King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  Grace sighed and looked down at her hands as she twisted her fingers. “Being of both races, the midwives can’t tell us. Later than a Dweller birth might be, but earlier than a Vaelinar. It depends, I guess, on Nutmeg.”

  “I don’t think she can get much bigger.”

  She turned on him. “Then let me stay!”

  “I can’t.” He caught her hands. “You increase the danger to her, you must know that.”

  “Me? How?”

  “Because anyone wanting to unseat Lariel will chip away at her support. Me. Houses Istlanthir and Drebukar and Vantane. Her allies. Her friends. All are at risk now, not just her possible heir.”

  She tugged away from his hold but not enough to free herself entirely as his hands closed tighter about hers. “Tree’s blood, Sevryn. What a world I’ve entered.”

  He leaned over to kiss her brow. “I never would have found you otherwise. Would you turn that back on us?”

  “My soul not find yours? Who knows?” She stepped close to him, then. “We leave tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Aderro,” she said, and hugged him, before going to find Nutmeg.

  Nutmeg sat in the tiny courtyard where the old well flourished and flowers grew at random as if birds had scattered their seeds, and she waited for her sister to find her because Grace would be coming, and soon, to tell her good-bye. It would happen, whether she hid or not, because Queen Lariel had sent birds out, they’d been received, and Sevryn had been ordered home, with new guards on their way, and so forth.

  So forth.

  Nutmeg sighed. She had overheard her sister talking. They could have been killed despite their defense. Grace surmised that they survived because whomever had sent the assassins wanted Nutmeg alive. Not for long, undoubtedly, but initially. And what then? Where would she be taken, how long would her lifeblood flow before they cut it off, and why?

  She twisted one thumb about the other. It wouldn’t be because they wanted the baby alive. No. They wanted her alive because they wanted information. What did they think she knew? Something Jeredon had told her? Or details from the awful battle at the Ashenbrook and Revela Rivers?

  She closed her eyes in memory.

  As if it were yesterday, Nutmeg was there again, trying to warn Bistel of the arrows aimed at them. He moved, to protect Bistane and her, and took the shaft to his chest. He sent Bistane away to do what could be done to stem the tide of the battle, and she had been left alone with him. She wrenched her hands together as the remembrance swept her up, and she could not break away as it all happened again. She still had Jeredon’s blood on her and now watched another dying.

  Bistel turned back. He stumbled. His chest gurgled. He broke the arrow shaft. He looked down at Nutmeg and seemed to really see her for the first time. He touched her wet face.

  She could see the copse he led her to, and put her small weight under his shoulder, and helped him to the shelter. Behind them, the Raymy and Ravers quarreled amongst themselves among the carcasses of their own, and the two of them were forgotten. He sank gratefully to the ground. He took off his helmet and let it drop and he lay down beside it, his snow-white hair glistening with sweat.

  “Did you . . . find what you needed . . . at the library?”

  “Not what I hoped.”

  “And . . .” He paused to take a long, sucking breath. She could only wonder why the arrow had not eaten him inside out, but it mattered little. It had killed him anyway. “And what had you hoped for?”

  “I wanted to find out if I could love a Vaelinar, and if he could love me back.”

  “Ahhhh.” He touched her wet cheek again. “That is not . . . the sort of thing . . . we Vaelinar write in our books. We feel it, but we do not write it.” His chest bubbled and she could see his pulse throb in his neck, and his skin pale.

  “I have something . . . I want you to take. It is a burden, a trust.” He licked his lips. “You can say no.”

  “There is no one else here.”

  He smiled thinly. “Bistane will come back for . . . me. But it is not something . . . I wish him to have . . . yet. You are honest. By the very stock of your blood, you are honest.” He gathered another breath, in great pain from the creases across his face. “Take the book from inside my mail, tucked in my shirt. Keep it. Give it to your sons to keep . . . until the day you feel it should be given.”

  His eyes of brilliant blues locked onto hers. She did not quite know what to answer.

