An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Justin DePaoli

  The princess? As in Braddock’s daughter? How old was she, six? Maybe seven? She didn’t have the power to stay up late at night, much less the power to grant entrances to the keep.

  “I come from the field,” I said, “bearing news from Lord Braddock.” Yuck. Those words, Lord Braddock, tasted worse than rotting chicken. An exaggeration, perhaps, but not much of one.

  “Where are your colors?” asked a guard.

  “No colors. Dangerous kind of thing for a scout to wear.”

  “Where you comin’ from?”

  Er, shit. Well, the way I saw it, I had a one-in-four chance of not being thrown in the dungeon for impersonation. Braddock was likely fighting in Southern, Northern, Eastern or Western Tronen. The South seemed like a good choice, given most of the rebellious families resided there.

  “Southern Tronen, near where Mount Pol breaks away.”

  The guard pointed at my waist. “Leave your weapons here.”

  “I’m quite fond of my—”

  “Leave them here, or you’re not going up. Don’t care what news you bring.”

  I should’ve told the authoritative bastard Braddock had been mortally wounded in battle. Bet he would’ve let me through then. But while the truth is optional, and entirely extensible, that’d be a lie that would probably cause more trouble than it was worth.

  “All right,” I said, unhooking my belt. I could’ve simply withdrawn my blades and left my belt on, but that would have likely raised suspicions. After all, meager scouts don’t typically haul around ebon swords.

  I wasn’t too worried about leaving behind my weapons. I still had a dagger hidden inside my pant leg. Well, until the guard patted me down and asked me what that bulge was on my shin.

  I smiled sheepishly, said, “Whoops,” and rolled my pant leg up to remove the sheath.

  Walking about unarmed made me feel naked, particularly when six guards with shiny blades escorted me up to the third plateau.

  A swarm of bodies besieged a tall masonic statue of what looked like a sword-wielding god. A long, flowing beard cascaded halfway down his muscular chest of whitewashed stone, and his arms looked like tree stumps. Beneath his pedestal descended a tunnel into the Erior ossuary. It was mostly attended by intellectual-looking types, some on their hands and knees, seemingly to inspect the cobbles. Perhaps they were hoping to find the grave robber was in fact a slug who’d perfected the art of shrinking his stolen possessions and sliding them along his slime trail to escape untouched.

  The guards forced me to stay put for a while, until one of them came back with word from the princess that she would see me now.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect with a six-year-old princess. Maybe a tea party.

  The guards led me through the keep and out the other side, to an expansive courtyard I’d never seen before. There, among the windy cobblestone paths edged with blooming daffodils and roses and amaranths and forget-me-nots, stood a little girl whose hair was swept up into a nut-brown ponytail. She bent over and sniffed a flower.

  “Yum!” she said.

  Oh, fuck me, I thought.

  “Lady Talira,” one of the guards said. “Lord Rike.”

  A thin man draped in an oversized crimson robe strolled across the cobbles. He grasped the little girl’s shoulder with a hand still concealed inside the thick robe. An ancient smile warmed his wrinkly face.

  “Scout says he has word from Lord Braddock.”

  The old man — this apparent Lord Rike — studied me like an old friend trying to recall a long-forgotten face. “Lord Braddock does not employ assassins as his scouts.”

  Damn. Shit. Fuck.

  I had other words in mind, but before I could so much as think them, the coarseness of mail scraped along my arms. Two pairs of hands had me by my wrists, pulling my arms at angles more fit for those double-jointed freaks. I am not double-jointed. I’ve checked before.

  And so I screamed in pain.

  The little girl tugged at her chaperone’s robes. “A assassin?” she whispered, seemingly more concerned about that little fact than seeing a man having his fucking arms ripped out of their sockets before her innocent eyes.

  “Get off me!” I cried, twisting and turning. Bending and kicking. Spitting and biting.

  “Release him.”

  The guards did as they were ordered. I grimaced and swung my arms around, trying to put them back in place.

  “Now there’s a sensible man,” I said, pointing at this Rike character.

  “A assassin?” Talira said again, this time more urgently.

