Born Assassin Saga Box Set

by Jacqueline Pawl

  Ghyslain stands beside the gate upon which Liselle’s body had once been strung, and he is clearly making an effort not to look at it. Even so, he glances at it out of the corner of his eye every few seconds, his face slightly green. Mercy and Leon join the crowd, and they watch as Ghyslain nods to Tamriel, who leads the soldiers and the six offenders forward. When they near the stake, the soldiers force the people onto their knees, and one of them protests into the gag which has been tied around his head. Their hands are bound, tied with rough pieces of rope, and they are all shirtless. The woman kneeling in the middle attempts to cover herself with her arms.

  Master Oliver steps forward, a whip coiled in his hand.

  “You are guilty of threatening the peace and inciting a riot,” Ghyslain says, “with the intent to murder civilians. Have you anything to say in your defense?”

  None of the offenders make a sound. They glare at Ghyslain, working the frayed fabric of the gags between their teeth.

  “Very well. I hereby sentence you to twenty lashes each.”

  Master Oliver pulls the first offender up and drags him to the stake, then secures the rope around his wrists on a hook which sticks out from the top of the stake, stretching the man’s arms high above his head. Before he steps away, Master Oliver unties the gag and slips it into his pocket. At first, this confuses Mercy, but as he backs up, cocks his arm, and sends the whip cracking forward, she understands: he wants the crowd to hear their screams. The whip snaps against the man’s back and he cries out, a thin red line immediately spreading across his back. He takes a deep breath and braces himself for the next lash. Master Oliver lets the whip fly again, and again, and again, no expression on his face. The speed and power behind his lashes never changes, and he doesn’t waver when, halfway through his twenty lashes, the man’s legs give out and he hangs from his arms alone.

  On the fifteenth strike, the whip lands in the same place the first one had, and the skin splits and oozes dark blood.

  After the last lash, a soldier moves forward to collect the man, and he pulls him away through the gate. The next offender is tied to the stake, and this time, he doesn’t make a sound as the whip tears his flesh to ribbons. He stands there, silent tears running down his face, and glares at Ghyslain.

  The third offender is an elven woman, her body soft and undefined. Her pale skin splits after the fifth lash. By the twelfth, her back and the waistband of her pants are soaked in blood. When Master Oliver swings his arm back for the next lash, she squeaks in fear and twists to the side, and the whip catches the side of her breast and stomach. She lets out a choked sob and goes slack, leaning her weight on the stake. The blood on her back shines under the sunlight as she takes quick, shallow breaths, her ribs visible as they expand and contract. The crowd murmurs and whispers, several of the women turning away or covering their faces. Across the clearing, Tamriel’s Adam’s apple bobs and the blood drains from his face despite his efforts to remain emotionless.

  “Enough, Oliver,” Ghyslain says suddenly. “That’s enough.”

  “That’s only sixteen, Your Majesty.”

  “Look at her. She’s learned her lesson. Take her away.”

  A soldier steps forward and unhooks her arms. He slips an arm around her waist, careful not to touch her lashed skin, and slowly walks her toward the gate. Halfway through, she goes unconscious, and the soldier lifts her into his arms and continues.

  While the next three people are punished, Mercy averts her gaze, focusing on the tips of her shoes, caked with dirt after running alongside the soldiers earlier. Her stomach roils and she flinches with every scream. Leon shoots her a worried look. When all six people have been taken into the castle grounds, Ghyslain rubs a weary hand across his brow, knocking his crown askew. When he lowers his hand to his side, Mercy notices it trembles.

  Master Oliver wipes the sweat from his forehead and coils the bloodied whip in one hand. He tosses it aside and pulls the wooden stake from the ground, then carries it into the castle grounds with the help of a soldier. Another guard steps forward and returns the cobblestone into the street where the stake had been planted.

