Traitor Princess, Assassin Saint

by T. R. Sherwood

  “What happened to your hand?”

  She tugged at the bandages. “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

  “It’s nothing, Haol.”

  Haol watched the horizon, frowning. “Nobody told me the plan. They just said it was time, and I had to bring you. And that the Xiunian Empire’s merchants appreciate your business. Annara, if you’ve been buying from them, where did you get the money?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  He turned to face her, concern in his eyes. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  Annara didn’t respond. Instead, she absent-mindedly brought her unbandaged hand to her lips and bit her knuckles until they bled.

  “I’m your friend,” Haol insisted. “We grew up together. You can trust me. I’m here for you.”

  You’re going to regret it someday, Annara thought. She inhaled shakily. “Then listen closely, and I’ll tell you what you need to do.”

  “What do I need to do? What’s going to happen?” he said, furrowing his brow.

  She turned to look down the weathered wooden decks of the ship, across the ocean, to the horizon where the islands of the Crescent waited. She bared her gums in a smile that felt predatory and harsh, stripped of any gentleness her time in Seichre might have lent her.

  “Revolution,” she said.

  ✽✽✽

  Senne choked. Her vision faded in and out, but she could still see the thing in Heron’s bare, shaking hand. It was a chunk of flesh, corrupted by some sort of dark, corroded metal that protruded from the bloodied chambers. Veins wound through it, clogged with that same black, rust-like material.

  It was still beating. The mass of flesh pulsed steadily. Two threadlike veins connected it to the wound in Senne’s chest.

  Heron closed his fist, and the world went dark.

  ✽✽✽

  Senne opened her eyes and found herself meeting the unfocused gaze of a small child. The child was gaunt and thin, limbs ravaged by malnourishment, and her eyes were glazed, as if she wasn’t fully conscious. She had long, ragged black hair, twisted into a low ponytail with a grubby scrap of cloth.

  With a start, Senne realized that the child was her. Herself, seven years old and near starvation in the south of Seichre.

  Footsteps sounded at the mouth of the alley where child Senne slumped. The shadow of a man slunk up the alleyway and covered her. Adult Senne turned to see a man dressed all in gray with tawny eyes. His face was familiar.

  Familiar, of course, because she had just seen it. It was Tin, the man who had just induced her transformation with a single volatile piece of memory ore. He stared through her as if she didn’t exist.

  Of course, she thought. Memory ore collects memories. This is a memory.

  Tin cleared his throat sharply. Child Senne’s sunken eyes fluttered open, and she feebly clutched at a wooden bowl on the ground next to her.

  “Please, sir,” she mumbled, barely coherent. “Spare a few coins?”

  Tin looked down at her dispassionately. There wasn’t a trace of warmth in the lines of his face. He did, however, take off his hat, revealing a head of hair that was not yet gray. It was brown and smoothed like terra cotta, forming a helmet over his high forehead.

  “Do you want to live?”

  The child stared up at him, slack-jawed.

  “You are dying, child. Starvation will kill you in a matter of days. The Wraith Initiative will save your life, but you will be ours, body and soul, for the rest of your life. You will obey our orders. You will be a tool of the Seichrenese monarchy.”

  The child struggled to sit up. “Monarchy?”

  “The king and queen, child,” Tin said impatiently. “You will have a duty, a concept which I’m sure is alien to you now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to. There is only one question you need to answer. Do you want to live?”

  She did. More than anything.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Stand up and come with me.”

  He didn’t offer to help her up. He must not have wanted to touch her. She tottered to her feet and followed him out of the alley, and the scene faded back to black.

  ✽✽✽

  The young Senne sat on a bench inside the Wraith Initiative headquarters, listening to Tin argue with someone. Their voices seeped through the cracks in a closed office door. She hadn’t recognized the second voice as a child, but Senne’s adult self raised her head. Heron.

  He sounded younger and more frightened than she could ever remember hearing him. More than that, he sounded furious. He must have been about seventeen years old.

