Merciless

by Jacqueline Pawl

  “Occasionally in passing,” Elise says. “Sometimes he sits in the library and reads for hours, although he hasn’t done much of that recently. My father told me Tamriel used to sneak out of his bedroom in the middle of the night and curl up on the library’s sofa with a book and a candle he’d stolen from the kitchen. It drove the guards mad trying to find him in all the library’s nooks and crannies.” She grins. “By the time they did, he’d have fallen asleep with the book clutched to his chest and the candle sitting a few feet away on the floor. My father said it was a miracle he never burned down the castle.”

  The admiration in her voice is obvious, a fact which Emrie ignores either from ignorance or sheer force of will. Her mouth tightens into a line before she changes the subject. “Will we see you here for the Solari celebration in three days, my lady?”

  “Yes, I’ll be here,” Mercy says, spotting Elvira as she reenters the throne room, wringing her hands. She pauses in the doorway and waves Mercy over. “If you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way. My grandmother insisted on keeping me busy with a full agenda of meetings—I’m sure you can understand.”

  At Elvira’s second, more insistent wave, Mercy smiles at the girls and walks past them, hurrying her pace to as close to a jog as she can manage without attracting stares. A couple courtiers make faces as she passes, spotting her elven ears, but Elvira’s expression prevents her from caring; the poor woman’s face has completely drained of blood.

  “What in the world is wrong? Did you follow him?” Mercy hisses as she passes through the doorway, dragging Elvira along with her. She casts a glance over her shoulder to ensure no one is watching, but everyone else is too absorbed in their own conversations to pay them any attention.

  “Follow me.” Elvira pulls out of Mercy’s grasp and hurries down the hall, her dress billowing behind her. Slaves pass carrying platters of drinks or sheaves of parchment, but they pay them no heed as Elvira and Mercy pass under a stone arch and down a flight of stairs.

  Down?

  “They’re not in the king’s chambers, or his office,” Elvira whispers.

  “Why not?”

  “Shhh!”

  Below the main floor of the palace, the stone walls are thick, the air earthy and moist. Torches line the walls in uneven intervals, the flames sputtering and crackling as they pass. The corridor splits.

  Left or right.

  Elvira comes to a stop so quickly Mercy trips over the backs of her heels. She mutters an apology, but the sound is lost as an agonized wail fills the halls, echoing and distorting as it bounces through the stone corridor. A gasp of pain cuts off the cry and the resounding silence makes the hairs on the back of Mercy’s neck stand on end. Elvira trembles.

  Mercy moves to peer around the corner; Elvira’s fist clamps on the collar of her jacket and locks her in place. “The guards,” she whispers. “This way.”

  Elvira leads her a few strides down the left hall and pushes open a door so old the wood has turned the same color as the gray bricks surrounding it. The resulting creaks of the rusted iron hinges seem amplified in the silence, but an eerie, low moan fills the space and drowns out the sound. As soon as the gap has widened enough for them to squeeze through the doorway, they do.

  They stand in an abandoned supply closet, rotting crates and pallets stacked against one wall. The room is so small that—standing shoulder-to-shoulder—there is hardly any room for them to maneuver without toppling a pile and alerting the guards to their presence.

  “Look.”

  Elvira points to a broken stone near Mercy’s hip. When she kneels to examine it, she realizes some of the pulverized stone has been chipped away to form a peephole into the neighboring room. She can barely make out the silhouette of a man against the flickering light of an ancient forge, but can see no higher than his hip. He circles a mound of dirty cloth, and when he strikes it with the tip of his boot there is a sharp, pained intake of breath, followed by a moan.

  Hero.

  The mound of clothing moves. Clutching her stomach with one arm, Hero rises to her knees and spits a mouthful of grimy hair from her mouth. Her other arm hangs limply at her side, her broken shoulder swollen to twice its normal size.

  “You cannot hide from this forever. You cannot turn everything she did into nothing.” She grimaces with pain, but her words come out evenly, laced with disgust. “You are a wretched, pitiful excuse of a—”

  Her head snaps to the side, the imprint of Master Oliver’s hand glowing red on her cheek. “You’d better watch your mouth,” he growls. “Remember who you address next time you speak, or we’ll take more than your tongue.”

