Born Assassin Saga Box Set

by Jacqueline Pawl

  “I wasn’t trying to get away with anything. I don’t want to—”

  “What was your plan? Kill Tamriel while the guards are conveniently asleep, then tell his father he’d been slaughtered by the savage Cirisians?”

  “No—”

  She narrows her eyes, her next words a growl. “If you think what Firesse’s elves did to that soldier was terrible, just wait until I get my hands on you. There won’t be enough left to bury.”

  “I didn’t want to kill him, you stubborn fool,” Calum chokes out. Mercy’s fists had begun tightening around the collar of his shirt, making it harder to breathe with each passing second. Over her shoulder, he sees a few elves stop and stare, but they do not interfere.

  “You’re a heartless bastard. You care only for yourself.”

  He shakes his head, prying at her vice grip on his shirt. “I’m a bastard, but I’m not heartless. I changed my mind—you know I did! I changed my mind about the contract that last night in Sandori. I went after him!”

  “You were too late.”

  He rolls his eyes and stops struggling. “If I still wished to kill him, he’d already be dead. I’ve had plenty of opportunities with far fewer people around.”

  Mercy studies him for a long, charged moment, her eyes narrowed. Then she makes a disgusted noise and shoves him away. He stumbles back and catches his balance on the boulder as she turns her back to him, rubbing her temples. “Why haven’t I killed you yet?” she asks in a tired voice.

  “Because,” he says, smoothing the wrinkles in his shirt, “you love my sparkling conversation and witty repartee.”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  “Because I’m the only real family Tamriel has left. You kill me, you destroy him, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

  He watches as her shoulders sag an inch, her anger giving way to weariness. At least, that’s what he thinks until she whirls around and punches him in the face.

  He staggers back, his fingers flying up to the warm blood bubbling over his lower lip. Nothing’s broken, but his teeth had split the tender skin. He spits a glob of blood onto the dirt and looks up to see Mercy shaking her right hand, frowning at her already-bruising knuckles.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, though,” he mumbles around his swollen lip, “it’s not out of some sense of familial obligation that you haven’t killed me yet, Sis.”

  For a second, he thinks she might punch him again . . . or that her patience has finally run out and she really will kill him this time. He braces himself.

  Instead, she rolls her eyes and walks away.

  18

  Mercy

  An hour later, Tamriel gathers Calum and the guards outside their tent. Mercy stands a few feet away, leaning against the scarred trunk of a tree and flexing her fingers, the skin over her knuckles pink and tender. She half-listens as Tamriel divides the soldiers into groups to accompany some of Firesse’s scavengers in their search for Cedikra. Beside him, Calum keeps sullenly touching his swollen lower lip, shooting Mercy dark looks whenever he catches her gaze.

  “Come,” someone whispers in Mercy’s ear. She jumps and turns slowly to not catch the prince’s attention, her heart hammering in her chest.

  Liselle?

  “Mercy,” her sister calls.

  Mercy searches the thick wilderness around her, but the ghost is nowhere to be seen—not so much as a flash of her gray, smoke-like form between the leaves—and her voice is weak, drifting to Mercy from somewhere far away.

  “Quickly!” Liselle snaps, a note of panic slipping into her tone.

  While Tamriel is distracted, Mercy ducks into the cover of the trees.

  Despite her sister’s request, Mercy creeps away slowly at first, taking care to avoid twigs or anything else which might betray her as she leaves the Cirisian camp. Once she has made it several dozen yards from the camp, she pauses, her ears straining for footfalls behind her or Liselle’s voice beckoning her forward. She hears nothing save for the normal sounds of the forest, but she continues in the direction from which she believes Liselle’s voice had come. She steps over exposed roots and ducks under low-hanging branches, using the position of the sun to ensure she’s not walking in circles. After several minutes pass without so much as a whisper, she begins to suspect she’d imagined the whole thing—until Liselle calls softly from her right.

  “Here.”

  Ten excruciating minutes later, Mercy scowls as she swats a fan leaf away from her face. “Are you leading me anywhere in particular, Liselle, or just enjoying watching me make a fool of myself?”

