Assassin's Apprentice

by S. R. Vaught; J. B. Redmond

  To Dari’s great horror, Aron threw down his silver blade and reached for the child.

  Stormbreaker got to him before he made contact, which surely would have been fatal. Stormbreaker, too, hesitated, but only for a moment. With a flourish of his blades, he dispatched the child’s spirit, and two of the nearest manes, as well.

  The boy had temporarily lost his senses, Dari felt certain. Battle madness. She rushed to the barn to help with the remaining manes as Aron collapsed beside Stormbreaker.

  Dari thrust her hands into the nearest mane, and went rigid with shock. Images flooded her, of Aron and other children and a farm burning. Hogs being slaughtered. This mane, this mother’s screaming, rang through her mind almost as powerfully as Aron’s thoughts had done when she touched him.

  Oh, gods. His mother. His family…

  But she couldn’t let them kill the boy all the same. She dispatched Aron’s mother with a firm touch and blessing, and an older boy, too. A brother. Stormbreaker dispatched the last mane, another tall, longhaired brother of Aron’s, whispering, “Seth. You did get to fight a great battle after all, boy. I’m sure you fought bravely.”

  As he watched the mane he called Seth turn to sparkles of energy and drift away, Stormbreaker said, “Did your father refuse to believe my warning? Did your family tarry too long before fleeing your farm?”

  Dari had no idea what Stormbreaker meant, and she had no time to puzzle it out. Instead, she worked to deepen her presence on the other side of the Veil, and prepared herself to kneel beside Aron and join with him, to force his body through a basic healing process, but a loud thunder of wings brought her up short.

  She wheeled away from the barn and ran forward, Stormbreaker at her side.

  Openmouthed, the two of them watched as the moonslit sky filled with huge, powerful flying beings. Not mockers, these. No. The outlines were unmistakable—bodies of lions, the heads, wings, and claws of giant eagles. Gryphons, blotting out all the stars with their size and numbers, moving in defensive V-formations, heading due south.

  Dari’s entire essence fell back from the other side of the Veil so fast she almost vomited. She needed no enhanced perceptions to understand what she was seeing, but she didn’t want to believe it.

  “The Sabor are withdrawing from Eyrie,” Stormbreaker murmured, obviously as shocked as Dari that the servants of Cayn would leave their hired posts in castles, temples, shrines, and manors all over the northern lands. “Lord Ross must have called them to close and guard his dynast borders.”

  Dari clutched at her own tunic, twisting it, tearing it in little patches as she went. Images of home filled her mind, with its welcoming mists rolling outward. The Ross border was between her and those mists, and now that border would be so closed and well defended even a single mane couldn’t slip through without most of the dynast hearing the alert.

  “Oh, gods. Grandfather!” Dari pulled at her tunic again. “How will I ever get home?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  DARI

  When the sun at last found its place in the sky, the travelers from the shelter dispersed in many directions. Stormbreaker held back his group and bade Windblown and Zed to feed themselves and prepare the animals for journey, then took Dari and the stumbling, stupefied Aron away from his companions for breakfast. He gave Dari a soft gray robe of his own, along with a dagger to cut it to a length that suited her, then apologized for not having clothing more appropriate for a lady.

  While she numbly worked on the robe, he built a strong fire in a nearby forest clearing, which Dari figured was more for warmth and cooking than protection from mockers or other predators who might move in the light. Stormbreaker knew animals and even the shape-shifting half-animals would keep a respectful distance. Dari was Stregan. Now that she was free of sleeping potions and able to broadcast a bit of her true essence, no beast would approach her without invitation. Stregans had no natural enemies, save for themselves—and of course, anyone with Fae blood.

  Stormbreaker had not asked her about her heritage, perhaps to keep Aron from overhearing it. Shielding her people or being courteous—Dari had no idea why he kept his questions to himself, but she was grateful. The Stregans had no wish to be revealed. The Fae had betrayed them once, driving them near to extinction. She didn’t intend to give the landbound remnants of her enemy’s bloodlines another chance.

