by Rj Barker
“Yes, Feorwic?”
“The Merela wants you.”
“Then I will go to her. You guard Anareth.” Feorwic nodded solemnly. “Maybe you and she could practise your skipping, eh?” She nodded again, trying to stay serious, and then ran off after her friend, shouting her name at the top of her voice while I went to find my master.
She sat under a tree, her crutches laid by her side and her legs sticking straight out. Her hair, which had once been jet-black, was now more grey than any other colour, though her dark skin did not seem to wrinkle the way skin did on most her age.
“Girton,” she said, pointing to a patch of grass by her. She knew that, even after all these years, I would not sit without her permission.
“Yes, Master?” I lowered myself to the ground, then jumped up with a yelp. A stick, with sharp thorns facing up, had been placed exactly where I sat.
“Long years in Maniyadoc have made you soft where you should be sharp.”
“Arses are meant to be soft, Master,” I said, rubbing my wounded backside. “You could have just told me.”
She shrugged.
“It is better to teach by example.” There was a twinkle of amusement in her eye as she picked up the thorny branch and tossed it away. “Ceadoc is not Maniyadoc. It will be rife with assassins, or those that call themselves such.”
“Which is why you should have stayed back at the castle, Master.” When I had been young, I had believed assassins were everywhere, though the truth had been that we were a dying breed. There was my master and I, and maybe three or four other sorrowings at most. But my fame, the assassin who became Heartblade to a king, had in turn led to a resurgence of the Open Circle and the art of the assassin. These new assassins were a cruder thing than I had been—a blunt instrument instead of a surgical knife—but, as I well knew, a warhammer kills as well as a blade.
“You should have stayed, Girton. If you had stayed Rufra would have left his children behind and you could have looked after them.” Before I could snap at her she raised a hand to still my temper. “I do not mean you are no use but as a nurseman, before you say that.”
“I was not going to say that, Master.”
I was.
“Only that the business at Ceadoc will be all politicking—bloody politicking, aye, but still nothing you wish to be involved with. Rufra is a fool to take his children there.”
“I told him that. He does not listen.”
“Neither do you.”
“He cannot be without me.”
“He has Aydor and Celot, not to mention Dinay. Sometimes protecting a king is about protecting him from himself, and those children are his weakness.”
“I am here to protect—”
“They are your weakness also.”
“I can protect them. Anareth is never out of Feorwic’s sight.”
“It is Feorwic I want to speak to you of.” Something cold settled on me.
“Feorwic is—”
“Delightful, Girton, in many ways, and has been since you found her wandering, but she will never make an assassin.”
I could feel the anger within, a dark tide as intricately tied up with the magic in my veins as the scars on my body were with my skin. I had learnt to control it, slowly and with my master’s help. Nine years ago we had finally stopped cutting the Landsman’s Leash into my flesh but the magic still fought to be free. Sometimes it was almost overwhelming.
“Her family were acrobats before they were killed, I am sure of it. She tumbles as well as I ever did, Master.” Dry words. My master nodded, staring at the floor.
“And she is filled with the same joy in life you were,” when my master looked up there was the echo of tears in her eyes. “I speak badly, Girton. I only think about you as a child and what our profession has put you through as an adult. Maybe I should not say she will never be an assassin. You care deeply for her, maybe I should ask you whether she should ever be one?”
I could not reply to that. Suddenly I was a small boy again, holding a blade for the first time, scared of the shining edge and the damage I thought it would do to me.
“Maybe you are right.”
My master put out her arm for me to help her up. When she walked half her weight was held on the crutches she tucked under her shoulders. A girl called Neliu had cut the hamstring in her right leg and, I thought then, stolen everything she was from her. But my master had never given up and, though she would never be the fighter she had been, she was still dangerous in her own way.
“When do we meet the queen, Girton?”
“She is due today.” A darkness spread across my master’s face at the thought of Rufra’s new wife.
“You would think that a man who was raised in fear of his life from Queen Adran would recognise another like her when he saw her.” She said it under her breath.
“She is from Festival. It was about alliance, not love. He is not blind to her.” I did not share my master’s opinion of Rufra’s queen, Voniss. She was ambitious, yes, but not cruel, and she delighted in her stepdaughter Anareth’s company. I could see nothing in her of Adran, the cold and cruel woman who had ruled Maniyadoc and would have burned Rufra alive for her own crimes had my master not outsmarted her. But they had known each other—and better than she would admit—well before I ever laid eyes on Adran or my master. Maybe this gave her some insight I was lacking but I found the threat hard to see, and my master’s past was not something she would ever speak of.
“There are other women in Festival, Girton, they could have sealed an alliance. Now Voniss is bearing his child her grip on Rufra will be stronger than ever.” She lifted a crutch and let herself fall toward me, catching her weight at the last minute and throwing herself forward in the lurching walk she used when she wanted to move quickly. Sometimes she used one crutch, sometimes two, and I had never worked out why. It seemed to change with her mood. “And the danger to Vinwulf and Anareth may not just be from the outside, Girton.”
