by DAVID B. COE
“You know me,” the duke of Bistari said, his voice as bleak and hard as the moors during the snows.
Cadel nodded.
“Do you fear me?”
“No,” he said evenly.
The duke gave a terrible grin. “Of course not. An assassin learns to live with his wraiths. Isn’t that right?”
Cadel shrugged. “What choice do we have?”
Another figure emerged from the shadows, a knife wound in his chest. The marquess of Tantreve. Cadel had killed him a bit more than a year ago, near his castle in northern Aneira.
“What about him?” the duke asked.
“No, not him either.”
Others stepped forward: Fihb of Thorald, his throat slit and his ring finger cut off; Hanan of Jetaya, unmarked save for the contorted expression the poison left on his features; Cyro of Yserne, the angle of his head and the mark on his neck so similar to those of the duke of Bistari that they might have been the twin sons of some cruel demon from the Underrealm. Soon there were dozens of them. Cadel couldn’t even recall all of their names, though he remembered each kill as clearly as he did the garroting of Chago.
Yet, he felt no dread. He could hear worshipers wailing all around him, begging for forgiveness, or at least mercy. He had heard stories of mercenaries clawing out their eyes on the Night of the Dead, so desperate were they to rid themselves of their wraiths. Several years ago he had been in the Sanctuary of Bian in Macharzo when a man used the prior’s blade to take his own life. Maybe the others knew something he didn’t. Maybe he should have been scared. But he had been paid to kill these men, and while they might not have deserved death, they would have been more than happy to pay him to do the same to their enemies had they thought of it in time.
He spent the Night of the Dead in Bian’s Sanctuary each year not out of fear of his wraiths, but rather out of respect for the god who sent them to him. If the Deceiver could bend the rules of life and death in this way, didn’t he deserve such homage? That was why Cadel came.
At least until this year. Because unlike all the years before, there now was one whom he did not wish to meet, one whose face he couldn’t bear to see again. He had known it would be like this almost from the moment he saw her. It had been the middle of the planting season, a warm clear night in Kentigern, but even then he had been prescient enough to know how difficult this night would be because of her. If only he had been hired to kill her father, the fat, foul-tempered duke, or, better still, the spoiled boy to whom she had been betrothed. But Filib of Thorald had already been killed, and Cadel’s Qirsi employers worried that the death of another heir to the Eibitharian throne would raise suspicions. They insisted that it be the girl.
He had heard tales of her beauty and her kindness, but only that night on the tor, when he met her in the duke’s great hall, did he truly appreciate how little justice these tales did Lady Brienne of Kentigern.
She had worn a dazzling gown of deepest sapphire that made the yellow ringlets of hair spilling down her back appear to have been spun from purest gold. Though Cadel posed that night as a common servant working under Kentigern’s cellarmaster, the duke’s daughter favored him with a smile so warm and genuine that he would have liked to run from the castle rather than kill her, though it meant leaving behind all the riches promised to him by the Qirsi. But it was far too late for that. The white-hairs had paid them a great deal, and Jedrek was already spending the gold they were still owed. And then there was all the Qirsi seemed to know about Cadel’s past-his family name, the disgrace that had driven him from his father’s court. What choice did he really have?
“None of the dead you see here can touch your heart,” the duke of Bistan said, gesturing with a glowing hand at the other wraiths who stood with him. “Is that what you want us to believe?”
“It’s the truth,” Cadel said, “whether you wish to believe it or not.”
A small smile touched the dead man’s lips, so that with his head cocked to the side, he looked almost like a mischievous child.
“There is one though, isn’t there? One that you fear?”
Cadel shuddered, as if the air had suddenly turned colder. He wanted to deny it, though it wouldn’t have done him any good. The dead could sense the truth.
“Yes. There’s one.”
The duke turned to look behind him, and as he did, the mass of luminous figures parted, allowing one last wraith to step forward.
He had known that she would come, of course-why should she have spared him this?-but still Cadel was unprepared for what he saw.
She wore the sapphire gown, though it was unbuttoned to her waist, as it had been that night. Her skin glowed like Panya, the white moon, and her face was as lovely as he remembered, save for the smudge of blood on her cheek. But Cadel’s eyes kept falling to her bared breasts and stomach, which were caked with dried blood and scarred with ugly knife wounds.
Lord Tavis’s dagger still jutted from the center of her chest, its hilt aimed accusingly at the assassin’s heart.
He had wanted to make her murder appear to be a crime born of passion and drunken lust. He had succeeded all too well.
“You stare as if you don’t recognize your own handiwork,” Brienne said, her voice shockingly cold. “Don’t let my lord’s dagger fool you. It was your hand guided the blade.”
Cadel started to say something, then shook his head.
“Do you deny it?” she asked, her voice rising, like the keening of a storm wind.
He looked up, and met her gaze. Her grey eyes blazed like Qirsi fire and tears ran down her face like drops of dew touched by sunlight.
“Do you?” she demanded again.
“No.” It came out as a whisper, barely discernible over the sobs of the other worshipers.
“Did I deserve to die like this?” She gestured at her wounds and the blood that covered her. “Did I wrong you in some way?”
