King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  “There will be a season for that one,” Tolby said.

  “Without doubt.” His temples throbbing, Sevryn attempted the street, Tolby in step with him. His head cleared more with every step. “Rivergrace will be wanting to know where we are.”

  “Oh, she knows where we are. She’ll be wantin’ to know what trouble we’re in.”

  Sevryn smiled in spite of himself. He would be held accountable for his actions, and he did not mind it. Despite his shortness of stature, common to all Dwellers, Tolby nearly matched him stride for stride. At the farmhouse, Keldan, the youngest Farbranch, met them at the front door with a wry grin, saying only, “Things are quietin’ a bit.” He brushed his dark hair from his eyes, his longish wavy cut reminding Sevryn of the hot-blooded elven horses the Dweller so admired.

  Nutmeg was the center of attention. She sat, her feet up, her face scrunched in consternation over the display of concern as Lily moved back and forth between her and the kitchen. Rivergrace perched on a stool nearby, a cleaning rag in one hand and her sword in the other, taking slow, deliberate wipes along the blade, her head bent in thought. The moment the two men stepped in the room, her face came up and her gaze fixed on Sevryn, searching, and then she relaxed into a smile.

  Nutmeg put her hand up at Tolby. “Now, Dad, don’t be yelling at Grace for putting me on the ground. I was a prize target before that.”

  “Mmmmm,” her father said, leaning over to kiss one, then the other on the cheek. He turned to Hosmer. “Two different groups of assassins, or am I wrong in my thinking?”

  “No, you’re right. The Vaelinars swept in first and they would have taken Nutmeg if you had not been here, Sevryn.”

  “Ild Fallyn?”

  Hosmer, a shorter and stockier version of his father, shrugged. “Not wearing th’ black and silver, but that would be a fair guess, we’re all thinking. What we cannot guess is who the Kobrir came after.” Not a question outright, but Hosmer locked his gaze on Sevryn.

  He did not answer, thinking that the Kobrir might not have been in Calcort at all, save for his drawing them there. But he could not be sure. Their targets had been many and their contract broken. Had he just proved too costly and they changed their minds? Or was finding the king of assassins a deeper trap? The handcuffs tucked away inside his shirt smoldered, and he thought of Rivergrace and the faint scars about her forearms from just such a binding when she was a child, cuffs commissioned and used by Quendius to enslave her and her family. His jaw tightened. Grace blinked up at him as if she’d caught that in his face, and he reminded himself how sensitive she was to him now. It was the way they were meant to be. He dropped a hand to her shoulder and squeezed it lightly.

  She put her weapon and cleaning cloth away briskly. “We have to get word to Lariel.”

  “Pigeon master is at the nor’eastern quarter, near the curve of the river, edge of the lanes. Night is falling, but he can still set them on their way. I’ll come with you,” Hosmer offered, tugging at his City Guard’s tunic, the rest of his uniform consisting of cuffed horse boots over plain trousers. His light brown hair curled down to his collar, and his expressive hazel eyes darted a look between his father and Sevryn.

  “Good, then.”

  Keldan bounded to his feet and out the door before anyone could suggest he go saddle the horses. He held all three mounts by their reins when Sevryn drew Rivergrace out to the courtyard, Hosmer on their heels. Keldan’s face warmed at Sevryn’s raised eyebrow. “I had ’em ready.”

  “Indeed. That, or the tack appeared out of thin air.”

  Keldan gave both the tashya-bred horses a muzzle rub before giving Sevryn his reins and lending Rivergrace a leg up to her saddle. The hot-blooded creatures arched their necks and snuffled the palm of his hand eagerly as if still searching for the sweet-grain he must have fed them earlier. They tossed their heads in disappointment at finding his hand empty. Grace took up her reins gently.

  Keldan lit a hand torch and passed it to his brother, for the other side of the city, like this quarter, would be dark on the fringes, night having fallen well and truly. He opened the courtyard gate to wave the mounts through.

  The City Guard had already gathered the bodies that they could find and were carting them through the streets to the city surgery as they rode past. Rivergrace looked down to the carts, where cloaks and tarps covered the dead.

