by Jon Skovron
“One last chance.” A burly man in shirtsleeves advanced on the girl, fists like cannonballs ready at his sides. “Come nice and quiet to your master, or we’ll break your legs and drag you to him in a sack.”
“I’m my own master,” the girl retorted, her voice blunt as a boat hook. “And you can tell Orthys to take his indenture contract and stuff it up his bunghole.”
They hadn’t noticed me yet. I could work my way around to the next bridge, and get my book safely home. I took a step back, glancing around for someone to put a stop to this: an officer of the watch, a soldier, anyone but me.
There was no one. The street lay deserted. Everyone else in the Tallows knew enough to make themselves scarce.
“Have it your way,” the man growled. The ruffians closed in on their prey.
This was exactly the sort of situation in which a young lady of the august and noble house of Cornaro should not involve herself, and in which a person of any moral fortitude must.
Maybe I could startle them, like stray dogs. “You there! Stop!”
They turned to face me, their stares cold and flat. The air went dry in my throat.
“This is none of your business,” one in a scuffed leather doublet warned. A scar pulled at the corner of his mouth. I doubted it came from a cooking accident.
I had no protection besides the dagger in my belt. The name Cornaro might hold weight with these scoundrels, but they’d never believe I bore it. Not dressed like this.
My name meant nothing. The idea sent a wild thrill into my lungs, as if the air were alive.
The girl didn’t wait to see what I would do. She tried to bolt between two of the men. A tree branch of an arm caught her at the waist, scooping her up as if she were a child. Her feet swung in the air.
My satchel pulled at my shoulder, but I couldn’t run off and leave her now, Muscati or no Muscati. Drawing my dagger seemed a poor idea. The men were all armed, one with a flintlock pistol.
“Help!” I called.
The brutes seemed unimpressed. They kept their attention on the struggling girl as they wrenched her arms behind her.
“That’s it!” Rage swelled her voice. “This is your last warning!”
Last warning? What an odd thing to say. Unless …
Ice slid into my bone marrow.
The men laughed, but she glowered furiously at them. She wasn’t afraid. I could think of only one reason she wouldn’t be.
I flattened myself against a wall just before everything caught fire.
Her eyes kindled first, a hungry blue spark flaring in her pupils. Then flames ran down her arms in delicate lines, leaping into the pale, lovely petals of a deadly flower.
The men lurched back from her, swearing, but it was too late. Smoke already rose from their clothing. Before they finished sucking in their first terrified breaths, blue flames sprang up in sudden, bold glory over every inch of them, burying every scar and blemish in light. For one moment, they were beautiful.
Then they let out the screams they had gathered. I cringed, covering my own mouth. The pain in them was inhuman. The terrible, oily reek of burning human meat hit me, and I gagged.
The men staggered for the canal, writhing in the embrace of the flames. I threw up my arm to ward my face from the heat, blocking the sight. Heavy splashes swallowed their screams.
In the sudden silence, I lowered my arm.
Fire leaped up past the girl’s shoulders now. A pure, cold anger graced her features. It wasn’t the look of a woman who was done.
Oh, Hells.
She raised her arms exultantly, and flames sprang up from the canal itself, bitter and wicked. They spread across the water as if on a layer of oil, licking at the belly of the bridge. On the far side of the canal, bystanders drawn by the commotion cried out in alarm.
“Enough!” My voice tore out of my throat higher than usual. “You’ve won! For mercy’s sake, put it out!”
But the girl’s eyes were fire, and flames ran down her hair. If she understood me, she made no sign of it. The blue fire gnawed at the stones around her feet. Hunger unsatisfied, it expanded as if the flagstones were grass.
I recognized it at last: balefire. I’d read of it in Orsenne’s Fall of Celantis.
Grace of Mercy preserve us all. That stuff would burn anything—water, metal, stone. It could light up the city like a dry corncrib. I hugged my book to my chest.
“You have to stop this!” I pleaded.
“She can’t,” a strained voice said. “She’s lost control.”
I turned to find a tall, lean young man at my shoulder, staring at the burning girl with understandable apprehension. His wavy black hair brushed the collar of the uniform I wanted to see most in the world at the moment: the scarlet-and-gold doublet of the Falconers. The very company that existed to control magic so things like this wouldn’t happen.
“Thank the Graces you’re here! Can you stop her?”
“No.” He drew in a deep, unsteady breath. “But you can, if you have the courage.”
“What?” It was more madness, piled on top of the horror of the balefire. “But I’m not a Falconer!”
“That’s why you can do it.” Something delicate gleamed in his offering hand. “Do you think you can slip this onto her wrist?”
It was a complex weave of gold wire and scarlet beads, designed to tighten with a tug. I recognized the pattern from a woodcut in one of my books: a Falconer’s jess. Named after the tethers used in falconry, it could place a seal on magic.
“She’s on fire,” I objected.
“I know. I won’t deny it’s dangerous.” His intent green eyes clouded. “I can’t do it myself; I’m already linked to another. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t an emergency. The more lives the balefire consumes, the more it spreads. It could swallow all of Raverra.”
