An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Justin DePaoli

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  “Wardens.”

  It was at that moment the bloody juice of crushed raspberries ran down my hand.

  Corvin turned, hands on his hips. His short, puffy face tightened into a ball of wrinkles. “How many?”

  “Looked like ten or so.”

  There’s good news and there’s bad news, and this fit neither of those categories. This was the kind of news that doesn’t fall on the spectrum of good and bad, but rather a spectrum of utterly terrible and inconceivably dreadful. One Warden would have been utterly terrible, but ten? Yeah, inconceivably dreadful.

  “You boys get frequent visits from the big bastards?” I asked, hopeful they’d say yes, the flail-wielding fucks like to come around once a month or so and consume a child or two before they go off and butcher puppies.

  “’Bout six years ago,” Gentry said. “Was lookin’ for someone then. Tore half the village apart ’fore they moved on.”

  “Fuck,” I spat, shoving my way past Gentry.

  “Where you goin’?” Corvin said.

  “To have a listen in on our visitors.”

  “Wait, wait,” Gentry said, loping off after me, manhood flapping up and down. “Don’t open the door.”

  I laughed. Good joke, that one. As if I had a fetish for having a studded flail shoved up my ass.

  Gentry came to the door and stabbed his fingernail into one of the four wooden plank panels. A thumb-sized square chunk popped out.

  “Peephole.” He smiled proudly, yellow teeth matching his blond beard. “Over here too.” He went over to an innocuous spot in the wall, revealing a second peephole. And then a third.

  I peered out all of them, although I soon wished I hadn’t. The confirmation that ten grotesquely large specimens of muscular-bodied Wardens were sniffing around Giddish Village did nothing to still my erratic heartbeat and sure as shit didn’t wash the fear right from my veins.

  “What’re they doing?” Corvin asked.

  I looked away and stumbled over to the table, where I sat with my head down.

  “They’ve cut three sheep in half. Oh… and one just crushed a cow’s skull.”

  I heard Corvin’s fast-moving footsteps as he scurried up to a peephole. “Food, ya think?”

  “Yup, yup. Looks it.”

  “Must be goin’ somewhere.”

  A deep-seated fear, one I hadn’t even considered existed, lifted my head up from my cradled arms. Corvin and I spoke at the same time, the realization smacking us both upside the head.

  “Ellie,” he said.

  “Lysa,” I said.

  Corvin scampered over to a cupboard. He riffled through compartments, spilling stamps and quills onto the floor. “Where’s the damn parchments?”

  “Who we gonna send to warn ’er?” Gentry asked. “Wardens’ll notice. Ellie got scouts between here and the city. She’ll be forewarned.”

  I threw myself back against the chair and put my hands atop my head. “You cannot move an entire city in a few days. A surprise attack from ten Wardens, from what I know about the occult motherfuckers, will turn your rebellion into a little bit of dried ink in the annals of history.”

  “Don’t underestimate Ellie,” Gentry said. “She’s dealt with Wardens before. ’Member the Battle of Foghorn?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t remember the Battle of Foghorn.”

  “Was a good’un.”

  “And probably untrue,” Corvin said, standing on his tiptoes and peering into the top compartment of the cupboard. “Where are the bloody parchments?”

  “Untrue?” Gentry sounded personally hurt. “When’s Ellie ever lied?”

  “If I don’t get my grubby hands on a parchment paper in ten seconds, I’m gonna—”

  I picked up the hatchet that was lying before me and lobbed it across the room. It clanked off a stool, sending the rickety chair careening into the wall.

  Corvin turned.

  “Think I found your parchments,” I said, nodding to the stool, where a stack of papers sat.

  “Oh,” Gentry said. “Yup. I remember now. I moved ’em.”

  Corvin grumbled. “Be just splendid if you’d quit rearranging the blasted house.”

  “What makes you think Ellie lied, anyways?”

  “For one,” Corvin said, snatching a piece of paper from the stack and walking back to the counter, “ain’t no one sunderin’ twenty-five Wardens.”

  “Over five days,” Gentry pointed out. “Not all at once.”