  “No Kobrir.”

  “No. They always take their own.”

  Her mouth tightened slightly. “The one Vaelinar who lived but briefly made sure he could not tell me who sent them.”

  “But it must be obvious,” Hosmer remarked. “Vaelinars opposed to Queen Lariel. It has to be the Stronghold of ild Fallyn.”

  “And you’d likely not be wrong, but proving it would be nigh impossible. The ild Fallyn are as shrewd as they are treacherous.”

  “So nothing will come of this.”

  “For the moment. They have tipped their hand, so Lara is forewarned, and that has some worth.”

  “Surely you can mark them as ild Fallyn, somehow, some way. Would not their bloodline give them away? Ears? Eyes?”

  “While it’s known that the ild Fallyn breed true, it’s also known that they take in many half-breeds. Those are most likely the ones trained and sent, for if they had sent true of their line, we might not have stood so easily against them.”

  “Why?”

  “The ild Fallyn can levitate,” Grace told him. “That’s how they build their Ways, and how they built their Stronghold. Tressandre or Alton could have crossed lanes in a single bound and been on us before we scarce knew they were there.”

  The torch he held wavered slightly in his hand. Then he shook his head slowly. “It’s a wonder any of you are still alive.”

  Her mouth quirked. “I am only by the grace of your family.”

  He dropped his reins to grip her skirted knee. “That’s not what I meant!”

  “No, but it’s true.” She clasped the back of his hand before moving it aside gently as their horses bumped shoulders in the lane. “Which brings to mind . . .” She turned to look at Sevryn. “It might not be ild Fallyn. It could be Quendius.”

  Did she sense the cuffs he had hidden away? “It could.”

  Her brows knotted a moment. “He would have sent Narskap to oversee it.”

  “Narskap died at Ashenbrook.”

  “So it was said, but no one has found the body.” She stroked the neck of her horse. “No one has seen Quendius either, although signs of his movement have been found. He would have taken Narskap back, if he could have gotten his hands on his old hound.”

  She did not call Narskap father, nor would she, although he had been, in another lifetime. Now the being burning inside out with his Vaelinar magic could hardly be called human, or alive, he thought. The man she’d known as her father, Fyrvae, had not existed in decades, not since he had failed in his escape from the mines of the weaponmaker, and the loss of his wife and child had broken him. He watched Rivergrace’s face as she absently tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. So young, still, her journey from the underground caverns of her escape having been put in suspension, held in the arms of a Kerith River Goddess until released tens of years after onto the flood-swollen waters of the River Silverwing which had carried her and her tiny raft past the apple orchards of the Farbranch family. Because of her, the Farbranches had eventually had to flee their ranch and take up residence in Calcort, but their hard work and shrewdness and family bonds ensured they would succeed.

  Hosmer held their horses as they reached the pigeon master’s coops and home. The smell of bird dung drifted on the damp night air, Rivergrace wrinkling her nose as she stepped into the front lobby of the home with Sevryn.

  A Kernan, smoking his pipe in the corner, as he set the wing of a bird, put both his charge and pipe down carefully. He moved to the counter fronting his lobby.
“Business, is it?”

  “Yes, and we’ll need nightfliers. Word must go out now.”

  The Kernan nodded. “Distance?”

  “We’ll need three teams. To the Istlanthir hold on the coast, to Larandaril, and to the Vantane House in the north.”

  The pigeon master sucked on his lower lip for a moment. “That’ll be pricey.”

  “Coin does not matter. Speed and sure arrival does.”

  He nodded in understanding. “I have but seven birds who can manage those routes.”

  “And we’ll need six. They will be sent back when rested.”

  The Kernan flushed briefly. “Oh, I have no doubt your lords will see right by my birds. No doubt.” He drew out six containers, with fine slips of paper for the messages to be written upon, and quills and ink. He turned his back on them, saying, “I’ll get my fliers.”

