The Divinus resumed his seat and an uncomfortable silence fell while Leo Sphinx slowly rose from his seat. His expression was characteristically unemotional but when his piercing gaze swept over them Mistral felt it was less assured than before. Gazing intently at their Training Captain, Mistral narrowed her eyes slightly and concentrated on the air around his blonde hair. Before he had even begun to speak Leo’s aura swam into view before her, a bright swirling fog of two contrasting colours that confirmed her suspicions. She felt the twins stir beside her and knew that had guessed what she was doing. Blinking quickly to break the vision, Mistral dropped her gaze to study her boots.
‘As your Training Captain I take responsibility for the actions of my Lieutenants. They have been dismissed from the Ri for their failure to carry out my orders. The loss of an apprentice is regrettable and whilst warriors must accept that death is a part of their life it must be noted that –’
Leo paused and glanced fleetingly at the Divinus who gave the faintest of nods.
‘– against all odds you excelled in your Qualification hunt. Well done.’ Leo finished stiffly and sat down quickly.
‘That must’ve hurt!’ Xerxes muttered under his breath, causing several stifled laughs fortunately drowned out by the sound of the Magnate rising to their feet and applauding.
‘You are all dismissed!’ Leo called in a return to his usual abrupt manner and strode over to the doors. Flinging them open he stepped back to allow the newly Qualified warriors to stream past him.
A buzz of conversation broke out the moment they left the Main Hall. Laughter and crude speculation about Golden and Columbine’s futures, disbelief at Leo’s obviously forced praise and sheer delight at having finally Qualified.
‘What did you see?’ Phantom hissed, wide-eyed with excitement when they poured out into the corridor to be swept along by the others towards the Entrance Hall.
‘Guilt and remorse,’ said Mistral with a smile of satisfaction, earning murmurs of righteous agreement from the twins. ‘And a lot of ambition,’ she added in a more unhappy voice.
Phantasm shrugged lightly, ‘Only to be expected. My brother and I are exceptionally gifted after all, and so are you,’ he added, slipping his arm around her shoulders in a rare display of affection.
‘I think I’m going to frame mine,’ Phantom sighed, gazing reverently at his application form.
‘Hmm,’ agreed Phantasm, studying the signatures on the back page. ‘Do you think you could replicate these?’ he asked looking at his brother with a raised eyebrow. ‘It might prove handy for our future careers.’
‘Piece of cake!’ said Phantom, peering closely at the various signatures of the Magnate.
Mistral stared uncaringly down at the parchment in her hand. For the twins it was a ticket to a career in the Council that circumstances had cruelly denied them. For her, it felt like she was holding a prison sentence. With a burst of bitterness she crumpled the parchment into a ball and shoved it angrily into her pocket. Her fingers brushed against something cold and metallic; the key to her home with Fabian.
Smiling broadly, she linked arms with the twins to walk down the path towards The Cloak and Dagger where her dark-haired destiny would be waiting patiently for her.
Extract from The Assassin’s Destiny (Book 2)
Malachi Nox
It was a cold Friday morning, Mistral and the twins were having breakfast in the Refectory listening to the first years talking excitedly about the knucker hunt they were being sent out on for the day. Phantasm smiled as he glanced out the window at the snow falling thickly. The sky outside was so heavy and grey it barely looked like daylight.
‘Bless them! Am I glad not to be a first year anymore,’ he sighed happily.
‘Can you actually imagine getting excited about hunting a knucker?’ Mistral asked with an incredulous shake of her head.
‘There was a time when you would get excited about hunting for a lost sock,’ Phantasm reproved her with a frown.
‘You’re right,’ Mistral admitted and laughed ruefully. ‘I was all about the hunting-and-eating-it part! Still am, come to think of it,’ she added thoughtfully.
‘Well I wish you had hunted my breakfast! Where on earth does Bernadette get her ideas of what constitutes an appropriate breakfast from?’ Phantom muttered as he pushed his half-eaten bowl of fish stew away with a shudder. He looked around with a bored expression on his face. ‘What’s on the agenda for today brother?’ he demanded, drumming his fingers moodily on the table-top.
