Rumbling.
The roof of the tunnel collapses, the force of so many tons of stone crashing down nearly throwing Drake off his feet. He braces a hand against the wall as a cloud of dirt fills the hall. The entire castle seems to shudder. When the rocks and bricks finally cease falling and the cloud of dust settles, Calum gapes at the destruction they’ve wrought.
Half of the Cirisians had been trapped in the tunnel, waiting for Drake and the others to clear the way into the castle. Where they had stood is now a mountain of rubble, broken bodies and shattered limbs peeking out from between massive hunks of stone. One of the Daughters lets out a sob and collapses beside the body of an Assassin. The dead girl’s eyes stare unblinkingly at the hole where the roof of the tunnel had once been. Now, they can see straight up into one of the castle’s twisting, labyrinthine halls.
At a snapped order from their commander, the dazed Beltharans turn and bolt down the corridor, off to report to their king and the Master of the Guard.
“Get to your feet,” Drake snaps at the remaining Cirisian soldiers. Nearly thirty of them are still alive, and all of the Daughters save for the one struck by the rubble are unharmed. Slowly, groaning with pain, they rise and dust off their armor. Drake jerks his chin to Kenna and Farren, their faces coated in gray dust, and points down the hall to where the Beltharans had run. “Take all the surviving Cirisians and go after them. They’ll lead you straight to the king.”
When their footsteps fade, Drake reaches down and pulls Faye to her feet. She winces, shifting her weight off her right ankle, but does not balk when he instructs her to gather her Sisters and follow him to the throne room. With Kenna and the elves approaching the great hall from one side and Drake and the Assassins approaching from the other, Tamriel and his father will be trapped between them with no chance of escape.
42
Mercy
Mercy and her family haven’t made it more than two blocks from the castle when a lone guard appears far down the street, shouting something indecipherable as she hurtles toward them. She points at something over her shoulder, then collapses to her knees in the middle of the road and begins to retch.
“What in the Creator’s name?” Matthias hisses, brows shooting up.
The woman wipes her mouth with the back of her hand as Mercy and her family approach. “Run,” she pants, shuddering and gasping. “Run, before it’s too late—they’re coming to kill us all. Warn the prince. Warn—warn the king.”
“Where is Firesse?”
“The End.”
“The End?” Mercy frowns, stopping short. “That’s impossible. How did they breach the city walls?”
The guard’s head snaps up, and that’s when Mercy sees the bright red rash covering half the woman’s face, the glistening blisters full of milky pus, the feverish gleam in her eyes. She starts to crouch down beside the guard, but the woman falls back onto her heels and scrambles out of her reach.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t— You can’t touch me.” She wraps her arms around her armor-clad knees and hugs them, trembling. Mercy’s throat tightens at the utter terror which flashes across the woman’s face when she glances toward the city gates. “They’re coming. They’re coming to make you sick.”
“Who?”
“This way.” She pushes herself to her feet, swaying a bit as she stands, and shuffles to a narrow alley between two massive houses. She squeezes in far enough for Mercy, Cassia, Dayna, Ino, and Matthias to all file in behind her. For a few moments, the only sound is her ragged, uneven breathing. Then, they watch in horror as countless sick elves stalk down the street, their sallow faces drawn with pain. The horde—there’s no other word to describe it—passes without a single glance in their direction. Every pair of glazed eyes is trained straight ahead.
“I freed that woman in Graystone,” Dayna whispers, nodding to a blonde woman at the rear of the group. “They were all slaves.”
“She’s right—they’re marching for the castle,” Cassia murmurs. “But how the hell did they make it out of the End?”
“Gates.” The guard leans her head back against the cool brick of the house and swallows. “The elf sent them here. Used her magic to infect them—infect us.”
“You mean you weren’t sick before the attack?” Ino asks, quietly horrified.
She shakes her head. “They got my husband, too. He didn’t make it out of the End.”