  No response.

  She sighs. “I’m going crazy,” she mutters to herself. At least no one is around to see her speaking to the air. “You’d better start talking if you don’t want me to—”

  The words die on her tongue when the tree line breaks, ushering her onto a sandy beach. The sun blazes high overhead, its rays sparkling on the sea’s waves. Mercy must hold her hand over her eyes for a moment before she realizes Liselle stands before her in the knee-high water, wringing her hands.

  “You’ll have to forgive me for calling you out here. I must explain—”

  “You have a lot to explain. First, where have you been?”

  Liselle pauses. “Had you not heard me until now? I’ve been trying to call you since you reached the Islands.”

  “No,” Mercy says slowly, not missing the concern which flits across Liselle’s face at her answer. “Is something wrong?”

  “The In-Between—the realm between the Beyond and that of the living—is crowded here; too many people have died on these islands. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay or if I’ll be able to return, so I’ll speak quickly. This land is dangerous. Don’t let your guard down, Mercy—not now, not ever. I was able to aid you in the capital—whisper to you, charm the guards—but I don’t have any power here. You and the prince are on your own.” She tries to step forward, but something seems to pull her back, away from the shore. Mercy remembers the charms Firesse had supposedly placed over the island—the barrier to ward away spirits and wraiths. As loathe as she is to believe that the wards exist, it would explain why Liselle hadn’t been able to contact her until now—and why she stands in the water, not on the land.

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Good.” Some of the worry on Liselle’s face disappears, and she smiles. “I am glad you and your prince are getting along better. I am grateful that you have rediscovered the kindness that the Guild tried to train out of you.” She holds out a hand to Mercy, her grin growing. “You deserve to be happy, sweet sister.”

  Mercy moves to the water’s edge, the gentle tide lapping at the toes of her leather boots, and reaches out. Before their fingers make contact, an arrow whizzes over Mercy’s shoulder and punches a hole through Liselle’s smoky form.

  She blinks, and Liselle disappears.

  Mercy whirls around as an elf steps out from under a thick tangle of mangrove roots, slinging her bow over her shoulder as she marches across the beach. She’s a few years older than Mercy, with a pretty, heart-shaped face and a long scar above her left eye. “You shouldn’t have left the camp. The wraiths like to lure people to the water.”

  “That wasn’t a wraith, it was my sister.”

  The elf holds up her hands, raising her brows mockingly. “I’m sorry, you’re right. You only just arrived here, but you’re from a big human city, so you must know so much more than our humble little clan.” She scowls, kicking a clump of seaweed into the blue-green waters. “Next time she calls you here, feel free to follow her into the water if you’re so certain she won’t drown you. Just don’t expect me to jump in and save you when she does.”

  “You don’t exactly seem like the charitable type.”

  “And I work hard to keep up that reputation, so let’s forget this little favor I did you in scaring that thing off.” She strides past Mercy and wades into the water, plucking the arrow off the sea floor. She twirls it between her fi
ngers, the sharp arrowhead sending an arc of droplets through the air. “Kaius told you about them last night, I assume. When we return to camp, you must ask Vaion about them. He’s one of the storytellers. He once watched a man roam the islands every night for two weeks, searching for his twin sister who had passed away in their childhood. She called to him in his dreams, he said. When he couldn’t handle the grief any longer, he hanged himself,” she says, then frowns. “Vaion tells it better. He saw it all happen.”

  “And he did nothing to stop it?”

  “He was a human. And a fool. Most importantly, he was a soldier. The fewer there are in the Islands, the better. Come.”

  She leads Mercy back toward the trees, tucking the arrow into her quiver. “My name is Nynev. I’m a huntress, and when I’m not following Kaius around, my job is to observe the foreign invaders and report back. I was hunting when I saw you walk past earlier, so I followed you.”

  “I’m Mercy.”

  “I know. Everyone in the clan knows who you are.”

  “Word spread that quickly?”