‘Master Nox,’ replied Phantasm, pushing his own empty bowl away with a satisfied sigh. ‘You know, that’s beginning to grow on me.’
Phantom suddenly perked up, ‘Master Nox? I wonder what he’ll be teaching us,’ he leaned his elbows onto the table and clasped his hands together thoughtfully. ‘Poisons, obviously, but what else?’
‘What else does he specialise in?’ Mistral asked, taking a sip of water from her cup. She hadn’t even bothered to fill a bowl from the large iron tureen on the counter; Bernadette’s breakfasts were notoriously inedible.
‘Master Nox? I’m not sure,’ said Phantasm narrowing his eyes broodingly.
Mistral raised her eyebrows in surprise. It wasn’t like the twins not to know every detail of one of the Magnate, down to their inside leg measurement.
‘There are no records of his achievements in the Ri’s library, only the standard entries of the dates of his apprenticeship and the date he completed working back his debt to the Ri … then there’s a huge gap until he became a member of the Magnate.’
‘Fabian says he was an excellent assassin in his day,’ Mistral said distractedly, her attention drawn to one of the first years enthusiastically demonstrating the best method of restraining a knucker. She watched him for a moment then turned her attention back to see two sets of bright green eyes staring impatiently at her.
‘Honestly Mistral, you could share these things! And what else did Mage De Winter say?’ Phantom demanded in a heated whisper.
Mistral shrugged, ‘He said Malachi was an expert at non-contact assassinations, you know, using poisons. Fabian met him a few times when Malachi was working for the Council as a special foreign envoy, or some other fancy title. Basically the Council would send him off abroad to tidy up when sorcerers had got carried away and exposed their true identities.’
Phantasm frowned, ‘How exactly did he do that?’
‘Assassinated them and anyone who knew the truth,’ she replied evenly.
Phantasm and Phantom shared a bleak look.
‘Sounds like yet another delightful person we have the pleasure of getting to know,’ sighed Phantom darkly.
‘I suggest that we don’t keep him waiting then,’ said Phantasm briskly and made to rise to his feet.
‘I agree, or we might not make it to lunchtime … which, I might add, is another high-point in my day,’ grumbled Phantom.
‘Another fun day,’ Mistral muttered dispiritedly and reluctantly followed the twins across the Refectory. ‘You know, I almost envy them,’ she said, casting a wistful glance at the first years pulling on heavy cloaks ready for the day’s hunt in the snow.
She trailed after the twins while they chatted away, climbing up the stairs to the second floor. Her second year’s apprenticeship was proving to be a lot less exacting than her first. To add to her flat mood Fabian being her Training Lieutenant had so far not turned out to be quite as pleasurable as she had imagined it would be. For starters, her training schedule for the year involved much less physical work and was more orientated around mastering her gift, requiring her to spend lots of time with Serenity Lightwater and occasionally the Divinus, and less in the Training Arena where Fabian was every day. True, she did get to see him most lunchtimes and every night … and morning, but she had envisaged spending her whole days with him too and felt cheated. She was also finding mastering the illusive power of Sight more difficult than she had imagined.
Despite all of the work she was putti
ng in, Mistral had still not been able to develop her ability beyond being able to read auras. By contrast the twins were progressing rapidly with their Gemini gift and had already been offered a classified Council Contract, which they had returned from with unbearably superior attitudes until Mistral had pasted them in a sword training session and brought them down to size again.
Mistral had been offered suspiciously few Contracts so far and was swiftly coming to the conclusion that there was some kind of “keep Mistral safe until she masters Sight” campaign going on behind the scenes. She was willing to bet that it had been agreed between Fabian and Leo but also suspected that the twins had been coerced into preventing her from doing anything vaguely interesting. They always seemed to be conveniently busy whenever she asked them to go out hunting with her, forcing her instead to accompany them on long, pointless sessions with Mycroft Casterton. Mistral had fallen asleep during the last one and had not been invited back again, for which she was grateful. Mycroft Casterton’s knowledge on Council politics and history was both vast and vastly dull. The combination of his fondness for the sound of his own voice and his sumptuous, overheated tower room made Mistral feel sleepy just by thinking about it.
