The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1)

by Justin DePaoli

“Sharp eyes.”

  “Cold blood.”

  “Cold blood.”

  “Healthy fear.”

  “Healthy fear.”

  I shook her gently. “See you on the other side.”

  “I’ll be there first,” she said, and I imagined she was grinning, like always.

  She shuffled past me, and she was gone.

  I unhooked a dagger from my leg. “How long’s it been since you held a blade?” I asked Dercy.

  “A few nights ago,” he said nonchalantly.

  “Ceremonial blades don’t count. I’m talking true steel, something you wield with the intention of cutting deeply into flesh.”

  “As am I. A vagrant stumbled onto our caravan camp on the way here. He was caught stealing salted boar flanks. I took off both his hands so he could never steal again. Beyond that, I practice my swordsmanship for one hour every day in Watchmen’s Bay; a king cannot afford to lose the wit of his blade, just as he cannot afford to lose the wit of his mind.

  “I know you regard my crown as weak and pacifying, Shepherd. But my reluctance for skirmishes and distaste for war does not speak of my weaknesses. I am seated on a coast where bandit ships prowl, where ancient tribesmen hold a special hatred for people like me, where vassals and lords of ancient strongholds and villages grow in power every day and so often wish to take the crown the Daniser name has clutched for two hundred years.

  “I am seated in a kingdom where our stone walls are fortified with a mixture of steel because they were under siege eternally during my grandfather’s reign and during my father’s reign. I am seated in a kingdom that for the first time in its history has seen peace soothe its plains and its mountains and its shores for the thirty-some-odd years I’ve sat in that seashell-constructed throne. Peace. Do you hear that word? It’s a word my people did not know for more than a few weeks at a time. Anyone can swing a sword, Astul: a conjurer, a drunk vagrant, a hopeless wanderer. Anyone can stab, blunt, poke. Real strength comes in pacifying those whose existence is driven by bloodshed.”

  I never thought I’d be lectured in a crumbling castle keep passageway, but here I was, beaten down by the king of the sea.

  “Truthfully, I was just curious to know if you could handle yourself in case we were attacked.”

  “I’m well aware,” Dercy said. “But I am equally curious if you know the truth as to why the Danisers will be your saving grace in this… what apparently is the beginning of a great war. And that is why you freed me, is it not? You want my army.”

  I shrugged. “Better to have you on my side than on the conjurers’.”

  “Know that it won’t be for the steel that I bring, the horses I march or the bodies of young men and women who will overwhelm whoever and whatever they face. It will be for the past thirty years of peace; the past thirty years of strengthened alliances; the past thirty years of growth my people have enjoyed. It’s because of that peace that I will have all the steel, the horses and the bright-eyed men and women who thirst to become warriors like their mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. You take care of the North, and I promise you victory.”

  A familiar feeling bubbled up inside my stomach. When I was sixteen and met Vayle for the first time, I thought I understood the world and what she offered. Sarcasm and biting wit were the preeminent qualities of my repertoire. It wasn’t until speaking with Vayle that I learned I was very ignorant of the world. She taught me words I never knew, history I’d gotten terribly wrong, cultures I didn’t know existed… things a young boy growing up in the wild cannot hope to know. It was a sobering experience, one that made me feel, at the time, that I was a stupid boy who only survived because of luck. But I taught her how to hold a sword, whet the blade, plunge it straight and true, and through this I learned no one knows precisely how this world operates: the bits and pieces of its inner workings are littered in the minds of all its inhabitants.

  Maybe I’d forgotten that over the years, but the conjurers and now Dercy had reminded me of it, and I once again felt like a very stupid boy.

  “Let’s work on getting out of here alive first, shall we?” I said.

  Dercy smiled and took the dagger. He hid it inside his sleeve. “Lead the way, Shepherd. Or should I say, Commander Wilhelm.”

  I grinned, tightened my helmet and crawled out of that hideous tunnel for hopefully the last time.

