Assassin's Heart

by Sarah Ahiers

  I shook my head. I’d killed three members of their Family, all while in their territory. They’d chase me even after I left Genoni. Simply leaving the city wouldn’t be enough.

  I glanced behind me. Dorian paced Butters, dutifully following. Maybe I could buy myself some time. . . .

  “Dorian!” I called his name over the sound of their loud hooves, and his ears twitched in response. I shouted the command for him to turn right. He tossed his head, warring with his desire to stay behind Butters, but I had trained him well. He swung down a side street, away from us.

  I lost sight of him. This is their fault—the Da Vias. One more beautiful thing gone from my life. Tears pricked my eyes. Don’t think about it. He was a good horse. Someone would give him a good home.

  At the next fork, I swung Butters north, away from Ravenna and my home territory. Some of the Addamos would’ve gone ahead to the city limits to catch me there. Hopefully this change in direction would shave off a few pursuers.

  There! Before me stood the old, crumbled city wall. Behind it lay the end of the tightly packed buildings of the cities and the start of fields, spread through the valley until the river cut across them. That was my destination—the river and the bridge that spanned it.

  We hit the fields and I leaned forward in the saddle. Butters took the cue gladly and raced faster.

  A shout from behind. I spared a glance. From two different streets Addamos poured from the city, seven of them, each mounted on a horse of their own. They whipped their mounts in a desperate attempt to catch me.

  They could do it, too. Butters was fast and willing, but their mounts were fresher, and they knew the quickest path to reach the bridge.

  A whistle shrieked above me. I hauled left on Butters’s reins, and only my quick reflexes saved us from the arrow. Butters slid to the side, almost losing his feet. I kicked him to regain his lost speed.

  I stared over my shoulder for the archer.

  There were two of them, their horses moving slower as their riders used both hands to pull on their bows.

  I kneed Butters farther left, placing myself directly in front of the closing front runners, blocking me from the view of the archers.

  Only a few yards ahead stood the bridge over the river. They wouldn’t follow me across it. They couldn’t. Only someone with nothing to lose would cross the bridge at night.

  Someone like me.

  All bridges over the river were crooked, with sharp turns in the middle before they continued on.

  Spirits, like people, need bridges to pass over rivers, but they could only cross moving water in a straight line. The bridges zigzagged, to prevent the ghosts from reaching the cities.

  An arrow slammed into my shoulder. I slipped left and lost my grip. Only my thighs squeezing Butters’s barrel kept me in my seat. He stumbled again, compensating for my sudden shift in balance. Then we were on the bridge. Butters cut the last corner with an awkward leap. He landed, and I slapped painfully against the saddle. We’d done it. We’d crossed the river.

  I’d reached the dead plains, home to angry ghosts.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  nine

  I DIDN’T SLOW BUTTERS UNTIL WE WERE SAFE FROM the Addamo archers. I stopped him with a tap of my legs and my voice. He halted, his head hanging as his sides heaved.

  Bonelessly, I slid to the ground, my knees almost giving way beneath me. I leaned against Butters and examined my left shoulder.

  The arrowhead had pierced me through the top of my shoulder, the metal tip protruding from the front of me. The injury wasn’t life-threatening if I could treat it and it didn’t become infected. I wouldn’t treat it here, though. Not until I was safe.

  The Addamos sat on their horses on the other side of the river. My gamble had worked—they wouldn’t come after me into the dead plains, not at night.

  I hadn’t entered their city with the intent of killing three of their members. That had come about in self-defense. If they had any honor, they’d take this as a lesson to train their numbers better.

  They watched me for a few more moments, and then, as one, they turned from the river and headed back into the city.

  With a knife, I sliced off a strip of fabric from the bottom of my cloak. I tied it around my back and left arm with help from my teeth, immobilizing my arm across my chest to prevent further injury. Blood seeped into the makeshift bandage. I paused to catch my breath. I didn’t have much time. I’d left the Addamos behind, but what waited for me on the dead plains was much worse.