  “Do you remember her?” Hero looks past the guard, glaring at someone outside of Mercy’s range of vision. “Do you remember the way the nobles strung her up on the gate like some cheap ornament? Like some criminal? And now you dance like a puppet for their amusement and run and hide whenever someone dares mention your dearly departed—”

  Oliver seizes her arm and wrenches it upward. She screams through her teeth as her broken bones grind against each other, somehow managing to stay conscious despite the agony ripping through her.

  “Sweet Creator,” Elvira groans.

  When Mercy glances behind her, Elvira is crouched on the floor, shaking. Her hands cover her ears, yet from a glance at her pale face, it’s clear they do nothing to block out the sounds of Hero’s suffering.

  “Go upstairs,” Mercy says. “Go back to Blackbriar.”

  Eyes shut tightly, she shakes her head.

  Another scream erupts in the other room. Hero’s arms have been tied behind her back, and Master Oliver pulls her tongue forward with a pair of tongs. He lifts a red-hot dagger from the coals of the forge, wrapping the handle in thick cloth. Hero’s eyes go wide; with Master Oliver holding her still, all she can do is watch as the glowing blade draws closer to her tongue.

  “Wait,” Ghyslain says. “Tamriel will do it.”

  Oliver hesitates. “Your Majesty?”

  “Father?” Tamriel’s voice comes out pinched, tight with fear and surprise.

  “You heard me, Oliver. Hand over the dagger.” Master Oliver must hesitate, because a second later, Ghyslain roars, “Hand him the dagger!”

  Through the tiny hole, Mercy watches as the prince pushes off the far wall and crosses the room, stopping at Oliver’s side. He doesn’t take the knife. Hero kneels on the floor before him, her eyes wide and terrified, glassy with pain.

  “Take the dagger, Tamriel,” his father says, his voice now deathly quiet. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, but you put yourself in this situation. It’s not my fault. Oliver, the knife.”

  Master Oliver hesitantly passes over the dagger and tongs, and Tamriel’s hands shake as he lifts it to Hero’s face.

  The prince holds the dagger over her tongue, its blade still glowing brightly. After a moment’s hesitation, he slices with one swift motion, and the sound of sizzling meat is drowned out by Hero’s scream.

  Almost.

  18

  Elvira is still trembling when they return to Blackbriar. The minute they step into the foyer, she excuses herself and retreats to her bedroom.

  Mercy paces the kitchen. If she’d had her way, she’d have stayed in the palace and tried to learn more about the prince; many of the nobles—while suspicious of the elven royal—seem to have rather loose tongues when it comes to their opinions about the royal family. They’ve seen how Ghyslain behaves; they’ve watched Tamriel grow up.

  Ghyslain and Tamriel. Father and son. If Ghyslain truly is mad, he hides it well, ruling with fear and harsh punishments—yet he had given that worker so much more than he had asked of the court, and out of the royal treasury, too. In her mind, she sees Raidon’s fist pumping in the air as he leaves the throne room. Then Hero’s screams echo in her ears and she flinches.

  No one had said anything when Tamriel had carved through Hero’s tongue, the stench of burning flesh filling the damp, earthy air. He had performed the task an
d thrown the meat into the forge while Hero choked on smoke, tears pouring down her face. Then he and his father had watched as Master Oliver had dragged her out of the room.

  Mercy tugs her hair out of its bun and moves to the study, rubbing her eyes, wishing she could remove the memory of the cruelty she had just witnessed. She traces the cracked leather spines of the books lining the bookshelf, the embossed titles bumpy under her fingertips, and thinks of the story Elise had told her about the boy who had snuck into the library at midnight to read himself to sleep. That child bears no resemblance to the young man she had met today.