  Sevryn inked the warnings to Tranta and Bistane and Lara quickly, passing them to Grace to be blotted and rolled into the copper tubes. Spare messages, but he wrote more to Lariel using the shorthand he and the queen had developed over the years for the work he’d done for her. Rivergrace filled her slender hands with the tubes, and let out a small cry when the pigeon master came back from his coops. One of the birds on his arm was a silverwing. It cooed when it saw her, putting its head out for her finger to stroke. He did not know the affinity of such creatures toward Grace, but it existed and he could not explain it. Some Vaelinar had the Talent for animals, but her Talents were Water and Fire. No. This perhaps was born from her association with the Kerith Goddess, or her years with the Farbranches at the edge of the wilderness, or perhaps merely from the goodness of her heart.

  “She goes to Larandaril?”

  “Aye. That’s her range.”

  Rivergrace stroked the bird’s head one last time. She handed him the tube Sevryn had marked for Lariel, and its twin for the next bird.

  The other five fliers were skyhawks, nightfliers who also ranged in the day, and whose wider wingspread and deeper chests marked them as longer-distance birds. Each had a paint smear upon its head: blue for the coastal regions and green crossed with white for the Vantane hold. Sevryn would ordinarily marvel that a pigeon master in Calcort had such messenger birds for those routes, but with the Raymy invasion and battle at Ashenbrook, and the subsequent military maneuvers throughout the Vaelinar and Galdarkan forces, it only made sense that communication would be necessary. He and the pigeon master fastened the tubes to the birds’ legs quickly, and then the Kernan sent them winging into the night.

  He paid the pigeon master, who thanked him and said, “Good news?”

  That was the only thing out of character. Why would the man ask what sort of news he sent? Sevryn stared at him for a moment before answering, “Who asks?”

  The man had the grace to flush and stammer back, “N-no one, good sir. No one at all.”

  “There had better not be.” He took Grace by the elbow and steered her back outside.

  Now he had to wonder if his messages would be delivered to whom he had intended. Message agents were sworn to be discreet and this one had been . . . almost. Hosmer looked down from his mount. “Done?”

  “No. Is there another messenger in town?”

  Hosmer sat back in his saddle, thinking. “One,” he answered slowly. “A dodgy fellow, though.”

  “Nonetheless, we’ll stop there as well.”

  Hosmer looked to his sister. “Not safe for her there.”

  Rivergrace put her chin up. “I can hold my own.”

  “No time to waste, Hosmer, arguing with her.” Sevryn made sure Rivergrace was seated before swinging up himself. “Take us there.”

  And so Hosmer did. The dodgy fellow smelled of beer, and his birds were field owls, their big yellow eyes blinking as they entered the birder’s hut and aviary.

  “How much?”

  The bird man gave a twisted grin, only half his face obeying the attempt. Half-brained, Sevryn thought, as he watched the man limp across the dirt floor of his cottage, one arm hanging slightly, one leg dragging a bit behind. But the floor of the cottage was well-raked and clear of bird debris, a difficult task with as many bird perches as were set into the dirt. He revised his opinion of the fellow. Perhaps a stroke had rendered him but half a man.

  “A gold bit each.”

  Sevryn winced, thinking of old days when he might have killed to have a gold bit pass his palm. Still, a bit was less than a half and far less than a full coin. Reminding himself that most of the coins in his purse had come from Queen Lariel, he nodded. “Done.” He watched the shrewd intelligence gleaming in the man’s eyes. “Another bit if you can tell me if Master Trader Bregan has left town.”

  “Oh, that one! Aye. Lit off like his tail was on fire. Took his caravan back to the coast empty. No profit in that. Someone put the fear of the Gods into that one.”

  Rivergrace turned her back slightly to hide her expression as he dropped the promised bits into the man’s good hand. He tucked his fee into his own coin purse and made a sweeping bow only slightly affected by his condition. “Ink ’n paper on the counter. Write what you will. I’ll attach them.”

  “We can do that,” Grace murmured.

  The birder shot her a look as if assessing her ability. The field owl at her elbow clacked his beak, and she put her hand out to gently stroke his throat feathers. The man gave his grimaced smile again. “As you wish. Loose them, too?”