  Dari was also grateful that Aron had regained consciousness, just before sunrise. The wiry boy with sapphire eyes had spent the waning hours of night trancelike and raving, seeming to talk to some injured, dying child he thought should be the king of the world. Aron had begged the child to live long enough to kill their mutual enemies and to restore Aron’s family to him. After a time, Aron had lapsed into grateful sobs and more ranting.

  Listening to Aron had torn at Dari’s heart. Even though she knew he was part-Fae, he seemed no more and no less than any child of her own people. So small, so slight to be so bereft. She wanted to shut out his cries of agony, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t, any more than Stormbreaker, who had sat for hours on his knees, keeping vigil beside Aron.

  Now that Aron was awake, he huddled beside the large fire without making a sound, covered in a drape of two travelers’ blankets. His light brown hair hung about his pale, freckled face in disarray, and his unusual eyes seemed dull and blank. Dari had used her graal to examine him as much as she dared, as had Stormbreaker. The Stone Brother’s Vagrat blood gave him healing skills almost equal to Dari’s, after all. Neither of them could find serious physical injuries affecting the boy. The damage had been done to Aron’s mind, from encountering so much he didn’t understand, from spending far too much time deep on the other side of the Veil without the training to manage such a journey, and no doubt from the overwhelming grief and shock of seeing his dead family rendered into carnivorous manes.

  By the time Stormbreaker finished preparing a restorative meal of toasted nuts, quail eggs, and bacon, Dari had washed her face in a nearby stream, wound her hair up in several thick braids, and changed into the freshly shorn robe. As she walked back into the clearing, passerines filled the morning sky. Some moved in message flocks, while others flew alone, carrying private notes in every direction.

  One of the larger flocks, the sadly wheeling group of tiny white birds, conveyed a clear and disturbing message. The last Mab heir, the hobbledehoy, was dead. Mab had none of the true ruling bloodline to take the throne when the mad queen died.

  Tears in the sky, bringing a sense of dread and doom to all who saw them.

  Even though her people had and always would keep themselves separate from the Fae dynasts, Dari wasn’t immune to the dread. The hobprince’s death would be more than enough to plunge Eyrie into chaos. She held up her dark hand and watched the birds through her fingers, wondering how the death might be connected to the massacre in Dyn Brailing—for surely it was. The timing was too great a coincidence. Her skin still glistened with the oil she had worked through her hair after waking, and she wished she had enough mint and tea balm to cover her body and soothe her nerves in the face of such dark news and such dreadful musings. Such were the luxuries of home, though. And she was far from home, with little to no hope of returning anytime soon.

  From what Dari could surmise from visiting the other side of the Veil, where unguarded thoughts moved freely even over great distance, Lord Brailing had broken the Watchline, then turned his forces due north, intending to march on Eyrie’s ruling dynast with the help of neighboring Lord Altar. Dyn Mab, seemingly oblivious to this threat, had its soldiers committed to pushing their way south, perhaps to strike a preemptive blow against Lady Mab’s imagined enemy, Lord Ross.

  Dari didn’t know if the Mab forces had learned of the flight of the Sabor, if they knew yet what they would find when they reached the Ross borders, but someone would inform them soon enough. Perhaps they would be shocked into reconsidering, and withdraw back to Mab to address the threat from the west.

  Perhaps her grandfather intende
d exactly that effect.

  She plowed into her breakfast, desperately needing the fortification of protein and oils to restore the energy she had lost the night before. A few bites later, however, her mind returned to a set of lingering questions.

  “I don’t understand why Lord Brailing failed to dispatch his dead.” She interrupted herself with a bite of nuts, then swallowed back a caustic remark about Fae cruelty and poor judgment, considering her present company. “Many of them had to have chevilles. It would have taken more time for word of his pogrom to spread if he had sent the spirits to their afterlife. Did he leave evidence of the slaughter of his own people simply to intimidate his foes?”

  “Or his allies.” Stormbreaker offered Aron a slice of bacon. The boy snatched it away and chewed, his eyes still distant. “Lord Brailing is beyond treacherous. He has his own designs, throwing in with Altar, but I’m sure he wants to keep Altar aware of his power and ruthlessness.”