“No, my lady.”
“Was I a tyrant? Is the world a better place without me?”
Cadel actually managed a smile. “Surely not.”
“Then why?” the wraith asked. “Why did you do this to me?”
“I was paid, just as I was paid to kill most of those standing with you.”
“You murder for money.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He blinked. “What?”
“Why would any person choose such a profession?”
Cadel stared at her a moment. With all that had happened, and the way she glared at him now, he found it easy to forget that Brienne was just a girl when she died. When he killed her.
“It pays handsomely, my lady,” he explained, as if she were simple.
“Of course it does,” she said. “I’m not asking why you do it now. I want to know how you started down this path. Certainly you didn’t go to your Determining hoping that the stone would show you as a hired blade.”
He felt his mouth twitch. Perhaps she wasn’t such a child after all.
“It started when he killed me,” came a voice from among the other wraiths.
Another man came forward. A boy actually; the young court lad who had been his rival for Venya’s love. His name was Eben. Cadel killed him with a blow to the head. The assassin didn’t need to see the matted blood behind the wraith’s ear to remind him of that. He could still feel his fingers gripping the rock. He could even hear the sound the stone made against the boy’s skull.
“Is it true?” Brienne asked, as Eben halted beside her. “Was he the first?”
“Yes, he was.”
“Did you kill him for gold as well?”
Cadel shook his head, a thin smile springing to his lips. “No, my lady. I killed him for love. Or at least what I thought at the time was love.”
“We were suitors for the same girl,” Eben said icily. “He surprised me on the farming lane west of Castle Nistaad, a lonely, desolate stretch of road. Few venture there, and I thought I was alone. I never even saw him.”
Brienne narrowed her glowing eyes. “And you enjoyed it? You decided to make it your life’s work?”
It was all I could do, he wanted to say. The only skill I had. I had fled my father’s court rather than face judgment for my crime. I needed gold to make my way in the world. What else was there other than filling? But he had never told any of this to another soul, and he wasn’t about to now, not even to this wraith standing before him, so deserving of answers.
“Why does this matter?” Cadel said instead, looking away. “What possible reason-?”
“I want to understand!” the wraith said, her voice rising like a gale. “I’m dead, and I want to know why.”
“You’re dead because someone hired me to kill you. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, it’s not! Who was it? Whose gold bought my blood?”
Cadel faltered. “Why would you want to know that? ”
“I already told you. I want to understand why you did this to me.”
“But surely-”
“Answer me!” the wraith said, the words seeming to echo off the walls and ceiling of the shrine, though among the living only Cadel could hear her.
“No,” he said. His hands were trembling abruptly, and he thrust them into his pockets. “I won’t tell you. Someone gave me gold and I killed you. That’s all you need to know.”
“Did they want a war? Is that why they wanted you to do it? So that Tavis’s father and my father would go to war?”
“I don’t really know. Perhaps.”
“Were they Qirsi?”
Cadel felt his face color. She was a wraith, a servant of Bian. Yes, she was crying, and her face was lovely, almost flawless. But this was no girl standing before him. He had to force himself to remember that.
“I won’t tell you any more.”
The light in her eyes danced like fire demons and she grinned, as did the other luminous figures standing with her. Some of them even laughed.
“You already have,” she said. “And I intend to tell my father, and Tavis, and every other living person who can hear me.”
He shook his head. “It won’t matter.”
She stared at him a moment. “The way you say it, one might think that this saddens you, that you’d like me to stop them.”
“I take their gold. That’s all. It doesn’t mean that I share their cause.”
“But you protect them. Why?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“You don’t know that,” the wraith said gently. “Explain it to me.”
“No,” he said again, his voice resounding through the shrine much as hers had a few moments before. He shook his head. “No,” he repeated, more quietly this time. “They live in this world, my world. They know how to find me. I’m not going to risk my life telling you anything.”
“So you’re afraid of them.”
“Yes.”
“More than you are of me.”
Cadel hadn’t thought of it that way before, but there was little use arguing the point. He feared the Qirsi more than he did anything or anyone in the Forelands. It wasn’t just that they knew so much about him and his past, it was also that they possessed powers he could scarcely comprehend. His Eandi enemies, even those he respected, didn’t frighten him. He knew how to wield a blade, how to shatter a man’s larynx with a single blow, and, when necessary, how to blend into his surroundings, be they the crowded marketplace of a city or the dense, silent shadows of a wood. But for all his dreams of striking back at the Qirsi who now so thoroughly controlled his life, he knew that he could never bring himself to risk their wrath.
“More than I am of you, my lady,” he finally said. “You may be of the Deceiver’s realm, but I only have to see you once in a year.”
She nodded, gazing at him silently for several moments. Then she raised a hand and gestured for him to step closer.
“Come to me,” she said. A sound like a soft wind rose from the other wraiths, as though they had all sighed as one.
Cadel stood motionless, drawing a grin from Brienne.
“Surely you’re not afraid. You wouldn’t hesitate to stand beside one of the Qirsi who pays you so handsomely.”
He swallowed, and took a step toward her.
