He sits on the ground beside her. “Tell me what she said when you went to see her. Was she acting strangely at all?”
“She and Lethandris were going to work on translations for a while longer, so she told me not to wait up for her. Still, I went back to our room and tried to stay up to speak with her—she seemed troubled, and I assumed it was because they have not made much progress in their work—but I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.”
He frowns. “I . . . I tried to do the same for Mercy, but I couldn’t stay awake, either. You don’t think she—?”
“What, that she drugged us?” she scoffs. Then she jerks upright, her hands dropping to her sides in shock. “She offered me a cup of tea when I visited her and Lethandris. How—How did she get you?”
“She poured the drinks when she joined me for dinner. She must have smuggled something out of the infirmary. Where would she go that she couldn’t tell us? Where would you refuse to let her go?”
Understanding dawns on Nynev’s face. “Gods damn her tender heart,” she spits. “The infirmary—that warehouse in Beggars’ End. Lethandris told me yesterday that when Atlas described how horrible the conditions are there, how many sick people are suffering there, my sister began to sob, saying she should have figured out the cure sooner—that she should have gone to help them sooner.”
“She wouldn’t be able to get past the guards at the gate.”
“She’s the most important healer in the city right now. By the king’s order, the guards are required to give her whatever aid she requests. If she went to the End, they’d have let her through.” As she speaks, Nynev’s face drains of blood, turning a ghostly white under the light of the moon. She stands and brushes the dirt off her cloak. “Let’s go find my sister.”
The second the guards let them through the gate—after confirming that Niamh and Lethandris had indeed entered the End an hour ago—Nynev breaks into a run, her cloak flapping behind her. Tamriel struggles to keep his footing on the weathered, uneven cobblestones as they careen around corners and race down the narrow streets, and he nearly plows straight into her back when she stops short before the warehouse-turned-infirmary. A soft orange light seeps through the shuttered and boarded-up windows. He follows Nynev to the warehouse door, peering over her shoulder as she turns the handle and pushes it open. Before he can catch more than a glimpse of cots and slumbering bodies, outlined in gold by the pale glow of the lantern on the far wall, the huntress pauses.
He touches her shoulder. “Is she there?”
She shushes him, quietly closes the door, and gestures him over to the window. “I didn’t want to interrupt them,” she whispers, pointing at a gap between the boards. “They’re praying.”
Two women are kneeling beside a cot in the middle of the room, their heads bowed and faces shrouded in shadow, but Tamriel recognizes Niamh by way her shoulders hunch when someone lets out a dry, rasping cough. She pulls something out of her pocket as Lethandris rises and moves to the head of the bed, murmuring something in Cirisian as she brushes sweat-slick hair from their patient’s brow.
“What are they saying?” he asks as Lethandris looks to Niamh and nods encouragingly.
“A prayer for—” She frowns, brows furrowing as Niamh unfolds the piece of paper she’d pulled out of her pocket and begins to read aloud in ancient Cirisian, the words guttural and savage. “A prayer for passing.”
Her sister pulls a slender knife from her sleeve and, in a flash of silver, drives it into the sick man’s heart.
They watch in stunned silence as Niamh dips a finger into the blood pooling on the man’s soiled tunic and begins drawing strange, swirling symbols along the man’s blistered face, neck, and arms. Lethandris continues whispering to him as he lets out a soft groan and goes still. Out of the corner of his eye, Tamriel sees Nynev lift a trembling hand to her mouth.
A heartbeat later, the blood begins to—
Tamriel goes completely, utterly still.
The blood begins to glow.
The glyphs Niamh traces with her delicate, shaking finger bathe her solemn face in a warm red light, like sunshine filtering through a stained-glass window, and illuminate the silent tears rolling down her cheeks. She continues her work down to the tips of the man’s fingers, then sits back, loosing a shuddering breath. When the light flares and fades, Lethandris grabs her hand and leads her to the next cot.
