A Crown for Assassins

by Morgan Rice

  “Even so, it will show anyone who supported me that I’ve accepted your rule,” he said. “It will help keep the peace, I hope.”

  He did hope it. He didn’t want any more violence on Ishjemme. There had been more than enough for now; for a lifetime.

  Rika hugged him, and this was a warmer hug than the one in the great hall.

  “I lied before when I said you’d be dead to me,” she said.

  “I love you, little sister,” Endi said.

  “I love you too. I wish that changed any of this.”

  Endi nodded. He understood. He went to stand in front of Jan.

  “I have nothing to say to you, Endi,” Jan said, his voice hard.

  “I guessed you wouldn’t,” Endi said, “but I have things to say to you, and if I’m never to see you again, I’d better say them.”

  “I guess so,” Jan said with a shrug.

  “You’ll need to be strong, for Rika and for Ishjemme,” Endi said. “I did things for Ishjemme and for our safety that… well, that I wish I hadn’t, but I couldn’t see another way. Rika is a lot stronger than I gave her credit for, but she’ll need a fine swordsman by her side.”

  Jan gave another shrug.

  “I’m proud of who you became, Jan,” Endi said. “Maybe if I’d spent a little more time wanting to be a hero, things wouldn’t have come to this.”

  “But they did,” Jan said. Even so, he held out his hand for Endi to clasp briefly. His knuckles were still raw with the blows he’d rained down on Endi’s skull.

  Endi went to stand in front of Oli.

  “I’m sorry,” Endi said simply.

  Oli smiled sadly, then held out something: a book, old and cracked, with yellowing pages.

  “What’s this?” Endi asked.

  “The story of Johan Talltrees,” Oli replied. “They say that he was cast out when he was young, and he sailed the world, seeking out new lands, building places that people could call home.”

  “There aren’t so many new lands to find these days,” Endi said.

  Oli tilted his head to one side. “I suppose all lands are new when you haven’t been there before. Goodbye, Endi.”

  “Goodbye, Oli.”

  It took all the strength Endi had to force himself up the ship’s gangplank, standing on the deck and looking back at his home. No, at what had been his home. Endi tried to remind himself of that, although even as he did it, he knew that home would always be here, no matter how much he tried to deny it.

  “The men are aboard,” one of his former guards said. “Those who are still loyal to you. What now?”

  What now indeed. Endi didn’t have a good answer to it. A part of him wanted to climb the mast and fling himself off it, because at least that would bring a swift end to this, rather than leaving him with a whole lifetime in which to carry around his regrets. If not the mast, then he could use his knife just as easily. He took it out now, testing the edge against his thumb and wincing.

  “My lord?” the man said.

  Blood would be one penance, but there were others. If Endi was going to start a new life, then he might as well leave behind all trace of the old.

  “Bring water and soap,” he said.

  To his credit, the soldier didn’t argue, just hurried off to obey the order. Endi knelt on the deck, waiting in silence until it arrived, and once he did, he began to lather it together, applying it to his head in a great, foamy mass.

  Shaving his shock of dark hair with a belt knife like this would have been hard enough in his rooms in the castle, with a mirror and whatever help he needed. Here, like this, it meant that Endi nicked his skin with every other stroke, until the water ran red. He kept going, hacking away his hair and then scraping his scalp smooth, not stopping until he could only feel the smoothness of his skin under his hands.

  Endi stood. “From this day, Endi Skyddar is no more. I am Endi Nameless, Endi the Traitor.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the soldier said.

  Endi shook his newly shaven head. “I’m no one’s lord now.”

  He stood, standing at the rail. Some of the crowd had started to drift away, but his siblings were still there. Endi lifted a hand in farewell, and was surprised to see that all three, even Jan, waved back.

  He had to turn away so that the tears he could feel building did not unman him. So that he didn’t run back to his sister and beg her to condemn him, throw him in a cell for the rest of his life, if only he could stay.

  “Take us out of here,” he said, his voice catching.

  “Where?” the soldier asked.

  Endi looked at the book Oli had given him. “Wherever we can find.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  Sebastian’s horse jolted as it crossed the moor, heading toward the mist that was thick in the distance. It wasn’t his horse, just the one that they’d put him on when they’d knocked him out, but even so it had carried him this far. Vincente and Asha walked on either side, as if making sure that he didn’t fall off his mount.

  “Just a little bit further,” he said to the creature.

  They were the words that kept them all going, moving in the long line that stretched out almost as far as Sebastian could see now. Just a little further and they would be safe. Just a little further, and the New Army wouldn’t be able to catch them. Just a little further, and they would reach Stonehome.

  How far had those words carried them now? One look at the faces of the people around him told Sebastian that it was too far. The people trudging across the moor looked haggard and hungry, tired in a way that only came when there was truly no time to risk resting. Even as Sebastian watched, a small group broke away, heading north rather than continuing west.

  “They’re making for the coast,” Vincente said with the certainty of a man who could read their minds. He was leaning on a long musket now as he walked, using it the way another man might use a stick. “They do not think that you can protect them.”

  “And could I?” Sebastian replied.