  We passed two roving patrols on the way to the kitchen. Each guard took great interest in Dercy, but they quickly dismissed their suspicious glances when I lashed out at them and told them to focus on finding the assassin. I’m getting quite adept at this Wilhelm voice, I thought.

  We were halfway through the kitchen when the bells went off. One bell, then two, then four, then ten, all clashing like cymbals in a hollow chamber. It was the annoying, ear-ringing, headache-producing alarm of Edenvaile.

  “Two of ’em up here, dead!” the voice screamed, and then trailed off.

  It sounded like a stampede of animals with iron greaves on their hooves in the great hallway outside the kitchen.

  A panicked voice broke in. “Lord Edmund’s here! Lady Mydia too.”

  “The king?”

  “Here!” a distant voice shouted.

  “Get them into the cellar,” a familiar voice barked. It was the officer in charge of dousing the fiery roughage and horseshit. “Where the bloody fuck is Wilhelm?”

  “He passed us, sir, saw him with Dercy Daniser.”

  “Get off of me!” That voice belonged to none other than Sybil Tath. Her screech… oh, not pleasant.

  “Let her go,” Chachant hollered.

  Voices bled in with one another, syllables drowning out vowels, hoarse cries erupting over calm and gentle orders.

  “Take your men and find Dercy Daniser,” the officer said. “I want Wilhelm Arch as well, alive or dead. Treasonous bastard.”

  “Lady Sybil!” a guard yipped. “Milady! We haven’t cleared that… way… yet.”

  “Take your men to the royal quarters,” the officer ordered. “Assist the royal guard.”

  “Sir! Lady Sybil ran off toward the courtyard.”

  “Fuck’s sake. You and you, go chase her down. Now!”

  “Let her go,” Chachant roared.

  I took off my helmet and sat it near a spice table. “Won’t be needing this anymore. Can’t see shit half the time anyway. Sybil’s going for her bird. Let’s play race the conjurer, what do you say?”

  “Go,” Dercy said.

  I busted ass through the kitchen, hauling off toward the door and throwing it open, ebon blade in hand. I turned the corner, looked back to make sure Dercy was keeping up, and sprinted through the shin-high snow.

  My calves burned. And my chest stung. Someone screeched, but from where? The ground glittered with flakes and ice, but the night seemed to hang extraordinarily low. It was black and cold, visibility blurred by falling snow.

  Something crunched from behind. A pair of feet — no, two pairs.

  Three pairs.

  More than that now.

  Their breaths rasped in my ears. Their shouts made my skull tremble. They called for archers. They called for everyone. They’d found us, they said.

  “Stop!” they shouted.

  We didn’t stop. Dercy and I, side by side now, kicked over the mountains of snow and tripped over hills of ice. We picked ourselves up, and we ran. We ran hard enough to crack the frozen sheets beneath our boots, ran hard enough that we seemed to suck away the blackness of the night. The horizon beamed at us as we turned another corner, dimly lit but growing hotter, fiercer.

  Oranger, bluer.

  A tail flicked about anxiously, its flames cutting across patches of snow, melting them into puddles.

  A shadow flung itself across the crystallized ground. It shed its skin, thinning its fat. It left heavy wool coats in its wake.

  Sybil ran toward her bird, determination searing her face. Her arms were bare, her chest almost naked save a thin kirtle. She was faster than us. Closer to the
phoenix. She was lightning zipping, shooting, dancing.

  But just as thunder chases lightning, a shadow chased her. A much larger shadow with muscular legs that could stomp in a skull. A shadow that exploded through the snow like a rolling boulder.

  Sybil spun around. She threw herself to the ground, somersaulting out of the way of a romping steed whose reins were held by my commander.

  A platoon of guards banked around the far corner of the keep, closing us in on both sides.

  I powered through the snow, urging Dercy on. Vayle and I held eyes for a moment. We both knew the plan had changed.

  “Ride!” I told her.

  She tugged on the reins. Her steed grunted and wheeled around. A pair of heels struck the horse hard in the ribs. Again and again. She charged toward the guards, skirting around their swords and vanishing beyond the keep.

