Assassin's Apprentice

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

  Nic felt a rush of something like power. It combined with the lingering effects of the nightshade wine, making him dizzy, almost giddy. He knew he should have been horrified, but all he could think was, Well done. One less criminal to terrorize the goodfolk.

  Snakekiller’s silky voice slipped into his euphoria. “Our companions are earlier than I expected. I’ll ask you this once, and only once.” She was speaking rapidly, as if to get out the words before the approaching men drew within earshot. “And you must answer me now. Are you certain you don’t wish for me to take you to the nearest Thorn guildhouse, so the rectors can take you to Eidolon for the rest of your recovery? I have no love for the men who wear black, or the Thorn Guild either, for that matter, but they would give you the respect and honor due your station in life.”

  Nic’s heart seemed to skip and stutter, sagging into his ribs from the shock of her knowledge. “No,” he said, his voice cracking with each word. “No rectors. Please.”

  After a moment of silence, he saw Snakekiller shift on the board above him. “Then it might be prudent if you didn’t reveal the extent of your education—knowing Sidhe words like benedet, for example. And keep your speech less proper, or better yet, speak little, if at all.”

  Nic wanted to close his eyes, but didn’t, fearful of falling in his mind, of losing what little ration he possessed. I’m such a fool. He started to promise to be cautious on this point, but Snakekiller plunged ahead. “Last night, you made contact with someone on the other side of the Veil. A boy with a very powerful legacy—and at least one powerful enemy. Both have mind-talents as bountiful as your own.”

  Now Nic’s mind spun with a wildness he couldn’t control. I don’t have a legacy. The rectors said I’m Quiet. I’ve always been Quiet….

  But he had spoken to that boy on the mountaintop, hadn’t he? Tia Snakekiller had just confirmed that. He had been on the other side of the Veil. How she knew that, he couldn’t begin to guess, and he sensed he didn’t have time to ask.

  “I think it might be safer if you don’t go through the Veil again until we reach Triune,” she said, and this time her movements seemed to free that terrifying scent of almonds, of poison, waiting to find its quarry. “Until you have some training and some protections so no one will recognize you by your graal. Do you take my meaning, Nic Vespa?”

  At that moment, Nic could do little but wish for another mouthful of nightshade wine. He wanted to drink the goatskin dry and slip into nothingness, where he couldn’t make such ridiculous errors. Where there was no chance he’d be sent back to a life of treachery and murder—or the vicious madness of his mother.

  “Yes, High Mistress,” he whispered, hoping he was telling the truth, that he could be as careful as she was ordering him to be. “I understand.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DARI

  Afternoon sun cast greenish hues over the tiny Dyn Brailing village as Dari stood with Stormbreaker, Windblown, and the tearful, sag-shouldered man who had fetched them from this area’s main byway. They had left the wagons, Zed, and Aron a few yards out of the town’s limits, under guard of what was now a traveling group of more than twenty Stone Brothers, plus their Harvest prizes.

  An agitated traveling group who knew they were moving all too slowly.

  Dari glanced at the sun’s position in the sky and shared the group’s unrest.

  Time was passing.

  She could almost feel the crawl of hours across the back of her neck and shoulders. When they were finished with their business here, they would skirt the town and join the byway again as soon as possible.

  But would that be soon enough?

  Could they possibly be fortunate enough to avoid soldiers and battles all the way to Triune?

  “We’re leagues from the Brailing Road now,” Windblown muttered, and Dari took his meaning immediately.

  They were alone in this abandoned place, except for the man who had fetched them. Here, there was no great crowd of witnesses, save for whatever type of goodfolk populated this bunch of dirt farms. Though she had to admit, having a small army of Stone Brothers positioned within shouting distance gave her comfort. It would take an army of fools to risk combat with such a large contingent of professional killers.

  “Are you sure we should do this, Dun?” Windblown’s whispered question echoed Dari’s thoughts exactly.

  “We’ll see to our duty.” Stormbreaker lifted his cowl against the wind. “Those who need Mercy don’t choose the time. The time chooses them—and war or no war, we’ll not leave a child suffering.”

  Brisk, cool breezes stirred dust down a handful of hard-packed roads little wider than paths. The sag-shouldered man picked at his tunic for a moment, adjusted the traveling pack on his back, then gestured toward one of the path-roads.

  They followed him, mindful of his slowed steps, though he was young and apparently of able body. This journey must have been unspeakably hard on him, fetching Stone to minister to his only son. His pack held several days of dry rations and water, and he had been planning to walk five towns to the north, where the nearest Stone guild-house was located. Fortunately for the man, and for the man’s son who lay dying in one of these shacks, his journey hadn’t taken that long. When he encountered the party of Stone Brothers returning from Harvest, he had been able to stammer out his name, Gund Zeller, and make his formal plea for Stone’s intervention. Other than that, he hadn’t made a sound beyond an occasional sob.