I hesitated. The jess sagged in his hand. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have—”
“I’ll do it.” I snatched the bracelet from him before I could think twice.
“Thank you.” He flashed me an oddly wistful smile. “I’ll distract her while you get close. Wits and courage. You can do it.”
The Falconer sprinted toward the spreading flames, leaving the jess dangling from my hand like an unanswered question.
He circled to the canal’s edge, calling to get the girl’s attention. “You! Warlock!”
She turned toward him. Flame trailed behind her like a queen’s mantua. The spreading edges crawled up the brick walls of the nearest house in blazing tendrils.
The Falconer’s voice rang out above the clamor of the growing crowd across the canal. “In the name of His Serenity the Doge, I claim you for the Falcons of Raverra!”
That certainly got her attention. The flames bent in his direction as if in a strong wind.
“I don’t belong to you, either!” Her voice was wild as a hissing bonfire. “You can’t claim me. I’ll see you burn first!”
Now she was going to kill him, too. Unless I stopped her.
My heart fluttering like an anxious dowager’s handkerchief, I struggled to calm down and think. Maybe she wouldn’t attack if I didn’t rush at her. I tucked my precious satchel under my coat and hustled toward the bridge as if I hoped to scurry past her and escape. It wasn’t hard to pretend. Some in the crowd on the far side beckoned me to safety.
My legs trembled with the urge to heed them and dash across. I couldn’t bear the thought of Muscati’s pages withering to ashes.
I tightened my grip on the jess.
The Falconer extended his hand toward the girl to keep her attention. “By law, you belonged to Raverra the moment you were born with the mage mark. I don’t know how you managed to hide for so long, but it’s over now. Come with me.”
The balefire roared at him in a blue-white wave.
“Plague take you!” The girl raised her fist in defiance. “If Raverra wants my fire, she can have it. Let the city burn!”
I lunged across the remaining distance between us, leap
ing over snaking lines of flame. Eyes squeezed half shut against the heat, I flung out an arm and looped the jess over her upraised fist.
The effect was immediate. The flames flickered out as if a cold blast of wind had snuffed them. The Falconer still recoiled, his arms upraised to protect his face, his fine uniform doublet smoking.
The girl swayed, the fire flickering out in her eyes. The golden jess settled around her bone-thin wrist.
She collapsed to the flagstones.
Pain seared my hand. I hissed through my teeth as I snatched it to my chest. That brief moment of contact had burned my skin and scorched my boots and coat. My satchel, thank the Graces, seemed fine.
Across the bridge, the gathering of onlookers cheered, then began to break up. The show was over, and nobody wanted to go near a fire warlock, even an unconscious one.
I couldn’t blame them. No sign remained of ruffians in the canal, though the burned smell lingered horribly in the air. Charred black scars streaked the sides of the buildings flanking me.
The Falconer approached, grinning with relief. “Well done! I’m impressed. Are you all right?”
It hit me in a giddy rush that it was over. I had saved—if not all of Raverra, at least a block or two of it—by myself, with my own hands. Not with my mother’s name, or with my mother’s wealth, but on my own.
Too dangerous to go to a pawnbroker’s shop? Ha! I’d taken out a fire warlock. I smiled at him, tucking my burned hand into my sleeve. “I’m fine. I’m glad I could help.”
“Lieutenant Marcello Verdi, at your service.” He bowed. “What is your name, brave young lady?”
“Amalia Cornaro.”
“Well, welcome to the doge’s Falconers, Miss …” He stopped. The smile fell off his face, and the color drained from his bronze skin. “Cornaro.” He swallowed. “Not … you aren’t related to La Contessa Lissandra Cornaro, surely?”
My elation curdled in my stomach. “She’s my mother.”
“Hells,” the lieutenant whispered. “What have I done?”
if you enjoyed
BLOOD AND TEMPEST
look out for
AGE OF ASSASSINS
The Wounded Kingdom:
Book 1
by
RJ Barker
To catch an assassin, use an assassin …
Girton Club-Foot, apprentice to the land’s best assassin, still has much to learn about the art of taking lives. But his latest mission tasks him and his master with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone, or many someones, is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton and his master to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince’s murder.
In a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies, Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted, and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire kingdom.
Chapter 1
We were attempting to enter Castle Maniyadoc through the night soil gate and my master was in the sort of foul mood only an assassin forced to wade through a week’s worth of shit can be. I was far more sanguine about our situation. As an assassin’s apprentice you become inured to foulness. It is your lot.
“Girton,” said Merela Karn. That is my master’s true name, though if I were to refer to her as anything other than “Master” I would be swiftly and painfully reprimanded. “Girton,” she said, “if one more king, queen or any other member of the blessed classes thinks a night soil gate is the best way to make an unseen entrance to their castle, you are to run them through.”
“Really, Master?”
“No, not really,” she whispered into the night, her breath a cloud in the cold air. “Of course not really. You are to politely suggest that walking in the main gate dressed as masked priests of the dead gods is less conspicuous. Show me a blessed who doesn’t know that the night soil gate is an easy way in for an enemy and I will show you a corpse.”
“You have shown me many corpses, Master.”
“Be quiet, Girton.”