  Heaving and hacking, Dercy and I reached the phoenix. We climbed onto her back, her flames receding. I took the engulfed reins that cooled in my hands like hot steel plunging into ice.

  There was a shriek that shivered across my shoulders. I turned to see Sybil on her feet, her face demented and swollen with anger. Had she the time and the energy, she would’ve grasped the phoenix’s mind and likely turned Dercy and me into human pyres.

  But finally, for the first time, I had the advantage. I took the reins and I pleaded with the bird to take us far away from here. The phoenix lurched forward, rising into the air. She ascended slowly toward the suffocating black sky.

  “How do you control this thing?” Dercy asked.

  The bird continued rising straight and slow, her wings flapping steadily. I stuffed my hands into her plumage and held tight.

  “Excellent question,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

  Suddenly, the bird that was once a raven tumbled toward the gate.

  “How’d you do that?” Dercy asked.

  I didn’t want to tell him.

  Spurts of orange flames lanced out from the phoenix’s smoldering face. She tucked her wings into her body, gaining speed. A moment later she unfurled her wings and flapped them gently, carrying us like a lazy cloud across the sky.

  “What?” Dercy said. “Fueled by magic?”

  Again I said nothing. It wasn’t that I couldn’t articulate it, but rather that I didn’t want to believe it. It felt very, very wrong.

  “Look!” Dercy said, his stubby finger pointing toward the ground far below us.

  At first glance, it looked like an agent of the night moved swiftly atop the snow. After a few blinks to clear out the blurriness and teariness that flying apparently inflicts, it became clear this was an agent not of the night, but of the Black Rot.

  Vayle guided her galloping steed between the wall-to-wall buildings of the market square, dashing through the thin strip of snow covering the cobblestone streets. Taking advantage of the farce the city guard thought would foolishly lead us into their waiting hands, she bolted for the opened gate.

  “She best weave,” Dercy said. “Otherwise those archers on the wall will string her up.”

  “She’s waiting,” I said.

  The archers thought they had her. I may not have seen their faces, but I was certain proud smirks pushed up the edges of their mouths, and their tongues probably slithered between their lips like snakes. She was heading right for them. Right for their barbed arrows that would sink into the chest of her steed and the flesh of her neck.

  Each guard had nocked an arrow. They drew back just as the phoenix carried Dercy and me beyond the wall. I willed us back around, keeping close watch on my commander.

  Their aim was on. Their hands steadfast. Their eyes pinned her down, waiting for her steed to take one more step.

  Just as the archers of the Edenvaile city guard released a barrage of steel-fanged tips, fletchings and wooden shafts into the night, Vayle tugged on her steed’s reins, vaulting out of the way. Another tug and the horse shifted its weight again, as agile as a cat. Vayle weaved like haphazard lightning through the snow, never allowing the archers more than a guess as to which way she would dance next.

  She sped through the gate, continuing to weave as the hooves of her steed pounded the ground into a fine white dust. Once she was far enough away from the gate, she rode hard and straight into the freedom of Rime. Freedom, however, is a fickle lady. Or maybe it’s a man? Or maybe a goat god, hmm? Whatever personification it prefers, it often vanishes just as quickly as it appears.

  The Edenvaile city guard poured from the gates like pissed-off bees whose honey had just been snatched by a clever bear under the guise of their queen. About fifteen cavalry galloped after the woman who’d just made a fool of their archers. There would be more soon, but the remaining horses were held in the nearby villages, and it would take time for those on foot to reach them.

  Vayle had a good start on the cavalry, but I needed the horse she was on, and she needed my bird. If we tried an exchange now, the city guard would be on us within minutes. And I was not eager to ride to Patrick Verdan with an army sniffing at my heels.

  How do you rectify that little problem? Given my position, I had only one logical option, and it involved something people had been doing since they’d first come to this world, or were dropped from the sky, or were gifted by a god, or however the hell people got here in the first place. Something that brought smiles to the faces of the children and maniacs alike.

  I would burn shit.

  With nothing more than my thoughts, I made the phoenix turn in a wide, arcing fashion. Head down, wings tucked, she barreled downward, beyond the galloping cavalry, and then looped back around.

