The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1)

by Justin DePaoli

  The women giggled.

  “Only here till the summer, thank you very much,” the man said. “Ran out of coin passing through, that’s all. When my father gets enough — and that’ll be this summer, like I said — we’re riding for the beaches. Gonna fish our lives away. I’m not like you. I know things. Got lots of experience.”

  The voices trailed off, and I continued on through the kitchen.

  “What if Sybil is there with him?” Vayle asked.

  Hm. I hadn’t considered that angle.

  “Would you kill her?”

  Now, the death of Sybil Tath I had considered. It was a muddy mess, though. If I slid my sword across her throat, would that prompt the conjurers to attack immediately? We weren’t ready for such an attack… but neither were they.

  Perhaps more importantly: could I slide my sword across her throat? This wasn’t an existential question set in a moor of morals and values, as the contemplation of ending Wilhelm’s life had been. It was quite literal. If Amielle could rive the sky, buckle the earth and command the wind, could Sybil do the same?

  “I’d prefer to wait until she left,” I said.

  Vayle couldn’t possibly understand the unnatural and the macabre world that I’d seen conjured by the hand of Amielle, but she nevertheless nodded knowingly, as if she had some faint notion.

  We exited the kitchen into a great hall with wide walls and vaulted ceilings. The castle of Edenvaile was mostly a square monstrosity with five paths to every destination. The royal quarters could be reached from a winding staircase that sat just outside of the throne room, and also by way of a less appealing set of stairs that tunneled deep through narrow halls and low-rising ceilings. There were more paths to be sure, but those were the two I knew.

  We would be taking the path less traveled, because I had a premonition of my head falling off my shoulders if we tried cutting through the throne room. The fewer guards we encountered, the better, particularly if those guards were officers. Regular guards may not have the balls or tits to question authority, but officers do… because they are authority.

  We walked along the great hallway that led into a smaller snaking corridor with forked paths every twenty feet or so. We passed several roving patrols along the way, all of whom tipped their brimmed skullcaps in recognition and continued on.

  The flames from wall-mounted candles whished and whooshed as we walked by, their faint golden glow splashing the silk banners draping the hallway.

  One of the forked corridors we walked was suddenly pinched off at the tip. At the end lay a doorway wrapped in a still sheet of blackness. I ducked inside, the soles of my plated greaves touching down on uneven steps of rotting wood. A creak here and a dreadful moan there, the ancient risers crying out under our pressure. If you put your hand above your head, you’d feel the cold wetness of rough stone beneath spongy mold.

  The candles had all dried out since my last visit through this pathway many years ago, when the grand spiral staircase was still under construction. It wouldn’t be long before the mold would eat this rising tunnel into rubble.

  If you were lucky enough — or put your nose far enough up the king’s ass — you got pampered up here in the royal quarters. Got yourself a nice room with windows overlooking… well, snow most of the time. A nice bed with feathers from geese or ducks and enough pillows that your poor nose would never feel stuffy when it was time to lay your head down to sleep. Got unlimited wine and a handmaid at your service who would bathe you, feed you and maybe even fuck you. What was she going to do? Say no to a powerful lord? But the Verdans did not discriminate. It was all the same with ladies of the court, just put a pair of balls on the handmaid and there you go.

  Bunch of worthless fucks. But I wasn’t here to cull them, so I walked right on by their rooms and ignored the orgasmic moaning from within.

  All of the ladies and lords of the court resided on the right side of the hallway. Or left, depending on which way you approach. Point is, the Verdan family resided on the opposite side. Yes, there was a sort of invisible line that silently proclaimed, We are better than you.

  Which room would Sybil place Dercy in? Probably not Mydia’s. The chambers of the king and queen were a possibility, but one that I didn’t want to investigate quite yet. Chachant would likely be brooding in there, or sleeping, possibly along with Sybil. I hoped to find Dercy alone.