  Dari downed more nuts, and followed them with eggs. She washed down the nourishment with sweet-tasting water from one of Stormbreaker’s flasks. “But Lord Brailing has killed his staunchest supporters. His most loyal citizens—many of his own distant relatives.”

  Stormbreaker nodded. “When I asked his permission to Harvest from the Brailing blood along the Watchline, he refused me. He feared these people. That much was obvious.”

  And that much, at least, Dari could understand. She glanced at Aron, who grabbed some roasted nuts from Stormbreaker’s hand and thrust them into his mouth. Lord Brailing must have realized some of his relatives were producing offspring with powerful graal. Throw-backs to better days for the Fae—but threats to Lord Brailing’s power. Even on this side of the Veil and less than sane, Aron’s essence pulsed a brilliant sapphire. The color outlined his entire body, even lighting up his clothes. Indeed, Lord Brailing must have seen it, or someone close enough to him to be heard and believed. A completely Quiet idiot might sense something about this boy.

  Still, somehow the Watchline farmers had been keeping their legacies a secret. They weren’t trying to intrude upon the recognized Fae ruling bloodlines or force places amongst the privileged.

  Well, of course they could keep their graal a secret. Dari took another swig of water to temper the salty bacon. In the oldest times, Brailing ruled Eyrie because the Brailing graal could bend the universe to its will. Animate matter, inanimate matter—a trained Fae with the Brailing mind-talents could force a rock to comply with his wishes.

  Stormbreaker fed Aron a bite of eggs and nodded, as if following her thoughts. “I suspect it was a simple matter for these folks to keep a testing cup from smoking, or force a rector not to notice how loud the blood was speaking when they presented their children for legacy screening after birth. I only saw Aron’s abilities because he wished it, to save his younger sister the pain of my blade.”

  Dari swallowed a bite of eggs that had turned leaden in her mouth. Was this the same girl whose mane the boy almost embraced the night before? She studied Aron’s face, but saw no flicker of emotion. His expression remained empty.

  “Either some observer noticed what the rectors missed, or Lord Brailing got a taste of Aron’s legacy when the boy saved his young talon from the Scry.” Stormbreaker shook his head sadly. “His family took the bequest of the little talon as a gift. In truth, I fear Tek was a marker, to make certain Aron’s family died when the time came.”

  Dari finished her meal and wiped her hands on a cloth the Stone Brother provided to her. “Do you think Lord Brailing is behind the rumored poisonings in Dyn Mab’s capital—in the Tree City? Is Lord Brailing the reason Mab now has no true heirs?”

  Stormbreaker took back his cloth and cleaned his own hands before responding. “That’s anyone’s guess. No doubt Lady Mab blames Lord Ross, in the madness of her grief. She always turns her suspicions southward and misses the treachery closer to her home. Dari, what relationship have you to the Ross line?”

  Dari clamped her teeth together, every drop of her blood and will rebelling against the thought of answering that question. She sat quietly, feeling her body rebuild itself thanks to Stormbreaker’s meal, and debating what she should say. The Stone Brother didn’t press his question, but instead busied himself by removing daggers and knives from his robes, laying them before him on the ground and cleaning the soiled blades in the fire. He even took off his swords and laid them with the rest, disarming himself as she had seen few Stone Brothers do. This High Master, Dunstan Stormbreaker, was something she had not encountered before. True of heart, despite his Fae heritage, and intelligent beyond what most of his peers might understand. She suspected his fellow Brothers saw him as a good leader and teacher, though a bit impulsive, with a tendency to risk his own life in a reckless fashion, protecting the innocent and weak, as the first tenet of the Canon of Stone dictated. Dari, however, suspected that Stormbreaker did nothing without tremendous thought and calculation. He simply kept his factoring and figures to himself.

  These thoughts made her feel ill at ease. The complexity of the man, the boy, the whole situation—it did not sit well with her. She had never considered what it might feel like to take any Fae seriously, outside those few in the Ross and Cobb dynasts that she had known since childhood. Those few, they were the only exceptions to Stregan prejudice against their enemies—or so she had believed until she met these two.

  Were they truly exceptions to the brutish stupidity of Fae, or had she let down her defenses too far in the heat of battle?

