Crown of Crimson

by Rose Reid

  Sebastien rolls his eyes. “Knock her out now, please.”

  I turn and face the approaching Evrallonic soldiers, some of which have sneers on their faces and others who have expressions of fear, and rightfully so. Swords are drawn, daggers are unsheathed, and an archer takes his place. Sebastien was correct — there are seven of them. And despite my feigned confidence, I know my odds of defeating trained Evrallonic soldiers. Perhaps if they were mere servicemen I could take on seven at a time, in addition to two skilled assassins, but I know even from the way these men walk, the way they move, that they are not going to be easy to fight. They’re swordsmen, trained by Evrallon’s Blight, their most talented warrior.

  He steps out from behind the other swordsmen and even though I am half turned away, my attention is drawn there. Dressed in a black cape that sweeps over his shoulders and down his back, cascading to the floor, the man has the look of a high-ranking officer. Around his waist hangs a polished sword on a thick leather belt. Tall, laced boots rise to his knees, meeting with the gray trousers he wears. The man wears a pure white shirt with a dark blue vest fitted across his chest. Then, crisscrossing the blue material, are two more straps that holds weapons such as daggers and even a small pistol. He is tall and lean but well-muscled and has an almost surreal quality to him. But none of that is what catches my attention.

  The man — or boy, really — is stunningly beautiful. Dark, tangled waves of hair fall down into eyes of blue glass that seem to pulse in the darkness. His ivory skin is flushed from the brisk outside breeze. He has elegant cheekbones, a full mouth, long, dark lashes, like the hero from an epic. Of course, most of his striking beauty is diminished by the scowl on his face. A name comes to mind — a name that has always been familiar, though I cannot decide if it is merely because I have heard his name a great many times before or if it is because he is related to someone I have encountered on previous assignments.

  I laugh, a sound that is a cross between maniacal and insane, not believing that he is really here. “Lyom Livingstone of House Wells, Swordmaster to the Cruel King and Evrallon’s Blight. Now what would you be doing in a place like Lydovier? I’d thought you were King Dryden’s personal bodyguard.”

  The Swordmaster saunters forward, undaunted and stone-faced. “If you assumed your assessment of me would impress, it has not. Your activities in Evrallon have not gone unnoticed.”

  I mock frown. “Have they not? Oh, I had thought I was being so sneaky when I assassinated one of your governors in broad daylight.”

  Swordmaster Livingstone only furrows his brows in mild annoyance. I’ve heard stories of this man before but have never encountered him. I know he is hardly human, if he is human at all. He has no remorse when it comes to justice — even less than an assassin. His loyalty to the Cruel King knows no bounds and his abilities are unsettling, even to me.

  “Your smart mouth isn’t going to free you this time, Assassin. By order of King Dryden, I place you under arrest. From this day forward, you are Evrallonic property. Surrender and I will see that you are uninjured when we return to Adandyrl.” says the Swordmaster in an unparalleled calm.

  I must admit, he is daunting. Dominik encountered him once on an assignment. I remember what he looked like when he returned — more than battered. This boy beat him easily. But what kind of assassin would I be if I did not try to defeat him?

  I straighten my spine because there is one thing I have forgotten and the Swordmaster has failed to account for: I am the Queen of Crimson, and I have a reputation of my own, whether I like it or not.

  Before the Swordmaster can do or say anything, I readjust my hand and throw my dagger into the skull of the archer that waits to fire at me. The archer is struck and drops from his place at the stairs, falling back to the first floor. All swords are raised at once but they’re likely to be uncoordinated.

  I unsheathe my second dagger, spinning it over the back of my hand. The locked doors of the outpost will be used to my advantage — Cicero and Sebastien won’t be making it out of this room alive, and I think they know it, even if they are afraid to admit it. I’m not the best assassin because I was just born to be the best, I’m the best because I’ve been with Quay the longest. I was trained by him since I was an infant, and I slaughtered my first Evrallonic envoy when I was eleven years old. The act earned me my title: the Queen of Crimson. Ironic, considering my heritage.