“Age is making you paranoid, Master.” Did she look disappointed in me? Maybe. “Voniss would never harm Rufra’s children. She is ambitious, not stupid.” In truth I liked Voniss, she was no Areth but she was sharp-witted and—though I do not think she loved him—she was loyal to Festival and so to Rufra.
“There’ll be plenty at Ceadoc ready to harm Rufra’s
children. Maybe Voniss would not move directly, but she would not stand in front of an arrow for them either.”
“I would hope not, Master, or I would be out of a job.” The crutch flashed out and hit me in the shin. “Ow.”
“Flippancy is not attractive, boy.” She gave me a grin. “We should find Rufra, I am sure he will find something to darken your mood.” But I did not have to meet the king for that, just thinking of him was enough.
The years had changed Rufra. There were still flashes of the boy I had known, and none could argue that the changes he had wrought in Maniyadoc had not been for the best, but it had been hard on him. The wounds he had taken to his side at the second battle of Goldenson Copse had never truly healed, and though we were of a similar age, both having seen over thirty-five yearsbirth storms, he looked far older. He had grown into a serious, worried man. If my master could not understand his attraction to Voniss I could, she was a brightness and, together with the jester Gusteffa, was one of the few things that still amused him.
Note that I am no longer among them.
I found him seated beneath an apple tree, leaning to one side to ease the pain in his side. He was big in a way he had never been before. Not that I would ever have described him as lithe, but he had been strong and fit as a youth, now time and pain had taken their toll. The more he hurt the less he exercised, often choosing a royal cart over his mount. It showed, he had thickened around the waist and grown a beard to hide his jowls. I had never thought of him as vain, but he was touchy about his looks, had been known to send Riders away to the furthest reaches of his kingdom if they mentioned his size.
More an
d more often when we spoke he ended up sending me away too, as if I were nothing but a servant.
“Death’s Jester,” he said.
“My king.” I bowed low, touching the floor with one hand, and Gusteffa cackled as she chewed on an apple with her one remaining tooth. I don’t know when I had stopped using his name. It was one of those changes that had happened slowly and subtly—this move from friendship to something other.
“Aydor comes from Festival with my wife. I would like you to ride to meet them.”
“But my place is here, by your side, guarding you and your family.”
“Voniss is family too, lest you forget. And I have plenty of guards.”
“But none are—”
“They are all perfectly capable, Jester.”
“They are not—”
“Didn’t you tell me the true assassins are almost gone?” I bit on the inside of my mouth. It annoyed me that he was so careless about what I was, and he knew it.
“Almost gone is not completely gone.”
“And as king I choose to risk sending you away to keep my wife and unborn child safe.” He let out a sigh, bowed his head and the hard figure before me wavered. “Please, Girton, we head to Ceadoc where I will vie for the crown of the high king. Voniss rides with Aydor and a phalanx of my best Riders, but I don’t doubt it has crossed the mind of someone that to take her hostage may give them some advantage. I trust them to be safe with you like I trust no one else.”
And in a moment my denials, readied and loaded like crossbow quarrels, died on my lips. I saw the boy within, the worried, desperate boy who had been through so much, and I saw the man who had watched his land prosper while it seemed a curse had fallen upon him. I nodded.
“Of course, Rufra. I will go to them.”
“Good,” he said. A smile brushed his lips. “You will meet them near the castle of Dannic ap Survin.”
“Is that wise? He does not support your bid for the crown and has no great love for you.”
“No,” said Rufra. He did not look at me. Instead he stared at Gusteffa as she rolled her apple core along her arms, over her shoulders and down into her other hand and then back again, her movements hypnotic, the smile painted on her face a rictus. “His son would support me though. And he is of an age to vote.”
I waited for something more. Some actual confirmation of what he meant by that, but it did not come. Would not. He was King Rufra, the Tired Lands’ most honourable king, the one whom they called “the Just.” Such a man would never order an assassination.
But he could always benefit from one.
Chapter 2
Dannic ap Survin lives in a ruin that juts from the land right on the edge of a souring. The building is like a broken tree writ massive. Once it must have been majestic, but now it is not. It is as dead as the land around it and ap Survin and his people move through it like worms through a corpse. What roofing remains is black-dotted with missing tiles. The lower parts of the building are protected from the elements by swathes of canvas, they may have been bright once but time has weathered them grey. The stink of the souring is brutal and I wonder how anyone manages here, how they can get used to the smell of sulphur and corruption rising up from the dead yellow land. Then again, are maggots bothered by the stink of decay? I suspect not.
The derelict nature of the building is a gift to me: a myriad ways in. It would be easier, and better, to find a way in as a visitor. A village of ten tumbledown shacks is clustered around the bottom of the keep and I am sure I could find work there, a jester is always welcome. But by tomorrow I must be with Voniss so I do not have the luxury of time, nor am I in the mood to entertain.
The ap Survin guards are a motley lot, slovenly and barely capable of holding the clubs and spears they wield. I could be a whirlwind here; none would stand against me if I cut my way through this place. A dancer on the edge of the blade, my steps set out in red. But that is not what Rufra wants: a nice quiet death; a gentle passing from this world into the arms of Xus the god of death; the sort of death no one will suspect. So I will not be seen and I will leave no evidence of my passing.
