by Rj Barker
A chill ran through me. My master would not be able to protect me now. In front of Adran she could be Merela Karn, assassin, but in front of these witnesses she could only be a jester, and jesters were forbidden to speak in company. Adran intended me to take the blame and did not want my master getting in the way. The queen slowed her pacing and came to a stop before me, straightening her back so she could look down on me.
“Did you do it, boy?” she said gently. “No one would blame you. Tempers among the young can become frayed and Kyril could be impetuous. We know you and he have had run-ins, that you did not get on.”
“Has something happened to Kyril?” I said. Her hand flashed out and slapped me across the face, leaving stinging heat on my cheek.
“Don’t use that glib tongue on me, child.” Her face was inches from mine. “Kyril is dead, and you know it because you killed him. Maybe a bit of rough and tumble was too much for you, or maybe you thought he was sniffing around that doe-eyed stablegirl you keep chasing after.” She stepped back. “I don’t really care why you did it. But you did kill him. Admit it to me now in front of these witnesses and it will go far easier for you than if I need to have the truth pulled from your bones.” I could barely speak and, absurdly, my embarrassment at hearing Drusl named was greater than my fear. “Are you shocked that I know about your little infatuation, boy?” she said. “You shouldn’t be. I know everything that happens in this castle because it is my castle.” She lowered her voice. “That is how I know you killed Kyril.”
“I did not kill Kyril, Queen Adran.”
“Who did then?” She screamed the words into my face. “Who else would want him dead?”
“I don’t know. But I did not kill Kyril, Queen Adran.”
“If the young blessed says he did not do this thing, my queen,” said my master, “then he did not.”
“Be quiet, jester,” hissed Adran. “You have no right to speak here.”
“My queen,” said Daana ap Dhyrrin. “Death’s Jester may speak out of turn, but she is right. Girton may not have liked Kyril but he does not possess the martial skills to best him.”
Adran had not been as clever as she thought in inviting witnesses here. She may have stopped my master from speaking in my defence but it also meant she could not reveal that I was quite capable of killing Kyril without leaving a mark on him. If she did she would expose who I was, and that she had lied to her court and put an assassin among the squires. No blessed would support her if they thought she was considering the murder of their children—which is how it would appear. These men gathered in the room saw me only as a clumsy boy. The idea I was a killer must seem ludicrous to them.
“What about Rufra then, Nywulf,” said Adran. “Rufra is skilled and he is friends with Girton. Where was Rufra this night? Out in the darkness acting from a misplaced sense of honour?” I saw alarm cross Nywulf’s face, but it was only there for the briefest second before it was gone, replaced by a mask as blank as that of the priest standing next to him.
“Rufra was with me, Queen Adran,” he said slowly and deliberately. “He was revising tactics until late and then he was locked in with the rest of the squires as you have ordered.”
“And yet Kyril wasn’t?”
“Kyril has special dispensation from your son to leave the barracks when he wishes.”
Adran’s fists were bunched in frustration.
“So what then, he just dropped dead?”
“People do,” said Nywulf. “Even the heart of the strongest may burst without warning.”
“Not the sons of the powerful!” she shouted. “Not in my castle and not under my care!” She walked over so she was close to me. “Maybe I should send you to Kyril’s family anyway.” I moved so the queen’s shoulder blocked my mouth from the sight of the others, though I could still see them.
“I am an assassin, Queen Adran,” I said in the Whisper-that-Flies-to-the-Ear. “I would kill your guards and escape. I would make you look weak.” She stared into my face and for a moment I thought she was going to hit me again. Behind her I could see Neander, his expressionless mask fixed on me.
“Daana, Nywulf, you may go,” she said. Her intent stare did not waver from me, and it felt like she was reading my spirit. “Send Heamus to me.”
“Yes, my queen,” said Nywulf. Daana ap Dhyrrin said nothing as he left, but his lizards squawked noisily as if amused by the drama around them.
Once they had left Queen Adran turned to Neander.
“Your opinion, Neander?”
The priest pushed up his white mask and wiped his face with his sleeve. “I doubt this boy did it.” He nodded at me, and it was as if I ceased to exist for Adran. “Daana is right: from what I’ve heard he can barely hold a sword.” There was something in his tone that was wrong, as if he knew this was a lie, and I wondered if Queen Adran confided in the priest. “Kyril’s family will not be pleased by their son’s death but they have other sons, and maybe if their boy died a hero that would ease their grief a little? It may even tie them to you, depending on the circumstances.”
Adran brought her thumb to her mouth and chewed on the nail as she paced backwards and forwards again, her gown swishing and sparkling in the candlelight. She stopped and turned to her son.
“Aydor.”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Where is the slave who found Kyril’s body?
“Heamus put it in the dungeon, Mother. He did not think you would want others to know about Kyril’s death.” She nodded, and the door creaked as Heamus came in and bowed low.
“Heamus,” said Adran before he could speak, “talk to the captain of my nightguard and tell him to find three guards whose loyalty he doubts. Find well muscled ones if possible. I want them removed from the barracks, quietly mind. Then bind them, gag them and put them in a cart.”
“You need them alive, my queen?” The old Landsman sounded tired, beaten.