Lost in brooding thoughts on how boring the second year was turning out to be, Mistral didn’t realise that they had reached the door to Malachi Nox’s tower room until she walked into the back of Phantasm.
‘It’s polite to knock before opening the door.’ Phantasm chided when she bounced off him with a surprised look on her face.
‘Sorry,’ she sighed. ‘Just eager to get in there and learn, learn, learn.’
‘Of course you are,’ he murmured and rapped smartly on the black wooden door.
With a sinking feeling of impending boredom, Mistral followed the twins through the door when it was opened by an unsmiling Malachi Nox.
‘Enter and be seated,’ he said crisply, waving a thin hand towards a long workbench and a number of tall stools.
Mistral stole a glance around the room as she walked over to sit on a stool. She had been inside all of the Magnate’s tower rooms now and had quickly realised that their living quarters provided useful insights to their personalities. Mycroft’s was furnished with plush velvet armchairs, all arranged around a fire that blazed winter and summer. He rarely moved from his armchair kingdom unless it was to refill the dish of sweetmeats set by his side. By contrast, the Divinus’ tower room was utterly devoid of any furnishings other than a stark throne-like wooden chair. Leo Sphinx’s room was scattered with weapons and bits of armour in need of repair. It also held possibly the largest four poster bed that Mistral had ever seen. She grimaced whenever she thought of it, knowing that Golden had been in it for most of the previous year. Serenity Lightwater, the only female member of the Magnate, did not use her tower room but had a small bedroom adjoining the Infirmary where she worked. In effect, the Infirmary was her tower room and reflected her ordered and annoyingly caring personality.
Malachi Nox’s tower room was crammed full of books, tainting the air with their peppery, musty smell. Shelves covered the stone walls from the floor right up to the high vaulted ceiling; all packed with leatherbound volumes. The overall effect was slightly claustrophobic but not chaotic. Mistral could see the books were all neatly ordered with a framed reference to the contents hanging at the end of every row.
Malachi had a narrow single bed pushed up beneath the room’s only window which looked as though it had been cut out of the bookshelf surrounding it. There was no fire in the room to protect the books and as a result it was icily cold. The only source of light apart from the boxed-in window came from a huge iron candelabra hanging down from the centre of the vaulted ceiling.
Mistral slid onto a stool next to Phantasm and switched her gaze to the workbench in front of her. Rows of glass bottles of all sizes were stacked three-deep along the length of the wooden surface. Each bottle was made of a different coloured glass and sealed with a distinctive bright green wax stopper.
The twins were sat as though carved from stone but Mistral wasn’t fooled; she knew their green eyes would have taken in every detail of the room. She hid a smile, knowing they would spend their evening talking about what they had deduced from their observations.
‘I will begin by attempting to introduce you to the subtle art of poisons,’ Malachi Nox’s clipped tones broke into her musings and drew her attention to the dark-robed figure stood before them. He was tall and angular with unnaturally pale features accentuated by closely cropped black hair that grew into a widow’s peak at the front.
‘However, I do not expect you to excel at, or even appreciate the art; few do.’
Mistral kept her face expressionless while she wondered privately how hard it could be to brew up poison. Cain was a dab hand already with no real instruction and Fabian concocted his own blend that was particularly potent.
‘Try to comprehend that poison is not just limited to its ability to kill quickly and silently,’ Malachi continued in a curt tone. ‘There are poisons that will induce a coma so deep that it is virtually indistinguishable from death, others that force the taker to reveal the innermost secrets of their soul and some that are capable of causing indescribable agony to the victim yet leave them resiliently healthy in every other aspect.’
As he spoke Malachi reached out to caress a bright red bottle with one long finger. Mistral suppressed a shudder of repulsion. She was willing to bet that bottle contained the agony-inducing potion he was describing.