  She very well could have stowed him away in her old room. Or Chachant’s, but that was less likely given Vileoux probably took up residence in his son’s quarters for now. Or she could have put him in one of the various rooms that had been empty for seventy years, since back when a litter of Verdans ran amok. That was unlikely as well, though, given none of the royal guard stood watch over the empty rooms.

  It all came down to logical deduction. And so I stopped in front of the archway of rock that hugged an imposing door made of cedar. It was Sybil Tath’s room. Two guardsmen, as always, were posted there. Their faces where sheathed in brushed steel that wrapped around their necks and sat upon a suit of silver plate. A protective slit grate covered their eyes, which stared ahead without yielding.

  “Commander Wilhelm,” one of them said, with a slight nod.

  Not too raw, not too ragged, I thought. “Step aside, men,” I said, thrusting each word out from deep within my chest, parroting Wilhelm’s voice the best I could. “I have an audience with the queen.”

  I saw the whites of both men’s eyes as their pupils slanted toward Vayle.

  “She may be joining you as the newest royal guard,” I said. “If Lord Chachant and Lady Sybil permit.”

  Even if my voice may have lacked the visceral edge of Wilhelm’s, my manners were spot-on.

  The guard to the left spoke. “The queen has forbidden entry until the morning.”

  And in predictable fashion, I thought. The royal guard was part of Wilhelm’s city guard, but the commander held little sway in their lives. Directives issued by the Verdan family trumped Wilhelm’s orders.

  “How long have you men been here?” I asked.

  “Since the morning, sir.”

  “Impressive.”

  I turned to Vayle and asked if she thought she had the endurance to stand on her feet for a day straight. While she answered, I took a gander. The remaining rooms were far down the hallway, beyond large swooping walls that interrupted your vision.

  Poor planning there by the architects of this city. Of course, they probably didn’t envision anyone assassinating a couple royal guards and freeing a king inside their illustrious keep.

  I slapped a gloved hand on the steel breast of each guardsman. “Good men. You do your commander proud. Remove your helmets. I wish to see your faces. The Pantheon knows I could use a good reminder of what some of my men have gone on to accomplish.”

  Without hesitation, without questioning authority, the guardsmen took their helmets off and curled them in their arms.

  I shook the hand of the young man in front of me and said, “Good man, indeed.” Then I pulled him close, his steel frame crashing against my chestplate, the pimples on his chin bopping up against the softness of my beard.

  His nostrils flared at the sound of ebon singing its lovely song as it scraped against the leather innards of its scabbard.

  He yanked himself back, but my fingers were coiled around his wrist. I was latched onto him like an iron clasp. The panic of finding himself seized, unable to wrestle his own blade from its sheath — it paled his face to the color of cold milk.

  This was all part of the job, the very thing he signed up for: giving his life to the kingdom he loved in a bid to protect her. But when the end comes — and it often comes so early for men like him — the courage, the bravado, every brash emotion shrinks in the shadow of death and the embrace of fear.

  His warmth coated my fingers and my wrist and my arm. It sputtered, spat and splashed into my face, dotted my hair in red paint. The taste of burning iron leaked into my mouth as his eyes rolled and his mouth filled with
blood.

  I eased him to his knees and then to his stomach. Vayle had done the same with her guardsman.

  Unwanted thoughts about this young man, his blond hair soaking in a deepening red pool, infiltrated my mind. Was he forced into the city guard as a slave? Were his parents still alive? Did he have a sister or a brother? I quickly pushed those thoughts aside as the two bodies bled out into a river that slowly snaked its way down the marble hallway.

  The door to Sybil’s room opened without resistance, and a small, squat man jumped off the bed in surprise. I removed my helmet, revealing my face.

  Dercy Daniser put a finger to his lips and waved us in.

  “Help me pull them in,” I whispered to Vayle.

  We lugged the dead-weighted bodies inside and shut the door.

  Dercy stood near a tiny opened window, no larger than a slit for a squirrel to fit in and out.

  It overlooked the snowy courtyard that lay behind the keep. Dressed in thick wools and Verdan regalia, Chachant and Sybil were sitting under a tree whose vast arms of needles and pinecones kept its trunk mostly free of snow.