  “Even still, load of…” He flung his finger around and around in the air, trying to lasso in the right word. “Load of propaganda.”

  “Sounds to me like treasonous sayings yer spoutin’.”

  I shot Gentry a glance. “She killed twenty-five Wardens?”

  “Battle of Foghorn,” he said firmly. “Twenty-five all by herself. Was thirty-two dead by the time they withdrew.”

  Hmm. Now there was a piece of interesting information. “Who exactly is Ellie, anyhow?”

  “Elimori, she’s the—”

  “No, no,” I said. “I know who she is. I’m asking who she really is.”

  Gentry had a blank look on his face.

  “Gentry don’t do well with the abstract,” Corvin explained, dipping his quill into an inkwell. He began scribbling on the parchment. “Ellie’s a little, er, reserved when it comes to that stuff. Will tell ya all about the rebellion, but a bit shy about herself. Most’re of the idea she’s a conjurer.”

  “And the others?”

  Corvin looked up from his writing. “That she’s something more.”

  If there was one thing I had failed to do in my short stay in Amortis, it was peeling back the layers of secrecy that Elimori wrapped around herself.

  “They’re leavin’,” Gentry said. “Gettin’ on their horsies and headin’, er… yup. Headin’ north.”

  “Which way’s north?” I asked.

  “Way you came,” Corvin said soberly.

  I rose from the table and walked to the door. Elbowing Gentry out of the way, I stepped outside and had myself a long look at the departing Wardens. The horses they rode were disfigured beasts, haunches thicker than tree stumps. Quick, too. Faster than a hare, smoother than a gliding bird.

  The Wardens rode into a golden horizon, the flatlands stretching like a red carpet for their arrival. I watched them almost vanish into the haze. Almost. They vanished, all right, but not into a vista unreachable by the eye; rather into the deep belly of the earth.

  The ground fissured before them, a zigzagging line that cut across the baked dirt like ebon through flesh. The lesion circled them, islanding them off.

  And then a plunge. The segment of land beneath their feet fell away, and hooves and haunches flailed and disappeared. Flails were swallowed, and heads devoured.

  A plume of dirt and crushed rock spiraled into the air. Through the dust trotted a horse, carrying a slumped-over rider.

  Correction: a slumped-over woman. I couldn’t see her face, but noses and cheeks and eyes… those sort of features aren’t always necessary for identification. Her hair gave her away. Those blond strands, cut right off at the shoulders.

  How foolish to think a single Warden could stop her when apparently ten hadn’t stood a chance.

  Chapter 15

  “No, no. It’s mighty fine. He’s, er… a savant. Quite all right. Thank you!”

  Corvin squeezed himself inside, shutting the door in the faces of concerned villagers.

  “Sterm’s gonna be all over this, Gentry. How is she?”

  “Knocked herself out,” Gentry said, kneeling his naked self opposite of me.

  I shouldered off the burlap sack containing the duplicate book and crouched before Lysa, laying a hand on her head. Clammy and cold. Her eyes were closed. Had to a put an ear to her mouth to confirm she was breathing.

  “Bring ’er in here,” Corvin said. “Bed’s not much to talk about, but better than lyin’ on the floor.”

  I sco
oped Lysa up in my arms and carried her into the next room over, placing her onto a bed of straw.

  Gentry, Corvin and I looked at one another.

  “I take it neither of you have ever dealt with something like this?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Think a warm rag’ll help?” Gentry asked.

  “Can’t hurt.”

  “Right.” He hurried off.

  Corvin stroked his gaping mouth. “I’ve never…”

  “I have. Just not from her.”

  “You’re familiar with one another?”

  I crouched beside the bed and folded Lysa’s fingers into my hand. “You could say that.”

  “Lovers?”

  I regarded him caustically.

  “What?” He shrugged. “Just askin’.”

  “We’re not lovers.”

  Gentry returned a short while later with a warm, wrung-out cloth. He folded it in half and laid it on Lysa’s forehead.

  “Word’s gonna travel quick,” Corvin said. “First to Sterm, then… well, I’d imagine to Arken.”

  “All right,” I said. “Who the fuck is Sterm?”