  I was worked by the toughest, trained by the strongest, taught by the smartest, and led by the quickest. Quay made sure of that. On my first assignment, he gave me no weapons to fight with. When I’d asked why, he’d told me I was a weapon, and I should know by now how to wield myself.

  These men, these swordsmen, have no idea what it is like to be a weapon. They have trained with swords and perhaps firearms for years, I’m sure, and they assuredly know how to brandish them, but they have not been put through the extensive training I have been subject to. And the Cannon, for all their cruelty and intolerance, did fashion me into a weapon.

  The first man lunges towards me and I slice his arm wide open while I dodge his sword. I stab him in the back with my dagger and he shouts. Others are coming towards me and I trip one of them, throwing him to the ground. When he’s firmly on the stone, I use him as a step to jump up and somersault in the air, bringing my heel down into the skull of the next swordsman. When he drops, I move on to another, dropping to my hands and knees and swiping the man’s feet out from under him. As he falls, I slash his throat and blood drains from him like water through a dam.

  A sword connects with my arm, slicing the material of my tight blouse and drawing blood but not enough to be concerned about. I easily step back and kick the man that attacked me in the face while throwing the dagger in my hand at the throat of another soldier. I make my way towards Cicero, who is waiting for me with a sword in his hand. He and his brother fall tonight, and tomorrow I will find Dominik and Laderic, make them pay. I fight the urge to throw up at the thought of the two of them betraying me and decide I’ll mourn the loss of my companions later.

  Just as I reach Cicero, I disarm a soldier and use his sword to clash blades with my former compeer. The metal shing is loud throughout the outpost but I move quickly, dodging Cicero’s frantic blows and easily slicing the back of his leg with my own blade. Cicero cries out and I hear Sebastien running towards me, along with the other soldiers I didn’t kill. I drop to the ground and roll out of the way before Sebastien reaches me and I stand up behind him, moving like the wind, so quickly that Sebastien has no idea where I’ve gone until it’s too late.

  I stand behind Sebastien and with one thrust I have wrung him through. Sebastien chokes, attempts to shout, but then just drops to the ground in a heap. Cicero’s eyes are wide with astonishment and torment while he stares at his fallen brother as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. When he finally looks up, I see rage in his eyes.

  I point my sword at him. “You’re next.”

  That’s when I feel the prick on the side of my neck. My hand flies there but it only pushes whatever is stuck in my neck deeper. I flinch and feel the dart, extracting it from the muscle in my neck. I don’t need to taste it to recognize the potent smell. Ikketra. An herb that only grows in Evrallon, used as a paralytic there.

  My heart sinks. I immediately drop the dart and try to raise my sword to swing at Cicero, whose body shakes with rage, but my arms don’t respond. I see Cicero lunge towards me but he is restrained by the soldiers around him. My knees give and I feel myself falling. I have no such luck of passing out before I hit the floor. I feel my skull crack on the stone and bruises are probably already forming on the length of my body. Breathing seems to become more difficult and black spots cloud my vision. My head lolls to the side and I spot the Swordmaster walking towards me.

  He shakes his head in disdain. “You assassins,” he condemns. “Always believing you’re better than you are.”

  His mockery is the last thing I hear before the world shifts to darkness and fo
r the first time in a long time, I feel control slip through my fingers.

  II

  “Now, my dear Cap, if you don’t look sharp your hour is come!

  Nothing on earth will save you, Cap, but your own wits!”

  — E.D.E.N. Southworth, The Hidden Hand

  Darkness is my ally in all places but one. In the depths of my own mind, darkness is my enemy. The memories I have put away for so long, have practiced ignoring, resurface and have no guardrails.

  My mother lies in a bed before me, a mother I’ve never seen but in murals of her in the Lydovier palace. Hair like silver and gold wraps around her face but instead of the gray eyes I possess, hers glitter the color of jade, bright and full of life, yet I know she is laying there dying.

  “You will do well, my daughter.” my mother, the queen, assures me. “Do not fear the future, for all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.”