  Another period of silence ensued, until Dari grew so tense she could hardly continue to sit inside her own skin.

  “Lord Ross is my grandfather,” she admitted at last. “Though that relationship remains as secret as my Stregan nature. His eldest son wed my mother—twice, in fact. Once they joined as promise-mates in the custom of my people, and later they wed again as band-mates in the custom of your people.”

  Stormbreaker didn’t ask his questions aloud, but Dari could read them on his tattooed face. What rector would give his permission for an illegal cross-mixing and formalize an oathbreaking union? How in all of Eyrie did Lord Ross find a rector who would add those second chevilles to the ankles of her parents, crystal born of the same fire, so the two could always find each other, no matter how the wind blew?

  “My parents were true band-mates,” she said. “The union was sanctioned by the Ross rector. Gloster is his name, and he’s very, very old, and also very skilled in the making of chevilles. He could do the work himself, without having to commission a stone mason to do it—well, you know most in Dyn Ross have some skill with working rock and stone anyway. Needless to say, Gloster does not hold tightly with his allegiance to Thorn.” She sat back, surprised at the sense of burdens lifting from her as she shared some of her secrets, and surprised by the flicker of darkness that crossed Stormbreaker’s features at the mention of Thorn.

  “I suspect the writ of acknowledgment of that marriage has never found its way out of the walls of Gloster’s Temple of the Brother,” she said. “Probably never will, unless need demands it.”

  Stormbreaker looked appeased, and once more light and focused. “Loyalty in Dyn Ross runs strong to the Ross bloodline—stronger than in any other dynast, except perhaps for Dyn Cobb. If Lord Ross had asked it, I’m sure any number of his people would have kept this secret.”

  Dari nodded. “Those in Ross were the only Fae who refused to betray their Fury brothers and sisters during the mixing disasters. They saved the Sabor from extinction, and in the end, they offered shelter and secrecy for Stregan survivors as well. I suspect a number of Ross citizens know, or have guessed, that my people reside nearby to their dynast borders, and that sometimes, we come amongst them. Yet no rumors of our existence have spread.”

  “Rumors will not spread from me, either,” Stormbreaker assured her. “No rumors of you, and no rumors of this boy’s origins.”

  Dari gazed once more at Aron, at his distant, vacant expression, and wondered if Stormbreake
r’s efforts on his behalf—and her own—had been in vain.

  Would Aron’s mind heal from the blows he had suffered?

  Could he?

  It didn’t take Dari long to add up that Stormbreaker had come to Brailing on purpose, probably sensing some shadow over the dynast, or maybe even the growing doom hanging above the Watchline. The dynast lord had refused him permission to Harvest from the dynast bloodline, but Stormbreaker had Harvested Aron anyway, despite potential ill will from Lord Brailing. The guild could take such an action by law, if it suited their purposes, but they rarely did so. And if she wasn’t much mistaken, Stormbreaker had tried to save Aron’s family from the coming massacre.

  She eyed the dav’ha marks lining the Fae’s arms.

  Perhaps Stormbreaker even had some debt of honor to Aron’s father. Perhaps Aron’s father had made dav’ha with this Stone Brother, somewhere back in time.

  Dari’s gaze returned to Aron.

  Did the boy realize that Stormbreaker had saved his life? That the Stone Brother had tried to spare his family from Lord Brailing’s attack? What did this isolated boy from an isolated Watchline farm understand about the workings of Eyrie? Their talk of politics and allegiances and betrayals were likely lost on him, beyond the fact that his family was dead and the only home he had known had probably been burned to the ground.

  Her mind turned over the night’s events one more time, and a new coldness flooded through her. “Lord Brailing couldn’t interfere directly with your Harvest, Stormbreaker, but he could be relatively assured of your death if he filled the woods between the Watchline and Triune with manes.”

  Stormbreaker, who had finally arranged his blades to his satisfaction, let out a sigh that told Dari she was correct.

  She jammed her hands against the ground on either side of her, to ground herself. “He thought you might disobey his wishes and Harvest one of the Watchline families. He left the essence of all of those people in torment, in hopes they would do murder for him. Lord Brailing sent this boy’s family to kill him!”