“Closer,” she said, her grin broadening.
He took another step so that he stood only a few hands’ widths from her, close enough to take her hands, close enough to lean forward and taste her lips.
“Now touch me,” she whispered. The other wraiths murmured their approval, but Cadel hardly noticed.
A part of him longed to do as she said. He could almost smell the soft, sweet scent she wore the night he killed her. It would have been so easy to caress her cheek with his hand or kiss her smooth brow. Except that it would have meant his death. She could not touch him-as he understood such matters, Bian forbade the wraiths from doing so. No doubt had he not, those who died by Cadel’s hand would have taken him long ago. But when the living reached out to touch their dead, they crossed over to the god’s realm and were forever lost to the living world.
Brienne’s image wavered briefly, as when a tranquil lake is swept by a gust of wind and then again is still. An instant later she stood before him whole and unbloodied, her dress fastened and the dagger gone.
“Touch me,” she said again. “Take me in your arms.”
“You know that I can’t.”
“I know that you’ll die, if that’s what you mean. But wouldn’t that be easier than the dark death that awaits you when you leave this shrine? Already Lord Tavis hunts the land for you. I’ve told him that he should restore his good name and be done with it, but he’ll never leave it at that. He’s vowed to avenge me, and I’ve no doubt that he will.”
Cadel should have expected this. Perhaps he would have, had it not been for Jedrek’s death and his own quest for vengeance against the Qirsi gleaner who killed his friend. He had heard rumors of Tavis’s escape from the dungeons of Kentigern and he knew that somehow, so far, the Eibitharians had managed to avoid the civil war that Brienne’s murder was supposed to spark. But it had never occurred to him that the boy would come after him. Here was one more reason to find a new partner, and soon.
“He’ll die in the attempt, my lady,” Cadel said, knowing how his words would hurt her, and regretting even this. He gestured at the wraiths standing with her. “As you can see, I’ve killed men who were far more formidable than your lord. You’d be wise to warn him off his pursuit before it’s too late.”
She gave a wan smile. “If you were in my lord’s position, would you heed such advice?”
Cadel stared at her, wondering if she asked the question in innocence, or had divined his thoughts. For he was in Tavis’s position.
Grinsa jal Arriet. The name repeated itself in his head like the litany of some overzealous cleric, clouding his thoughts by day and keeping him from sleep at night. Cadel knew almost nothing about him except that he was a Revel gleaner who somehow had managed to kill Jedrek.
He might have been more.
The Qirsi woman, another gleaner, had told him as much in Noltierre several turns before, just moments after telling him of Jed’s death. Looking back on their conversation now, Cadel wished that he had stayed with her long enough to learn more. She had paid him for Brienne’s murder, and had admitted that she sent Jed after Grinsa when the gleaner left the Revel to go to Kentigern. He felt certain that she knew the man far better than she had let on. Still, even the little she did tell him should have been enough to keep Cadel from going after the gleaner.
It’s possible that he had other powers. Mists and winds, perhaps others. There were seven Qirsi standing among his dead. Three he had killed in their sleep, the others he had taken in the back. None of them had seen him coming. And in all these cases he knew what powers they possessed before he approached them. How was he supposed to fight Grinsa when he wasn’t certain what magic the man wielded? It was suicide. But Brienne was right. Like Lord Tavis of Curgh, who was already hunt
ing the land for the lady’s killer, Cadel couldn’t keep himself from trying.
“You see?” the wraith said. “You’re more like my lord than you care to admit.”
“Perhaps,” Cadel said. “But if he finds me, I’ll still have to kill him.”
“Have you ever fought a man who was intent on vengeance?” she asked.
He considered this for some time. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t suppose I have.”
She nodded sagely, as if death had given her wisdom beyond her years. “I see.”
A number of the other wraiths laughed appreciatively.
Cadel heard the city bells ringing in the distance. It was too early yet for the midnight tolling. This had to be the gate closing. The night was just starting, and already he was weary.
“Perhaps you wish to sleep?” Brienne asked, sounding as innocent as a babe.
He merely shook his head, as the wraiths leered at him hungrily. Few of the living ever slept on Pitch Night in Bian’s Turn. The dead could not touch a man to kill him, but there was nothing to keep them from huddling so close to his sleeping form that the slightest movement on his part-a mere gesture in the throes of some horrible dream-might send him to the god’s realm.
“Well,” Bnenne said, “you won’t touch me, and you won’t sleep.” She flickered like a candle once again so that she stood before him as she had when she first appeared, scarred and half naked. “How do you propose we pass the rest of the night?”
“You could leave me,” Cadel said. “Grant me peace and silence.”
The ghost smiled. “Why would we want to do that?”
The other wraiths came closer, crowding around him like eager buyers in a marketplace pressing to see some wares. Cadel held himself still, closing his eyes and readying himself for what he knew would come next. It was said to be common-something that all the wraiths did on this night. It even had a name: the Excoriation. Usually it began immediately, with nightfall and the appearance of the first wraiths. But tonight had been different, perhaps because of Brienne. Not that it mattered. This night’s Excoriation, like all of them, would last for hours.
