by Carol A Park
Ivana wouldn’t be relieved until the messenger drank from that canteen.
She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold. It wasn’t poison, she reasoned. Only a sedative. No actual assassination for her tonight; no, tonight she was only an accomplice.
Only? What kind of person reasons that she’s only an accomplice to murder?
Elidor’s sources had told him this particular messenger always began his journeys, whatever the weather, with a slow ride and a swig of hard liquor to get himself going for the day.
The messenger passed her position in the woods and then, true to form, he reached back, flipped open the flap to one of his bags, took out the canteen, and took a nice, long draw.
He wiped his mouth and returned the canteen to the saddlebag, none the wiser.
Ivana rose to a crouch and followed him to the side and behind within the shadow of the trees, out of eyesight.
A quarter-mile later, the messenger continued on, humming to himself as the road gently descended and the village disappeared from sight. He drank more of the liquor, which was fine. It wouldn’t be enough to make a difference to the timing.
After another quarter-mile, he had reached the bottom of the hill, and he blinked a few times and rubbed at one eye with the hand not holding the reins.
Come on. A half-mile, at a walk—that’s all it should have needed!
But the horse continued to clop steadily down the road.
They were between the town he had left and the next village along the road. Not a soul was in sight. A large swath of woods ran along the opposite side of the road. Perfectly positioned for about another half-mile, when the woods would thin out, dawn would start to touch the sky, and farmland would come back into sight, right over the next hill.
She gnashed her teeth. Work! Elidor would have her head, possibly literally. She had planned this job, and everything came down to precise timing. She had even tested the damn sedative on herself, modifying it for her increased mass over the rats.
And she was two-thirds of this man’s weight. She bit her lip, cursing herself for failing to take his additional mass into account. A stupid mistake.
At almost the mile mark, where the road was already ascending the next hill—the top of which would bring him in view of the next village—the horse finally stopped.
Ivana held her breath.
The messenger frowned. He slid off his horse and almost collapsed onto the ground.
He fumbled with the flap on his saddlebag, drew out the canteen, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed at it.
He wouldn’t smell anything other than the alcohol, Ivana was sure of that much.
His mind would be foggy at this point—later than it should have been, but since he hadn’t moved farther along the road, it was good enough. He clutched the saddle for support, blinking rapidly. He was probably trying to sluggishly put pieces together.
That was when, apparently, the picture finally formed.
His eyes widened, and, cursing, he tried to hoist himself back up on the horse. He slapped its side, and the horse jerked forward, the man still hanging half off its side, unable to muster the strength to pull himself up.
An arrow thudded into his back.
He lost his grip, tumbled to the ground, and the horse, still startled, cantered up the hill.
She ignored the horse. It had already slowed, as if realizing it had left its rider behind. As long as it didn’t prematurely warn anyone, it didn’t matter.
The man, on the other hand, lay where he had fallen, either dead or unconscious. The sky had started to grey. Where in the abyss was Elidor?
Almost in answer, Elidor appeared at the edge of the woods. Without comment, he helped her drag the man as far into the woods as they dared, given the timing.
It was still dark under the dense foliage. Even so, Ivana averted her eyes after Elidor pulled out his dagger first and then a wicked-looking serrated knife.
She didn’t want to know how he was going to make it look like the messenger had been attacked and killed by a bloodbane.
After a few minutes of noisy tearing and rending that she tried to ignore, Elidor spoke. “Time to go.”
Less than a day later, Ivana sat across from Elidor in his study. His eyes studied her as they often did before he was about to lecture or question her.
He had a glass of wine. He had offered her nothing, so she had clenched her hands in her lap to keep from fidgeting.
When Elidor had told her beforehand to relate the plan she had come up with, he had given no feedback—which was unlike his normal tests. He had merely instructed her curtly to do whatever she needed to do to prepare.
It seemed she was to be drilled now.
“Your impressions of the job,” he said at last.
“Well… He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Elidor stared at her. Apparently, that was not the answer he had been looking for.
“And I’m pretty sure no one will realize it was, um, intentional.”
“‘Pretty sure’ isn’t good enough.”
She exhaled. “Fine. I’m confident.”
He nodded. “I agree. However, you cut the timing close.”
She bit her lip. “I might have…miscalculated the strength of the sedative.”
“Might have?”
She gritted her teeth. “I failed to take into account the messenger’s greater mass, so it took a little longer to fully set in.”
“Why,” he said, “did you choose to use such a roundabout way of accosting the man? Since you knew his trajectory, surely it would have been easier to waylay him along his path.”
That, she knew the answer to—and she wasn’t sure whether he did, too, and was just probing her, or whether he truly didn’t know. “Easier for you, perhaps,” she said. “But you told me to plan this as though I were the one who had to handle every detail. If it had been my responsibility to carry out the actual assassination, overpowering a man of greater stature than myself on horseback would have been even riskier.” He opened his mouth, and she held up a finger to stave off the objection she knew he would have. “And I am worthless with a bow at present. If I had missed or hit the wrong spot, he would have been alerted and on his way to the next town before I could recover.”
