After eating so much my jaw ached, I took a skin of wine to the face, burped and got down to business. The four of us sat at the edge of the hill, overlooking the sheer drop into straw-colored grass wilting at the tips.
“Shepherd,” Kale said, “you’ve gotta tell me where you’ve been. I know you can disappear well enough, but we can still usually find you. I put out enough whispers for you this past month to cover the entirety of Mizridahl.”
I swished around some wine in my mouth, then swallowed it. It tasted tart, sucked the spit right from my cheeks. “Well, I haven’t been on Mizridahl.”
Kale flicked a loose rock off the cliff. “Figured you might have fled to… what’s the place called? Hilth? That doesn’t sound right.”
“Lith,” I corrected him. “And I didn’t flee. You’ve known me for a while, Kale. Ever known me to flee?”
“You set Braddock Glannondil on fire. Thought fleeing was the only sensible action. That’s what I was planning to do, lest the fat fuck capture me too.”
I lowered the skin of wine. This conversation had taken a turn I didn’t quite like. “Who else has he taken?”
“You don’t know? Haven’t heard?”
“Listen, I haven’t been in the fucking realm of the living for the past month.”
Kale stroked his chin and mouthed, wow. “All right. Well, can I at least assume you remember making Braddock very warm and toasty?”
“I think we both remember that.” I turned to Lysa, but saw that she was lying on her back, asleep. So was Rovid.
“He survived,” Kale said.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“And he put a bounty on the Black Rot so big that you can’t skip through a run-down hamlet without seeing our faces plastered on parchment and nailed to barns. And let me tell you, Shepherd, whatever artist he got to sketch us — pretty damn good.”
It was his fat, probably. All that blubber he hauled around saved his life. Fire couldn’t eat through all the layers before his panicked soldiers stomped it out.
“Fear no fury like that of a singed man,” I said. “Is that a saying? It is now, at any rate. Okay, so who’s he taken down?”
“He’s imprisoning them,” Kale said. “Far as I’ve heard, near everyone. Slenna and Wevel may be out there still. They split from the Hole a few days ago, fearing he’d come marching here soon. I thought the same. Good thing you caught me today, because I’d be gone by tomorrow.”
Imprisoning them? Interesting choice there. If it was retribution against the Black Rot he wanted, he’d have had their heads delivered to him in buckets. Only one good reason existed for him to chain them up and feed ’em slop till their muscles atrophied and their spirits withered away.
“Braddock’s using them as bait,” I said. “He wants to lure me in. He knows I’d do anything to save my Rots, even if most had left that life.”
Kale nibbled away at the nubs of his fingers. “Is he right?”
I thought about it for a while. “He’s right. For more reasons than he realizes. I’ve a plan, Kale, and I need the Black Rot whole again.”
“What kind of plan?”
“All I can tell you is that it involves assassins doing what assassins do best. And if it fails… well, we’ve got about a month before the world ends. So we’ve got that to look forward to.”
Kale picked up a clomp of dirt and threw it, smacking me in the chest with it. “Fuck you. You’re not leaving me hanging on that thread.”
I laughed. “Let’s get some more wine, and I’ll tell you all about my exciting escapades.”
The morning palette of gorgeous pinks and lustful oranges wasted away into the blandness of blue, and with it came a searing heat that had Kale and me sweating wine. We drank, and we ate, and he listened eagerly as I recalled the dramatic, the dangerous, the disturbing and the downright dreadful. Some memories exaggerated, some forgotten.
I woke up in the middle of the night, mouth parched, stomach rumbling. Kale had fetched some water, but it looked to be a few nights old. A fine coat of muck lay on top. Not one to enjoy shitting liquid for the next week, I dumped it out and hauled up some fresh from the well. Then I went into the Hole, grabbed a torch and carried it through the maze of mud corridors, till I reached a confined space that I had originally dubbed Astul’s Quarters. I’d never used the room much, except to escape into the quiet of my own thoughts, when the rare urge struck me.