  “I will.”

  The bird perches were marked with the flags of the cities and holds to which they’d been trained to fly as destinations. He chose his birds swiftly as Grace penned the notes, her handwriting even smaller and clearer than his. Sevryn and Grace braved their clacking beaks to fasten the letter tubes to their legs before they were set free. As Sevryn watched them take flight as only an owl does, swift and silent, he felt more certain that the word he sent would be carried to its destination, one way or another. He watched them take wing, the birder silent at their backs, letting them do as they would, but ensuring that his birds were being handled safely.

  They were. Sevryn had chosen his messengers carefully before setting them to the sky.

  He could not afford to be silenced.

  “WHAT IS THAT?” Rivergrace asked quietly, her words muffled as she did not wish them to carry, to disturb the quiet which had finally fallen in the Dweller farmhouse. She sat behind him, her body cushioned in quilts and linens, her hair tickling his face as she leaned toward him. She watched what he held.

  “A present from the Kobrir,” Sevryn told her, as he turned the shiv over and over in his hands, carefully, for it was as keenly sharp as any stabbing/slicing weapon he’d ever come across, and it reeked faintly of kedant as well.

  “They know us well enough to leave presents now?” She smiled faintly as she sat on the small bed behind him with the point of her chin on his shoulder so that she could look down at his hands as he examined his gift.

  “So it seems.” He did not wish to let her know about the cuffs, so he kept them close, burning his skin even as he did so, from the malignant, binding magic which was twisted into the fiber of the steel. He paused, letting the engraved, ornate letter D shine in the candlelight.

  She sucked in her breath. “Daravan?”

  “My thoughts exactly, yet how can it be?”

  “The Ferryman.”

  He thought of how they had last seen Daravan and his brother who resided neither in the flesh nor entirely in the phantasmic, a Way in and of himself, linked inextricably with Daravan who, as the named brother, held the only life the two of them shared. It was Daravan who told them that the Vaelinars were not the Suldarran, the Lost, as they believed themselves but the Suldarrat, the Exiled, traitors against Trevilara their world and queen. It had struck them deeply, and hard. Yet, even as Daravan had exhorted them, railed against them for their trespasses in Tr
evilara’s war, he took the tide of Raymy, lizard men who had no heart and souls as any man would reckon them, and sent them on a journey where only a Way could take them. Perhaps it had been to a when rather than a where, for such was the twisted nature of the Way known as the Ferryman, but the invading force had been swept from the field of Ashenbrook. It was but a temporary diversion, but without it, the battle, and all, would have been lost.

  That troubled him. He did not hold Daravan as the sacrificial type. Why had he swept up the Raymy? When would they come back, a massive tide of war and destruction? What had been Daravan’s true intentions? At Ashenbrook, the massed armies of the Vaelinars and the Galdarkans had stood to do what damage they could. If the Raymy, turned aside from the battlefield of Ashenbrook, returned elsewhere and could not be met by an army, what destruction could they truly wreak upon Kerith? He knew that Lariel, as Warrior Queen, kept forces marshaled at Ashenbrook. But what if she were wrong?

  The Raymy would return. Perhaps any day. Perhaps in a decade. They did not know. So an army camped. Waiting.

  Sevryn turned the shiv in his hands yet again.

  “If he’s found his way back . . .” Rivergrace began and then halted.

  “We know the Way he created to take them is not perfect. We have handfuls of Raymy who drop here and there, as whimsical as frogs dropping from a raincloud and as lethal as the deadliest viper.”

  “But the bulk of the army stays . . . wherever it is he took them.”

  “As far as we know.” Sevryn traced the D. “I know Daravan had dealings with the Kobrir. He admitted as much. He meddled. He assassinated. He did whatever it took to keep us from regaining our heritage and our truth. Whatever. I would not put it past him to have returned and be doing it again.”

  “I saw—” Rivergrace hesitated.

  “What?”

  “A shadow that did not fall as other shadows did. A river of darkness moving past and against the flow of dimming light.”

  “Even the Kobrir don’t move like that, although they would like to.”