An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Justin DePaoli

  Lysa Rabthorn was only in Lith in her mind.

  Chapter 30

  I made the decision. A decision that had my phoenix spurning the clouds and descending to the pancaked earth below. A decision that…it just didn’t feel right. No good decision to make here, only the right one.

  Fact is, I could have saved Vayle and Rovid. Could’ve intercepted them before they made it to Lith. Warned ’em about the trap they were walking into. But what was the endgame there? Save the lives of my friends and let Occrum take the riches?

  Every thought I’d had since stepping out from Amortis was being scribbled into his fancy book. Including the realization that popped me like a strong fist to the jaw. The trick Lysa had pulled. Occrum would read all about it soon enough. Maybe even was reading it right now, while the library of Lith lay smoking and burning.

  Judging from the shapely landscape to the north, scarred with black mountains and jagged crests, I suspected Occrum made his home on a floating piece of rock high above Evastra, near the channel that severed this continent and Mizridahl.

  This was an important piece of cartographic information to have. Assuming Occrum was currently flipping Lith upside down, it meant I was closer to Vereumene than he was. Soon as he’d open his book and take a peek into my mind, he’d discover the truth as to Serith and Nilly’s whereabouts. And he’d make his move to take the city.

  But he’d be one step behind yours truly. And that’s all the information I needed to make my decision. Look, if I could’ve intercepted Vayle and Rovid before they’d arrive in Lith and get my ass to Vereumene before Occrum — if there was any way — I’d have done it. A hundred times out of a hundred.

  But I couldn’t risk it. People out there have all sorts of opinions about me. That I don’t care about anyone except myself and my Rots. That I’d off a man for something shiny to stick in my pocket. That I could never be inconvenienced by honor and morality. There’s truth in all those opinions, but you’ve gotta be a demented kook, straight fucked in the head, not to care about the eradication of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

  Plus, I couldn’t let all that Lysa had done, all that she’d sacrificed — I couldn’t let it go to waste. Vayle would understand. I hoped.

  Spotting Occrum’s mass of reaped storming across Mizridahl, or by this time through Mizridahl, had been my hope while soaring so high, but the Bay of Selaph land bridge was empty. And everything looked like miniature chess pieces scattered about a life-sized board from up here. Trees were green bulbs, and my eyes couldn’t distinguish hills from flat stretches of clay.

  I was on the lookout for a creek or lake, but then remembered Tylik’s laments that his world had been spoiled, and all that remained was the cold reminder of dirt, rock and sand. Well, grass and trees too, but rule of three. There was little water, even less game. Nothing to fill my belly or wet my throat. Bad time to leave my supplies sitting in Amortis.

  Sometime after dusk, southern Mizridahl lay beneath me, resting silently on this side of the world. Well, silently, assuming everything went according to plan and the reaped marched to Watchmen’s Bay first.

  A windy lake cut between some hills and trees, and I aimed the phoenix toward its banks. The pretty girl lighting the night ablaze drank her fill, and I mine. Caught a few crayfish, ate ’em raw, and went back at it, flying and thinking.

  First thought I had when we got into the air again was good gods did raw crayfish taste like… well, raw crayfish. About as bad as you’d expect. Stunk like a tainted creek and tasted worse. Also, their shells are hell on the fingers. Shredded the skin around my nails.

  I needed tougher skin. I’d have to get on that soon as this world-saving business was over.

  The flight to Vereumene would likely take a couple hours. Could go faster, but I didn’t want to push my fiery girl too hard and have exhaustion take her. Plus, it gave me time to sort out the finer details of my entry into the city.

  Here was what I knew: Kane Calbid was, at last glance, waving his cock at Erior. That was two weeks ago. Two weeks is a lot of time. Probably enough for the East to organize and attempt to drown the seaborne bastard in the belly of his “Mother.” Success would put the South in disarray. I couldn’t possibly predict the stability of Vereumene in that case. If Kane had managed to pull off a miracle and hold his own, or at least retreat without heavy losses, things would likely be tense in the city, but not chaotic. Not until the East arrived, which wouldn’t happen immediately.