The morning dragged by slowly with them reading through and making notes on basic recipes for different types of poisons. The lack of natural light in the room gave it a strangely timeless feel and it was only when Mistral’s stomach rumbled hungrily that she realised it must be midday.
‘I will see you back here in one hour,’ Malachi dismissed them shortly, holding the heavy door open for them. They filed past him silently and ran lightly down the stairs from his room.
‘Well, that was fun,’ said Mistral heavily. ‘Let’s go to The Cloak. I can’t stand the thought of eating another of Bernadette’s vile concoctions.’
‘Why don’t you say what you really mean?’ Phantom huffed. ‘You want to have lunch with your Mage, not us!’
‘Please forgive me for trying to have some enjoyment in my sorry excuse for a life!’ Mistral snapped and abruptly stalked off ahead of them.
‘That was rather tactless brother,’ murmured Phantasm, watching Mistral vanish down the second flight of stairs to the ground floor. ‘You know how hard she’s finding the idea of a second year.’
Phantom sighed, ‘But she used to be such fun and now she’s either brooding over her Mage or drooling over him and I don’t know which is worse.’
‘The brooding,’ said Phantasm firmly.
By the time the twins had walked through the heavy snow down to The Cloak and Dagger Mistral was already talking to Fabian at the bar, gazing deeply into his eyes with an expression of such utter happiness on her face that even Phantom began to feel guilty for his harsh words.
They wandered over and greeted Fabian before ordering drinks and meals from the red-cheeked bartender.
‘How was your morning?’ Fabian enquired, passing Mistral a tankard of ale.
‘Duller than dull.’ Mistral replied, taking a long drink from her tankard before setting down it on the bar again. ‘How was yours?’
Fabian shrugged lightly and smiled, ‘Quite entertaining. I oversaw the first years out on their first knucker hunt. Considering that they are all tribe born they have rather lamentable hunting skills.’
‘Where are they now?’ Mistral asked, gazing around at the empty bar.
‘Two are in the Infirmary with concussions from falling off their horses and the rest are still hunting.’
Mistral laughed, ‘Let’s hope none of them die, I don’t think it would look too good on your record as a Training Lieutenant.’
‘Ours didn’t do too well last year did they?’ Phantom int
erjected with a wry grin. ‘Two died and you practically lived in the Infirmary.’
‘Good times,’ Mistral sighed and took another long drink from her tankard. ‘At least I was doing something to get injured.’
‘You will if you keep drinking at that rate – don’t forget we’re going to be handling dangerous substances this afternoon,’ said Phantasm, looking pointedly at her nearly empty tankard.
Mistral fixed Fabian with a pleading look, ‘Please let me skive off with you this afternoon. I will honestly die of boredom if I have to spend the afternoon with Malachi Nox.’
Fabian touched her cheek and murmured softly, ‘It’s not forever.’
‘Talking of Master Nox,’ Phantom interrupted loudly. ‘Do you know what blood he has? Only I can’t work it out … he’s not of elven descent that’s for sure.’
‘Blood is the right word to use when referring to Malachi.’ Fabian replied.
The twins gazed at Fabian silently, waiting for him to explain. Mistral sighed disinterestedly and leaned against his side while he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. They could talk all they wanted for all she cared, she was quite happy to drink and enjoy being close to Fabian for an all too brief hour.
‘Malachi Nox is of Mage descent on his mother’s side,’ Fabian continued in a low voice. ‘And his father is reputed to have been a vampire.’
The twins’ eyes widened at this salacious piece of information and instantly began a murmured conversation between themselves about the reclusive tribe of vampires that lived in the Northern Range.
‘Good, that’ll keep them occupied for the rest of the hour,’ said Mistral with a satisfied look on her face. ‘Now you can tell me what we’re doing this weekend.’
‘Well, I know it’s not quite up to the chimera hunt –’
‘Oh, now that was fantastic,’ interrupted Mistral with a happy smile. ‘Did I ever thank you for that? It was the best holiday I’ve ever had … well the only one actually, but it’ll be a hard one to beat.’
The Assassin's Tale (Isle of Dreams) Page 67