  As they walked in the swirling dust, Dari kept her eyes wide and her senses on full alert. Though she had determined she could not launch an organized search for her sister until she reached Triune, there was always the chance Kate could turn up in some unexpected spot—or that someone might have seen her or heard of her.

  If she’s still alive.

  Dari winced at her own thoughts, then let her consciousness drift into the scent of burned cornmeal and stewing vegetables. Here and there, meat was cooking. They passed doorway after doorway, and people came to stand and watch the procession. Thin people, wrapped in thin clothes, with thin, pinched expressions. This was a poor and hungry place.

  After another few steps, Dari felt a tickle in the back of her thoughts, a jangle in the mental connection she had established with Aron to save his life.

  “He’s awake,” she murmured to Stormbreaker as they passed another shack full of scrawny, staring people. “He’s getting out of the wagon to follow us. Zed’s with him.”

  Stormbreaker kept his cowl up and seemed to be looking straight ahead. “Let them come. It won’t hurt Aron to see this.”

  Windblown gave a sniff that Dari had learned to associate with his perpetual disapproval—of everything. Windblown thought Aron had fallen by the pond and struck his head, and that the boy was taking his own lazy time recovering. This was a perception Dari and Stormbreaker hadn’t corrected.

  The truth would have been too dangerous to tell.

  Dari briefly closed her eyes against the grit trying to find purchase on her face.

  Aron tried to murder Brailing guardsmen from the other side of the Veil.

  He made contact with someone else who possesses a dangerous, powerful legacy—someone we don’t know.

  He overreached his training and may have damaged his own mind.

  And the rest of it?

  Dari had managed to forge a healing connection between them just in time to save the boy’s life. If she had let Aron die, he would pose no further risk to other living creatures, accidentally or on purpose—but Dari had never been able to take that belief or habit into her own heart. Not with Kate in her life. Not with so many that she had seen, damaged, different, yet with something to offer their world, often in ways no one could foresee.

  For his part, Stormbreaker had been grateful for her intervention, and more grateful still that she could use the healing connection to keep a watch on Aron’s activities on both sides of the Veil. For the four days Aron had been only partially conscious, Stormbreaker had tended the
boy like his own son, keeping him clean and forcing him to take soup and water whenever his level of awareness allowed. He showed Aron every kindness, despite what amounted to a betrayal of his trust few men would have tolerated.

  Dari couldn’t help remembering Stormbreaker’s image on the other side of the Veil. A towering creature made of lightning, thunder, and rain. If he had been allowed to survive, and he had learned to control such an unusual and powerful graal, surely Aron could do the same.

  Gund Zeller finally brought them to a halt in front of what looked like a two-room cabin at the far end of one of the little streets. The structure was in fair repair, and Dari noted a few struggling trees and plants in the small yard. Someone had tended to watering and cultivating. There was even a small stone walkway leading over dried patches of mud, to the well-carved but simple entrance.

  The front door opened to reveal another man, this one much older, with a bald head, a craggy face, and an uneven white beard. He wore a leather tunic and breeches that looked like they might have been tanned and hammered during the mixing disasters. This older man glanced from their sag-shouldered guide to Dari to Stormbreaker and Windblown, and a wild white light seemed to flicker in the depths of his cloudy brown eyes as he returned his attention to Stormbreaker.

  Dari’s breath hitched.

  Stormbreaker always seemed to catch people off guard, just by his very appearance—and anyone with a hint of graal could sense the roiling energy inside him. What if this man judged Stormbreaker to be some sort of Brotherless demon?

  Windblown tensed, and Dari saw his hands flex as if readying for sword work. Stormbreaker remained calm as always, letting the man grow accustomed to his hair, his rank-marks, his green eyes.

  The older man bowed his bald head.

  “Thank the Brother you’ve come,” he said in voice much deeper and firmer than Dari expected. “I’m Dolf Zeller, the boy’s grandfather.”

  Stormbreaker introduced himself with a polite bow, then named Windblown and Dari as his companions. No one seemed surprised or put off by Dari’s presence, and she knew the color of her skin caused them to assume she possessed the Ross graal. Death vigils were the one place outside of Dyn Ross where those with her presumed legacy of being able to dispatch spirits were always welcome.

  Dolf Zeller stepped aside to admit them, and Dari filed in behind Gund Zeller and the two Stone Brothers.

  The heat inside the room struck her like a fist and she coughed. Sweat broke immediately across her forehead and the back of her neck. She squinted because the light inside the cabin had been shuttered to almost nothing. A few candles revealed basic furnishings—chairs, a table, all hand-carved. A small bedchamber stood empty toward the back. On a pallet beside the hearth, which had been stoked to its capacity, a small brown-headed boy lay shivering beneath a stack of rough blankets. A woman, presumably his mother, sat by his side, stroking his pale, wet face with her fingertips.