  I’ve never heard my mother say these words, but I read them in a letter she wrote to me when I was a baby, just after I was born and my father wanted to have me executed. Quay gave the letter to me when I turned sixteen, one year ago. In the hazy fog of my drugged mind, I can’t recall the rest of the letter, and everything else the image of my mother says is gibberish and incomprehensible until fire begins to lick up from her feet and turn her to ash.

  The floor drops out from under me and I fall, far, far down into the pit beneath the palace. I hit the floor so hard it almost jolts me awake, but the drugs have a strong hold on me and I remain in my dreamworld.

  I know I am dreaming, know I have been captured by the Evrallonic soldiers, yet there is nothing I can do but remain in sleep.

  Dark shadows twist and writhe around me, drawing closer. A face jumps in front of me but I can’t make out the features. I feel like I’m falling again, even though my feet are firmly planted on the ground.

  Turning around in the dark place, I see something horrific standing before me. A beast with great horns and pale blue skin tilts its head at me, cackling. It is humanoid in form but everything about it is wrong. Its figure concerns me instantly for I recognize it as a creature of magic. They were eradicated long ago, long before I was even born.

  I turn around and suddenly I’m back in the palace, in the grand ballroom where the king would hold dances and we, the assassins, would slip through the shadows, watching and mocking the dancers, since we were never allowed to attend for fear that someone may remember our faces.

  But this room is nothing like the ballroom in the Lydovier palace. It looks strange, like a dining room. Tables and chairs are set up and dignitaries all sit around, laughing and talking. I’ve never seen the ballroom set up like this.

  King Cress waves a servant to his table from where he sits. I begin to approach the former king, watching to see if blood sprouts from his side where he was shot by the arrow. When nothing happens, I move closer. The king looks like he should be laughing but when he speaks, it’s not his voice I hear. It’s unfamiliar, a new voice, filled with tangible distaste.

  “She’s vile.” murmurs the disgusted voice. I hear a sound of revulsion come from the king’s lips, but his voice still sounds so strange. “We should have killed the filthy wretch.”

  “We have our orders.”

  Now this voice I recognize, coming from the noble sitting beside my father. But it’s not Lord Corring’s voice I’ve heard — it’s the Swordmaster’s.

  My eyes open. Nightmares don’t startle me awake, nor do they cause me to cry out in my sleep. Quay taught me to never move in my sleep because it tires your body when it needs rest.

  This time, when I wake, I see a wooden ceiling and have a nauseous feeling in my stomach. The sound of creaking boards fills my ears and a rotten fish smell permeates the air.

  I gather all I can from my senses before I actually sit up to examine the room. Before I rise, I have determined I’m in the brig of a ship — an Evrallonic vessel. I am laying on the floor of the ship behind bars. Outside of the bars lies a small room that is dim, only the light between the boards illuminating it. The floor is damp where I sit from the ocean water beneath me and the stench of fish is foul in the air. In the outer room, ropes and chains hang from rafters, either tying the ship together in messy knots or just thrown about; one can never tell with Evrallonic filth.

  Whatever voices I heard in my dream are now gone. The Swordmaster is not present and neither is anyone else. I let out a slow breath and take a moment to assess the situation. How far am I from Lydovier? It’s daylight so I must assume I’m very close to Evrallon, as it barely takes two hours to reach the shore by boat. In the daylight, you can see Evrallon’s shores from Lydovier’s.

  I’ve been stripped down to only the bare essentials, wearing nothing but a thin undershirt that would be considered extremely inappropriate by most and my snug trousers. My fine leather boots are missing, as is the belt that once hung around my waist. I don’t need to pat down my legs to know the knife inside my trousers has been removed. It makes my skin crawl to know that Evrallonic men had to retrieve that knife.

  My gaze sweeps the surrounding area, hoping the Evrallonic were dull enough to leave a key anywhere near my cell. To my disappointment, the Evrallonic put more thought into my captivity than that. From the sound of it, the Swordmaster had planned on capturing me from the moment they stepped on the shores.