“It doesn’t matter as long as no one knows we have taken them. Tell him to take the slave that found the body and the corpse of the boy and put them in the cart also. A covered cart, mind. Then he should drive the cart out to Barnew’s Wood. Early this morning I want you to put on Kyril’s armour—you are a similar size—and ride out to the wood with Aydor. I want everyone to see you leave, but you will keep the visor of your helmet down. Neander will make sure Daana ap Dhyrrin and Nywulf know not to mention Kyril’s death to anyone.”
“Very well, my queen,” he said and left the room followed by the orange-clad priest.
“We’re not going to hurt Girton?” said Aydor. Plainly, he was disappointed in my continued existence.
“No, Aydor, we are not going to hurt Girton any more today,” said his mother. “Neander was right. Kyril’s family may feel some obligation to us if their son dies a hero in our cause. You and Heamus, posing as Kyril, will ride out to Barnew’s Wood. When you get there, if the slave and those guards still live, cut them down. I If they are already dead slash the bodies with your blades, but it must look like they died in a fight. Then you will put Kyril’s body back in his armour and drive a sword through him.” She stared out of the crystal window. “Do it more than once. A few survivable wounds and a lethal one. It should seem to any that see him that he went down fighting hard. Then, Aydor, you will bring his body back over his mount—scar the animal too. Heamus will come back with the cart and my captain. I will send a messenger later to Kyril’s family and tell them he gave his life to protect his beloved heir from bandits.”
“Very well, Mother.” He bowed and I could see a smile on his face. The idea of cutting down a few defenceless men appealed to him.
“My son, come here.” Queen Adran put out her arms as if to hold her son. He let her hold him, briefly. Then she leaned back and touched his face with her hand. “My beautiful boy,” she said gently, “I am afraid it cannot look like you simply walked away from this.”
“What do you mean—” he began and his mother’s other hand flashed up, slashing him across
the face with a dagger. “Dead gods, you mad bitch!” he shouted as his hand came up to the wound. Blood ran freely down his face.
“A scar will look good on you,” hissed his mother, “and when, one day, you meet Kyril’s family and take their oath of loyalty you can truthfully say you got that scar when their boy died.”
“It hurts,” he said.
“Be a man, not a child, Aydor. If you think becoming high king will be pain free you are a fool. This is only the start. Now leave us. You have work to do.”
He slammed the door as he left and Queen Adran stared at the wood as if the whorls of the grain would spell out her next move. “Merela,” she said eventually, “come and look at Kyril’s body with me before they take it. I dislike a mystery and you know more of death than most. You can bring your boy if you must.”
We followed Queen Adran through the veins of the castle—like most old keeps it was riddled with secret passages so the powerful could go unseen. Kyril’s body was on the dungeon level in a clean room where statues of age-of-balance kings had been carved into the wall. Most had lost their stone hands, feet and noses, and rather than looking like kings now looked like criminals, mockingly crowned and fresh from punishment. A granite block made a table in the centre and was covered by the yellow and purple Mennix flag; Underneath the flag the contours of a body rose and fell; the yellow parts reminding me of the sourlands, the purple of night. Adran pulled the flag away and I watched in silence as the slight material of the flag drifted slowly to the floor to reveal Kyril. He looked smaller in death.
“Kyril,” I said.
The queen turned her stare on me. “Did I ask you to speak?”
“No.” I stared at the floor like a slave.
“No, Queen Adran,” she reminded me.
“No, Queen Adran.”
“Good. This is poor Kyril, Merela. Once a friend to Aydor and now a problem to me.” She stepped over to the table, placing her hands on the stone at either side of the boy’s head and staring down into his face. “He was an unpleasant character and given to leering at anything with a bust, but he would have been useful.” She turned her gaze from the body to my master. “I have not asked as it was not convenient before: did you do this, Merela?”
“What do you think?” My master brought her hands up, palms outwards, fingers spread in the gesture used to show surprise when storytelling. The movement involved enough of a pause to make her next words obviously disrespectful. “Queen Adran.”
Adran stayed where she was and stared at my master. “You look ridiculous in that costume.”
“To some. But others find it distressing, and it pleases Xus the god of death, which is fitting, considering the moment.”
“I am sure, Merela, you no more believe fairy tales about gods than I do.” She touched Kyril’s still face. “Is Nywulf right—did this boy’s heart really burst? Death is your domain.”
“Is it really?”
“Don’t!” Adran slapped her hand on the stone slab, the noise echoed around the mortuary room. “I am not in the mood for silly jester games, Merela. Tell me how this boy died.”
My master stepped closer to the corpse. In my mind’s eye I had built Kyril up into something monstrous and huge, but dead he was just a boy and a boy who looked younger than his sixteen years.
“Girton,” said my master, “take your knife and strip him.”
“No.” The queen held up a hand. “Undress him if you must but don’t cut his clothes off. His family may want them returned and I want the only cuts in them to be from the sword that kills him.”
“Very well.” My master smiled at Adran’s choice of words as she started to unbutton the boy’s jacket. “Girton, some help, please.”