  “What were you thinking, sir? This is ridiculous,” Heron hissed.

  “Are you questioning your orders?”

  “No, sir,” Heron said, subdued. “Of course not. But, Tin, she’s too young.”

  “She’s not much younger than you were.”

  “I was fourteen! She’s, what, six?”

  Child Senne frowned irritably. She was obviously seven.

  “Everyone besides me who’s ever undergone the procedure has died,” Heron continued. “Are you going to mutilate a child now? I wouldn’t be here if I had a moral objection to murder, but this is going too far.”

  “The other test subjects died precisely because they were not children,” Tin said sharply. “You only survived because you were young. She will survive too.”

  “You don’t know that! One case of something happening isn’t evidence, it’s not science, science has to be repeatable.”

  “Look at that. Someone has delusions of literacy.”

  Adult Senne could picture Heron bristling. “I can read.”

  “Who taught you, child?”

  “I taught myself,” Heron spat. “No thanks to you.”

  “I don’t appreciate your tone. In fact, I will not be spoken to this way.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Tin.”

  There was a heavy smack and a quickly stifled cry of pain. The room went silent for a long time.

  “I apologize, sir,” Heron said tightly. “I should never have spoken to you that way.”

  “As long as you understand your mistake. Now, Silver is coming to collect the girl. Do you wish to watch the procedure?”

  Heron’s voice had turned dull. “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t cause any trouble.”

  ✽✽✽

  Senne sat at a table, staring down a massive banquet of food. There were fresh buns, still steaming from the oven, duck glazed with orange sauce, an entire salmon in a bed of greens, and a slab of steak, pink at the core and charred at the edges.

  Her bare chest was still wrapped in bandages, but Senne ignored the piercing, burning pain. Vaguely, she remembered a severe woman explaining the procedure. A piece of memory ore would be implanted in her heart, and if she was very, very lucky, it would meld to her organs and grant her the power to control any memory steel, anywhere.

  Right now, faced with the scent of meat and bread and oranges, Senne didn’t care about that at all. She piled her plate high with everything she could get her hands on and started shoveling it into her mouth.

  A door opened, somewhere to her left. She felt the dining bench creak as someone settled next to her. Senne tore herself away from her food long enough to look at him.

  Adult Senne had to do a double take. Heron had never looked like that. Had he?

  He was a thin teenager with long limbs and badly cut black hair that fell to his shoulders. His clothes were a far cry from his adult self’s casual elegance. He was dressed in a ragged black poncho and tattered gray gloves. His wrists were heavily bandaged, and there was a dark bruise just under his left eye, like a stain on his cheekbone. He looked exhausted— and worse, frightened. His eyes were puffy, as if he had just been crying.

  “Don’t eat so fast,” he said brusquely. “You’re going to make yourself throw up.”

  Senne elected to ignore this in favor of shoving mo
re food in her mouth.

  Heron sighed and pulled her plate away from her. Senne slammed both tiny fists on the table, outraged. The silverware shook.

  “Hey!” she said, mouth full.

  Heron reached over and picked a sweet poppyseed bun off the pile of bread on the table. He split it in half, buttered it, and handed one half to her.

  “Eat this,” he said. “Slowly.”

  Senne grabbed the bun and started munching on it. He watched her for a split second, to make sure she was eating it properly, and then he took a knife and began cutting her piece of steak into small pieces so that she could eat it better. When he was done, he slid the plate back over and gently placed a fork in her hands.

  Senne stared at him. The casual domestic gesture unburied prehistoric memories of the time when her family was still alive.

  “Go on, eat up,” he said. “You look like you’re on death’s door.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Semg.”

  He reached for the other half of the bun he had given her. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  This was so quintessentially older-brotherish that Senne unexpectedly burst into tears. She didn’t say anything, she just chewed rapidly with tears rolling heavily down her cheeks and an awed expression on her face.