  “Plains” was a misnomer. The long grasses before me rolled over gentle hills. Their peaceful appearance belied their true nature. But returning to Lovero now would be a death sentence. The Addamos would be watching for me. And soon they’d inform the Da Vias. Luckily, the three Addamos who knew I wasn’t Rafeo were dead.

  The pain in my shoulder settled into a fierce ache. Regardless of my injury, I had to keep moving if I wanted to have a chance.

  The dead plains were dotted with shrines and monasteries dedicated to Safraella. If I could reach one, I’d find sanctuary.

  I remembered the stack of paper on my father’s desk, the bids for our new Family priest. I scanned my memory of the one I’d examined, searching for the location of the monastery. Northwest of Genoni.

  Mounting Butters with a single arm was difficult, but after much swearing and kicking, I managed to climb into the saddle. I rested, then nudged Butters forward. We headed northwest. I kept my eyes peeled, watching the dark landscape for movement.

  Everything was wrong. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. Why had this happened to me? How had my life come to this? Fleeing in the night, injured and alone.

  My fault. All my fault.

  But, also, the Da Vias’. I tightened my fist on the reins. Butters flicked his ears. It was their fault, too. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget this feeling, the rage flowing in your blood.

  Val. His actions had condemned me to this fate. If I could just speak to him, hear his side of things—no. Don’t be dumb, Lea. Nothing he could say would fix what had happened. Even if, more than anything, I wanted to feel his arms around me, telling me everything would be all right. That no one would find out about us. That we’d be safe together. But now I was alone and I’d never be safe again.

  Ahead, something lay in the tall grass. Butters snorted, and we approached cautiously. Nothing moved other than the grass in the wind.

  I knew it would be a body. I looked down as we passed. A man, dressed in cheap silks that fluttered around him in the night breeze. He lay facedown, his head turned to the side, dirt pressed against his mouth and open eyes. Nothing marked him, as if he’d dropped dead from a failed heart. It wasn’t his heart, though, that had brought his death.

  Anyone could become a ghost. People who died out of favor with their gods, people who didn’t worship a god, even people of good faith who died with too much rage or despair in their hearts. It was why we left the coins on people we clipped. It acted as a balm to ease their rage, to signal to Safraella that they’d been murdered for holy reasons and deserved a chance at a new life.

  Movement to my left. I turned slowly, trying not to draw attention.

  A wisp of white, a figure floating in the night across the field. An angry ghost. The dead plains were full of them.

  Many gods had their own personal hells they could damn their followers to, but Safraella did not. If someone was devoted to Safraella but died out of favor, they entered a sort of purgatory. Ghosts congregated on the dead plains, waiting for a person to stumble upon them so they could steal the body and turn that person into a ghost.

  But a ghost could never again be a person, and after a day or so it would abandon its stolen body—often on the dead plains, like the body in the tall grass—and begin its search anew, endlessly looking for the life that had been taken from it.<
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  I shivered. The angry ghosts were dangerous. They could use their rage to move objects, or they could rip your soul from your body. No one would ever willingly face a ghost. The ghosts were why the Addamos had let me go.

  I ducked my head and asked Butters to speed up. So far the ghost hadn’t noticed me. Sunrise was only an hour or two away. If I could pass through unmolested until then, I could travel to Yvain and find my uncle. Luckily, the Addamos didn’t know where I was headed, but there were only so many places one could go to from the plains.

  Butters huffed, his breath steaming in a puff of white in the cool spring night.

  To the right, more movement. Another ghost, heading south toward the river.

  I hunched in my cloak. My shoulder burned and my vision faded. I bit my lip until my sight cleared. I needed to stay in control or I wouldn’t make it out of the dead plains.

  But maybe . . . maybe it would be okay to not make it out. Maybe it was what I deserved for the deaths of my Family, an afterlife spent wandering the dead plains as a ghost. . . .

  No. If the ghosts took me, then no one would make the Da Vias pay for what they’d done.