  “If we make it to Stonehome, we will be safe.”

  The unspoken part of that loomed large in Sebastian’s mind. They had to hurry, because the New Army was slowly catching them up. The sounds of harrying battle in the distance, as their rearguard sought to slow the enemy, were no longer so distant. Every extra mile was another in which their foes might catch them.

  Even now, a part of Sebastian wondered if he might have been able to delay things more if he’d stayed, if he might still be able to slow things down by taking a force and attacking the New Army.

  “Doing so will not slow them,” Asha said, obviously not caring that it was rude to look into his thoughts like that, “and in any case, we are almost there.”

  “If I’d stayed, I might have been able to help Will and Hans,” Sebastian said.

  Asha shook her head. “All you could have done was die beside them. You could not have saved either of them.”

  “Is that meant to make me feel better?” Sebastian asked. “Because it really doesn’t.”

  “I am not responsible for your feelings,” Asha said, and walked down the line to hurry people along.

  “Asha is not good with people,” Vincente said, “but she has a point. You are doing more good here than you could have by dying. This way, at least, your daughter will have a father.”

  That thought made Sebastian sit up in the saddle, looking out for the spot where Cora and Emeline walked. Cora still held little Violet, and hadn’t let go of her for more than a few moments that Sebastian had seen. Sebastian might have gone over to take Violet and hold her, but he could see how much looking after her was doing for Cora in her grief, and in any case, he doubted that there was anywhere in the kingdom that she would have been safer right then.

  “We will all be safe when we get to Stonehome,” Vincente said.

  “You do it as well?” Sebastian said.

  “In Stonehome, people do not normally intrude, but if you do not shield your thoughts, they assume that they are open
deliberately.”

  Sebastian looked along the line. “And there are a lot of frightened people here who have no way to do that, and who probably won’t react well if they think that everything they think and feel is being watched.”

  “True,” Vincente said. “I will try to persuade my people to act with more restraint.”

  “And Asha will agree?” Sebastian asked.

  “I said ‘try’ for a reason.”

  Sebastian let that go, because there were more important things now than arguing over how people would fit in together; things like getting to Stonehome in the first place. They were starting to enter the mists now, their thick folds spreading over the line of people like a blanket.

  “I have sent a message ahead,” Vincente said. “Give it a second.”

  The mist faded as if burned away by the sun. It gave Sebastian his first view of Stonehome ahead.

  It was smaller than he’d thought, the size of a village or perhaps a small town rather than a city. Compared to Ashton, it was barely there at all, and as for defenses, the best it seemed to boast was a low stone wall with a ditch running around the main body of the settlement. It didn’t look like enough to hold back even a small body of soldiers, let alone the full might of the New Army.

  Sebastian could hear that thought echoed in the sounds of disbelief that echoed up and down the line.

  “Many people are considering running,” Vincente said. “You must tell them that they will be safe within, or you will lose them.”

  “Will we be safe inside?” Sebastian asked.

  Vincente nodded. “Stonehome is stronger than any other place in this kingdom. It will not fall.”

  He sounded so confident about it, and the truth was that Sebastian couldn’t see any option for their long line of refugees.

  “Listen to me!” he called out to the people there. “Stonehome might not look like a fortress, but it will be a safe place for us. For all of us. It stood up to my mother’s best efforts to bring it down for years. On the moors, you stand no chance. Within its walls, we can survive.”

  It was enough to keep the line moving, and Sebastian hurried along it to the entrance to the settlement. When Cora and Emeline reached it with Violet, he dared to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “We’ll take her to our home,” Emeline said. “She’ll be safe there, and you’re welcome to stay.”

  “Thank you,” Sebastian replied. “Both of you.”

  Sebastian watched them go, and kept watching people file into the settlement’s boundaries. They stood there, not knowing what else to do, as more came, and more. Their remaining soldiers followed, pulling back with the exhausted look of men who had fought for too long. Several were wounded, helped along by their comrades.

  “Is that everyone?” Sebastian asked one of the last. He nodded mutely.

  “It doesn’t matter if there are more,” Asha said, coming to stand by the perimeter. “There is no more time. Look.”

  She pointed, and Sebastian saw the advancing mass of the army following them, fast horses first, but with a bigger body behind it that promised almost the full force that had come at Ashton. Compared to that, Stonehome seemed tiny.

  “Are you sure this place can hold?” Sebastian asked.

  Asha laughed, gesturing to a stone circle at the heart of the settlement, where a handful of people stood, concentrating. “They have to find us before they can fight us.”

  A second later, and the mist started to billow up from the ground again. In a matter of moments, it was so thick that it was impossible to see the army beyond it, and Sebastian guessed that from the outside, Stonehome would be completely lost to sight.

  “If they send in men to find us, those men will become lost,” Asha said. She drew a sword. “And then they will die. We will pick them off a few at a time. Even if he comes, there are many of us here.”

  She sounded so certain of it that it was hard not to be reassured, and Sebastian was, at least until he saw the crows descending.

  They came in a flock that darkened the mist, their wings beating a drum pattern in the air, perfectly synchronized, oddly powerful. The air those wings moved blew, and blew, turning into something stronger, pushing at the mist.