It is harder when none may know.
My great mount, also named Xus, is stabled in a wood an hour’s walk away and any who check for me will find the scars of a campfire and the remains of a meal, a hollow in the grass will show where I slept—not that anyone will look. I am good at what I do, even if I no longer do it often. Swathed in black my movements are as imperceptible as the shadows which move across the land from dawn to dusk. The stones of the broken keep are steps and the corrugations of its walls provide me shelter from prying eyes as I spider up the walls. And if I draw a little magic to me to cloud any eye that may wander my way, then what of it? I tell myself I have harnessed this beast and made it serve me. I no longer hear its voice, I am it and it is me and we cannot be separated, our relationship is as complex and beautiful as the network of scars on my skin.
Up the wall, across broken tiles, hearing snippets of conversation. What to eat, who is sleeping with who, which guards can be trusted, which priests are easiest to talk to. None of it is of interest to me apart from as a way of easily pinpointing people: where they are, who remains awake at this late hour. Magic could do that too—the glow of life around me—but I use it sparingly.
I have never been here before but have met Dannic ap Survin and heard him talk, he was dull and stuck to many of the common beliefs—like the higher you are in a building the more important you are. That is probably why he stayed here rather than moving away from the souring. Such tall buildings are rare and maybe the prestige of a high building is worth the stink to him.
In through a window, flowing like smoke.
Stop.
Wait.
Listen.
Nothing.
Wait.
Listen.
Breathing.
The slow, regular breathing of a man asleep coming from a room just ahead of me. No guards, no servants. Just us. Pad down the corridor, slip in through the door, find the sleeping man.
I see you, Dannic ap Survin.
Are you a bad man? Your people do not seem unhappy, or badly treated, so you are probably not. But you are a man in the way of a higher good and I am here in service to it.
I lay my hand on the pillow by his head. His breath smells of hay and mint. He shuffles slightly in his sleep, lets a single syllable escape his lips. The name of a lover? A child? Or simply the knowledge that something is wrong and a darkness has entered his room: a darkness he has no defence against.
A tendril of black leaves my fingernail, a shiver of excitement runs through me. There is a momentary widening of my eyes. He does not wake, does not feel the magic move into his head, spread through the pulsing jelly of his brain and find what it is that keeps him alive, keeps his lungs going and his heart beating.
As easily as I would snuff out a candle I snuff out a life.
Not now, not this second. I leave a memory of magic that will tell his body to shut down when I am long gone from there.
He looks peaceful lying there, unaware that Xus the unseen now waits in a corner of his room. That his fate is already sealed.
You were not a bad man, Dannic ap Survin.
I am not sure I can say the same of myself.
Chapter 3
“Is Dannic dead yet then, Girton?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oh, come on, why else would he send you?” Aydor paused, as if to pick his words. “I mean, he’s not worried about Voniss’s safety, not with a warrior of such renown as I in charge of her.” He glanced over his shoulder as if to make sure she was out of earshot, then hooked his shield with the sigil of the bear on it over his saddle. “Unless, of course, he was frightened she may leap into my bed. It has been known, you know, women find the girth of my belly irresistible. But I would fight her off, for I am loyal to my king and ow!” A stone pinged off his helm and he turned to see Voniss, grinning like an imp.
&nb
sp; “I am pregnant, not deaf, Aydor ap Mennix. Your voice is as big as your stomach.” For a moment he looked wounded.
“Mighty,” he said. “I think she meant, ‘Your voice is as mighty as your stomach.’ And it is mighty, Girton. When do we stop for lunch?”
“We have only just had breakfast, Aydor.”
He leaned in close. This time he spoke so quietly even I could barely hear him. “He is dead though?”
“King Rufra does not order assassinations, Aydor.” I did not look at him, only stared at the flat, wide grassland framed by Xus’s antlers.
“And I do not order perry, Girton, it simply appears in my hand when I am thirsty.”
“Well, that is your curse, eh?”
“Aye, my life given to Dark Ungar simply because I am a man with a great thirst.” He seemed to pick up on my discomfort and realise what he had said. Aydor was one of the few who knew about the magic which ran through my veins. He had never told me as much, it was something that had gradually dawned on me over the years of our friendship. He dragged himself into an upright position. “I could eat a whole pig,” he said. “Maybe two.”
“There’ll be pigs aplenty at Ceadoc, Aydor.” He sat even straighter in his saddle.
“I’ve lost my appetite now.” He squinted into the distance. “You’ve never been to Ceadoc, have you?”
“No, he made me stay at Maniyadoc last time, took Celot instead.”
“I don’t know why he suddenly got it into his head to be high king. Maniyadoc should be enough, we have it good there. Ceadoc is a cesspool and the high king has no real power. If he wants power he’d be better taking his army into the field. No one could stand against him.”
“He wants to avoid a war. What the war of the three kings did to Maniyadoc still haunts him.” I looked away, looked back. “I’m not looking forward to this, Aydor. I do not understand why Rufra is interested or how it will work.” Xus let out a hiss and I stroked his neck, feeling the muscles beneath the fur.