  Butters shook his head, the metal buckles on his bridle tinkling quietly. I held my breath as the closer ghost paused, then turned toward me.

  Oh gods . . .

  The ghost shrieked—a guttural screech that echoed across the field. It rushed my way, its white, glowing form spread out behind it like morning mist.

  I kicked Butters. He jumped into a canter.

  Ghosts were dead. They never tired; they would keep coming until the sun rose or I could find safety.

  The angry ghost caught up to me. My voice evaporated in my throat and my fingers clutched the reins until pain rushed through my fingers. I stared at the ghost as it paced us, the rage on its face, the darkness in its mouth as it howled at me. It had been human, once. A woman. A faint outline glowed where her throat had been slashed. Someone had taken her life, but not someone in my Family. We marked our kills to avoid creating angry ghosts. But ghosts didn’t follow logic, or mercy. They followed their rage until it led them to a person.

  The ghost reached for me. I jerked Butters away, my shoulder stretching with fresh, hot pain. Her fingers passed through the saddle. She shrieked louder, her screams reverberating in my skull.

  More ghosts appeared; she’d called them in her rage. They raced to us and Butters flattened his ears, snorting, his eyes wide and white. Every hoofbeat pounded through my shoulder until my body was awash with agony.

  Their screeches deafened me. They seeped into my body until I clenched my eyes shut and screamed at them, trying anything to get them to stop their terrible cries.

  I leaned over Butters and forced him faster. He broke into a wild gallop. My thighs strained, and it was all I could do to stay on, one armed.

  The ghosts fell behind, and for a moment it seemed we would outrun them all, but they rallied and raced after us.

  Butters’s breaths beat beneath me, matching the rhythm of my own heart. A rock flew out of the night and struck Butters on the hind end. A ghost had thrown it.

  Butters bucked, squealing, and I slipped across the saddle, losing the reins completely. Only my feet in the stirrups kept me from spilling off. I lunged for the pommel and grasped it tightly, gasping as spots flashed before my eyes.

  With no pressure on the reins to slow his headlong gallop, Butters flew across the plains. His blond mane whipped painfully against my face as I crouched over his neck and struggled to keep my grip on the pommel. At this speed, falling off could be a death sentence, even without the arrow in my body. If I didn’t crack my skull or snap my neck, I was loaded with sharp objects, any of which could lodge fatally in my flesh.

  I used my left hand, still bound across my torso, to dig through a pouch on my waist for a Saldana Family coin. I clutched it tightly in my palm and prayed to Safraella.

  A ghost appeared beside us. Its spectral hands reached for me. I twisted, but its fingers slipped into the flesh of my thigh.

  Icy pain cracked through my body, radiating from where the ghost touched me. I shouted as the cold spread through my leg. The ghost pulled its hands away, but with it came a transparent image of my limb, the ghost’s fingers wrapped tightly around it as it tried to tug me from my own body.

  “No!” I yelled. I couldn’t fail my Family. “No!”

  The coin in my hand grew warm. Then hot. It burned, erasing all other pains. I struggled to open my hand, to be rid of the coin, but my fingers were paralyzed.

  I screamed, leaning over Butters, clutching my burning hand to my chest. I turned my face away as the ghost slowly pulled my soul from my body.

  The pain in my hand stopped, like a quick breath. An explosion of light erupted from my skin, catapulting the ghost away.

  Salvation appeared before me: the monastery, nearly hidden amid a grove of old oak trees.

  I put my burned hand out of mind and focused on the reins bouncing on Butters’s neck. I counted to three, then lunged for them, the leather slapping into my palm. I hauled back, trying to slow Butters, to show him I was in charge again. He tossed his head, his mouth and eyes wide, but his ears flicked backward and he slowed.

  I turned him toward the monastery as a small group of ghosts passed us by on the right and flowed around the trees.

  A thunderous crack split the night and a tree jerked, showering the field with new leaves. It creaked and toppled over, right in our path.

  We couldn’t stop—we were going too fast.