  Tamriel will turn eighteen in a little over a week and a half, which is more than enough time for Mercy to complete her contract. After the Solari celebration will be her best chance of luring Tamriel somewhere private, although it will be difficult to move his body with so many guests and guards wandering about; if she hides him, there’s no guarantee she will be able to return and move him later.

  Well.

  She will do what she has always done:

  Adapt.

  Elvira barely speaks to her the next morning, breaking her silence only to ask Mercy to pass a plate of fruit as they eat breakfast and to help her dress an hour later. The silence isn’t out of anger or sadness, but something far more complex; it hangs in the air around her, dragging down her usually graceful movements. Even so, the woman refuses to keep still, patting and fluffing every pillow on Mercy’s bed, smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles on the skirt she has wrestled Mercy into. A long-sleeved tunic hangs over it, loose-collared and crafted of emerald crepe.

  The questions nagging at the back of Mercy’s mind rise to the surface, and she dares to voice one as Elvira closes the doors of the wardrobe. “How do you know the castle so well?”

  She pauses. “You are not the first Assassin I have helped, and Tamriel is not the first royal to be assassinated.”

  “You knew where the guards were going to be, you spoke to a slave, you even knew where that storage closet was.”

  Elvira crosses her arms and sighs. “My husband has been a slave in Myrellis Castle for twenty years. He was eight when he was taken from an orphanage in Beggars’ End and brought to the castle, and we met during a Solari feast. I was serving an old noblewoman at the time, and when she passed, Kier and I snuck out of the castle. We were going to flee to the Howling Mountains, then east to Cirisor,” she says wistfully, “but a guard caught us a few hundred yards out on the lake in a stolen boat.

  “Sorin was a Daughter then, and was working on a contract on some noble when she heard the guard bring us in. She killed him and would have killed us, too, if the Guild hadn’t recently lost an important contact in the capital. She promised no one would find out about Kier’s escape attempt if I agreed to work at Blackbriar, so I did.”

  “So, now what? You’re going to work for the Guild for the rest of your life?”

  “I had thought so, but Sorin convinced Illynor to grant my freedom after fifteen years. But this time, I’m not going to wait for time to run out. This time, Kier and I are going to make it all the way to Cirisor.” She nods once, her lips forming a tight line. “We’ve had ten years to plan his escape, after all. Bron, the servant I spoke to, is our messenger. He’s our only connection to each other.

  “The reason I know the castle so well,” she continues, “is because I have walked each of those halls a thousand times, peering into every alcove and exploring every possible exit.” She walks to the desk and picks up Mercy’s daggers. “You’ll want to take these with you,” she says, pushing them into Mercy’s hands. “Nowhere in Sandori is safe for an elf on her own.”

  Never in her life has Mercy been more grateful for a pair of shoes than she is for the ones on her feet.

  Black silk with gold embroidery, two tassels on top of each slipper, the delicate filigree glittering with flecks of crystal—they’re worth more than everything Mercy has ever owned. They’re ridiculous. Beautiful, but their purpose seems better served on a pedestal in some royal’s mansion than on the feet of an Assassin with twenty aurums to her name.

  They are also completely silent as Mercy stalks down the third-floor hallway of the castle.

  Without Elvira as her guide, Mercy wanders through the high-ceilinged corridors with one destination in mind: Tamriel’s private chambers. She has already discovered the kitchen and larders, storerooms, and pantries, as well as the main dining hall, multiple studies, and several unused apartments which make up the outer wings of the castle. Luckily for Mercy, the architect who had designed the palace had chosen simplicity over extravagance: the core of the building is square, rooms upon rooms stacked atop one another. In the years since its construction, various kings have added extensions to its exterior wings and towers, so the outer halls of the palace are nothing short of labyrinthine. Most of the rooms are empty or filled with the bulky forms of old furniture hidden under sheets—a memory of the years when the castle bustled with foreign dignitaries, diplomats, and visiting royalty, before the stalemate over the Cirisor Islands had shattered the bonds between Feyndara and Beltharos.

  The only people who pass Mercy are those who work and live in the castle. The slaves don’t so much as glance at her as they scurry about their chores, and the guards at every corner stand so still it’s difficult to distinguish them from the decorative suits of armor displayed around the castle.