  “I will,” vowed Nutmeg. She unlaced his chain and found the book inside as he told her, wrapped in cloth that had become drenched with blood. She pushed the cloth aside and then put the book inside her bodice. “Until the day comes when I think it should be given.”

  “Thank you.” Bistel managed a half breath and then shuddered. His body gave a terrible wrench as if it fought to hold on, and failed.

  With a shudder of her own, Nutmeg broke free of that past and its remembrances. If only she had said no, as he’d offered her, but how could she have? He’d just saved her life and there was more than that to his request, an importance she couldn’t have denied.

  She could be fairly certain someone might think she knew something. She was the only one at Warlord Bistel’s side when he died.

  Did they know about the book he’d entrusted to her and made her swear on?

  Did they? Her fingers laced together as she wrung her hands.

  It was known, though quietly, that Bistel had placed his journal at the library of Ferstanthe. That’s when they’d met and talked, tall, impressive warlord and her impulsive Dweller self. Whoever hunted her down for information had to know that, even though it hadn’t been widely talked about. The Books of All Truth weren’t discussed among the Vaelinars, at least not with other ears to hear. But this book was not his journal. She wasn’t sure of its contents, but she knew that much. She’d seen the worn journal when they’d met at the library. She knew that wasn’t what she had hidden. The hidden book was thinner, newer looking though nearly as worn, the edges of its pages gilt in gold. One could never mistake one book for another. She wondered who had originally been meant to inherit her burden. Bistel? His other son, the half-blooded one? Perhaps another Vaelinar like Lariel Anderieon? Whom had she robbed of their legacy?

  Twist. Her fingers curled as she wrung them.

  Rivergrace couldn’t tell her much because she was more of a Dweller, her sister, and the machinations of Vaelinar plots were often as obscure to her as they were to Nutmeg. Or they had been. Grace had changed since she’d met Sevryn and would continue to change. Maybe the day would come when Nutmeg couldn’t recognize her sister at all, when the labyrinth of Vaelinar planning would come as naturally to her as her own breath.

  Turn.

  If Jeredon had lived, perhaps they would have stayed together, and she close to Grace at Larandaril, and privy to the lives of the high elven. Certainly she would not have been shut out, shut away, here at Calcort, like a favorite broodmare turned out to pasture to wait until foaling. She could possibly even have turned the burden over to another wiser person, more able to carry it.

  Twist.

  Nutmeg winced as she gave herself a burn and forced her hands apart. She flapped them in the air to chase the sting away.

  “Feeling a’right, Nutmeg?” Lily Farbranch drifted out of the back doorway, dusting biscuit flour off her hands as she moved to stand by her daughter. A comforting smell of baking bread followed in her wake from the kitchen snuggled behind the weathered timbers of the farmhouse.

  Nutmeg leaned against a stout post as she hid her reddening hands from sight. She sighed and retrieved a thought that would not be an untruth. “I’m going to miss Rivergrace.”

  “So will I.” Lily ruffled Nutmeg’s hair the way she used to do when both were younger. She put her hand familiarly on Nutmeg’s swollen belly. Her face stretched in a smile.
“Feel that baby kick!”

  “Oh, I am. It tumbles about like a street acrobat.” She stumbled a bit on the unfamiliar word before letting out a pony-like huff. “Hasn’t it been long enough?”

  “Vaelinars age far slower than we do. Stands to reason even their babes would take their time.”

  “I could be pregnant for years!” Nutmeg’s hand flew up to smother a wail.

  Her mother patted her belly. “Doubtful.”

  “Don’t tease.”

  “Never, I would never. Now your father and your brothers . . .” Her voice trailed off. Nutmeg did not answer. Both knew that Tolby and her brothers doted on her even as they ragged her with teasing. Perhaps a little too much. Sometimes she felt smothered.

