The Reluctant Assassin Boxset

by Thomas K. Carpenter

Zayn tried to slip his fingers inside its grip, but there was no room. The guardian had clamped down hard.

  "It was supposed to last longer," said Vin, distraught. "I don't understand."

  As Zayn was led towards a blank wall, he looked back to see his cousin avoiding the final guardian. Zayn reached under his shirt to grab the Tether, wondering if he could somehow reach the others, but the guardian grabbed his other hand, catching the chain and breaking it. The circular amulet slipped through his fingers and bounced across the floor.

  The other three were dragged through a door that had materialized the moment before the guardians reached it. Zayn struggled against the glass creature, all his strength and speed useless against it.

  As he glanced back, he saw Keelan running towards the open door.

  "Keelan!"

  But the wall reappeared in the open space before Keelan could reach the opening.

  The glass guardians marched them down the hall, which at the end, descended into a crystal-clear pool. Zayn took the biggest breath of his life and locked it in, then he was pulled into the water.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Bastille, April 2015

  Lost and alone

  The wound in his shoulder ached no matter how he held his arm, so Keelan sat against a column while the others worked on removing the ruby eye from the glass guardian. A stab of pain shot up his arm when he put his hand down for balance. He suspected a piece of the crystalline root had broken off in his flesh, and it hurt like hell, but every time he thought about telling Zayn, it triggered the voice of his father: "No one cares about your crying."

  The hard part was knowing that Zayn wouldn't care if they had to stop and fix his shoulder. He'd damn well welcome it. Zayn had always been like that. Even when Zayn was working for the Goon, a garbage person if there'd ever been one, Keelan knew his cousin had purer motives. Sometimes he wondered how they could share the same family.

  Keelan looked over to his cousin with the rest of the team around him. Zayn had a way with people, and Keelan might have been jealous if being the focal point of attention didn't wear him out. He was always worried that the parts of him that were like his father would come out in stressful situations.

  "Oh no," said Vin.

  The exclamation immediately brought Keelan to his feet, moments before the foam exploded. As bits of whitish fluff floated through the air, the glass guardians captured his teammates.

  His whole body went cold, and he had to leap out of the way of the fifth guardian. Its glass fingers brushed his hip as he slipped past.

  But it was too late. They'd already lost.

  Keelan tried to help Skylar remove herself from a guardian's grip, but it tried to grab him with its other hand.

  "I can't break free," said Skylar breathlessly.

  A tremoring rage went through him. He wanted to kick the glass guardian in the head, shatter it into a million pieces, but that would only kill him and the rest of the team. The deviousness of their construction left him impotent with rage.

  Keelan kept ahead of the fifth guardian, but he could do nothing to stop the others from being taken.

  He was on the other side of the room when an opening in the beige wall materialized. He sprinted towards it, pouring faez into his imbuement to reach it.

  "Keelan!" yelled Zayn, holding his hand out as if he might be saved.

  The opening filled in, right as he reached it. Keelan slammed into the wall. The impact brought a spike of agony from his shoulder. It felt like a tiny knife was digging through his flesh, tunneling deeper and deeper.

  Separated from his team, Keelan wanted to slump against the wall and put his head between his knees, but the fifth guardian pursued him relentlessly.

  After running around the room in looping circles, he thought about letting the guardian catch him so he could follow the others, but that seemed like the last possible resort. It might happen anyway, because he couldn't run forever. He was getting dizzy. The skin around the wound was hot to the touch. He had to get the piece of crystalline root out of his arm. Soon.

  What he really needed was the ruby eyes from the guardian so he could get through the door and follow the others. Keelan snatched up the unbreakable rope, used it like a lasso, and captured the glass guardian. After a minute of tricky cat and mouse, Keelan tied it to a column, its arms pinned to its side.

  He approached the guardian with his knife out.

  "You're not going to be a problem, are you? I just need your eyes. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

  The guardian's red eyes and expressionless face seemed appropriate for the role. He held his hand against the creature's chest to keep it in place. He didn't like being this close to it, but didn't have a choice.

  "You kind of remind me of Jesse," said Keelan as he held the knife up, placing the tip underneath the edge of the ruby. In his head he thought of him as "Father" or "Dad," but when he spoke of him, he often used his name instead. It somehow made it easier to reckon with the idea that he was related, or maybe that he wasn't too related.

  "All I see is your red eyes. Mad at the world for never giving you what you wanted, forgetting that you had us, and Mom's family. Shouldn't that have been enough?"

  When the glass guardian didn't answer, Keelan pulled the tip of the knife away.

  "You really are like Jesse."

  Keelan dug back in, removing the ruby from the glass face. He thought about just taking the one, but decided that eventually it would get free, and he didn't want it capable of following him. He removed the second, slipping them both in his pocket.

  As he walked away, a wave of delirium overtook him. He stumbled, nearly stabbing himself in the leg on accident.

  "Let me get to them first, then I'll take care of it."

  On the way to the wall, he spied a little metal circle on the ground. The Tether. Zayn had lost it in the scramble with the guardians.

  "Or he left it for me. That'd be just like him to save me at his expense."