  I leaned forward over Butters’s neck again, loosening the reins until he reached the downed tree. He bunched his legs and we flew over the tree trunk, the ghosts behind shrieking in renewed anger and rage.

  We raced through the gates of the monastery, free of the mob of angry ghosts.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  ten

  AT THE SOUND OF BUTTERS’S HOOVES CLATTERING ON the stone entryway, the priests of Safraella rushed outside carrying lanterns.

  The angry ghosts milled around the fence surrounding the monastery, held back by the priests’ faith and the holy ground, blessed by Safraella.

  The priests reached my side, and I slid off Butters into their capable hands.

  “Sister, how do you come to be here so late at night?” The speaker was a man with dark skin, and hair clipped close to his scalp. He had brown, kind eyes with laugh lines around the edges.

  “You mean so early, Brother,” another one said. To the east, the sun crested the horizon and the wailing ghosts faded away in the soft light of morning.

  My legs wobbled, but the priest helped me to stand. “I fled across the dead plains.”

  He called for another priest to tend to Butters, whose chest heaved as he tried to regain his breath.

  “You have been arrow shot!” he exclaimed.

  I laughed. Surely he knew I was aware.

  “Come, Sister.” He lent me his shoulder. “We will tend you inside. I am Brother Faraday. When you are treated, you should tell me your tale, for it must be full of adventure and daring.”

  I glanced at him and his eyes sparkled. He was younger than I’d first guessed. Maybe only a few years older than me. “I know you.”

  His left eyebrow arched upward.

  “I saw your request to become the Saldana Family priest.”

  “Ah!”

  Inside the stone walls, candlelight filled the halls with a soft yellow light. Faraday led me past a great room with a stone altar at the far end and into a small chamber with only a table and chair.

  A few priests hovered in the doorway, peering past one another at me.

  Someone outside huffed, and the men parted to allow a priest with a bucket of hot water and towels draped over his arm to enter. Two others followed.

  One of the priests, who introduced himself as Brother Sebast
ien, cut my cloak away from my body, carefully removing it so it wouldn’t catch on the arrow shaft protruding from my shoulder.

  He examined the wound. “There’s no easy way to do this. We’ll have to force the arrowhead the rest of the way through your flesh. Then we’ll be better able to remove the shaft.”

  I slipped off my mask. Another priest took it reverently.

  “We’ll have it cleaned and repaired,” Brother Faraday said.

  “No!” My shout startled them. I lowered my voice. “Cleaning is fine. But the crack . . . leave it. It’s a reminder for me.”

  The priest carried my mask away.

  “What have you done to your hand?” Brother Sebastien seized my wrist.

  I’d almost forgotten my hand. I turned it over and with some effort managed to peel my fingers open.

  “What is this?” Sebastien plucked the coin carefully from my scorched palm and passed it to Brother Faraday. My burned skin cooled painfully in the air. It was red and raw. Brother Sebastien dabbed at my hand with a damp cloth.

  Faraday cleaned the coin under the light of a lantern.

  “It’s a holy coin,” I answered. “I was clutching it in my fear.”

  “But why are you burned?” Faraday asked.

  I shrugged, then hissed in pain from the movement.

  “I don’t know how it burned me,” I replied to Faraday. Sebastien cut away my leathers and started to clean my shoulder of blood. “I didn’t think I’d be able to reach the monastery before the ghosts stopped me. I clutched the coin and pleaded for Safraella to save me.”

  Faraday paused in his examination of the coin and stared at me, his gaze so intense I fidgeted in my seat.

  Sebastien pressed his hands against my shoulders, holding me in place. “Miss Oleander, I must implore you to remain still.”

  “You recognize me?” I asked, surprised.

  “The coin and the mask are Family Saldana, though the mask belongs to Rafeo Saldana. The late Rafeo Saldana, if I’ve judged things correctly.” He glanced at me, then returned to my shoulder. “There are only two women in the Saldana Family, and you don’t look nearly old enough to be Bianca. Therefore, Oleander.”