He grunted. “Why a sedative? You trained for months with Da Lavena. You could have played a wounded or helpless girl alongside the road to lure him off the horse and into the woods.”
She hesitated. “I felt that was too risky, not knowing his character. What if he had failed to stop?” Actually, she hadn’t wanted to look a victim in the eyes and do something that would lead to their death. But she didn’t think Elidor would approve of that reasoning. “I felt it better to rely on the precision of my measurements.”
“The measurements you calculated incorrectly, you mean?”
She flushed. “It won’t happen again.”
“Indeed, it will not. Mistakes can be fatal in this profession, girl.”
“I understand that,” she murmured. She hesitated. “So, did I succeed?”
Elidor was silent for a moment. “You overcomplicated the job,” he said. “Sometimes the simplest solution is best.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “However, as you noted: he’s dead. Questions?”
She was going to ask if he had a backup plan, in case things went wrong, but something else came out instead. “Why did the government want a simple messenger dead?”
“As I’ve told you before, they don’t disclose their motives to me, and there is no point in dwelling on it.”
“Aren’t you ever even curious?”
“No.”
She sighed. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Just…rip that man’s body apart like that.” Her stomach felt queasy even thinking about the brief glimpse she had seen.
“With a sharp knife,” he said.
That hadn’t been what she’d meant, and he knew it.
“But now that you mention it, a
hands-on lesson or two in human anatomy might be useful. I will see about obtaining a cadaver from the university.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he jerked his head. “Dismissed.”
Great. Just great.
Alone
Ivana’s mother drove them on. Despite her own pain, she kept their family from complete despair. She found a small apartment in town that they could afford on the trifling income that she brought in hiring herself out as a scribe.
Small was generous. The apartment had two rooms: one larger room that sufficed as their shared bedroom, living area, and kitchen, and a small space barely large enough to hold the chamber pot and washbasin.
Ivana tried to find work to help, but no one would hire her or even Izel, as though whoring were a disease that might rub off on their own children. Thankfully, that didn’t seem to extend to their mother.
Their mother tried to encourage them, saying that things would get better once the winter was over. For now, they had to spend a good bit of her income on wood for the woodstove to keep their apartment warm. Both Ivana and Izel offered to chop wood themselves, but their mother wouldn’t have it. She couldn’t take the time from work herself to chop wood, and she wouldn’t have either of the girls out in the woods alone, lest bloodbane or other more intelligent predators fall upon them.
Once spring came, she insisted that money could go to other things to improve their situation. She would also have more work once the winter passed; perhaps they could then scrape together the money to go to her relatives in northern Ferehar—she had already sent a letter after all. If not, Cohoxta, the capital of Ferehar, was closer and therefore less expensive of a trip, and she would be sure to find more work there.
Her mother was being optimistic. They had yet to receive a reply to her mother’s letter, and they had no way of knowing if it had even reached its destination. If it had, how would her relatives send help from so far away? They were hardly wealthy.
As it was, they had had to use the rest of Airell’s coins and sell most of their possessions to secure the apartment, since the landlord had demanded three months advance payment—which was just as well, since they no longer had room for most of their things anyway.
The last items of any value that they still owned were her father’s microscope, which Ivana and her mother, in particular, were loath to part with, and the small chest her father had kept his notes and ramblings in. At last, they mutually made the decision that they had to try and sell those items as well.
The chest was a fine cedar chest lined with velvet, as her mother remembered. It would fetch a good price, but it was locked. Her mother didn’t know where the key had gone, and none of them had dared to force the lock, lest they ruin the chest and decrease its value. Ivana would first have to take it to a locksmith to see if it could be picked without damaging the chest itself. It was a hassle, but doable.
Selling the microscope would be the more difficult task.
Unfortunately, while a microscope might bring in a large sum with the right buyer, those buyers were few. It would be useless to everyone else.
But Ivana had just the person in mind, and it just so happened there was a locksmith in the same town.
Her mother insisted that Ivana take some of their precious coins to buy a carriage ride to Eleuria, and truth be told, Ivana was relieved. The idea of walking the eight miles to Eleuria and back, some of which, with short winter days, would have to have been while dark, chilled her even more than the cold would have. The most vicious bloodbane weren’t common in this area, as there were too many small villages and towns about, but that didn’t mean the threat was non-existent—especially at night.
The carriage ride to Eleuria and the walk to the apothecary were eerily familiar. She couldn’t help but wonder how things would have turned out if she would have taken the poison. Her father would be alive, and life would have gone on. She might have even still had the chance at a decent marriage, if no one had found out about her affair with Airell.
But she had no one to blame but herself.