  Rike patted her head reassuringly, then gestured to the thugs behind me. “Leave us. I don’t believe the Shepherd of the Black Rot will bring harm to Lord Braddock’s daughter, or his chancellor. Am I correct, Astul?”

  I turned to the guards. “You heard the man! Leave! Begone!” I waved my hands at them, quite enjoying myself.

  As disgruntled as a pack of dogs forced to leave the fresh corpse of a deer, the guardsmen slowly trailed back to the keep. It’s not like they were needed. There were, by my count, six guards walking about the courtyard and another two posted by the keep doors. I was only one man. One man without any weapons. How much damage could I do?

  “I apologize for the inconvenience,” Rike said. He mindlessly swiped a bee away just before Talira could grasp it in her hand.

  “Are you a assassin?” Talira asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you kill people?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She furrowed her brows. “That’s not nice. It’s not nice to kill people!”

  “I hope you remember that when you are a queen one day.” I smiled and glanced at the chancellor. “So old Braddock is off fighting a war, hmm?”

  “No!” Talira said, stamping her foot in the ground. “He’s putting the ri—”

  Rike gently smacked the girl’s cheek. “Remember what your father said about keeping secrets?”

  Crestfallen, she dipped her head. Her eyes were wet, but she held back the tears.

  “I’m not certain what Braddock has told you about him and me,” I said, “but we’ve been through some shit. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you revealed a few secrets.”

  “I am sorry,” Rike said. “I’m not at liberty to discuss Lord Braddock’s departure.”

  I didn’t really care whose heads Braddock intended on knocking around. I just have a thing for secrets. But that wasn’t why I came here. “Lysa Rabthorn. Is she around?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  I waited for the bald-headed chancellor to expand on his one-word answer. He did not.

  “Where is she?”

  “Away.”

  It was at this point that a fire bubbled up from my stomach into my throat. I took a deep breath and pushed it down. Getting angry wouldn’t help, I told myself. Be calm. Be one with nature.

  “This away place,” I said, “can you point me in its direction?”

  “Afraid not.”

  All right. Fuck nature. “Listen. It’s quite important I talk to Lysa Rabthorn, so if you’d be so kind as to tell me where the fuck she is, that would be great. Thank you.”

  “He’s out of hiding!” the girl said, boinging on the balls of her feet.

  Rike looked as perplexed as I was at that declaration.

  “Who’s out of hiding?” I asked.

  “He is. That’s why she went with Father. I heard her! She said, ‘He’s out of hiding. I have to go. He’s out of hiding!’ Just like that, I heard her.”

  It appeared the chancellor was hearing all of this for the first time as well. It took him a moment to return to character and shush the princess.

  “That is enough,” he said, grasping her tightly by the wrist. “This is not appropriate behavior for the heiress to the throne. Do I make myself clear?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Guards were still at their post. Those patrolling the courtyard were at least thirty feet away.

>   I walked up to Talira and crouched down. “Who is ‘he’? Do you remember a name?”

  “Do not answer him,” Rike said, fury crinkling the bridge of his nose. “I want you out, Shepherd. Now.”

  I reached for the little girl’s hand. “If you know, tell me. It’s very important.”

  Fingers snapped. Boots trembled across the cobbles. Talira was yanked away from me, spun around inside Rike’s thick robe.

  The sharp sound of a blade being unsheathed rang out. I jumped up and held my hands high in the air. “I’m going. I’m leaving. Put your weapons away.”

  The guards escorted me back through the keep and down to the Gleam, where I was barely able to retrieve my weapons before they hurried me into the courtyard and then kicked my ass out the gate.

  Too bad I wasn’t allowed to stay for a while. I could’ve used a drink or six at Stag’s Tavern. Because I had a very bad feeling that my previous assumption of Braddock’s intentions was inaccurate. There aren’t a lot of reasons to bring the heiress of a throne with you to war, unless… well, unless you want to turn an heiress into a queen. He never had liked Kane Calbid.

  More concerning was the fact that Lysa had willingly gone with him.