  How had Lysa snuck her way in? She couldn’t possibly have shown up with a couple reaped, said she’d like to conduct a few experiments and gotten the okay from Kane’s court. But she had lived here for most of her life, excluding the stint in Lith. Probably knew a few ways to get in and out of the city that most did not.

  I’d wished she had told me about this secret at the Prim. Why hadn’t she? I mean, a fucking riddle disguised as a poem? A quiet whisper would have sufficed just fine, thank you very much. Unless she feared Occrum had a presence in Amortis. Or was warned. It did seem like she’d met Ripheneal before. I wondered…

  The eastern wall of Vereumene faced the outcropping of volcanic mountains. The only way for a hostile army to encroach upon that side would be to split off from their northern, southern or western approach and slip between the mountains and the wall. For this reason, the eastern parapet remained largely unmanned. That would be my point of entry.

  The cuspated silhouettes of battlements drew near, and behind them the shadowy backdrop of a silent kingdom. With a few mindful instructions, I laid out the plan to my phoenix, the most important of which was avoiding death by an inevitable barrage of arrows.

  Puffy clouds converged on the moon, suffocating its white glow. Apparently I had a bit of luck still in my reserves of good fortune.

  With her wings tucked in, the phoenix sped toward the eastern battlements. The hiss of wind in my face dulled the sounds coming from Vereumene. There were screams and cries, but I could not decipher the words.

  My thighs clenched tighter to the phoenix’s body as she rolled unexpectedly. Another roll, this one to the right. Her descent slowed as she navigated the treacherous airspace strung with whistling arrows.

  She hovered above the battlements, eyes fixated on the archers who were surging up the stairs to the opposite parapet.

  I lay as low as I could on her back, face buried in her plumage. If they saw me, the plan was fucked.

  She lurched one way and the other, then finally settled onto the parapet below. That was my sign.

  I released my hold on her body and more or less fell onto the cold stone floor. The impact punched the air from my lungs, but that’s a small price to pay for unauthorized entry into a kingdom.

  My gorgeous girl set fire to the night as she took to the sky, an orange trail sizzling behind her. I lay low until she flew across the southern wall, taking with her the eyes of panicked guardsmen. Then I got to my knees and peeked over the crenellations. Stairs leading down into the courtyard were clear, and not a single inquisitive guardsman peered in my direction. Not yet, anyhow.

  Like a hunchback late for an appointment with a savant who could straighten spines, I hurried across the parapet, bent over as far as I could in attempt to conceal my silhouette behind the crenellations.

  Then it was down the steps, into the courtyard. On the balls of my feet, minding debris that would crunch or crack with a misplaced step, I sidled up to the backside of a building. Moved along its peeling walls, stabbing splinters into my hands. At the corner, I stopped and listened.

  A stuffy-nosed guardsman wondered what the fuck it was that he just saw. Another said it was a big crow, probably a grand ole illusion from the Glannondils. An authoritative voice silenced them, then ordered a platoon to the eastern parapet. Another order was given to arm the trebuchets and alert some lord who I guessed was standing in for Kane.

  A quick survey of my surroundings revealed a lot of open space. Vereumene was unique in that regard am
ong the five great kingdoms. Buildings were dispersed here like trees in the barrens. A few popped up here and there, with huge swaths of emptiness between. Unlike Edenvaile, Erior, and the rest, Vereumene was not home to peasants and the poor. They lived in clumps of nearby villages.

  So a stealthy advance required nimble feet and impeccable timing. Confident nothing loomed around the corner, I scurried to and took cover behind a small shack with a triangular open roof.

  My destination lay about a hundred feet thataway, at the corner that joined the eastern and northern walls. Lysa hadn’t divulged where she’d kept Serith and Nilly, but I had a good idea of where to go: her secret hiding spot. The one where I’d confessed to her my intentions of killing her father.

  Behind a stable I slunk, then around a forge and a bakehouse. The residue of ale hung in the air like rain after a summer storm as I passed behind a brewery. Crushed volcanic rock lay deep and unraked beneath my feet. I had to mind each step, careful to not drag my toes across the stuff and kick a handful into the back of a building.