It feels like an eternity passes before the sick elves shuffle out of sight. Even after Matthias peers out and gives the all-clear, they wait two full minutes before slipping out of the alley. Mercy turns toward the battlefield. Behind her, Cassia keeps murmuring the same thing—You’re all right, you’ll be okay—to the guard. Cannonballs still sail through the columns of black smoke rising from the inferno, blasting Cirisians and undead soldiers to bits. Despite that, it’s obvious even from this distance that Firesse’s soldiers have gained the upper hand. She hisses a curse under her breath. A distraction—that’s all this was. They should have known better than to meet the elves in the field. They should have known that amidst all this bloodshed, the limits of Firesse’s magic would be seemingly nonexistent.
“We need to get her to a healer, Mercy,” Cassia says, her voice high and strained. “We need to get—No. No, no, no, no, no. Stay— Stay with me!”
By the time she turns, the guard is slumped against the side of the house, staring up at the sky with dead, unseeing eyes. Her pupils have gone a milky white—like Pilar’s, before she tried to claw them out—and a dribble of blood trails out of the corner of her mouth.
Dayna gapes at the corpse, then slowly lifts her gaze to the opposite end of the street, where the horde of sick elves had marched toward the castle. Her face goes slack with realization. “Th-That’s what Firesse was going to do to Adriel and me for betraying her. That’s why she didn’t kill us outright when we tried to escape.”
Matthias lets out a strangled sound.
A chill snakes its way down Mercy’s spine. Despite the fear roiling in her stomach, she wills that Assassin’s mask, that calm veneer, to slip over her features. She nudges Cassia out of the way as she stoops to pick up the guard’s sword, being careful not to touch her skin. If Firesse’s magic has strengthened the plague enough for it to kill the guardswoman in what little time it had taken her to find them, she won’t take any chances with her supposed immunity. The woman’s hand—which had been lying limp in her lap—clenches into a fist. Firesse’s magic. Mercy grits her teeth and swings the sword, cutting through flesh and bone. The woman’s head thumps to the ground, and the corpse falls still.
She tosses the sword aside in favor of her double-edged dagger and frowns at her elder sister, ignoring the blood pooling around her boots. “Let’s go.” They’re soldiers now—they’ll grieve their dead after the war is won.
Sure enough, the slums are in chaos when Mercy and the others arrive not fifteen minutes later. Beltharan soldiers and city guards alike pour into the End through the open gate, shouting to one another over the din of clashing swords drifting from inside, and Mercy can see fingers of flames licking the blackening sky over the wall. How Firesse’s forces had made it past the city walls remains a mystery they don’t have time to contemplate. Mercy splashes through a dark red puddle as she leads the others through the old archway and into the End.
The first thing that strikes her is the blood. It’s everywhere—drying between the cracks in the cobblestone road, pooling along the curb, dripping down the sides of the buildings. The sight reminds Mercy of the map she’d found in Seren Pierce’s study so many weeks ago; Cassius, upon waking from a dream-vision, had painted the entirety of Beggars’ End in bloodred ink. She stops short, ignoring Ino’s murmured apology when he walks straight into her back. They’d thought that the vision was intended to show them where the plague originated, but could it have been a premonition of this battle? Mercy shakes her head sharply as soldiers stream past and forces her feet to continue moving.
They we
nd their way through the streets, passing soldiers and guards locked in combat with Cirisians and skirting derelict houses consumed in flames. The cobblestone grows slicker the further into the slums they move. They pass several large pools of blood, but no bodies. Firesse’s magic is too strong; it reanimates the soldiers as soon as they fall, and there are so many people crammed into the twisting, winding roads of the End that it’s hard to tell who is fighting for which side. Between the cries of pain, the flash of blades as they slice through the air, the spraying blood, and the unbearable heat of the flames, it’s all Mercy can do to keep walking, to train her eyes straight ahead, to see past the injured and dying soldiers around her in hopes of catching a glimpse of flame-red hair. Kill the magic wielder, kill the magic. The words have become her mantra.
She lets out a breath of relief when they turn a corner and come face-to-face with Bas, one of the guards who had shadowed her after she’d been struck by that arrow. “Have you seen Firesse?” she shouts over the sounds of fighting, her throat already burning from the smoke and soot in the air. The question has barely left her mouth when she notices the blood dripping down his side, the dagger still jammed up to the hilt in his ribcage. A fatal blow.