The tinkling of the tiny bell alerted the girl at the front; the same one Ivana had seen before. She took one look at Ivana, then called to the back. “Mama!”
The older woman named Patli appeared shortly thereafter. She saw Ivana, blinked, and then dismissed her daughter. “My dear,” she said, once her daughter was gone. “I never thought I’d see you again.” Her eyes swept over her, but she didn’t inquire after the child, for which Ivana was grateful. That pain, among others, was still too raw. “What can I do for you today?”
Ivana lifted the microscope out of the bag she had carried it and the chest in. Then she set it on the counter and removed the protective cloths she had wrapped it in.
A pang went through her as she touched the surface of the apparatus, memories of all of the times she and her father had looked through it, marveling at what the naked eye couldn’t see.
Patli stared at it, her mouth slightly open. She held out one hand to touch it and then looked up at Ivana. “Is this a microscope?”
Ivana gave a tight nod. “My father made it.” She didn’t elaborate. “I… I find myself in need of some extra money, and I was hoping you might be interested in purchasing it—or know someone who would be.”
Patli ran her hand over the side of it. “I haven’t seen one of these since…” She shook her head and examined it more thoroughly, turning the dials and then looking through the scope. “Marvelous,” she said. “Your father is quite the scholar.”
Ivana said nothing. She didn’t trust herself to speak right now. She wanted the apothecary to take it, so she could be done with it.
Finally, the woman shook her head. “As much as I would love this device, I know I can’t give you even close to what it’s worth,” she said. “You would have better luck taking it to one of the cities, especially if you could get to Carradon or Marakyn.”
The capitals of Cadmyr and Donia, respectively, both of which had universities. Neither of which was a remote possibility. Either journey would take months, and would take her through vast expanses of uninhabited land—the places bloodbane liked to haunt the most. They could never afford to pay their share of a guarded caravan, or they would have already tried. “I’ll take whatever you can give me,” Ivana said. “If you want to pass it on at a higher price when you have the opportunity, I understand.”
The woman sucked her lower lip in, studied the microscope, and then finally nodded. “Very well. If you’re certain you don’t want to try for a higher bidder… I’ll return in a moment.”
True to her word, she returned with a purse. “Frankly, it’s worth twenty times this amount, but I don’t have that much in capital.” She slid the purse across the counter. “I hope this will help anyway.”
Ivana took the purse without counting it. It hardly mattered. It was what it was. She took one last look at the microscope and then started to turn away.
A thought struck her, and she hesitated, glancing down at the bag. “There is something you could do for me. Not money. If you feel you owe me more.”
She slid her father’s chest out of the bag and lifted it onto the counter. It was as long as her arm, but only as deep as her hand and as wide as two of her father’s journals—easy to stash in a narrow space.
“Could you keep this for me? It’s just some personal things. Mementos. I was going to sell the chest, but I think if you could keep it, perhaps I could come back for it sometime, once I’m a little better established. I-I hate to see it all go.”
The woman flicked her eyes over the chest. “Easy enough,” she said. “It’s a deal.” She gave Ivana the warm smile she had given her when Ivana had first walked through her door. “The best of luck to you, dear.”
Ivana nodded and left the shop.
She was going to need a whole lot more than luck.
Ivana was surprised to find her mother home when she arrived back at the apartment. She usually worked late into the evening.
Instead, she found her curled up on their pallet under a mound of blankets. Izel wasn’t there.
Ivana knelt at her mother’s side and put a hand to her head. She felt like she might have a bit of a fever. “Mama?”
Her mother stirred. “Ana. Did you get the things sold?”
“Yes, Mama.” She didn’t tell her about the chest. There was no point now. She took out the purse and held it out to her mother.
“Help me up,” her mother said.
Ivana moved to help her mother sit up. Her mother took the purse, dumped it out, and then counted soundlessly.
She sighed when she was done. “Well. It’ll buy us some more time, anyway, once our three months are up.” She laid her head back against the wall, her eyes closed.
“What’s wrong?” Ivana asked.
“A bit of a headache, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”
At that moment, Izel walked in, carrying a sack of what passed for their food supplies. Ivana rose to meet her. “What happened?”
“She came home early this afternoon,” Izel replied. “Said she didn’t feel well, and needed to rest.”
“She came home because she had a bit of a headache?”
“I know. It doesn’t seem normal, does it?” The two looked at each other, and in that moment, everything that had happened in the past months was set aside in their mutual concern for their mother.
“We’ll keep an eye on her,” Ivana said.
Izel nodded.
“What are you two muttering about over there?” their mother called. “The gods know you have enough burdens for your age without worrying about me. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
But she wasn’t.
Her fever worsened over the course of the week and didn’t go away. After another week, she started complaining of abdominal pains, and then one day, she didn’t even try to get up. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink. She just lay there.
Ivana and Izel agreed to spend some of the coins they had from the sale of the microscope on a doctor, as they were helpless to do anything themselves.