  They talked. I listened.

  “It’s not right,” Chachant said. “Magic is uncontrolled. It’s unpredictable.”

  “It’s not magic,” Sybil said. “It’s a state of mind. It’s something you already have inside you! You haven’t learned how to use it, that’s all. Do you want me to prove it to you?”

  Shadows hid the features of Chachant’s face, but I watched him pick his head up slowly from the ground, a mix of curiosity and concern.

  “Come on,” Sybil said, jumping to her feet. She grabbed his hand and helped him up. “Come out here, in the open.”

  I leaned in to Dercy and whispered, “I think you’re meant to hear this. She wants to break you. She’s going to show you what the conjurers are capable of. She wants to strip the spirit from your fight. I’m told they go down easier like that.”

  “They?”

  “Those whose minds the conjurers want for their own. Look, if you feel yourself slipping into a void or falling or not at all present in this world anymore, bloody do something, will you? Flail your arms, shake your head, whatever, and I’ll shut the window. When it happened to me, this realm slowly slipped from my grasp… you won’t mistake it for anything else.”

  Dercy’s eyebrow inclined. “You were taken by a conjurer? You seem fine now.”

  “I am fine. Now. I think. Long fucking story. I’ll keep talking to you, prevent her from reaching inside your mind farther than she already has.”

  “Does that work?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve no bloody idea. Can’t hurt.”

  Sybil and Chachant stood in the middle of the courtyard.

  “Hold me,” she said.

  Chachant stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her belly. She leaned back onto his shoulder.

  “Do you see that raven there, in the tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Close your eyes,” she said. “Are they closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to imagine something.” She rolled her head from side to side on his shoulder, looking into the sky. Finally, she stopped. “I want you to imagine the raven just as you saw it,” she said. “Imagine it perched upon a snowy branch. Suddenly, it’s flying. It soars against the midnight sky, your eyes barely able to trace its blurry black outline. Imagine it slowing, as if the wind is pushing it back.”

  In the midnight sky of Edenvaile, a raven drifted across the sky like a barrel across the sea, slowly rolling along the black waves.

  “Now,” Sybil said, “it’s resting before the moon. Imagine, Chachant: this insignificant speck suspended in the sky, this marring of the moon. But you have its mind, my dear. And you can turn its insignificance into brilliance. It seems to be growing larger now, engorging itself on the brightness of the moon that’s suddenly shrinking under the raven’s massive wings and its elongated talons that are ripping at the curtain of the night, pulling it closed, shuttering the moon into oblivion.”

  The moon was no longer visible. A single entity of wings blotted it out.

  “It moves as you will it,” Sybil said. “It pitches down, screaming toward the ground. As it plunges, the moon becomes visible again, but it looks so small, so… insignificant compared to this creature. This creature that now powerfully lifts itself back into the air. Its yellow eyes spark like a freshly struck fire. Its wings of ink are burning now, melting off as the yellow flames chase away the night. It combusts! An enormous bird of fire, blue flames rippling across the surface of the yellow ones. It gently eases itself to the ground, the fire drinking up the snow and ice as it lands softly in a frozen courtyard.”

  Sybil’s head rolled lifelessly back onto Chachant’s shoulder. She gasped.

  “Now, my love… open your eyes.”

  Chachant jumped back, but curiosity pulled him in again. “That can’t be real. It’s just like I imagined.”

  Sybil sidled out of Chachant’s embrace on wobbly legs, toward the phoenix whose fiery tail swooshed about.

  “It is real,” she said. “I know you felt it.”

  “I felt it in you,” Chachant said, trailing through the snow after her.

  “It was in you too,” Sybil said. “You helped shape it. You helped fly it. You helped create it.”

  “It’s magnificent,” Chachant said, childlike excitement drowning out the fear that had thickened his voice.

  “Touch her. She won’t hurt you. Your mind influences her.”