  He loved his cousin so much it made his heart ache, but being around Zayn was like trying to shine a flashlight on a sunny day. Nobody noticed the flashlight.

  Keelan placed the amulet in his pocket with the ruby eyes. "I'm coming to save you, cuz."

  He checked to make sure the glass guardian was still tied to the column before approaching the secret door. To his relief, it dematerialized, and he walked through.

  He was expecting a lot of things, but he didn't expect a short corridor ending in stairs that went into water. A chill shivered down his spine at the sight of where he would have to go. He approached the water slowly, fighting his memories with every step.

  The Academy had provided him with clothes and shoes that were easy to swim in, but that wasn't his problem.

  He touched his shoulder. He wouldn't be able to swim until he dealt with the wound. And even after that, he hated the idea of going underwater. Lessons in the Grotto had been bad enough, and that had been in the light, with all his classmates. Except for the one incident at the beginning of the year, he'd gotten through his classes with Instructor Noyade unscathed.

  His hand went reflexively to the obsidian amulet in his pocket.

  "No way," said Keelan. "I'm not leaving them."

  He touched the wound on his shoulder. Pale pus leaked from stitches.

  "First things first."

  Keelan sat against the wall. He didn't want to injure himself if he passed out. Then he coaxed flame into existence, heating the tip of the dagger until he thought it'd been sterilized.

  Before applying the knife to his shoulder, he dampened his sense of touch. Pain was the hardest sense to ignore, because the body was designed to signal overload when it was being damaged, but he could at least reduce it.

  First he clipped the stitches, then worked the tip into the wound. It felt like someone digging a finger into his shoulder. As he worked the knife back and forth, he hoped the piece of crystalline root hadn't gotten too far imbedded into his shoulder.


  The deeper he dug the tip, the more he couldn't block the pain. By the time he reached the piece of root, he could hardly keep his eyes open and his breath came in short heaves.

  The piece was smaller than he expected. He worked it, lifting it from the wound until it reached the top and he could pull it away. The piece of crystalline root was no bigger than a couple of grains of sand. He put it in his pocket for later examination.

  His shoulder was a bloody mess, but now that the piece of crystal was removed, he could apply magic to it. Before he was too worried about the reflective material causing more damage when he tried to heal the wound.

  Drenched in sweat, but feeling better already, Keelan approached the water. Every bit of him resisted walking into it. His mind threw out all sorts of scenarios, mostly having to do with his teammates already being dead, and that he should just leave the Bastille and live out his days in Varna. But he had to believe that there was an air pocket somewhere down below. That it was another barrier that had to be overcome.

  "You have to do this."

  After psyching himself up, he took a chest-expanding breath and walked into the water.

  As the cool liquid rose around his body, his anxiety returned. Being submerged felt like being shoved into a tomb. Without anyone around, and his body still recovering from his self-surgery, Keelan had to fight to keep going.

  The staircase led to a large chamber. Though the water was relatively clear, distance turned it murky, so he couldn't see the walls, which made it feel like it was a limitless expanse sucking him down.

  Keelan clung to the bottom of the stairs, looking around for a direction to swim. He pushed off, making tentative strokes into the middle, but as soon as he looked back to see the dim outline of the stairs, panic set in. His whole body turned into an alarm, and he couldn't swim fast enough to get back.

  Before he knew it, he was crawling up the stairs, shaking and dripping. He clenched his fists.

  "Dammit."

  He paced before the water. He hated what his father had done to him. What if it had broken him permanently? What if he couldn't go back in? His mind was filled with loose wires, ready to short-circuit him at the worst moments.

  It took him a few minutes of psyching himself up but eventually he convinced himself he had to go back in. Zayn would do the same for him.

  After another deep breath, Keelan marched into the water, this time diving into the watery expanse and stroking hard in a downward direction.

  When a shape came rising out of the deep, he panicked and nearly fled the other way, but either the glass guardian didn't see him or didn't care. Maybe the ruby eyes in his pocket helped the automatons to know who was safe and who wasn't.

  Swimming deeper, with the air in his lungs straining to get out, he saw a line of cages hanging in the middle of the water. His whole world condensed around him when he saw the four lifeless bodies floating in the cages, limbs dangling beneath them.

  The shock of seeing them was like a punch to the gut. He turned and fled upward, swimming until he found the stairs, and crawled out on his hands and knees. Collapsed.

  He was too late. They were already dead.

  His jaw shook. He clamped his hand around his mouth, trying to hold in the pain, because he knew if he let it out, he'd never get up again.

  All he could think about was how he was going to have to tell Aunt Sela and Uncle Maceo that Zayn was dead.

  Keelan pulled the circular obsidian amulet from his pocket and held his hands as if they were a plate with the magical device resting in the middle. All he had to do was hold tight and flood it with faez and he'd be saved. Back in the Honeycomb. Once he did, he'd go straight back to Varna.

  He looked at the water again. Did he really know they were dead? And if they were, shouldn't he bring their bodies back to the Honeycomb? He stared at the water for a long time.

  With a trembling realization that he had to exhaust all possibilities, however remote, or suffer a lifetime of regrets, Keelan climbed to his feet, adjusting his imbuements so that he could hold his breath even longer than before.