“No one else.” Tamriel can hardly hear himself over the pounding in his ears as he storms into the warehouse and snarls, his voice nearly unrecognizable, “Put down the knife, Niamh, or I swear to the Creator I will personally find a way to send you to the Beyond—and I’ll make it hurt. Just what the hell do you think you’re doing murdering my people?”
Lethandris steps forward, hands up in surrender. “We can explain, Your Highness—”
“I didn’t ask you,” he snaps. “I asked her.”
Niamh clutches the bloody knife in her hands, her wide eyes flitting from her sister—standing in the doorway, gaping as if she doesn’t recognize the woman standing before her—to him. “I-I-It’s an ancient Cirisian ritual,” she stammers. “A similar magic to the one Firesse uses to manipulate the Aitherialnik—blood magic. We wouldn’t have risked it if it weren’t absolutely necessary.”
“The cure is working,” the priestess cuts in, “but too slowly. On its own, you’ll need massive amounts of Cedikra to cure all the sick in Sandori, let alone the entire country. If you want to save as many people as you can, we need help. The Old Gods’ magic can enhance the body’s natural healing abilities enough to fight the disease with a smaller dose of medicine.”
“You learned that from the Church’s books?”
She nods.
“And you didn’t see fit to tell me before you took the life of one of my citizens?” He looks pointedly at Niamh’s blood-coated hands, still wrapped around the handle of the knife, then to the body lying on the bed beside them.
Niamh bites her lip. “He was already dying. He only had another day or two left in this world, and his mind was gone already. This way, his death means something. It’ll save lives. The stronger my connection to the Old Gods, the more people I can heal. Killing a few for the sake of the many is a sacrifice we have to make if you wish to see your people survive this outbreak.”
“Be careful walking that line, mo dhija,” Nynev says, shaking her head. “Firesse is using that same logic to justify her attacks on this country.”
Niamh opens her mouth to retort when footsteps clomp down the rickety steps. They all turn to see Hero standing halfway down the staircase, surveying the four of them and the dead man lying on the bloody cot. Ketojan hovers behind her.
“Did you know what they were planning?” Tamriel asks, frowning.
“We did,” Hero says, the words garbled.
“And you do not object to them killing the people you’ve treated for so long?”
“If a few mercy killings will save thousands from long, painful deaths,” Ketojan responds, “we will gladly see their suffering ended.”
Every set of eyes swing to him, waiting to see what he will say.
He takes a deep breath, swallowing his residual anger, and turns to Niamh and the priestess. “No one else dies. You will test your theory on Atlas and the other guards first—two with magic, and two with only medicine. We will discuss how the rest of the sick in the country will be treated after we know the Old Gods’ magic works. The next time you make a discovery like this, you will tell me first. Have I made myself clear?”
Niamh lets out a relieved sigh and bows, her body visibly relaxing. “Yes, Your Highness.”
Lethandris nods. “As you wish, Your Highness.”
“Good. Clean up this mess and report back to the castle when you are finished. Nynev, let’s go.” Tamriel walks out into the street, the cool, storm-scented breeze sweeping over him. He closes his eyes and turns his face up to the sky, where patches of twinkling stars are visible through the thick clouds, as
Nynev softly closes the door behind them. He can’t keep the memory of the man’s glowing blood out of his mind.
Creator, let them be right.
30
Mercy
The next morning, Cassia drags Mercy out of bed and into the bathing room tucked away behind the tailor’s shop, where the clawfoot tub is already filled with steaming, perfumed water. At the sight, Mercy stops and turns to her sister, her brows raised. As far as she had seen, the shop doesn’t have access to running water like the mansions in the Sapphire Quarter. Running back and forth from the public pump and heating the water must have been exhausting, especially after trekking across the city in the middle of the night. “You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble of filling the bath for me. You’ve done enough already.”