  “Lord Sterm. Got himself a manor ’bout forty miles away. Holds dominion over the Bronze Sheets. Roundabouts, oh… what’d’ya say, Gentry, two-hundred-mile radius?”

  Gentry thought about this figure, or perhaps what radius meant. “Yup, I’d say.”

  “Responsible for upholdin’, or, er… doin’ Arken’s business. Kind of like vassals of old when we was still livin’.”

  “Not much has changed in that regard,” I said.

  Corvin frowned. “Shame. Anyways, he’s been sniffin’ out rebellion folks for damn near ever. Got a good many of us, but Gentry and I have managed to keep ourselves from bein’ shipped off to Fragment Zero… for now.” He sniffed and looked at Lysa. “That might change, though. Given, uh, recent events.”

  Gentry and Corvin eventually went off to tend to their three goats, leaving me alone with Lysa. I lay beside her, on the floor, closing my eyes. When I opened them, raucous laughter droned from another room.

  “And then her nipple popped right off!”

  “No…”

  “I swears it!”

  “Well, well,” I said, interrupting the fun. “Looks like you’re feeling better.”

  Lysa was sitting on a stool, sipping from a mug.

  “Woke up ’bouts an hour ago,” Corvin said. “Spry as a young goat.”

  Lysa smiled. “I’m not sure about that. But I do feel good. It was nice to sleep.”

  I fingered away crusted gunk from my eye. “You and I need to have a talk.”

  She scrunched up her face. “I figured you’d say something like that.”

  I looked at Gentry and then to Corvin. “Alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “Kickin’ us out of our own darn house,” Corvin grumbled. “Hmph. C’mon, Gentry. Might as well scoop the dung.”

  With the dung scoopers outside doing their business — business that seemed unwise to do while naked — I pulled up a stool next to Lysa and sat on my hands.

  “Ten Wardens. Gone, just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “Impressive.”

  Lysa traced the rim of her mug with the tip of her finger. “Probably wanna know why I didn’t do that in Crokdaw, huh?”

  “Because you were scared.”

  She snorted. “I’m that predictable, am I?”

  “I know you well, Lysa. Not well enough to anticipate you incapacitating a Warden, riding after me for seven days, and then riving the bloody earth and sending ten of bastards to their death, however. I’m just dying to know — how’d you sneak out of Scholl?”

  “I persuaded him.” She grinned.

  “See, I was told it took ten conjurers to wrangle in that ogre.”

  She shrugged. “I did it myself.”

  I sighed, tossing my head back and staring hard into the support beams as if those fat pieces of wood held all the answers to my problems.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess you’re here to stay, huh?”

  “You could use me, you know.”

  “I’m not going to argue that. I just didn’t want to use you. We’d better get our asses on the back of a couple boars. Toiling around while Arken’s sending Wardens after the rebellion doesn’t sound like the brightest idea.”

  “It makes him nervous,” Lysa said. “The rebellion.”

  Lysa could’ve been spot-on with that presumption. Maybe I’d underestimated the rebellion. Maybe the separatists had Arken shaking in his godly boots. Wasn’t entirely out of the question. But I preferred an alternative theory.

  One that suggested the rebellion itself was of little importance to Arken, but the woman behind the rebellion? That was another matter entirely. Elimori may well have been a conjurer, but she was something else too.

  Something bigger. Something that gave the god of Amortis pause.

  “How’d you find me, anyhow?” I asked, curious.

  “Your tracks weren’t hard to follow. But, um. I think the question you probably want to ask is why I followed you.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Oh? And why might I probably want to ask that question?”

  Lysa lowered her mug between her thighs, her face turning gravely serious. “The god of fragments, he’s um — well, he’s gone. He escaped. I was worried if he’d follow you—”

  “He didn’t escape,” I told her, allaying her worries. “He was released.”

  “What? By who?”

  I lifted my chin and gave a quick up-and-down flash of my brows.

  “Y… you?”

  “We had a deal, him and I. He’d do a little favor for me, and I, in return, would set him free.”

  Lysa’s mouth formed silent words. She shook her head. “Do you know what you’ve done? The rebellion can’t win now! It’s impossible. He’ll… he’ll… fragment the lands.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?”