  Most concerning of all, however, were those words that went right into my ears and shivered down my spine.

  He’s out of hiding.

  Chapter 3

  The idea was simple. Find and persuade Lysa Rabthorn to kindly follow me out of Braddock’s war camp. Or, failing that, kidnap her.

  The execution of this idea was not so simple. I’d have a better chance of convincing a snail to run than I would convincing Braddock to free Lysa. So I’d have to do it in secret, which called for a little assistance from the Rots.

  I arrived back at the Hole about seven days after leaving Erior, thanks to the hastiness of Pormillia. Kale greeted me with a one-finger salute and a wink.

  He flicked his long blond bangs out of his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe the fucked-up job I just had, Shepherd.”

  Hmm. The grass here looked strange.

  “This stable master,” Kale said, and his voice trailed off. He was still jabbering about, but I heard only muffled noises.

  I crouched down, plucked a blade of grass from the dirt and smeared the tip on my finger. The red dollop of liquid had dried to a bubble.

  “Why is there blood all over the ground?” I asked.

  A couple Rots in the distance hooted and hollered.

  Kale had stopped telling his story. He winced and swore under his breath.

  “I don’t appreciate the silence,” I said. “This is a fair amount of blood. Is someone hurt?”

  He reached for the back of his neck, scratching away the consternation that so obviously gripped him. “I’m not supposed to tell you, Shepherd. But, ah. Kind of conflicted here, you know?”

  I crossed my arms and waited patiently. Someone might have demanded silence out of him, but I overruled that someone. And Kale knew it.

  “Vayle,” he said blankly.

  My heart pounded. “She’s here?” I hadn’t seen Vayle since the war had ended five months ago.

  “Was here,” Kale corrected. “She’s gone again. Left yesterday. She had no weapons, a nasty cut along her arm — bleedin’ pretty bad. I helped bandage her up, stuffed some corpsum leaf in the wound. Then she grabbed a couple ebon blades and was gone again.”

  “You know my next question,” I said.

  “Rode for the North, again. She’s been freein’ slaves.”

  Freeing slaves… I should’ve known. Why didn’t she tell me? Maybe she thought I’d chase after her, ask her to come back. And that was exactly what I was going to do. Having a look around the Hole revealed only three Rots, including Kale. Wevel and Slenna were prodding a fire, trading laughs and getting drunk.

  The rest were… still not back. They hadn’t been back since the war ended.

  I could peel Lysa away from Braddock with the help of only three, but Vayle would be of great assistance. Plus, I really just wanted to talk to her again. I’d missed her.

  “Let’s talk over a skin of wine,” I said to Kale.

  The broiling heat oozing out of the fire warmed my face as my Rots and I traded stories and wetted our whistles. Wevel and Slenna had recently returned from an assassination involving a thief who was suspected of stealing from his lord, among other things, a long golden phallus that reportedly stunk. The pleasure wand was later hung outside the lord’s chambers and caused him the sort of embarrassment that’ll have you paying good money for an assassination.

  This was the fifth job that Wevel and Slenna had taken together in the past few months.

  They sat close to one another by the fire, a smile touching her lips whenever he looked at her. He laughed at every joke she told. Touched her knee when he talked, stretched his foot out a smidgen until his toe grazed hers.

  Maybe it was the wine dredging up the bits of romanticism that still existed in my heart. Or maybe it was recalling the Rots lying dead in the arena of Lith. Yeah, that was probably it. Whatever the reason, doubt balled itself up like an orange in my throat. Wevel and Slenna were twenty-two and twenty-one respectively. If grievous injury, death or imprisonment befell them in my attempt to kidnap Lysa, I’d have a hard time living with that.

  Maybe it would be only Vayle and me, like the old times. Or maybe I simply wanted to talk to her one last time, before she left this world. Because deep down, I knew what my greatest friend was up to.

  And with that in mind, I woke up before the sun and set off toward the North. My mouth was dry, and my stomach was quite unhappy with all the wine I’d sucked down. Felt a bit drunk still too. But all of that would pass as the bitter cold of Rime sunk into my bones.