  Ghyslain steps forward and opens his mouth. The crowd hushes, waiting for him to speak. For a moment, his jaw works, but no sound comes out. Then he glances at his son, who stands across the clearing, watching him. Ghyslain frowns, turns sharply on his heel, and bolts through the gate.

  Surprise flickers across Tamriel’s face, then he clears his throat and steps into the clearing. “Emerick, make sure these people return home safely,” he murmurs to the nearest guard, “and have someone clean up this mess.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  Tamriel nods once and walks across the intersection. He steps in the drying puddle of blood where the stake had been, and his boots leave dark red prints on the cobblestones for a few strides. The bottom of his cloak drags behind him and leaves a thin line of blood which follows him through the gate and behind the castle’s walls.

  “Bring them into the castle to be tended. Don’t put them in the infirmary, put them . . . somewhere else. Put them— Well, you know the castle. Find somewhere they’ll be comfortable. Send for a healer, too. Not Alyss—she has enough to do already and I don’t want those priestesses left alone. Send for someone in the market, someone who won’t get too queasy at the sight of them.”

  Ghyslain paces on the grass, his fingers rubbing small circles on both temples. When the six soldiers carrying the offenders turn to walk them up the gravel to the castle, Ghyslain stops and stares after them, swaying slightly, as if he’d just stepped onto land after a month at sea. He presses a hand against the wall to support himself. He flinches and shuts his eyes.

  “I’m not cruel,” he murmurs. “I did what I had to do to keep them safe. To buy time. They won’t try again—not yet.”

  “Do you think he realizes we’re here?” Leon whispers. They stand awkwardly a few yards away, watching as the king removes his crown and stares down at the central ruby as if it holds all the answers. Leon shuffles his feet, digging the toe of his shoe into the grass.

  Mercy elbows him. “He will if you don’t shut your mouth. Let’s go.”

  They start toward the gate and are only two feet away when Tamriel says a quick goodbye to the advisor he’d been speaking to and jogs over, catching Mercy by the arm. “You’re not leaving yet, are you?”

  “We were planning to. Why?”

  “I need you to save me.”

  Mercy frowns. “What?”

  Tamriel shakes his head, staring at his father. “He’s inconsolable when he’s like this. In about five seconds, he’ll stop talking to himself and start talking to the ghosts which live in his head, and I promise you, you don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see that. So please, help me escape somewhere he’ll never look.”

  He turns and starts toward the castle, and Mercy trails a few paces behind before she realizes Leon isn’t following. He stands in the same place as before, glancing between Mercy and the prince, looking uncomfortable.

  “You’re not coming?”

  “I, uh, wasn’t sure the invitation was meant for me,” he says, raising a brow.

  Tamriel stops. “If you would like to spend the next hour consoling the Mad King, be my guest. Otherwise, you are welcome to join us.”

  Leon hesitates, then jogs to Mercy’s side. Tamriel looks back and smirks, then starts again up the long carriageway. “He’s been like this for as long as I can remember. He blames himself for the crimes of his people and calls himself a failure of a king.” He frowns down at the gravel as it crunches under his feet. “Usually he keeps it together until he returns to his study.”

  “Would he prefer you stay with him, Your Highness?” Leon asks. “He looks like he might need the company—or something to distract him, at least.”

  “The only people whose company he enjoys have been dead for nearly eighteen years. Follow me.”

  Tamriel strides up the stairs two at a time and pushes the
castle doors open wide. He apparently only remembers to hold them open behind him at the last second, and he abruptly turns and catches the door with the toe of his shoe before it swings into Mercy. He offers her an apologetic smile and gestures to his head. “Sorry. Distracted.”

  He leads Mercy and Leon through the great hall and down a steep flight of stairs. As they descend, the walls narrow and the air turns damp and earthy, and Mercy realizes with a start where he is leading them. When they reach the bottom of the stairs, the abrupt fork in the hallway confirms her suspicion: they’re in the basement, far under the castle. To the left is the storeroom where Mercy and Elvira had watched Tamriel cut out Hero’s tongue with a glowing knife. She trains her eyes on Tamriel’s back as he and Leon continue down the hall, convinced he somehow knows exactly who she is and plans to punish her the same way. Elvira has been gone for hours—perhaps she had revealed to the prince Mercy’s identity in exchange for her husband’s freedom and is now on the run to Cirisor. After Elvira’s outburst earlier, Mercy isn’t sure she’s above it.