  “Oh, goddesses,” Heron said. “Did I do something? What did I do? You can talk with your mouth full if it’s that important to you, kid, it’s not that big a deal.”

  Senne still couldn’t say anything, so she just chewed her food, watching him and crying silently.

  “Uh… right. If anyone asks, it wasn’t me and I was never here,” Heron said, getting up and stealing another bun from the table. “Senne, wasn’t it? I guess I’ll see you around.”

  He reached out and ruffled her hair as he passed. She could feel the warmth even through his glove, even a long time after he left.

  ✽✽✽

  The scene changed again.

  A slightly older Senne sat on the floor of a windowless room. There was nothing in the room except her, a candle, and a memory steel blade. She glared at it, willing it to levitate, but nothing happened.

  “Why won’t you work?” she yelled.

  She hurled the knife at the wall. It bounced off and clattered onto the floor.

  There was a click from the door behind her. She hadn’t noticed it the first time around, but as an adult, she recognized the distinctive scrape of a lock being picked. The door creaked open to reveal Heron, looking furtive.

  “I can’t get it to move!” Senne said, staring at the fallen knife like she wanted it to burst into flames.

  “That’s alright. Why don’t you take a break and—”

  “It’s not alright! I have to do this. If I can’t do this, I can’t be Lord Wraith. If I can’t be Lord Wraith, then what’s the point of me? Why am I still alive?”

  Heron sat on the floor next to her, crossing his arms. He looked exhausted, with deeply engrained circles under his eyes and the bulk of bandages hidden beneath his tunic. Of course, Senne hadn’t noticed any of it at the time.

  “When’s the last time you ate something?” he said.

  Senne wiped tears of frustration away with the palm of her hand. “I don’t know. Silver says I can’t eat anything until I make the knife move.”

  “Right, because not eating helps concentration so much,” Heron said, with a touch of his future self’s sarcasm. He reached into his pocket and brought out a poppyseed bun wrapped in wax paper, with the dark seeds clear pinpricks where they pressed against the wrapping. “Eat this.”

  She hesitated. “But Silver says—”

  “Do I look like Silver?”

  She took the bun and regarded him very seriously over its crumpled wrapper. “No.”

  “I sure hope not. She looks like an angry weasel.”

  Senne giggled into the bread, which she bit into slowly and guiltily. Flakes of the sugared glaze clung to her cheeks.

  “Are you feeling better?” Heron said when she was done. He reached out and helped her wipe her hands clean with a handkerchief.

  “A little.”

  “Did you mean what you said earlier, about not knowing why you were alive if you couldn’t be Lord Wraith?”

  She hesitated, and then nodded.

  “I like that you’re alive, even if you’re not Lord Wraith,” he said. The usual light in his eyes vanished like an extinguished candle flame. “I know the feeling, though. Some days I wonder why I don’t just—”

  He cut himself off and ran a hand through his long black hair, apparently realizing that whatever he was about to say wasn’t appropriate for children. Watching him, the adult Senne’s heart broke all over again.

  “I like that you’re alive too,” small Senne said. “If… if something happened to you, what would happen to me? I’d have no one to bring me poppyseed buns.”

  “Yeah.” Heron laughed softly. “Yeah, you make a good point.” The light returned, just a little fiercer than usual. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Good,” small Senne said.

  “Good,” adult Senne echoed, even though no one could hear her.

  “Alright,” Heron said, after a small pause. “Are we ready to try that knife again?”

  “I think so,” Senne said.

  “Good. First you have to bond to it.”

  “It’s already bonded to Silver.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Bond to it anyway.” Heron placed the knife in front of her. “Look at the knife. Really look at it. Is the blade perfectly uniform? How would you describe the colors? Are there any patterns in the metal?”

  Slowly, the color of the knife clouded and turned to black.

  “Excellent work. Now picture the knife going up.”