  Strange thing occurred to me about five days into my journey. I’d crossed into Rime two days ago. And my arms were still bare. I didn’t yet have a need for the wools I’d brought along, which was odd, because this far into the frozen province, I usually wished fur covered my balls. But the weather thus far had been a rather mild affair. Nice, gentle breezes of tepid air, and better yet — no snow. Or rain. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. It’d been a while, hadn’t it?

  Mizridahl was in the midst of summer, but just as the South remains sticky and at least genial when winter calls, the North keeps its bluster and gelid cold when summer arrives. But I wasn’t going to complain. The warmth had melted much of the snow, which allowed me and Pormillia to arrive inside Edenvaile seven days after we’d left the Hole. Workers were rebuilding the front walls of the kingdom, which the conjurers had unkindly uprooted and collapsed during their brief stay here.

  Vayle could have gone elsewhere, but entry into the sporadic villages and kingdoms of the North flows largely through the mouth of the White Mountains, which Edenvaile nestled against. She’d also likely want to restock before heading deeper into Northern territory.

  I gave the stable boy Pormillia’s reins and morbidly threw in a joke that I hoped he’d have a better future than the old stable boy. He didn’t understand, but smiled anyway.

  It was around high noon, which limited the number of places my commander could have been to around one, give or take zero. I trudged through the dirty puddles of melted snow that cratered the commons, and aimed my nose for a building on which the skull of a wood-carved bear protruded from high above the door. It was in a state of a perpetual winking, a paw with long claws holding tight to a mug.

  It took a shove and a knee and a push to open the bloody door. The bottom rail screeched across the floorboards, its wood fat and swollen from the abnormal warmth of a Northern summer.

  The Roar and Pour, as this tavern was known, greeted me with open tables, empty chairs and unexpected silence. It’s not a common sight to find an empty watering hole in the North; the spice of mead and bitterness of ale is the only way these poor bastards make it through the onslaught of snow and ice.

  But you know what’s even less common? Se
eing the king of the North sitting at a round table, entertaining guests. It’s the kind of thing that usually goes on in the privacy of a keep, where gold chalices and luxurious tablecloths sate a lord and lady’s hunger for the grandiose.

  Patrick Verdan sat at the head of the table, and all around him were older men with white beards and gray beards and stringy hair and wrinkly faces and pruned lips. A single woman with hair the color of ice turned to look at me.

  Patrick Verdan whispered something to his guests, then excused himself from the table. He approached me in the skin of a man wholly uncomfortable with himself. He tugged at his tight-fitting tunic, readjusted his cloak lined with snowy fur and looked to be squatting away the clinging fabric of his trousers from his balls. The shade of night dressed him, with golden buttons and threads glistening down his tunic and trousers and sleeves.

  “Two Rots in three days,” he said. “Having a family reunion in the North?”

  “A brief one,” I said. “Where’s she at?”

  He brushed away encroaching fur from his pitted face. “Walk with me. I sent a messenger to the Hole a couple days ago, but it’s better you’re here in person.”

  Patrick opened the door and walked out. I took one last look at his guests. I’d seen two of them before, months ago. When the conjurers were inside these walls… when the might of the North stormed into the fields and cut their armies down.

  The old men’s names eluded me, but they were lords of nearby provinces. The others at the table probably held similar titles. Kings don’t often call to court their vassals, so this was all rather worrying.

  “Do you know how many times I wore fur and tights in Icerun?” he asked, heavy boots splashing into a shallow pool.

  We walked toward the fountain in the center of the market square. A merchant bowed his head, called Patrick his lord and offered him a free turnip. The king of Edenvaile grumbled and made his way toward the keep.

  “Kingship here isn’t quite the same as it was in Icerun, is it?” I asked.

  “In that old home of mine,” he said, “I drank with farmers and cobblers and smiths. Laughed with seamstresses, walked with tailors and ate bread fresh out of the hearth with bakers. You walk by a man here and he steeples his hands like you’re a god.” He looked over his shoulder at me and said, “It’s why I’m going home. As soon as I can.”