My master is not a lover of humour. Not many assassins are; it is a profession that attracts the miserable and the melancholic. I would never put myself into either of those categories, but I was bought into the profession and did not join by choice.
“Dead gods in their watery graves!” hissed my master into the night. “They have not even opened the grate for us.” She swung herself aside whispering, “Move, Girton!” I slipped and slid crabwise on the filthy grass of the slope running from the river below us up to the base of the towering castle walls. Foulness farted out of the grating to join the oozing stream that ran down the motte and joined the river.
A silvery smudge marred the riverbank in the distance; it looked like a giant paint-covered thumb had been placed over it. In the moonlight it was quite beautiful, but we had passed near as we sneaked in, and I knew it was the same livid yellow as the other sourings which scarred the Tired Lands. There was no telling how old this souring was, and I wondered how big it had been originally and how much blood had been spilled to shrink it to its present size. I glanced up at the keep. This side had few windows and I thought the small souring could be new, but that was a silly, childish thought. The blades of the Landsmen kept us safe from sorcerers and the magic which sucked the life from the land. There had been no significant magic used in the Tired Lands since the Black Sorcerer had risen, and he had died before I had been born. No, what I saw was simply one of many sores on the land—a place as dead as the ancient sorcerer who made it. I turned from the souring and did my best to imagine it wasn’t there, though I was sure I could smell it, even over the high stink of the night soil drain.
“Someone will pay for arranging this, Girton, I swear,” said my master. Her head vanished into the darkness as she bobbed down to examine the grate once more. “This is sealed with a simple five-lever lock.” She did not even breathe heavily despite holding her entire weight on one arm and one leg jammed into stonework the black of old wounds. “You can open this, Girton. You need as much practice with locks as you can get.”
“Thank you, Master,” I said. I did not mean it. It was cold, and a lock is far harder to manipulate when it is cold.
And when it is covered in shit.
Unlike my master, I am no great acrobat. I am hampered by a clubbed foot, so I used my weight to hold me tight against the grating even though it meant getting covered in filth. On the stone columns either side of the grate the forlorn remains of minor gods had been almost chipped away. On my right only a pair of intricately carved antlers remained, and on my left a pair of horns and one solemn eye stared out at me. I turned from the eye and brought out my picks, sliding them into the lock with shaking fingers and feeling within using the slim metal rods.
“What if there are dogs, Master?”
“We kill them, Girton.”
There is something rewarding in picking a lock. Something very satisfying about the click of the barrels and the pressure vanishing as the lock gives way to skill. It is not quite as rewarding done while a castle’s toilets empty themselves over your body, but a happy life is one where you take your pleasures where you can.
“It is open, Master.”
“Good. You took too long.”
“Thank you, Master.” It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but I was sure she smiled before she nodded me forward. I hesitated at the edge of the pitch-dark drain. “It looks like the sort of place you’d find Dark Ungar, Master.”
“The hedgings are just like the gods, Girton—stories to scare the weak-minded. There’s nothing in there but stink and filth. You’ve been through worse. Go.” I slithered through the gate, managing to make sure no part of my skin or clothing remained clean, and into the tunnel that led through the keep’s curtain wall. Somewhere beyond I could hear the lumpy splashes of night soil being shovelled into the stream that ran over my feet. The living classes in the villages keep their piss and night soil and sell it to the tanneries and dye makers, but the blessed clas
ses are far too grand for that, and their castles shovel their filth out into the rivers—as if to gift it to the populace. I have crawled through plenty of filth in my fifteen years, from the thankful, the living and the blessed; it all smells equally bad.
Once we had squeezed through the opening we were able to stand, and my master lit a glow-worm lamp, a small wick that burns with a dim light that can be amplified or shut off by a cleverly interlocking set of mirrors. Then she lifted a gloved hand and pointed at her ear.
I listened.
Above the happy gurgle of the stream running down the channel—water cares nothing for the medium it travels through—I heard the voices of men as they worked. We would have to wait for them to move before we could proceed into the castle proper, and whenever we have to wait I count out the seconds the way my master taught me—one, my master. Two, my master. Three, my master—ticking away in my mind like the balls of a water clock as I stand idle, filth swirling round my ankles and my heart beating out a nervous tattoo.
You get used to the smell. That is what people say.
It is not true.
Eight minutes and nineteen seconds passed before we finally heard the men laugh and move on. Another signal from my master and I started to count again. Five minutes this time. Human nature being the way it is you cannot guarantee someone will not leave something and come back for it. When the five minutes had passed we made our way up the night soil passage until we could see dim light dancing on walls caked with centuries of filth. My own height plus a half above us was the shovelling room. Above us the door creaked and then we heard footsteps, followed by voices.
“… so now we’re done and Alsa’s in the heir’s guard. Fancy armour and more pay.”
“It’s a hedging’s deal. I’d sooner poke out my own eyes and find magic in my hand than serve the fat bear, he’s a right yellower.”
“Service is mother though, aye?”
Laughter followed. My master glanced up through the hole, chewing on her lip. She held up two fingers before speaking in the Whisper-That-Flies-to-the-Ear so only I could hear her.