  The knife suddenly shot up to head height, trembling slightly and flickering in and out of existence. Heron offered her a smile as she gaped at it.

  “I did it!”

  “You did,” Heron said, patting her shoulder. “Good job.”

  “Heron!” someone shouted outside, their voice echoing down the hallway. “Damn it, where is he? He has work to do.”

  Heron’s smile slipped slightly. “I think that’s my cue.”

  He started to get up, then knelt back down and quickly scrubbed the sugar and seeds off her face with his handkerchief. She let him squish her face around in the interest of hiding the evidence. Then he pulled away and offered her a smile. There was still exhaustion etched into the lines of his shoulders, but he seemed to stand a little straighter than he had before.

  ✽✽✽

  Colors blurred. The scene changed again.

  This time, Senne was chained to the wall in the same windowless room, wearing a white nightgown. She shifted against the manacles on her wrists as the cold bit into her bare skin. The transformation hadn’t started yet. A layer of cold sweat clung to her chest and her hands.

  The adult Senne watched her younger self convulse as spines sprouted from her skin. Her teeth elongated, and her neck sprouted metallic silver fur. She thrashed back and forth, chains rattling and whipping across the room.

  Heron had been telling the truth, she realized, when he said it always hurt. It had always hurt Senne, and she had always assumed it was because she wasn’t good enough. Because she was weak, and ill-equipped to handle her duty. But that wasn’t true. It hurt because the Wraith Initiative was cruel.

  At least Senne had someone to bring her poppyseed buns and kind words here and there. Heron had been alone in the Wraith Initiative for years.

  The scene changed again.

  ✽✽✽

  The prisoner was easily twice her size. He was a boulder of a man, dressed in a ragged gray uniform. They had armed him with a butcher knife, with a large rectangular blade. He dragged it along the floor as he approached, leaving a long white scratch in the rough gray stone.

  “Kill,” Silver said.

  Senne
wrapped her fingers around the knives in her pockets. Their handles were already slick with sweat. Every time the glint of the butcher knife’s shining edge caught her eye, she could picture it biting into the soft flesh of her stomach and cracking through her vertebrae. She barely came up to his waist. To him, she must have been the size of an animal.

  The prisoner swung his knife, aiming not for her stomach, but for her neck. A mistake. Easier to duck. Senne dropped to the ground, dove around him, and plunged both her knives into the backs of his knees. He screamed. The sound was so loud and raw that the stone walls shook, and Senne scuttled away to a corner of the room, holding her bloodied hands over her ears.

  His voice trailed away as he fell, and he lay on the hard stone floor, gasping. Senne straightened, shaking slightly as she wiped her knives on her sleeves, and bowed to Silver.

  “He’s not dead yet, wraith-in-training,” Silver said sharply.

  “I’ve incata— incapacitated him,” Senne said.

  “Your orders were to kill. Go on. Cut out his heart so that we can present it to the King as evidence of your progress.”

  “Do I have to?”

  Silver’s expression was her answer. Senne swallowed. She inched closer to the prone form of the prisoner. Hatred and rage blazed in his eyes, so intensely that she almost stepped back. Instead, she stepped forward, and knelt down so that the blood on the floor clung stickily to the knees of her pants. The prisoner scrabbled desperately for his fallen weapon. Senne closed her eyes and raised her knife.

  Before she could move, there was a quiet thunk and an even quieter sigh.

  “You!” Silver said furiously.

  “Good morning.”

  Senne’s eyes flew open. A small black throwing knife had neatly pierced the center of the prisoner’s forehead, killing him instantly. A tiny trickle of blood streaked down from the wound and clotted in one of his eyebrows.

  A familiar figure stood casually in the doorway. Heron stood tall, with the posture of a gentleman. He raised an eyebrow at Silver. The dagger extracted itself and shot back into his gloved hands. He cleaned it with a black handkerchief, and it vanished into the pitch-dark folds of his coat.

  “You can’t do that,” Silver seethed.