I leaned the torch into a few candlewicks, then placed it upon a fixture on the wood-braced wall. A small circular desk sat upon steel feet so that the dirt beneath couldn’t rot it away. Hadn’t prevented the innumerable leaks over the years from whittling down the frame, though. Only downside to carving out the earth and living inside: rain. And the potential for dirt to shift and serve you up as a chunk of chocolate cake in death.
I sat at the desk, the chair creaking and wobbling. I took a pen from the ink tray and tapped it on my finger. A dollop of ink marked my skin. First time I’d had a bloody working pen in weeks.
Most of the parchment had fallen victim to the ruinous cycle of wetting and drying, so it was brittle and smeared with gray water spots. But it would work just fine for the purpose I had in mind.
I straightened my shoulders and set my eyes on the wooden walls, where the tail of torch fire whirled toward the ceiling like a flaming spire. My fingers moved, manipulating the pen. Twisting it down the paper. Dragging it across. Lifting it up, putting it down. Angling it this way and that. But I didn’t pay any mind to the letters the ink drew from the alphabet. All my thoughts revolved around the fire, its shadow prancing as if it were a dancer shaking her hips.
My hand moved automatically, requiring no semblance of thought. If Occrum was reading his little book right now, he would witness the artistic mind of Astul at work, exploring the existential and the abstract. The book may have revealed to him the secrets of the world, but it would never reveal the name and place my pen scrawled on that piece of paper.
“There you are,” Lysa said. She leaned against the hollowed-out doorway. “Your, um, Hole is really big. It’s kind of deceiving. I must have walked every hallway before I found you. What are you doing?”
With a bit of sleight of hand, I concealed the parchment and slid it off the table. It fell onto my thigh, where I quickly stuffed it in my pocket.
“Welcome to my brooding chamber,” I said. “You slept a long time.”
“I could sleep even more. But I’m hungry. What are you thinking about?”
“The meaning of life.”
She rolled her eyes and saw herself into the room. “I’m sure.”
“You know our little tiff with Braddock Glannondil resulted in all my Rots being captured.”
She wrapped a soothing hand around my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
“We’re going to free them. We have to. I need them. We need them.”
“For the plan? The one you won’t tell me about.”
A heavy sigh wrinkled the candle flames. “The one I can’t tell you about.”
“You could in Amortis. He’d never know. And I can keep a secret.”
Frustrated, I stood up and marched to the side of the room. “It’s not about keeping secrets. It’s about keeping your own thoughts from yourself. It’s not easy. It’s driving me fucking insane.”
Soft, pliable fingers had me by the arm. “I can do that.” Her voice was like a whisper in the deepest, darkest of places where sound does not exist. A hiss that threads itself into your skull. “Better than you, I bet.”
A sarcastic chuckle slipped from between my lips.
“I’ve read about it,” she said. “In my book.”
“The one that almost killed you?”
“It didn’t almost kill me,” she said. “I know strategies to suppress my thoughts. Listen to me, Astul. I want to help you. I want to help us.”
I turned toward her. Determination was pulling at her face. “You will help. By freeing the Rots and—”
“N
o!” she said, the forcefulness of her words avalanching her bangs into her eyes. “I’ll end up being your sidekick, that’s all. I know how this works. I’m not your assistant, handing you whatever tools you request.”
“Then what are you?”
She crossed her arms, set her jaw. “Something greater.” She paused, then relaxed her shoulders. “If you’re worried about something happening to me, I’ll be careful.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I stared at her a while, trying to figure out where exactly I had gone wrong — when I’d started caring this much. Lysa Rabthorn was beautiful and smart and strong-willed. She was naive and reckless and idealistic. And somewhere along this misbegotten journey, she had become someone special to me, someone I’d never had before.
It was probably time to stop protecting her.
“We need to start a great war,” I said. “Or how about a good war, half the size of a great one.”
“Don’t tell me here! We can go through the tear, back into Amortis. Tell me there.”