  For the third time, Keelan went into the water. It didn't get any easier, but he had to go. His father had been "buried" in an empty grave. He didn't want his cousin and his friends to suffer the same fate.

  This time, knowing where he needed to go, he reached the cages quickly. The door to Zayn’s cage opened to his touch, suggesting that the ruby eyes were the key to moving around the Bastille.

  Keelan hesitated before touching Zayn, but when he did, he found his skin still warm, not at all cold as he expected. Hope bloomed in his chest, an emotion he had to temper or use up his oxygen.

  He swam beneath Zayn, to find a bronze mask fitted over his face. A quick check of the magic involved revealed it was keeping him in stasis.

  Keelan tugged Zayn through the water, his limbs trailing behind him like seaweed. He carried Zayn up the stairs and gently set him on the ground before removing the mask.

  Zayn gasped with air, coming alive, fighting against Keelan for a moment.

  "I've got you, man. I've got you," Keelan said to his cousin.

  A ready smile broke across Zayn's face, and relief flooded through Keelan. He buried his head against his cousin's chest.

  "I thought I'd lost you."

  Zayn wrapped his arms around Keelan and held him until they were both done sobbing.

  "I thought I was lost as well." Zayn looked around as he sat up. "Where are the others?"

  "In the water, but I'll get 'em. I ain't leaving you all," said Keelan, his Alabama accent thickening his words.

  As Keelan strode back into the water, he found it didn't frighten him as much as it did before. He glanced back to Zayn, who was still sitting on the edge of the steps recovering.

  "I love you, cuz," said Keelan.

  That smile returned, the one that went all the way to Zayn's eyes. "Love you too, Keelan."

  Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Bastille, April 2015

  The Heist returns

  Right away, Zayn saw there was something different about Keelan after the watery rescue. He wasn't carrying a loaded spring in his gut and he'd gone back into the water multiple times after dragging them out of their prisons. He would have asked what had changed, but there was no time. It was enough to see peace in his cousin's eyes, even if it might only be temporary.

  "How are we getting out of here?" asked Portia, wringing her hair out onto the steps.

  Keelan, who had returned from another foray into the water, held his hand out, revealing a handful of rubies.

  "With these."

  "How did you get those?" asked Vin.

  "Not only do they let you through doors, but they let the guardians know who is safe and who isn't. I was able to pry them off the other guardians while they swam. Carry them in your pocket and we won't have to worry about them again," said Keelan.

  Vin put his arms around Keelan in a bear hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've always wanted to be in a heist, but I never wanted to die in a heist."

  Zayn shook out his limbs and heightened his senses with the imbuement. The stasis had left him a little groggy.

  "Let's get out of here and get the Word," said Zayn.

  With the ruby eyes in their pockets, they moved through the generator room, finding another exit and going up a flight of stairs until they reached an area Zayn recognized. After listening for anyone nearby, he led them into a large room with a massive shimmering sphere that hovered in the middle.

  No one spoke, but they signaled him with their hands.

  Prison sphere?

  Yes, he replied.

  The others stared into the sphere, expressions moving from curiosity to revulsion as they realized that the shapes inside it were people.

  They gave it a wide berth as Zayn led them to a side passage, rather than up the stairs to the chamber of the Black Council. When they heard a pai
r of voices coming down the stairs, Zayn had them step into a room filled with extravagant paintings. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a Mona Lisa, but was quickly distracted by familiar voices.

  "...know that Halfdan was behind it even if I cannot prove it," said a voice that Zayn immediately identified. It was Eleanor Fields, the ranking member of the Black Council.

  The second speaker, Tamako, whom he recognized by her stilted diction, responded, "Let me take a contingent of the guardians and speak with him. I can make him tell the truth."

  Eleanor chuckled. "As much as I would like to do that, as the man has always bothered me for reasons I cannot explain, it would upset the others and cause unnecessary strife." A pause. "Speaking of the guardians, have you seen any lately? It's not like them not to be prowling about."

  "I will send Jax down to fix them," said Tamako. "Sometimes their spellweaves get tangled, and they lose their way..."

  The Black Council members went through a door and Zayn could no longer hear them. He led the team towards a spiral staircase that went up.

  At the end of another long corridor, they came upon a room with a giant door on one side, protective runes covering it. Standing near it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  "This is it. The Word of Annihilation is through this door," said Zayn.

  "Those door wards are insane," said Skylar, eyes wide, a hint of appreciation in her voice as she studied the runes. "They made it so no one can get in. No one. Basically, they locked up the Word and threw away the key. If anyone tries to go through the door or unravels the wards, they'll die. Like instantaneously. But the problem is the doors will only stay open as long as the person who opened them is alive. So even if someone wanted to sacrifice themselves, it wouldn't work for long."

  "You almost sound like you admire its design," said Vin.

  "Purely professional. But for us, this sucks. We have no way to get in," said Skylar.

  "We need to get through it. Priyanka always said there's a flaw in every design. Can we protect that person from the trap? Or disable it? Any ideas?" asked Zayn.

  They spent a few minutes studying the runes.