  She shrugs, stepping over a fallen log. “Firesse is always interested in people who can fight. All this excitement over a newcomer is infectious, I guess.”

  “I’m not staying.”

  “Good luck telling Firesse that. I bet she’s mixing the tattoo ink as we speak.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask someone about those. What do they mean?”

  “They used to simply mark elves of the different clans, but it’s evolved somewhat since then. Each clan has a style—Firesse’s being the vines,” she explains, gesturing to the lines covering her face and coiling down her arms, “and our jobs are included in the patterns. See? Hunter.” She points to her right forearm, where the pattern is broken by a cuff of interlocking circles. “We tattoo our faces so any elves who leave or are abducted from the clan can’t be sold into slavery. Can you imagine any noble willing to let a ‘Cirisian savage’ sleep in his home and serve him his morning tea?”

  “So they’re protection?”

  She nods. “We wear our freedom on our skin. It is as much a part of us as our ears and our blood.” She glances sidelong at Mercy. “You’ll be a warrior or a hunter, no doubt. Firesse would never waste your skills on domestic duties.”

  The casual way she speaks of Mercy’s future—as if there is no doubt that she will remain with the clan—makes Mercy stop. Nynev pauses, her fingers resting idly on her bowstring as she waits, cocking her head. “Don’t be shy. You aren’t the first foreigner to join our camp, and you certainly won’t be the last. It can be intimidating—I know from experience.”

  Mercy glances back at the beach, slivers of the yellow sand and blue water visible through the gaps in the leaves. She searches for a glimpse of her sister but finds none. “I want nothing to do with the Cirisian Islands.”

  Nynev’s answering smile is disarmingly sincere. “I thought the same thing when I was first brought here. T’villi ajo ma, Mercy. Come with me.”

  The huntress leads Mercy north, away from the beach and the Cirisian camp. She moves silently, an arrow nocked in her bow. When a fat goose bursts into flight before them, she looses an arrow which pierces one of the bird’s wings, sending it tumbling to the ground.

  “Mo rrizen,” she curses, running ahead. Mercy follows closely behind, the goose’s pained squawks growing louder as they approach. The bird hops from side to side in the grass, the arrow stuck halfway through its left wing, which is a mess of bloodstained feathers and tiny broken bones. Nynev picks it up and snaps its neck, and the bird goes limp in her arms.

  “You scared it,” Nynev snaps, pulling the arrow from the goose’s wing. She wipes the blood on the leg of her pants and returns the arrow to her quiver, then loops a length of leather cord around the bird’s feet and tosses it over her shoulder. “I could’ve shot it through the eye if you hadn’t been stomping around so loudly. If you scare all the prey away, it’s you and your friends who won’t be eating tonight. No Cirisian will give up his dinner for a human.”

  The carcass bumps against Nynev’s back as she jogs ahead. Mercy follows silently, focusing on the ground in front of her, but it’s not long until her curious and awe-stricken gaze drifts upward. Wide-trunked trees laden with bright yellow bananas surround them, the sweet scent of ripe fruit floating on the breeze. Large ferns cover most of the land below, the greenery dotted with spiky birds of paradise, red orchids, and white gardenias. To their right, ivy climbs up the side of a moss-covered boulder.

  It's easily the most beautiful place Mercy has ever seen.

  As they walk, a roaring grows somewhere ahead of them, a sound Mercy recognizes from the Forest of Flames: rushing water, like the rapids of the Alynthi River. A few minutes later, the forest parts around a thin blue-green river, and they follow its banks to a wide pool at the bottom of a waterfall.

  The sight takes Mercy’s breath away.

  It’s not at all as she’d expected.

  She remembers sitting atop the hill in the Forest the day Mistress Trytain had chased the apprentices on horseback with her blunted arrows; the day she had hunted them and laughed when her arrowheads had struck soft flesh; the day she had finally shown the depth of her hatred for Mercy. There had been no emotion in her voice when she had described how she stole one-week-old Mercy from her crib in the middle of the night and tried to drown her in the river. My regret isn’t that I tried to drown you—it’s that I failed, she had said. Because you, Mercy . . . you are ruthless.