  Sebastian didn’t have to see Asha’s face pale to know that it wasn’t good.

  A cry came from the stone circle, and Sebastian saw a young man fall, blood coming from his nose. Even as he fell, the mist flickered and faded, blown away by the crows.

  “The power that must have cost him…” Asha said in obvious disbelief.

  “He’s just slaughtered his way through the country,” Sebastian said. “He has power to spare.”

  The New Army was spread out before them now, rank after rank set ready for an assault. Even as Sebastian watched, the companies nearest to them started to move forward.

  “What now?” Sebastian said, as the people he thought he’d brought to safety started to scream in terror.

  “Now we stand,” Asha said. She looked grim, but determined. “We have prepared for this. More to the circle!”

  “Mist won’t stop them marching in,” Sebastian said. “Not now.”

  Asha shook her head. “We can manage more than mist.”

  Men and women hurried into the stone circle, augmenting the exhausted people already there. While they did it, the New Army continued forward, its ranks marching to the beat of drums, its soldiers advancing with the certainty of the slaughter to come.

  Then the air along the edge of the wall started to crackle, and Sebastian saw it glow golden, humming in ephemeral walls between the standing stones set on Stonehome’s edge. There was nothing ghostly about them when the advancing army poured over the ditch though. They slammed into the power and crashed back, men tumbling into their fellows, some crushed by the weight of the men behind them. The New Army ground to a halt, staring at those walls, and beside Sebastian, Asha smiled.

  “Let’s see a few crows blow away that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  Henry d’Angelica walked the grounds of the Duke of Axshire’s estates, heading for the burials the family kept on their edges. It was a surprisingly quiet spot for the dead, given how the average noble house liked to shout about its ancestors: ringed in by rowan and ash trees, shielded from the rest of the estate by a babbling brook that looked as though it had been put in by the same landscaper who had felled the trees before the house proper.

  As for the burial ground, it was a place of mausoleums and monuments in overwrought marble and black granite, ranging from the elegantly simple to the needlessly gilded and ornate. A statue of the Masked Goddess in her role as taker of the dead stood at its heart. It was the kind of place that should have made Henry feel disquiet, or at least disapprove of previous generations’ lack of taste, but to him, it felt peaceful.

  “And of course,” he said in the silence, “it holds more than just the dead.”

  “Henry? Henry, are you there?”

  Imogen’s voice, as lovely as she was, just the sound of it making Henry’s heart dance. He’d thought it an easy thing to push old feelings aside, but there they were, every time he heard her voice. As for when he saw her…

  “You’re a vision today, Lady Axshire,” he said as she came up. She was, dressed in cream and gold, her choice of dress far more simple than anything most of the ladies of the court would have chosen, but Imogen could have worn rags and still seemed radiant.

  “Lady Axshire?” Imogen said. “That sounds far too serious, Henry. You’ll be having me call you Your Majesty next.”

  “I’m sorry, Imi.” Now that was an old nickname. One he probably shouldn’t have used.

  “You haven’t called me that since the night of the harvest festival before I got married,” Imogen said.

  Henry could remember every detail of that night, from the shine of the moonlight on Imogen’s skin, to… no, he had to think about something else.

  “What has you finding me all the way out here?” he asked. “I�
�d have thought you’d be in the drawing room, entertaining the ladies of the local town.”

  That was what the dress was for, probably. Reminding burghers’ wives that true nobility needed none of the expense their husbands went to in order to achieve perfection, or maybe that was just the way that the dress…

  “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about,” Imogen said. “We have more visitors.”

  That was enough to snatch Henry’s attention away. “Who?”

  “Just about everyone in the kingdom,” Imogen said. “The town is filling up with people fled from Ashton, while all our rooms are filling up with nobles. Earl Jalland is back, and Lord Quinsby, and… well, you’ll have to see for yourself. Loris is entertaining them, and he would have sent a servant to fetch you, but I volunteered. I told him that I could probably find you faster than any serving boy.”

  “You could when we were children,” Henry said, thinking of the games they’d played when they were small. They’d been so close. Did Loris know what he was doing when he sent Imogen like this? “Wait, if everyone is coming here…”

  “It means that you were right, Henry,” Imogen said. “Ashton has fallen, and people are coming here to support you!”

  Henry could feel the smile spreading across his face. He knew that Loris and Imogen hadn’t shared his certainty that this would happen. Even he’d had his moments of doubt, when he’d been left with nothing to do but look through the estate’s library and tour its halls. Now, though, he felt the joy that came with vindication.

  Henry leaned back against the memorial to some long dead Duke of Axshire, breathing slowly as he tried to take in the fact that this was truly happening.

  Imogen moved up next to him. “I’m so sorry that I doubted you, Henry.”

  “You doubted me?” Henry said with a brief laugh. He’d known that part all too well.

  Imogen put a hand on his arm. “Loris and I thought… well, we weren’t certain what to think, but this… if this is really happening…”

  “It is,” Henry assured her. He’d worked out the possibilities as carefully as he could, and he knew what the presence of so many people would mean.