Though I have been the cause of many corpses I have been close to remarkably few of them for long and I was surprised by how heavy and cold Kyril was. His unwieldiness made getting his clothes off a struggle, when we finally had him undressed my master called for more light. I held a torch while she looked over the body. First she manipulated the neck to check for breaks and then she used the span of her hand as a measure to methodically check every part of the pale, almost blue, skin of his body for puncture wounds. The flickering torch made the shadow of her hand jump, spider-like, across the corpse. She found nothing on his front but a bruise over his heart, though it was a yellow that made me think it was days old. She sniffed at it, but the dancing torchlight hid her face and she did not seem to come to any conclusion, only bit her lower lip and glanced at me. Then we turned him and she checked his back using her hand as a measure again. Lastly, she had me turn him back onto his front and put her nose close to his mouth while I pushed, first on his stomach and then on his chest.
“No assassin did this, Adran.”
“How can you be sure?” Queen Adran spoke almost absent-mindedly. She seemed transfixed by the body, utterly unable to take her eyes from boy’s limp form. She was so fascinated she forgot to correct my master for not calling her Queen.
“There are no puncture wounds, no broken neck or bruising of the nerve points and no scent of poison on his breath.”
“Then how did the boy die?”
“His heart probably burst, as Nywulf said. It can happen even to the young and healthy.”
“Are you suggesting Coil the Yellower or Fitchgrass jumped out of a hedge and frightened the boy to death?” My master ignored the sarcasm and rested a finger on Kyril’s chest.
“See the bruise, here, over his heart?”
“It is old.”
“Yes, it is.” Something in my master’s voice—did she lie? “He may have been kicked by a mount or hurt in training. Such things can cause a heart to burst days later.”
“You are sure?”
“There is only one way to be sure,” said my master. “Girton, I will need your knife. And a saw to get through his ribs.”
“No!” Adran moved in front of my master. “I believe you. We’ll not cut him open.” She stared at the body again. “It is sobering, is it not, Merela? We could be struck down at any moment with no warning. It makes a mockery of all our struggles.”
“But does not stop us struggling.”
“No, nothing stops us.” She took a final look at Kyril, leaning in close to his face. “Nothing but death.” She turned to my master. “Merela, you and your boy will not talk to anyone about the bruise. We will tell the family he died a hero saving the future king. I will have Neander conduct the ceremony of leaving tonight.”
We left the laying-out room and returned to our own small bedroom. The first thing I did was change out of my clothes as I felt like the smell of Kyril’s corpse was clinging to me. My master was distracted, pulling aside the greased paper cover so she could stare out of the window.
“Girton, you really had nothing to do with Kyril’s death?”
“No.” Again that sense of betrayal that she thought so little of me. “I hated him, but I have more self-control than to go about murdering people I don’t like. Why don’t you believe me?”
“I do. It is just that if it was not you then our lives are more complex than I thought.”
“What do you mean? Did you lie to Adran? Was Kyril murdered then?”
“Yes, he was murdered. Someone used the Black Hammer to kill him. That was the cause of the bruise over his heart.”
I went cold. My flesh seemed to freeze and my skin to be punctured by painful spines. “Magic? Are you saying there’s a sorcerer loose in the castle? How can you be sure?”
“I could smell it on him.”
“Smell it?”
“Aye, magic leaves a scent like pepper and honey. It is faint but recognisable if you know to look out for it. That is how the Landsmen find sorcerers, though it only works for those unable to control themselves.”
A vivid image came to me: of Heamus sniffing the air around me, of Neander doing the same. Something dark, cold and slow moved within me and it sucked the moisture from my mouth and the feeling from my fingers an
d toes.
…if it was not you then our lives are more complex than I thought.
The world seemed to spin, as if the earth moved beneath me while I stayed still.
“If it was not me?” I said, the words small and confused. “What do you mean, if it was not me?”
At first she looked puzzled. Then surprised. Then a terrible sadness came over her, almost fear. She sat on the bed, unable to look at me.
“Oh Girton,” she whispered, “what we do? The Whisper-that-Flies-to-the-Ear? The Simple Invisibility?” I stared at her. It seemed she had suddenly become something alien, and though I understood her words they made as much sense to me as the lowing of a draymount.
“Magic, Master? Magic in me? That cannot be.”
“Girton—” she lifted a hand as if to reach for me and then let it fall “—you have always been so clever, my clever boy, so very clever. I thought you knew. When I said tell no one our secrets, not even other assassins, I thought you knew. I thought that you had realised this long ago.” She looked up. “Sometimes I forget you are a child still. That I have always been able to ask anything of you and you do it—your trust in me has always been total. I should have thought harder on that. Why would you question our abilities when I told you they were only tricks?”
“No,” I said, and felt the world around me folding in, becoming pale. Its angles ceased to make sense and our room became both impossibly large and impossibly small at the same time. My skin burned with a cold fire and the air became thick and soupy. “It cannot be,” I said again. “I am not a monster.” She reached out for me and I pulled my arm away. “What we do is only tricks, Master. Tricks.” My heart beat, thready and quick like a small animal desperate to escape a cage.
“Some yes. The Careless Gossip, the Wild Gaze, these are techniques that, given time, anyone can—”