Bas’s dull, glazed eyes betray no hint of pain as he hefts his bloodied sword and swings it low, straight for Mercy’s waist—a move which would have cut her in half had she not seen him train, had she not anticipated the move. Matthias lets out a cry of alarm as Mercy leaps forward, deflects the sword with her own blade, then whirls the double-edged dagger around and slices his head clean off. Blood splatters across her face. Mercy nearly gags—not at the blood, but at the feel of it on her skin. It’s ice-cold and putrid, as if he had been dead for weeks. She shudders, wipes it away with the back of her hand, and gestures for the others to follow her as she breaks into a sprint.
Together, the five of them slash and hack their way toward the center of the slums, pausing only long enough to order the Beltharan soldiers they pass to behead the undead creatures. Mercy’s heart thunders in her chest as she watches Cassia lunge out of the arc of a fallen elf’s blade and plunge her own dagger into the monster’s chest, distracting it long enough for Ino to step up behind it and slice straight through its neck. By the time they reach the clearing before the dilapidated warehouse-turned-infirmary, they’re all panting, shaking with fatigue, and coated in thick, foul-scented blood. The wounds in Mercy’s chest have begun to throb so intensely she can feel each thump of her heart all the way down to her fingertips. Wincing, she clenches and unclenches her left hand as she surveys the carnage before them.
More people than she has ever seen in Beggars’ End fill the clearing—hundreds upon hundreds of Beltharan soldiers, Cirisian elves, and reanimated corpses—locked in a whirl of clashing weapons and splattering blood. Two wooden houses across from them have already collapsed from the flames; nothing more than the stone frames and glowing embers remain. Thankfully, the warehouse Hero has worked so hard to maintain seems unscathed.
“Mercy!” Matthias shoves her out of the way as a Cirisian leaps at her seemingly out of nowhere, the blade at the end of his spear flashing. Dayna grabs her arm to right her just as four more elves burst out of the alley to their right, their teeth bared and eyes bright with bloodlust. Mercy immediately lifts her double-edged dagger to parry the nearest elf’s attack as Dayna and her siblings fall into defensive positions beside her. Something lets out a sharp crack, and Mercy risks a glance at Matthias to see the bladed end of his opponent’s spear clatter on the ground and roll well out of reach. Before the Cirisian can pull the knife sheathed at his hip, Matthias plunges his blade through the elf’s leather armor and into his stomach.
“Traitor,” the elf nearest her hisses as he lunges at Mercy. She feints right, ducks left, and hooks her leg around his ankle, yanking him off balance. He slips in the blood coating the street and crashes onto his back, glaring up at her with fury in his eyes. “You fight for the wrong side, soldier.”
She doesn’t bother to answer before she cuts off his head.
She barely has time to breathe before another Cirisian is lunging toward her, his blade angled for her neck. She kills him easily, but another one fills his place the second he falls. There’s no end to them—not to the Cirisians, and not to the corpses fighting alongside them. The distant booms of the cannons have ceased. The battle in the field must be over; it’s obvious by the staggering number of Cirisians flooding the streets of the slums which side had won. They’ve set their sights entirely on breaching Beggars’ End, which means Calum—or Drake—must not have known about the secret tunnel leading out of the castle. If he had, Firesse certainly would have focused all her efforts there, not on the slums on the complete opposite side of the city. She’s here, fighting somewhere in the chaos.
Ino seems to sense her thoughts. He tears his focus off the elf he’s fighting long enough to jerk his chin toward the house to their right. “Up there,” he shouts. “The second-floor window—see if you can see her.” When she nods, he slips into her place, taking on two elves to buy her time to run.
She bursts through the door and scrambles up the rickety stairs two at a time, her chainmail armor jangling with every step. When she reaches the landing, she swings herself around the banister and presses her face to the grimy glass of the window Ino had pointed out. Halfway across the clearing, she spots a shock of white hair by the warehouse’s door—Ketojan. Hero is beside him, brandishing a Cirisian’s spear at anyone who dares step too close. Neither of them has armor, but the few wounds Mercy can see from this distance are minor; they seem to be holding their own through sheer force of will. She murmurs a prayer and tries not to think about how much their deaths would devastate Tamriel as she drags her gaze past them, toward the edge of the clearing where countless Cirisians still stream in.