  As the moon escaped its prison and flung its white light across the kingdom of Vereumene, I arrived at my destination.

  Into the hole that was once to be the foundation for Vereumene’s new sewage system I went. The ground descended sharply, twisted and turned one way and the other. I saw fuck-all, forced to rely on my hands along the wet, muddy walls for guidance. Smelled like decay down here. Rather similar to rankness you’d expect to greet you when walking into an ossuary and putting your nose to a corpse or two.

  The deeper into the tunnel I went, the worse the stench. My resistance to gagging began to wane. I put a hand to my mouth as my stomach rumbled and warned me it might begin spewing bile any moment now.

  Feeling as though I’d been walking for an eternity and was closing in on the belly of hell, my fingers came into contact with something new. Something not at all wet and muddy. Something rather hard. Bony, you might say.

  It pulled away from me, and grunted.

  “Er, Serith?” I asked. “Or Nilly? Lysa’s” — what were they, exactly? They probably wouldn’t appreciate being called reaped, or experiments. “Lysa’s patients?” I finally said. That seemed like a good, non-hostile word.

  “Are you Astul?” The voice was warm, masculine and composed, entirely unlike the dissonance of the other reaped I’d encountered.

  “I guess you’re expecting me?”

  “Lysa told us about you,” Nilly said.

  “Hopefully only the good parts about me.” I chuckled, then cringed. Making jokes with a couple people who’d been killed, essentially reborn, mind-fucked and whatever other torture they suffered from? Highbrow stuff there, Astul.

  Heavy feet trudged from somewhere deeper in the tunnel. “Huh? What? Did I hear that properly? Astul?”

  “Fuck me,” I said. “I thought you were bloody dead.”

  “I’m bloody confused, that’s what I am!” A couple fingers reached through the darkness and groped my shoulder. “Shit on a stick, it is you. Listen, that girl of yours, she’s trouble, Shepherd. I’m tellin’ you. I wake up in this… this… where are we, exactly?”

  “Vereumene,” I said.

  There was silence. Then, “Fuck. How’d I end up here? She put me to sleep. I’m telling you. She put me to fucking sleep. I wake up, and she’s gone. And I’ve got two skeletons with a bit of flesh on them beside me, and — look, I know this sounds insane.”

  I laughed. I patted Kale on his shoulder. Or rather, attempted to. Accidentally slapped his face instead, given I couldn’t tell his cheeks from his toes in this tunnel. “How long have you been here?”

  “A while. I tried to leave, but… my mind, Shepherd. It wouldn’t let me. Swear upon the Black Rot she did something to me. Bound me to these two skeletons or something.”

  “They’re not skeletons,” I said. “They were reaped. And now they’re not, thanks to Lysa. We have to leave, quickly. Serith, Nilly — those are the names Lysa gave you. What are your true names?”

  “Ava. I never thought I’d hear it again.”

  “Boon,” the other said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Right. Boon and Ava. Do you know what’s going on out there?”

  “We were part of that horror,” Ava said, caution in her voice.

  I rubbed some warmth back into my hands. It was much colder down here than up above. “And now you’ll be part of the redemption. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Kale grabbed my wrist. “Shepherd, wait. You got an escape plan?”

  “One of my best ever. I think you’ll agree.”

  In retrospect, it’s never a good idea to say that. The problem wasn’t with my exit strategy, but rather with an unexpected invasion of Vereumene.

  Halfway back toward the would-be sewer entrance, dire cries poured through the kingdom.

  “Over the walls! Over the walls!”

  “The trebuchets! They’re on fire. They’re—”

  “Knock the bloody ladders down!”

  A horn bellowed a warning into the night.

  “Reapers,” I said. Had to be reapers. Occrum must’ve sent them when he realized he couldn’t make it here himself. I pointed at Boon and Ava. “You two, stay right here. Kale, come with me.”

  Kale and I hurried through the tunnel, swords drawn. A halo of milky moonlight clung to the mouth of the tunnel that rushed toward us as we broke into a run.

  “Archer!” Kale shouted, grabbing me by the arm and slinging me against the mud wall. An arrow hissed past.

  “I owe you one,” I said, spitting out dirt that my face-plant into the wall had shoved in my mouth.