  The poor bastards probably saw her coming, what with the white of the snow burning away and an apocalyptic sky steadfastly approaching them from behind, but what could they do?

  With a flick of my mind, the phoenix spread her wings. She edged herself along the cavalry and showered every last one of them in sticky, broiling fire.

  They flailed and they fell. Screamed and cried. They doused themselves in snow, but the elements betrayed them and turned to boiling water, scalding the skin from their faces and the brows from their eyes.

  My thoughts raced the phoenix low over the snow like a mosquito over water. The bird caught up to Vayle with ease. My commander slowed her steed and eventually came to a stop.

  The wind had wrangled her hair into a nest of tangles and knots. Her cheeks were red and her lips cracked.

  “That will be one for the book,” she said, patting her horse appreciatively.

  “And which book is that?” I asked, stepping off the phoenix.

  “The one I will write involving my near-death experiences,” Vayle said. “They will all have a common theme: you.”

  I laughed. “More of me is a good thing, wouldn’t you say?”

  Vayle stepped down from her horse. She walked over to the phoenix but kept her distance.

  “An alluring creature,” she said, tiptoeing around its seething tail.

  “You appear scared,” Dercy said, as if he wasn’t shitting himself when we first took to the air.

  “I do not know if I am scared,” Vayle said. “I have never flown before.”

  I put my hand on the bird’s head. The flames peeled away from my palm. “Your thoughts control her actions.”

  Vayle’s head cocked, almost imperceptibly. “That sounds very… conjurerish.”

  “Don’t think about it too much. Get to Watchmen’s Bay with the king here, and let him work his magic he claims he has vats of.”

  “There is an ongoing complication in Watchmen’s Bay,” Vayle said. “If you recall.”

  “What kind of complication?” Dercy asked, alarmed.

  I rubbed my eyes. It didn’t do much for the pain in my head. “This may sound…”

  “Bad,” Vayle put in.

  “Treasonous, even, if you consider us loose friends.”

  “Horrific if close friends,” Vayle said.

  “Yes,” I said, “thank you, Commander. I think
he gets the point.”

  “Get on with it,” Dercy said. “What happened to my kingdom?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Well, perhaps something. It can’t truly happen without you, let’s put it that way. You’re the big missing piece,” I said, slapping Dercy on the shoulder, trying to loosen him up.

  He looked at me in the way a father looks at his child while the boy is holding the shattered pieces of a family heirloom and attempting to explain that while this is as bad as it looks, consider the positives.

  “The Black Rot proposed to assassinate you, along with your family, and lift one of your bannermen to the throne in exchange for a promise of supplies and men for the war effort. I was convinced you would not agree to war against the conjurers unless I had empirical proof. I believe my assumption was correct, until that nasty incident we’ve left in our wake.”

  “You are a bold man,” Dercy said, as if paying me a compliment.

  “Very bold,” I agreed, chuckling uneasily. He was taking this well. “And you know what they say about boldness: it’s the bold that… er, well. Lots of good sayings about boldness. I’m sure you’ve heard them all well enough.”

  He fingered his wiry beard. “And stupid.”

  “Occasionally stupid,” I agreed.

  “And an idiot who would have had twenty claims for the throne and no real support for a war few would believe in.”

  I shrugged. “It was a long shot to begin with.”

  After a long pause, Dercy cleared his throat. “Consider it forgiven.”

  What a fantastic conclusion. If this had been Braddock, I would have endured threats of my head being chopped off, my cock being clamped by a vise and injected with poison and so forth. Dercy Daniser — he was an understanding man. Calm, cool, collected.

  “If,” he said, “you inform me which of my bannermen agreed to your proposal so that I may hasten their meeting with their maker.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “Let us talk for a moment about logistics,” Vayle said. “When should we march?”

  “How long do you need to mobilize your bannermen?” I asked Dercy.

  “Ten days,” he answered. “I can make it to the walls of Edenvaile in thirty days, provided we don’t get interrupted by a conjurer army.”