  At last, she stands before the door to Tamriel’s chambers. Or—more accurately—stares at it from twenty feet down the hall, huddled under the cover of the doorway she had darted into the moment she had seen the four guards standing watch over the entrance. Thankfully, they hadn’t noticed Mercy when she had turned the corner, spotted them, and immediately ducked out of view. She considers using her daggers, then shakes her head. It would be impossible to engage four guards without alerting half the castle.

  Tamriel’s bedroom is the best place for Mercy to strike after the Solari celebration, when most of the guards will be busy in the throne room watching the guests. Of course, if Mercy can’t sneak past the guards, she can still convince Tamriel to dismiss them; she needs to make him trust her.

  With a smirk on her lips and one last look at the guards, Mercy slips out from the doorway and around the corner.

  A strangled cry freezes Mercy in place atop the second-floor landing. She pauses with one foot on the first stair, ears straining for the source of the sound. She glances at the empty hallway behind her, waiting for the bark of a guard’s orders or the stamping of boot-clad feet on stone, but hears nothing.

  She tiptoes to the nearest closed door and rests her hands on the smooth wood, listening for movement from within. After a beat of silence, she reaches for the door handle.

  Something shatters against the opposite side of the door. Mercy jumps back, then grabs the doorknob and twists, opening the door slowly until the gap is wide enough to peer through with one eye.

  King Ghyslain turns to the desk behind him and closes his fingers around the neck of a vase. With a roar, he hurls it into the fireplace, the logs crackling and snapping as a shower of sparks dances in the air, white chips of porcelain blackening in the glowing embers. He reaches behind him and staggers as he tosses another one. The momentum throws him off-balance and he falls to his knees with a choked moan.

  “Go away.”

  His splayed fingers flex against the stone and he lifts his head, staring into the fire. Strands of black hair have fallen from his ponytail and hang in front of his face, and his eyes glitter with the reflection of the flames.

  “You have no hold over me. You have no right to torment me like this. Leave now!” His eyes move to the space above the fire, tracking an imaginary creature as it stalks forward. He scrambles away until his back hits the desk. “You know I had to punish her. If I do anything to help the slaves, the nobles will take my throne and my head, and Tam will be next. I refuse to lose anyone else I love, Liselle!”

  The name sends a chill down Mercy’s spine. The king believes
his long-dead lover is somehow here with him, somehow speaking to him?

  Inside the room, Ghyslain tugs at his hair, and when he lifts his head, the firelight illuminates the silent tears running down his cheeks. “The throne is mine. There is too much at stake. The Zendais boy has been stirring up sympathy for his family, and with Tamriel’s eighteenth birthday coming up, I must have as much support from the nobles as possible. My son must never take the throne. I’ll not have him in danger.”

  Ghyslain’s voice drops to a whisper on the last word, and he leans forward until his forehead rests on the floor. His right hand curls into a fist, then he shudders and goes still.

  He stays in that position so long Mercy wonders if he might have fallen asleep. She considers leaving, casting a glance at the strangely empty hallway. Tamriel’s bedroom had had four guards stationed around it, yet the king shouts and shatters porcelain, and no one bats an eye? If Mercy had come to kill him, her contract would have been completed hours ago.

  “Creator’s grace,” he finally gasps. When he sits up, he is visibly shaking, sobbing as he stares at the shards littering the floor and fireplace. His eyes lift to the corner of the room, and a sad smile spreads across his face. “Why did they have to take you from me, Liselle?” Ghyslain extends a hand as if to caress Liselle’s face, but stops short, trembling in the open air. His hand falls to his side as a new wave of tears rise.

  Mercy eases the door shut and returns to the stairs. She refuses to pity him. The man in that room is not the king—he is the mangled, grieving shell of the ruler he should have been if he hadn’t allowed himself to fall for Liselle.

  She will not pity him.

  Yet as she walks down the stairs to the great hall, she cannot keep the image of his face, shiny with tears and so like his son’s, out of her mind.

  19