  Nutmeg peered across the way. It was a far cry from their home and orchards on the banks of the Silverwing, where one might ride the better part of a morning to greet a neighbor. Far from the gnarled and fragrant apple trees. Those days were gone, their neighbors the Barrels mostly dead, killed by Ravers, the farms and orchards gone fallow or—worse—feral. Other neighbors had moved closer to villages and farther away from the mountains and the ridgelines where wild things prowled. Life here was good in its way just as their life there had been good until danger forced them off their lands. She wondered how their fate might have been had she not pulled a girl child from the river and claimed her as her own sister. The Silverwing gave life and, like any river in its occasional rages, could take it away. The Ravers had come for Rivergrace because of her Vaelinar blood as if they had scented her on the wind.

  She braced herself in her chair, a rocking chair, and glared at the hitching rail. Her father and Keldan had built it for Hosmer, now a captain in the City Guard, with a proud horse of his own to tie to it. Not a mountain pony which suited the shorter stature of the Dwellers more, nor a hot-blooded tashya from the Vaelinar herds, but a long-limbed Kernan horse, as befit the city patrol. Hosmer patrolled the city street in front of the farmhouse now to replace Lariel’s guards until new ones arrived, his horse inside the stable.

  Nutmeg shifted one hip and felt the baby roll slightly inside her. She thought that the child would be like its father, tall and rangy. It was hard to think that any of her blood might show in the child’s heritage. She thought of it as Jeredon’s child, hardly ever just . . . hers. “Do you think Tressandre ild Fallyn sent the killers?”

  “That bitch.”

  Nutmeg’s jaw dropped as she whipped her head around to stare at Lily Farbranch. “Mother!”

  Her mother’s mouth tightened momentarily. “I can think that. Say it, too.”

  “City ways are rubbing off on you.”

  “Is that not the truth?” Lily sat on the hitching post railing with a little bit of a hop. Her feet did not touch the ground once she perched her body on the precarious seat. “I weave fine fabrics for them and sew gracious tailoring and I hear what they say, some of it to my face but most of it behind my back. There are many who carry the venom of envy in their words. There are many who are as deceitful as any of our old tales would have them. Yet my daughters have befriended the Warrior Queen. What should I think, then? And what should I think when they send assassins?”

  Nutmeg cradled her stomach for a moment.

  Lily took a deep breath, as if to shake off her mood. She leaned down. “Do you wonder who it is you carry?”

  “Boy or girl? Aye, of course, Mom! It’s strong and feisty, that I know.”

  Lily laughed softly. “Shall I swing a ring for you?”

  “Like we used to do when we were just villagers? Before we moved to this great city?”

  Nutmeg sombered a bit. “I would, very much. I thought of asking you, but it seemed . . .”

  “Meg. Never doubt that we love this baby as much as we love you. And we are not disappointed. Do you hear me?” Lily hid the glimmer of a tear in the corner of her eye as she roughly tugged off her wedding ring. “Let me get a bit of string.” She felt about in the pockets of her apron to come up with a long piece of embroidery thread. “This will do.” She affixed her ring to it and held the ring in the air over Nutmeg’s swollen belly. “Now. Both of us need to be quiet for this to work.”

  “Tell the baby that,” Nutmeg muttered before pressing her lips together tightly.

  They watched the ring hanging still from its thread. It did not stir, not even in the growing breeze that always came as the day moved toward evening. Nutmeg fidgeted one foot, and bit the corner of her lip. Long moments passed. Then . . . did it move? Just a tad? Before she could open her mouth to exclaim that it had, the ring began to swing back and forth in an undeniable arc. A circle would have foretold a girl, but this—most emphatically—heralded a boy.

  “A boy!”

  “So it seems.”

  “Jeredon would have loved either.”

  “And you?” Lily looked down at her with a gentle expression on her face.

  “I fancied a boy. I wanted to see him, somehow, I guess.” She closed her eyes, briefly, seeing Jeredon and wondering how she’d see him in their child. And a lingering echo of Bistel’s “Pass it on to your sons.” He’d known then, somehow. She took a deep breath to watch Lily unfasten her ring and slip it back on her finger.

  Nutmeg added, “I know I would see his blood in a girl, too. But a boy. This time I wanted a boy.”

  “The ring isn’t always right.”

  “It has been every time I’ve seen it swung,” Nutmeg said confidently. She rubbed one eye vigorously.

  “You’re lonely. I know you miss him . . . but are you empty?”