  When Tamriel turns right at the fork, Mercy lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and hurries after him. She rounds the corner and nearly collides with the prince, who stands still as a statue in the center of the hall, staring at a cobweb-covered door. Leon catches her arm as she stops, and the two of them exchange a look as Tamriel takes a deep breath and grasps the door’s handle. He turns it slowly and the door opens with a low groan. The three of them step inside, and Tamriel turns to them, a grave expression on his pale face.

  “Welcome,” he says, “to my mother’s tomb.”

  37

  Leon lets out a strangled sound which is almost a laugh. “Uh, not her actual tomb, though, right?”

  “After her death, her body was buried at her grandparents’ estate in Redscale Down, so no, it’s not her actual tomb,” Tamriel says, looking a bit irritated, “but my father had many of her personal effects placed into this room so he wouldn’t be reminded of her every day. These objects held enough of her life in them he couldn’t even bear the sight of them. He still can’t. I don’t think my father’s ever set foot in this room.”

  “Are we allowed to be in here?”

  He shrugs. “My father’s not going to come searching. Would you care to look around?”

  The room is packed from wall to wall with bookshelves, sculptures, paintings, dresses, bolts of fabric, and various baubles. On a dust-coated vanity is a silver tray of hairbrushes and combs, jars of makeup, and pearl hair clips. A gemstone-encrusted box sits open beside the metal mirror, spilling necklaces of rubies, sapphires, and diamonds, along with strands of gold and tarnished silver. While Mercy and Leon work their way around various pieces of furniture and piles of clothing, Tamriel leaves and returns a minute later with two torches he had taken from the hall outside. Their glow is weak in the dust-filled air, bathing everything nearby in a pale yellow light.

  “Here.” He hands one to Leon. “Have you taken a look at that bookshelf over there? There are a few books I think would interest you—my mother loved classical literature, so I’m told.”

  “Really? You’d let me . . .?”

  “Sure. Right over there. You, too, Marieve.”

  They move to the bookshelf and Leon picks up and reads the titles of a few of the leather-bound books, coughing when dust flies up from the pages. He holds the torch in one hand and wanders around to the other side of the bookshelf, and when the light fades and leaves Mercy in a cloak of darkness, she realizes Tamriel hadn’t followed them. She glances back and, after a moment of searching, spots him sitting cross-legged on the floor across the room, partially hidden by the arm of an enormous velvet settee.

  He doesn’t move at all as Mercy approaches, and only looks up at her when she stops beside him. The torch he holds at his side illuminates only half his face, but it does nothing to hide the grief in his eyes. At first, Mercy cannot decipher the expression on his face, but it dawns on her as he turns away:

  He looks vulnerable.

  She tears her eyes away and focuses on the painting in front of him, an enormous gold-framed canvas which he had leaned against the wall, the dust cloth which had protected it crumpled at his side; a handful of the rough fabric is still clamped in his fist. In the painting, King Ghyslain and Queen Elisora stand on a balcony overlooking Lake Myrella. Ghyslain and Elisora face each other, their hands clasped between them. The Ghyslain in the painting is dressed in a dark blue shirt and black pants, and Elisora is draped in a gold gown which clings to the curve of her round stomach, heavy with child. The king and queen gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes, and a smile tugs at Ghyslain’s lips.

  “It’s beautiful,” Mercy whispers.

  “It was painted right before she was bedridden with . . . complications,” Tamriel says. “I’ve seen paintings of her before, but this one is my favorite. They look so happy. I’ve never seen my father smile like that.”

  “Never?”