I waved away her concerns. “Occrum already knows this plan. It’s the first step. Well, first major step. There’s not much he can do to prevent it, given the only tools he has at his disposal are reapers and himself. Reapers can’t stop the momentum of a budding war. And you know as well as I that he won’t make an appearance.”
“Okay,” Lysa said. “But how do you start a war?”
“Murdering and lying, mostly. I’m not going to ask you to do either of those.”
She thought about this. “Tell me more.”
“Much as I’d like to have the five great families face off against each other, time won’t allow it. We’ve got a month and a half before the Bay of Selaph drains. It’ll take Patrick Verdan that long to march. Jesson Tath even longer.” I rolled a ball of mud off the wall and flicked it aimlessly. “Braddock Glannondil has left me a string on which to play, and I’m going to take it. The idea’s this: incite a war between Braddock and Kane. Easy enough, given the circumstances. But we also need Dercy Daniser to ally with Kane.”
“Why?”
“Can’t tell you that part. You’ll have to trust me.”
Lysa twirled her lemony hair around and around her finger. “You don’t think Dercy will help?”
I paced the room. “Got a better chance of convincing a tortoise to hand over its shell. He’s got no stake in the fight, and he suffered plenty of casualties during the war with the conjurers. But, I’ll figure out something. Or I won’t, and we’ll all die horrible deaths. No pressure, yeah?”
Lysa lifted her chin high into the air and slapped her chest. “Leave it to me.”
“You?”
“Me. It’s simple, really. I’ll just, you know, make him march to war.”
I crossed my arms, eager to hear the logic behind this. “I didn’t know Lysa Rabthorn had the kind of clout to persuade isolated kings into action.”
“I don’t need clout. I don’t need anything. Except the past ten years of training.”
Boom. She dropped it on me, like a brick right to the head. I bit down on my knuckle, dissecting the possibility. There’s a trick to analyzing solutions. You break it down. Sever any emotional attachment you have to the problem at hand and the players involved. You grind it up, make it as black-and-white as you can.
The prospect of having a conjurer on my side wasn’t one that I’d considered before, largely due to the aforementioned emotions. But this would provide the opportunity I needed. And it’d work, most likely, so long as Lysa was skilled enough. Tough break for Dercy, having his mind filched. But it was with good intentions, however slippery a slope that justification might be.
One minor impediment, though. If you encounter enough problems and conceive enough solutions, you learn that, in the end, you can’t disregard emotional attachment. Gotta add it back in. It’ll come back to haunt you, if you don’t.
“If you fail,” I told Lysa, “or are discovered, or Occrum’s reapers intercept you, or if a number of other obstacles trip you up…”
She touched my shoulder. “Astul, I know. I want this.”
“Do you? You’ve confessed to me that you only want to use your power to do good in this world.”
“But I’ll be doing good.”
“Mm. This isn’t the kind of good that’s as clear-cut as helping a distraught woman overcome her child’s death, you know.”
She was standing straight, unflinching. Unbudging.
“All right, then,” I said. “We’ll get you a horse, and you can gallop away to Watchmen’s Bay. I’ll send Kale with you. He’ll bloody some reapers if need be.”
Lysa smiled so big, her tongue was poking out of her mouth. “I was gonna go anyways, even if you didn’t agree.”
“You’re an ass,” I said, grinning.
“I learned from the best,” she chirped, winking. She eased her hand around mine. “I’ll go ready myself.”
“Send Rovid in if he’s awake.”
She flashed me one last freckle-dashed smile, then spun around like a wind-whipped curtain.
I watched the last of her shadow slink around the bend, and I thought of those words she said to me — I’ll be careful. I hoped they weren’t a lie. A man can only endure so much. Can only be shattered and broken so many times, before the wires cobbling him together simply will not hold anymore. Or ever again.
Thankfully a groggy man with fucking cat eyes interrupted my inner spewing of sorrow and heartache.
Rovid groaned and plopped down against a wall. “I’m still exhausted. What’d I sleep, fifteen hours?”
“I told her not to bother you unless you were awake.”