The rushing in her ears goes dead silent when she spots the green-and-gold scaled woman slaughtering her way through the Beltharan forces.
Mother Illynor.
She has never seen Illynor fight. The entire time she was in the Guild, Illynor had never touched any blade except her dinner knife until the day she’d almost killed Mercy for cheating the Trial. With her preternatural stillness, her smooth, savage grace, those calculating slitted eyes, she’d never needed to resort to violence to ensure her apprentices stayed in line. She’d been terrifying enough without it.
But watching her now . . . She’s no longer merely the headmistress of the Guild. She’s Queen of the Assassins. She’s a nightmare made flesh. She’s Death incarnate.
Illynor cuts through bodies as if they’re no more substantial than air. She’s a hurricane, a raging tempest, lunging and slashing and killing with such speed and dexterity that Mercy can hardly keep track of her movements. She blinks, and two soldiers are dead—two more bodies to join Firesse’s ranks of reanimated corpses. Watching the headmistress, she finally understands why Illynor had always seemed faintly amused by Mercy’s dream of becoming the best Assassin the Guild had ever trained—she could complete a thousand contracts, could practice and drill every day until she passed out from exhaustion, could master every weapon, and she would still not be a fraction of the warrior Mother Illynor is. The headmistress fights like she has done every move a million times, like she knows every attack her opponent will make before he even thinks of it. She’s the greatest warrior Mercy has ever seen.
A heartbeat later, Firesse and several Daughters stride into the clearing. Mercy bites back a shout of warning as she watches a handful of Beltharan soldiers tear away from the group they’d been fighting and barrel toward Firesse. They clash with the Daughters in a whirlwind of steel and blood, and it’s not long before the men and women join the undead. The Daughters disappear into the chaos, leaving the young First completely unguarded—undoubtedly a trap. Mercy could swear Firesse smiles as she surveys the bloodied clearing, daring another soldier to attack her.
Kill the magic wielder, kill the magic.
Right be
hind her, a floorboard creaks. Mercy ducks, twisting her double-edged dagger apart as she moves, and plunges the twin blades into her attacker’s stomach. Cold, foul-smelling blood pours over her hands. Gagging at the stench—like carrion, meat rotting under a hot sun—she looks up into her attacker’s face and meets bloodshot blind eyes, the skin around them swollen and red. Milky pus leaks out of the burst boils across its cheek. Not just one of Firesse’s undead puppets, then—
One infected with the plague.
“Firesse is across the clearing,” Mercy gasps to Ino when she hurtles out of the house minutes later, her daggers dripping the creature’s foul blood. He looks away from the elf he’s fighting long enough to glance in the direction she points. They can’t see her, but they can hear the soldiers around them dying, hear the whistling of Mother Illynor’s blades. “The Daughters are here—Illynor, too.”
He deflects his opponent’s blade and slashes low, carving a gash into the elf’s legs down to the bone. The Cirisian lets out a scream of pain, which is cut short when Ino’s other dagger swings up and crunches through his ribcage, piercing his heart. Ino grunts and staggers back as he yanks the blades out. “Where do you want us?”
“You and Cassia take the alley and fight your way to the other side of the clearing, behind Firesse. Find a crossbow or a bow and quiver and get to a roof. If you can find a clear shot, take it.”
He nods. “Be safe.” He runs over to Cassia and Matthias, who are barely holding back three of Firesse’s men. Mercy slips behind the elf her mother is struggling to kill—he’s a swift fighter, quick, lethal, and it’s all Dayna can do to keep parrying his lightning-fast strikes. Mercy angles her daggers up under his ill-fitting metal breastplate—stolen from a Feyndaran soldier, from the royal crest emblazoned at the top of the spine—and plunges them into his back, piercing his kidneys. He groans and slumps at her feet as, behind her, three bodies thump to the ground. Mercy looks her mother up and down. Dayna is bleeding from one side of her jaw and the upper part of her arm, but the rest of the blood coating her leather armor does not appear to be her own.
Born Assassin Saga Box Set Page 109