  “Yes! I hope the deal you made was worth it, Astul. Because you condemned Amortis to an eternal hell.”

  I started laughing. A little chuckle at first, then a full-blown shoulder bobbing, eye-watering, tongue-flailing burst of laughter.

  “This is funny to you?” Lysa snapped.

  I pounded my chest and coughed, doubling over as the hilarity of the situation made me feel like I was going to die of suffocation.

  “Look at you,” I said, wiping my eyes and sniffling, a huge shit-eating grin on my lips. “You’re this queen of the dead now, huh? The defender of the world, Lysa Rabthorn!”

  Her jaw shifted to one side — the wholesome display of acrimony in action. Needling her provided me so much entertainment.

  “Oh, wipe that damn scowl off your lips, girl. You think I’d send Klatch joyfully scampering into Amortis a free man — or god — again? Come on, Lysa.”

  “Then what happened?”

  I slipped a hand into the pocket of my cloak. I slapped a book on the table. “We made a deal, like I said. Then he sniffed freedom for approximately half a second before coming face-to-face with someone he very much did not want to see.”

  Lysa brushed a finger along the cheerless gray cover of the book. The tome inched across the table as she did. She fingered through the pages, curiosity — or perhaps concern — tightening her face.

  “This is it,” she said, looking up at me. Her blue eyes swirled with the wonder of a sunlit ocean. “This is the book. But how? It’s so light. It’s so small.”

  A mischievous smile widened my lips. “We all have our tricks, Lysa. Your father and mother could weave a tale so grand and sensible, they’d have even Braddock Glannondil wrapped around their finger. You conjurers have your tricks, able to bend the mind or, in your case, the bloody earth. And the god of fragments… well, his occupation involves visual deceptions on a grand scale.”

  Lysa folded her bottom lip under her top teeth. “What about you?”

  “Me? I’m good at persuading people. Even go
ds. Come on, we need to resupply and head out.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Later,” I told her.

  She pursed her lips. “Astul…”

  “Later.”

  She relented with a sigh and a shake of her head.

  Gentry and Corvin assisted with filling our satchels. By the time we walked out of their larder, Lysa and I had five satchels each, filled with berries and veggies and fruits.

  “How deep ya goin’ there in Fragment Zero?” Corvin asked.

  I’d so far been deliberately obtuse when it came to Corvin’s questions about my intentions. But I had a sudden change of heart and told him we were going to deep enough into Fragment Zero to free the conjurers; no shallower, no deeper.

  Surprisingly, Corvin and Gentry took this in stride.

  “Gots to give it up to Ellie,” Gentry said. “Always thinkin’, that woman. Good plan, far as I’m concerned.”

  “Mm,” Corvin grunted. “Good plan, but risky. Be nice to have buckets o’ conjurers on the rebellion’s side, though. Know where yer goin’?”

  “Follow the river till it bends,” I said, “then keep straight till I come to the endless forests of Fragment Three. So long as we make sure the sun’s on our left as it rises and on our right as it falls, we’ll run straight into Fragment Zero.”

  Gentry scratched his wiry beard. “Yup, sounds ’bout right.”

  “Yeah,” Corvin said, “but do ya know where Arken keeps ’em? Conjurers, I mean.”

  I shook my head. That was one obstacle I still needed to overcome; one that I’d hoped would cease to be after my divulgence to Corvin and Gentry. So, truth to be told, I didn’t exactly have a sudden change of heart; I simply had ulterior motives.

  “Me neither,” admitted Corvin. “But I can tell ya this. There’s a city in Fragment Zero. Name’s Devous. Big ole bustlin’ city, huger than any city you’ve ever seen, I promise ya that. Got me a sister there. Now, I don’t want to be gettin’ her in trouble, but… it’s for the good of the rebellion. For the good of her. For our family. She’d approve, I know it. You find her, I betcha she can give a little hint as to where Arken keeps the conjurers.”

  Lysa looked up from tying the satchels tight so they wouldn’t spill out on our journey. “Why are you here and your sister is there?”