“It was no trouble. The boys helped after a little prodding.” As she speaks, Cassia helps Mercy remove her sling, tunic, and the bandages on her chest. She grimaces when she sees the lines of stitches where the arrows had pierced her flesh. “The lazy asses didn’t want to get out of bed. Go on, the water’s getting cold. I’ll fix something to eat while you wash.”
When her sister pulls the door closed behind her, Mercy quickly undresses and slips into the bath, letting out a sigh of relief as the heat seeps into her skin, immediately easing the ache in her chest from her wounds. She’s never had such severe injuries. Even when the scars are healed, she’ll never be able to move her arm with the ease she had before; the arrowheads had damaged the muscle too deeply. She’ll have to adjust the way she fights—favor the right side. Use that arm for blocking heavy blows, use the left for quick slashes and easy jabs. It won’t be strong enough to hold a heavy sword for a while—maybe not ever again—but she’ll adapt. She won’t let it remain a weakness for long.
She submerges herself completely, luxuriating in the warm water as it envelops her and sends her hair dancing around her face. She’s never enjoyed a bath so much. She has never had a chance to—not in the castle, and certainly never in the Guild.
After she washes her hair and scrubs her skin with one of the fine soaps Cassia had left on the edge of the tub—those and her floral-scented oils being some of her sister’s few concessions to luxury in the apartment—she dries herself off and dresses in the clothes Cassia had hung on the back of the door for her: soft, well-worn black pants and an embroidered white top. She returns to the kitchen to find her sister frying eggs on the wood-burning stove, and Matthias slumped on the couch with a mug of tea in his hand, his hair still mussed from sleep. He eyes Mercy’s outfit and chuckles. “She got you to play dress-up, did she?”
“What?”
“She made that.” He gestures toward her shirt. Embroidered roses sweep across the fitted bodice and coil down the arms, the red blooms as bright and stark against the white cotton as blood on fresh snow. At a glance, the pattern is delicate and girly, but a closer look reveals the long, sharp thorns poking out from the vines which wrap around her arms and form a thick cuff at each wrist. The workmanship is exquisite, and a perfect representation of her sister—a beautiful exterior hiding the deadly barbs within. “She could have been working with Ino and me escorting a merchants’ caravan to Bluegrass Valley, but no, she had to spend a week sewing that.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, brother dearest, if not for me and my sewing needles, you wouldn’t have had any clothes to wear for the first few years after our escape,” Cassia purrs as she slides the eggs onto a plate and hands it to Mercy. The second the aroma hits her nose, her mouth begins to water. She hadn’t realized how hungry she had become since leaving the castle.
“Like that would have been a shame,” Matthias retorts. He winks at Mercy as she shovels food into her mouth. “I look wonderful without clothes on, for your information.”
“I’ll gladly take your word for it.”
He grins at Cassia. “I like her.”
“I should hope so. You’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the days to come.” When Mercy finishes her breakfast, Cassia tugs the plate out of her hand and drops it on the couch beside Matthias. “Your turn to clean.”
“You can’t give me chores—I’m a grown-ass man!”
“Then start acting like it,” she tosses over her shoulder as she drags Mercy into the adjacent bedchamber. She rolls her eyes when Matthias curses at her under his breath. “Now,” she says to Mercy as she closes the door behind her, “to turn you into a queen.”
Tamriel’s jaw drops when Mercy and her siblings saunter into the castle a little over an hour later. The king and Master Adan do the same. Mercy beams when the guards and courtiers who had been passing through the great hall stop and stare.
“You— You look—” Tamriel shakes his head, his Adam’s apple bobbing when he swallows, and says, “You look . . . different.”
She raises a brow. “That’s it? Just different?”
Beautiful, he doesn’t need to say. She can read it on his face. What’s even more dangerous is that for the first time in her life, she feels beautiful, too. Everything a Daughter should be—strong, cunning, powerful, stunning—she is. Everything except human.