  The phoenix’s fiery body illuminated Chachant’s face. He sported the stupid grin of a man who had no idea the evil he was touching. The flames receded as Chachant’s hand passed over the bird’s body.

  Sybil curled her arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “The conjurers chose us. They trust us, the Verdans and the Taths — the families of divinity! That’s why we must do this. I’m sorry I hadn’t told you the truth before, but… I was scared. Scared of the gifts they’d given me, scared of what you would think. Scared of war.”

  “There’s still a war to be had. You said so yourself.”

  “Yes, but it will all be over soon. Conjurer spies have eliminated the Rabthorns; the South is in disarray. My father is confident his bannermen will join him, and with your father returning, much of the North will fall in line. The only fight lies with Braddock.”

  “Not all of the North will fall in line,” Chachant said. “My father will pull in a few, but my brother’s abdication fractured the North. He has the allegiances of several families… powerful ones. And the North is always fickle. If they see power sway his direction, all of the families may join him.”

  Sybil traced her nail down along Chachant’s jaw. “The needle of power will never point toward your brother. Not when the conjurers show their hand. But it will be a lot less bloody if you could maybe… mm, convince your brother to see our point of view.”

  A wind caught hold of the phoenix’s flames, ruffling its spine of blue flame. Chachant smiled at it maniacally. “I could fly there tonight.”

  Sybil laughed. “Dercy and I are going to enjoy this girl tonight. He needs to see the power of the conjurers with his own eyes. But ride for your brother in the morning. I will meet you there.”

  Chachant pulled her in and kissed her lips, his fingers burrowing into her back.

  Not one to play voyeur, I closed the window and looked at Dercy. “Feel all right?”

  “Slightly ill,” he admitted. “Never mind the fact I was under the assumption conjurers were almost extinct, I did not know they had the power to do… this.”

  “There’s plenty more you don’t know,” I said. “Commander Vayle can inform you of everything while the two of you fly to Watchmen’s Bay.”

  “Er, fly?” Vayle said.

  I smiled. “We’re going to steal a bird.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  People generally do not go around stealing birds. Even in the remote villages where rel
ationships with wildlife are questionable at best and promiscuous at worst, and where fowl are valuable commodities, thievery of the feathery things is not something that often occurs. The reason for this is simple: birds are bloody hard to steal. Try to steal something that can fly, squawk, tear into your skin with talons, peck your eyes out with terribly sharp beaks and shit all over you and themselves without second thought. Sounds like a sort of insanity most would much rather stay away from.

  Thankfully, phoenixes were not like most birds. They seemed highly intelligent, affectionate, lively. Perhaps they could be reasoned with. I didn’t have much of a choice but to risk it. This bird was a weapon, one that could not fall into the hands of Sybil or Chachant.

  I crouched down inside the decrepit tunnel. Stale air whirled around me. “To the kitchen,” I told Dercy. “When we exit the kitchen, we’ll come to a courtyard. Lots of guards around. Stay sandwiched between Vayle and me when we come out. With any luck, we won’t pass an officer.”

  “I can do you one better,” Vayle said.

  I looked in her general direction but saw only shadows. “Then lay it on me.”

  “Take Dercy yourself. I’ll bring you a horse.”

  “A horse?”

  “I’m sorry,” Vayle said. “Did you intend to fly as well?”

  “I’ve had my fill, thank you. There’s not enough room anyway.”

  “Right. So you need an escape.”

  “Well… I was, er — you see, my plan—” I cleared my throat. “Fuck it. I can’t think of a good excuse. I was too focused on ensuring freedom for both of you.”

  A small hand patted my shoulders. “Isn’t he growing up so fast, Dercy, putting others before himself?”

  “Shut it. If you find yourself in trouble—”

  “You’ll know it,” Vayle said.

  My hand swam in the darkness, till my fingers curled around the collar of a mesh shirt. Vayle clung to my plate, and we whispered the Rots hymn to one another.

  “Strong sword,” I said.

  “Strong sword.”

  “Sharp eyes.”