  The reminder of my companions’ betrayal hits me swiftly and I nearly punch through the floor beneath me. I grab hold of my temper and bite back a swear. I can’t believe my own stupidity. I even kissed Dominik, a mere thirty minutes before he fled Lydovier and left me to be dragged back by the Swordmaster of the Cruel King. And he was cowardly enough to let Cicero and Sebastien do the dirty work. Laderic, as well. But Dominik? There is a special place in hell for traitors like him. He’d smiled when I pushed him away, smiled knowing that I’d be captured in a matter of minutes.

  More than anything, I despise myself for not seeing it coming. Part of me recognizes that none of them showed any signs leading up to my betrayal and therefore I had no way of knowing, but I still could have been more prepared. I had been lulled into a false sense of security by their oaths to Quay and to the order of assassins, never thinking that oaths are only as good as the men who take them.

  Dominik used to tell me he hated taking oaths, that his mother told him to swear by neither heaven nor hell, nor by your mother nor your own grave, that a man’s word was all he had, and no one can swear anything in the future. I now believe Dominik only despised oaths because he felt obligated to keep them.

  I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about them. I could kill Dominik right now, Laderic as well. Cicero and Sebastien were my friends before — they were as close to me as Laderic and Dominik — but they weren’t anything like them. Dominik and Laderic had always seemed like unlikely assassins.

  Laderic, a boy of only fifteen-years-old, has red curly hair and green eyes like my mother. He was born in an old town in Lydovier and Quay and I rescued him when he was twelve and I was fourteen. He has a heart of gold but a sense for justice. He always wants to know why the person he’s assassinating needs to be taken out.

  Dominik came to the Cannon just before I turned eleven. He was twelve at the time. He came from Evrallon. Quay picked him up when he was there. I remember thinking he looked foreign but didn’t know his place of birth until I was older. Dominik was the same way; he would never assassinate unless he knew the person he was killing had wronged another so greatly that he deserved the punishment the king was dishing out.

  The rest of us? No. We never asked. In a twisted way, I can understand Cicero and Sebastien turning to Evrallon for their own selfish reasons, but I’d like to hear how Dominik and Laderic justify the slaughter of all the people in Lydovier.

  I hear a clatter upstairs and look towards the steps that lead from the upper deck. Hinges squeal and light floods down the stairs, followed by the sound of a boot hitting the first wooden step. The trapdo
or is closed after another set of footsteps begins marching down the stairs behind the first. I get to my feet and watch as the two men appear at the bottom of the steps.

  They’re very different. One is tall and slender, a sailor, and the other is gruff and burly, a soldier. They’re both employed by the Cruel King, though, if their red attire is any indication.

  “Well, well, well,” chuckles the soldier. His mustache is riddled with ash. One of the ones that destroyed my palace, I see. “If it isn’t the Queen, herself. How are you enjoying your time on The King’s Coffer so far, Your Majesty?”

  I just frown at them. No need to grace them with my words.

  The soldier laughs. “Stars, do you suppose she even has a tongue?”

  The sailor, an older fellow with graying hair, looks a little more apprehensive. “Can we just get her on deck?”

  “Relax, you old matelot.” Cuffs and chains jingle when the soldier pulls them from his belt. He smirks and purposefully dangles them in front of me for a moment before chuckling again and approaching the door with a key.

  The key is inserted into the lock and the solider turns the key over, unlatching my cell. I kick it open in an instant, sending the sailor scurrying. The soldier is less unprepared. He just smirks and takes one of my own daggers he must have had concealed on his belt and presses it against my neck. I feel the sharp point of my blade, a blade I sharpen daily, pressing into the hollow of my throat.

  “I couldn’t make it easy for you.” I say between gritted teeth.

  The serviceman just grins. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I like my women a little feisty.”

  His innuendo irks me. I quickly bat the man’s hand away, ignoring the slight nick on my neck that it causes. I twist his hand behind his back, feel the break of his arm in my palm, hear his scream, before snatching the knife from him. I’m about to plant it in the back of his skull when another blade presses to my neck from behind.