Falling back on what she’d learned as a housemaid and slave, Cassia had braided her hair into a crown and pinned small, silken roses into every few stitches, her deft fingers making quick work of Mercy’s wild curls. She’d left a few strands free around Mercy’s face to soften the harsh lines she had inherited from their father. The bloodred roses on her shirt appear to tumble out over the top of the leather breastplate Cassia had loaned her and spill down her arms, the petals the same shade as the gloss on her lips. The gemstones encrusted on the handguard of the dagger sheathed at her hip catch the red of the blossoms and send flecks of firelight dancing around the room as she moves. She looks like a warrior queen from the legends of the Year of One Night, and Tamriel can’t stop gawking. Cassia and Matthias flank her on either side, each armed and dressed in similar leather armor. Ino, rendered nearly invisible to the nobles by his white slave sash, is already somewhere in the castle, eavesdropping and gathering whatever information he can.
Mercy stops before the king and bows. When she straightens, she looks straight at Tamriel and raises a brow. “What did I miss?”
He blinks at her a few times, clearly at a loss for words. When he swallows again, she grins at the hint of desire she glimpses through his shock and bewilderment. “There’s been an attack,” he finally says. “Multiple attacks.”
Every hint of levity vanishes at the pain in his voice. “What? Where?”
“Harkness. Briar Glen. Fairwater. Graystone,” Master Adan answers for him.
Mercy feels the blood drain from her face. Beside her, Cassia and Matthias stiffen.
“It seems our Cirisian friends have coordinated their attacks well,” Ghyslain says, agony turning his voice raw. “Each town was hit in the dead of night in the exact same manner. Master Adan can fill you in on the details later.” He turns on his heel and gestures for them to follow. When they reach the council chambers, Cassia and Matthias take up positions on either side of the double doors, hands on the hilts of the simple swords sheathed at their sides. Mercy trails Tamriel and Master Adan into the room to find the king already slumped at the head of the table. “Through some blend of magic, strategy, and our own Creator-damned bad luck, Firesse and most of her soldiers have managed to evade the troops we sent and incapacitate four more towns. How the hell did they make it past our men, Adan?”
The Master of the Guard hesitates, then says, “I’m . . . not entirely sure, Your Majesty. Her powers—”
“She’s a girl with a thousand scarcely-trained elves at her back and my bitter, foolish nephew at her side. I expect my Master of the Guard to be able to keep our enemies from marching straight into the heart of our country unimpeded, but it seems I may have grossly overestimated your skill in that regard, Adan. I suggest you come up with a new strategy before you find yourself out of a job.”
Master Adan’s face pales. As they begin
to discuss troop movements, possible future attacks, and guess at what sensitive information Calum might have given Firesse, Mercy turns to Tamriel. The prince is still standing by the closed double doors, watching her. When their eyes meet, he starts toward her and she stiffens, expecting another round of the fight they’d had the night before.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and she breathes a sigh of relief. “You were right about the courtiers, about fleeing—about everything. After Drayce hurt you, all I wanted was to protect you, but I ended up making everything worse. He got inside my head,” he murmurs, nodding to his father. “When I should have had your back, I let fear paralyze me. It won’t happen again.”
She wraps her arms around his waist, tugging him close. “I’m sorry, too. It wasn’t fair for me to lash out like that. Can you forgive me?”
He nods. His lips brush the point of her ear when he leans down and whispers, “I love you so much, Mercy. No one will ever take you away from me.” As he speaks, his fingers slide down to the bottom of her breastplate and slip under the hem of her shirt, tracing light circles across her bare skin.
“I love you more.”
“Not possible. And I assume the man and woman waiting outside are your siblings?”
“I’ll introduce you. They’ve promised to help us fight the nobles.”
He grins. “The more the merrier.”
Someone clears his throat and they jump apart. Ghyslain frowns as Adan hurries out of the room. “Has Seren Pierce found any more information about the people involved in Drayce’s plot to kill Mercy, Tam?”
Born Assassin Saga Box Set Page 98