  Nutmeg looked up. Her face wrinkled a bit in thought. The two of them had never discussed all that her love for Jeredon had portended. Her parents had never questioned her, just as Rivergrace hadn’t till a day or so ago. She tilted her head slightly. “I never expected,” she began, “that I would have a long future with him. I never thought that far ahead. It was like a call to me, Mother, that I couldn’t ignore. I wanted to answer it. I gave him all that I could in hopes he would heal. And he did. Then the war took him, war and treachery.” Nutmeg inhaled sharply. “It hurt when he left me behind for Tressandre, but I knew what he was doing. I just wanted him for whatever moments we could have. I never thought it would be so short. Or that I would have this memory of him.”

  Nutmeg inhaled again, this time deeper and slower. “This babe will need grounding and roots, as deep and solid as anything before the machinations of a Vaelinar can be grafted on it.”

  Lily slipped her arm about Nutmeg’s shoulders. “Who would have thought orchard growers could have such wisdom, eh?”

  Nutmeg rubbed her cheek on her mother’s arm, getting flour, no doubt, on her face. “I miss our orchards. I never thought there wouldn’t be a tall enough tree that I could climb so that I could see for leagues around, to get a clear view on things. But this.” She shook her head lightly. “There are no trees that reach to the heavens to give me a view now, are there?”

  Lily kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Not yet, dear. Not yet.”

  They stayed like that for a very long time until Grace found them, and they told her of the ring’s findings, and they talked of many things, but avoided saying good-bye.

  As Sevryn brought her horse out of the stables, Rivergrace turned the collar of her cloak against the brisk morning. The corner of it seemed damp. Tears, she thought. Hers or Nutmeg’s. Spring had failed that day, it seemed, and winter whispered down at them again. Her breath sent white gusts against the chilled air. Uneasiness tugged against her, far sharper than that of winter’s touch. She turned on one heel, scouting the landscape about her, trying to understand the strangeness that tugged at her. Threads seemed to fall through the air, multicolored, writhing aimlessly before fading abruptly away as if to tell her that somewhere, a weaving had gone awry. It left a foreboding coiled just under the edge of her rib cage. She couldn’t s
ee anything amiss, but the sense of wrongness pricked and jabbed at her. She threw a hand up in warding.

  He pressed her reins into the palm of her free hand before turning to go get his own mount and their pack animal. She caught his arm.

  “What is it?”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “The cold? Do you want a coat under your cloak?”

  “It’s not that.” She searched the courtyard and street beyond it, looking for threads among the threads again, meaning to catch them if she could. “There’s a gap, Sevryn. Something is wrong.” Her hands winged through the air. “A river of darkness moving against the natural rivers of shadows. Like I felt before.”

  “Afraid?”

  Her nose wrinkled a little as she frowned up at him. “No. I sense it. Can’t you? There is a tangle among the threads.”

  Sevryn stood still for a moment, opening his mind. She could see his eyes harden and knew that it wasn’t as easy for him as others, his half-bloodedness blocking him sometimes, but Gilgarran had drilled him relentlessly when he was young, and he could use his Voice at will. Other perceptions were harder. He lifted a hand, as she had, to give a brusque nod as if he felt it. “Not a tangle, no. A rip.” The expression on his face chilled. “Grace—something is very wrong.”

  “Nutmeg?”

  “Not sure.” He took to his heels, horses behind him, running down the dirt lane, back toward the city, back to where she thought she felt the contradiction of universes twisting violently, beginning to rend . . .

  “Sevryn!” Hosmer called behind them and began to run after. “What is it?”

  “Trouble!” Sevryn pulled his sword. Rivergrace drew hers at the same time and knew that behind them, her brother, Hosmer Farbranch of the Calcort City Guard, did as well.

  Hosmer passed them on the street, his Dweller feet fleet and without the burden of pulling horses behind. Dust flew from his boot heels. Grace felt the sky shiver overhead. Sevryn pulled to a stop. “Rivergrace, stay behind me!” She did. He dropped the horses’ reins and shooed them away.