  He shakes his head. “You’ve seen the paintings in the hall outside the throne room, haven’t you? The ones of my ancestors? According to tradition, they’re supposed to be portraits of the king alone. Instead, my father was so excited for my arrival he commissioned a family portrait, and had it hung in the hall for everyone to see. He was so proud of it.” Tamriel doesn’t look at Mercy as he speaks, just keeps staring at the painting as the light of the torch flickers and dances across its surface. “Tell me, does that sound like the king you saw outside?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “This painting hung in that hall for years after her death. The advisors had thought the citizens should have a space to dedicate to her memory, since she wasn’t buried here, and this painting became an unofficial shrine to her. People used to leave coins, jewelry, flowers, letters—they cared for her so much, my father had had no choice but to leave it there, no matter how much it killed him to see it.

  “One night, when I was five, I awoke to a crashing sound downstairs, and a howling of such despair it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I climbed out of bed and followed the sound downstairs, and when I reached that hall, my father was on his knees on the ground, the smashed flowers and vases in pieces around him. There was a puddle of water around him and his knees were bleeding from the shards of porcelain and glass, but he stayed there, sobbing into his hands,” Tamriel says, his voice hollow. “It terrified me. I called out to him and he froze. He simply froze. Then his face turned bright red and he started shouting, screaming at me, and he chased me up the stairs and told me to never, ever spy on him again. The next morning, the painting was gone, and he had blunted a letter opener scratching her name off the inscription.”

  Mercy sinks to her knees and places a hand on his shoulder. It startles him and he stiffens, then relaxes slowly, leaning into her touch. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for her death, Tamriel, or the way your father responded to it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do. I can tell by the way you talk about her—”

  “It’s just— It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? How can you mourn someone you’ve never met? Everything I know about her, I’ve learned from other people. When my father looks at me, all he sees is her ghost. And I don’t—I don’t understand it. How could he have loved her so much and still fallen for Liselle?” He spits her name like a curse. “How could he have betrayed her like that?”

  “I don’t know. Have you tried asking him?”

  Tamriel chokes on a laugh. “Right. I’m sure he’d be happy to share the intimate details of their relationship, seeing how he can hardly say her name without falling apart.”

  Mercy nods, unsure what to say to that, and sits down beside him, their knees nearly brushing. For a few minutes, neither of them speaks.

  “I heard what they said before—what they called me outside Beggars’ End,” Tamriel says softly. “I’m not a bastard.”

  “I know.”

  He turns to her. “I want y
ou to know I appreciate all the help you’ve given us since your arrival. Thank you—”

  “Don’t thank me, Tamriel—”

  “I want to, and you deserve it. We’ve been so busy since Solari the negotiations have fallen to the wayside, but you’ve still helped in the infirmary—”

  “—where your father ordered me to go—”

  “—and you didn’t have to. None of what’s happening is your responsibility. You could have gone home at the first sign of a problem, but you didn’t.” He takes a deep breath, his dark eyes searching hers in a way which makes her stomach flutter. “And that’s why, when I challenge my father’s rule on my eighteenth birthday and ascend the throne, I will ensure you are given everything your country is owed—namely, a peace treaty over Cirisor.”

  “A— A what? You’re going to challenge your father?”

  Tamriel drops his head into his hands and rubs circles on his temples. “I hadn’t seriously considered it until this morning, when I saw how unhinged he’s become. He’s getting worse—more distracted, more deranged— He told me he sees Liselle . . . He—He talks to her. How can I in good conscience allow him to keep the throne? I have a responsibility to my people.

  “There are several nobles whose loyalty to my father is questionable, at best. If I meet with them, I bet they will support me. They will help me dethrone my father, and then I will be able to negotiate with you for Cirisor.” He speaks quietly enough that Leon can’t hear him, an intoxicating, wild excitement in his eyes. He hesitates before speaking again. “And if you still desire it . . . I will need a queen to rule beside me . . .”