“She didn’t listen. What do you want?”
I slipped the parchment out of my pocket. “I’d wager you probably want some time to yourself.”
“What is this? A clever way of demanding I do something for you?”
I folded the parchment twice over and walked it to the reaper. “Go back to Amortis, read this. Do not open it until you’re there. You’ve got ten days to get what we need.”
He sniggered. “Ten days? Anything else, your highness?”
I crouched so the two of us could see eye to eye. “You don’t like being told what to do. I understand that. What I don’t understand is how you functioned in your little circle of reapers. No one gave orders?”
“I did. I was leader material from the start, Occrum even said so.”
“Now you’re not,” I said. “Now you’re someone who’s a flash of steel away from going to a very bad place. So, what do you say? Do you wanna help save this fucking world and maybe readjust your weight on the celestial scale of goodness? Or are you going to continue being a piece of shit and bitch that I didn’t give you a sword, sew a fucking emblem on your shirt, and call you Commander Rovid?”
With a scoff, he snatched the parchment from me. Held my eyes for a while, then pocketed the paper, silently acknowledging that we had a deal.
“Take whatever you need from here. Food, gold — not that it’ll do you much good in Amortis — water, wine.”
Rovid grunted, got up and presumably went to fetch whatever supplies he needed.
I pinched the candles in the room, then dislodged the torch from its brazier. Time to put the plan into motion.
Chapter Nineteen
I fucked up.
The crows told me as much. They cawed and cawed, then beat their wings and soared over the ridged, pockmarked landscape. Out here, the birds know everything. They know when the weather’s about to turn, when the worms will wriggle out of the muddy ground, and when the foreboding approaches.
They weren’t flying away because of me, but rather from whatever was coming for me.
The sounds were subtle as evening laid its plum-colored sheet overhead. A snap of dry grass, a crackle echoing deep in the forest over ways. Sounds that the wind can stir up. But there was no wind out here. Nothing but the stillness o
f a humid air.
The noises inched closer. Pebbles sledded down a hillside, as if a misplaced foot had jettisoned them off. I looked up, saw nothing.
I’d been on this path for two days now, after seeing Lysa off with Kale. Under the presumption that Occrum wouldn’t know the passage I was on from Braddock’s puckered and now-charred asshole, I set out alone. After all, Mizridahl’s a big place, and thoughts alone don’t lend themselves well to identifying location with precision.
It seemed, however, that either I’d been mistaken and his agents of death were pursuing me, or something else had a sniff of my scent. I hoped it was the prior. It’s always easier to take comfort in knowing what chases you. If not reapers, then what? Various sects of clans lived in these hills, none too receptive to strangers. Wanderers would roam here, but few would be sophisticated enough to hunt down anything more than game. Wolves prowled behind the shadows of jagged rock, and they were patient, rarely ever seen till they were on top of you.
Or maybe something my mind hadn’t yet conceived pursued me. I’d met conjurers, reapers, the reaped, phoenixes and all sorts of things that make your teeth chatter and your innards bounce around. So I wasn’t counting anything out.
So yes, I’d fucked up. I’d wanted the alone time. I’d been elbow to elbow with Lysa, Rovid or Rav for the past month. Stuffed in tiny wagons half the time, sleeping in confined spaces together. It’s the kind of thing that’ll make you snap and tell everyone to fuck off while you march off into the distance to collect your sanity. But now I wished I’d swiped a mercenary from some hovel. One of us would sleep while the other kept watch.
I didn’t have that luxury. If I closed my eyes, I might as well have stuck a sign into the ground that said GET YOUR DAILY DOSE OF MURDER HERE.
So, I didn’t sleep. It’d only been twenty hours. I’d be fine for a while longer. Or was it more along the lines of twenty-five? Oh well. Didn’t matter. With all the lovely scenery — if you looked over there, you’d see blackness, and over there? A different shade of blackness — you could have gotten ten hours of rest and been immediately sleepy after a one-mile jaunt through this morose place.
The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) Page 19