  Mercy had sat and listened as Mistress Trytain had hurled those words at her, watching droplets of water fly from the roaring waterfall beside her and bead up on her worn leather boots. Thousands of gallons of water hurtled over the cliff’s face every minute, frothing and foaming and crashing against the rocks at the bottom of the hundred-foot drop.

  This one, though . . .

  It’s not nearly as tall as the Alynthi waterfall—perhaps only fifteen feet or so—and the water which flows over the lip of the cliff is a dull rumble in comparison. It’s calm, serene. Nynev nods toward the water as she settles onto the half-rotted, mossy trunk of a fallen tree, her lips quirked into a smile.

  “It’s freshwater, and it’s clean. Take a drink.”

  Mercy kneels beside the bank and cups her hands under the water, bringing it to her lips and drinking eagerly. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she had been—she has no idea how far they have walked or how long she’s been away from camp—and although the water is warm, it soothes the ache in her throat. After she’s drunk her fill, she pours some water over her head and gathers her hair in one hand, relishing the breeze on the back of her neck.

  “You get used to the heat after a while,” Nynev says.

  Mercy drops her hair and frowns, biting back the retort that she will never get used to the heat because she will never make the Cirisor Islands her home. Instead, she stands, brushing the dirt from her knees before she perches beside the huntress on the log. When she shifts, the wood groans, but doesn’t give.

  “I came here with my sister and my mother over . . . wow, over a decade ago,” Nynev says. She lets out a long breath, then shrugs. “I can’t believe it’s been so long. I would be dead now if Firesse hadn’t taken my family into her tribe.” She pulls one of the arrows out of her quiver and stares down at it, fidgeting absently with the fletching. “My father worked himself to death in the mines in Ospia shortly before we came to the Islands. I think . . . I think my mother was waiting for him to die so we could join the Cirisians. His lungs weren’t in good enough condition to make the long trip here, and she wanted him to die in his own bed, to be buried beside his siblings. When he passed . . . there just wasn’t anything tying us to the town anymore.

  “Even so, a few months after we arrived, my mother passed away from a broken heart. As silly as it sounds, I imagine she missed my father so much he came back to welcome her into the Beyond—no pain, no suffering. I can’t blame her for wanting to be with him again. Sh
e had done her job; my sister and I were free and safe, living with people who could protect us from the humans better than anyone in our home village was ever willing to.”

  “Have you . . . seen her since? Do the wraiths try to lure you?”

  “I used to hear her voice constantly, but whether it was because of the wraiths or grief, I have no idea. She used to hum an old folk song from our village while she did the chores, and I hear it every once in a while. Over the years, though, the words have begun to drift away. I can’t recall anything but the melody.” She hums a few notes under her breath.

  “And your sister? Have I met her?”

  A pained look crosses Nynev’s face. “She’s . . . gone.”

  “Recently?”

  She nods.

  “I’m sorry,” Mercy murmurs. Then, as kindly as she can, she continues, “May I ask why you are telling me this?”

  “I want you to consider your options carefully before you leave. You’re devoted to your prince, and he to you—anyone can see it—but it may not be enough to keep you safe in the human cities.” She shrugs. “It’s not my choice whether you stay or go, but we could use a fighter like you in our clan. Now, speak truthfully: why have you come to the Cirisor Islands with those men? Two human lords and four guards couldn’t search for Cedikra by themselves?”

  “I’m running from people who want to kill me.”

  Nynev says nothing, waiting for more.

  “I tried to kill the prince.”

  “You failed.”

  “Hence the running.”

  For a few moments, Nynev is quiet, thinking. Finally, she stretches her legs out and says casually, “I’ve never felt much patriotism toward Beltharos. Have you?”

  Mercy shakes her head. “My loyalty is to myself, and myself alone.” And to a stupid, stubborn prince whose mere touch fractures the walls she has built around herself, but she doesn’t say that out loud.