  “Looked like a Red Sentinel,” Kale said. “Not many others shoot that accurately and wear crimson cloaks.”

  “Crimson? You’re sure?”

  “Go on,” Kale said, “stick your head out there and look for yourself.”

  I put a fist to my mouth and sighed. What a time to land in Vereumene, just as war was coming to its walls. Or rather overtop them. Well, not war precisely. War implies legions of soldiers and artillery and mass death. It seemed what we had on our hands here was a small force of Sentinels intent on taking a city whose military was mostly out at sea.

  At least it wasn’t reapers. Although maybe that would have been better.

  I squared myself to Kale. “Listen to me. They” — I pointed into the darkness, where Boon and Ava were — “they have to get out of here intact. In one piece. Alive. No matter what, got it? I don’t care if I’ve got ten Red Sentinels about to bury a pike in my balls; you get those bony fuckers out of here and move your ass to Watchmen’s Bay.”

  “This about those reapers and that Occrum guy?” I gave Kale a quick history lesson, bringing him up to speed. “What if they’re not at Watchmen’s Bay?” he asked.

  “Then find them. You shouldn’t have a problem locating fifty thousand ravaging corpses. Sit tight. I’m gonna see if that archer’s still out there.”

  I leaned away from the wall for approximately half a second before feeling a breeze rustle my hair. Then I was clinging to the wall again, heart thrashing my chest.

  “He’s still there.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Kale said. “Remember when me, you and Big Gruff got pinned down behind a hearth near the wetlands?”

  “Yeah, I remember. I also remember the archer there couldn’t hit the broadside of a horse’s ass while sitting the wrong way on a saddle.”

  Kale stuck his arms out, as if to suggest we had little in the way of options in this tunnel of mud, unless we wanted to dig our way out. An arrow whizzed by his hand, missing it by inches.

  “That would’ve hurt,” he said. “All right, Shepherd. You ready? I’ll draw one out, then you run like Commander Vayle’s out there in danger.”

  “What are you implying, Kale?”

  “Er, no—nothing. You know I’m bad with similes.”

  I stabbed my sword back in its sheath. Could run faster without it. Pl
us, slipping on mud and impaling myself sounded like a shitty way to go.

  “On you,” I told Kale.

  He cracked his knuckles and did a little preparatory dance in place. Then he gave me the go-ahead, and I leaned forward, all my weight on my front leg.

  His head went out. Then flung back in. Soon as the hiss sailed by, I pushed off and ran my non-arrow-embedded ass out of that tunnel like a man who wanted to continue having an ass without an arrow embedded in it. By the time the archer had nocked a second iron-tipped death stick, I was flying horizontally across the air. I hit the ground and attempted to somersault behind a building. I more or less skidded behind a building, but whatever — style points didn’t count here.

  Vapors of fermented yeast drifted through the air. I was behind the brewery, where the archer couldn’t stick me with his arrows, unless he came around one of the sides. Seemed unlikely, given he’d want to keep an eye on Kale.

  So I needed to go to him. While avoiding a city run amok with crimson cloaks. A few were still coming over the walls, pricks of blood scuttling along the parapets. The most overplayed melody in the world, crashing steel, droned from every corner of the kingdom. There were screams, gurgles and moans.

  Slinking low to the ground, I came to the corner of the brewery. I crouched there momentarily, weighing my options. That archer needed to die, but a second wouldn’t go by without a crimson cloak streaming between buildings and across open paths of volcanic rock.

  My phoenix continued circling to the west. Attempting to lure her in proved fruitless; she was too far. I’d have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  With my fingers around the leather wrappings of my hilt, I crept around the siding of the brewery, hand sliding against the wood. With a momentary reprieve of Red Sentinels running chaotically through the streets, I broke into a sprint.

  Then I stopped, uttered a single fuck, turned, and broke into a sprint the other way. An arrow whistled by as I took cover behind the brewery again. Clever bastard.

  “Shepherd!” hollered Kale, rushing out of the tunnel. A plume of black soot whirled around him as his boots dug through volcanic rock. He tore through the openness, toward the brewery.