her master. She’d have been submissive, trapped in a life of slavery as a piece of property whose worth was determined by nothing more than the shape of her ears. Mercy shivers, marveling at how close she’d come to this imagined life becoming a reality; if her father had walked into Drake Zendais’s study five minutes later, perhaps Llorin would have had enough time to flee. Perhaps her father wouldn’t have bartered her life for his.

  “No,” Mercy says to the empty room. It is a waste of time to ponder the what-ifs. She rises and climbs the stairs to her third-floor bedroom. Sitting on her bed are her two daggers, tossed there by Elvira after Mercy had failed to return after Solari. Mercy picks them up, smiling at their familiar weight, and begins to practice.

  An hour later, Elvira still hasn’t returned, so Mercy decides to take a walk through the Sapphire Quarter in hopes of running into Calum or Tamriel on patrol with the guards. Normally, she would never have expected to find a prince doing something so menial, but it seems like the sort of task Ghyslain would delegate to his son.

  Mercy sheaths one of the daggers and tucks it into the waistband of her pants, allowing her flowy tunic to hide its shape. When she steps out of the house, she waits a moment, staring down the street half expecting Elvira to appear, back to her normal, quiet self. Of course, she doesn’t. In fact, the street is strangely empty; where it normally bustles with private carriages and workers pushing carts of food and drink, today there is only a stray dog standing a few doors down, munching on part of a sandwich someone had dropped near the sewer. When it sees Mercy, the dog yelps and bolts into an alley.

  When she reaches the corner, something draws her left, toward the market district, and as she walks, the sounds of stomping appro
aches from behind her. She jumps out of the way as a group of twelve soldiers rounds the corner and sprints past her. Tamriel isn’t with them, but she still breaks into a run, following as closely as she can without being spotted. They wind through the streets so effortlessly Mercy quickly becomes disoriented, focusing on nothing more than keeping her eyes on the soldiers’ backs. When they pass the market, the commander shouts an order and six of the soldiers split from the main group and run down a side street. The rest continue heading straight, Mercy trailing behind as quickly as her delicate silk slippers will allow.

  A sound like the crashing of waves builds all around her, amplified and distorted by the buildings surrounding her, and it blends with the stomping of the soldiers’ feet and the clanking of their armor. It puzzles her. Behind them, Alynthi River splits Sandori into the market and trading districts, and Lake Myrella is on the opposite side of the city. They should not be able to hear either from here.

  Mercy nearly slams into one of the soldiers’ backs when she blindly rounds a corner, but she catches herself just in time, one hand automatically reaching back to make sure she hadn’t dropped her dagger.

  Someone pushes past her, and as she turns to glare at him, she realizes where she is. She and about two thousand other people stand outside the walls surrounding Beggars’ End, and the crashing of waves is the roar of their voices merging into one. The street on which Mercy stands is perhaps ten feet wide, and the crowd in front of her is tightly packed with people standing elbow-to-elbow, so close she can’t see more than two rows in front of her. Considering the layout of the surrounding streets, there could be as many as a thousand people here, Mercy realizes. Above her, people hang out of the broken second-story window of a derelict house, shouting and tossing broken bottles at the bodies below.

  Go, something whispers in her mind, and an unseen force propels her forward.

  She darts into the crowd and elbows people out of her way as she pushes toward the center, fighting for every spare inch of space. The intersection is not very large, but with the wet heat of several thousand bodies, she might as well be wading through quicksand.