  As Dari watched, the boy’s body arched and contracted into a rigor so unnatural it seemed all his little bones might break. This posturing, along with his unmistakable grimace of pain, lasted a few seconds; then he collapsed back to stillness, save for his rapidly heaving chest.

  “There,” said the woman, as if the boy could hear her. “The worst of that fit’s past now.”

  “There are two more of our party on their way,” Stormbreaker told Dolf Zeller. “They’re young ones. Apprentices. They need to learn.”

  Dolf Zeller nodded and kept the door open a crack, glancing down the road. Dari wondered if he was watching for Aron and Zed or expecting trouble from his neighbors, who had looked none too comfortable at the presence of Stone Brothers walking their dirt streets.

  More Fae foolishness and short-minded fear.

  She caught herself and sealed off her quick-rising disgust as Stormbreaker went immediately to the ailing boy and knelt beside him. He was so focused on the child that he gave little heed to the distraught mother, whose pale face and sunken cheeks suggested she might have been awake for days. It was Windblown who settled himself beside the boy’s mother. He reached out his hand. “There, now. You’ve had a long and heartbreaking watch over your boy, I’m sure. Talk to me while my companion examines your son.”

  The woman stared at Windblown with wide brown eyes, taking in his round face and pleasant expression. Dari realized his gentle appearance was a great strength, and of significant use in situations where a soft touch was needed for the Stone Brothers to see to their duties. Perhaps this was why Stormbreaker and Windblown had chosen to travel together, or been paired by the Lord Provost of Stone. One to do the harsh work, and one to soothe. Dari was beginning to suspect that Stone did little by chance or accident.

  The woman beside the boy couldn’t look at Stormbreaker at all, and in the end, she reached out to Windblown and allowed him to comfort her.

  “What is your name?” Windblown smiled as he asked the question, his expression now even more welcoming and encouraging.

  “Frega,” the woman said, and at the cracked sound of her words, Dari instinctively moved to the small table in the room, picked up a wooden pitcher with a bit of water still in the bottom, selected the cleanest-looking wooden cup, and filled it.

  As she handed it to the woman, Dolf Zeller opened the door once more, this time to admit a flustered Zed and a sallow, starved-looking Aron. Both boys were frowning. Their gray tunics were wrinkled, as if there had been grabbing and snatching, and both boys had mussed hair and dirty faces. Zed had a bruise starting on his left cheek, and Dari could tell from Zed’s expression that he would very much like to bruise Aron back for coming here without permission.

  Dari straightened beside Frega Zeller, catching the attention of both boys. She gestured for them to come to the small table and sit, and to remain silent. To her relief, they complied quickly, and with no violence or noise as they moved. She sat across from them, where she could easily watch them or Stormbreaker. Then she used her mental connection with Aron to check his emotional state.

  Tired. Hungry. Angry. Confused. And now intrigued, too. Wondering what was happening here, and giving his full attention to the matter.

  Good.

  If he was engaged with the events in this room, his thoughts wouldn’t wander elsewhere, at least for a time.

  Windblown patted Frega Zeller’s arm to return her focus to him. “Can you tell me about the boy’s sickness?”

  The woman sipped the water Dari gave her, then placed the cup on the board floor beside her. She gazed at the child, somehow managing not to look at Stormbreaker, who was systematically flexing the boy’s limbs. “Kristoff has been ill for almost eight weeks. He rallies, then sinks, worse each time, with shorter periods between wellness and sickness.”

  Dari’s shoulders tightened. Zed’s frown told her that he had likely seen such cases before, but Aron’s confusion only deepened.

  The boy seized again, stretching, arching, his eyes closed, his mouth open from the force of his pain. This time, the attack lasted longer, almost a minute, and Dari wanted to cry out for what the boy must be going through in such a state.

  “We have no rectors here,” Frega explained after the boy once more collapsed back to panting stillness. “But our healer said—she said she thought—”

  “Wasting Fever,” Stormbreaker confirmed in a low, tight voice. He folded Kristoff Zeller’s skeletal arms over his frail, heaving chest, then pulled his blankets back up to cover him.

  Dari could barely stand to hear the words. It was all she could do not to make a sign against ill fortune, like some ground-hatched Fae. She had lost far too many friends and relatives to this disease in childhood, and she hated even the mention of it.

  Dolf and Gund Zeller had no such inhibitions. They came to stand behind Frega and Windblown, to the side of Stormbreaker and the boy. All three quickly touched both of their own cheeks, to invoke the love and blessings of the Brother.

  At the table with Dari, Zed looked down, and his posture dr
ooped in understanding.

  Aron continued to look confused, and this was the primary emotion Dari sensed from him. So he hadn’t had a sibling die in this fashion. Fortunate for him, and for them. Perhaps their family line wouldn’t be plagued by the disease unknown before the mixing disasters.

  None of the Zellers seemed able to speak for a time, and it was the boy’s father, Gund, who found his voice first. “How can this be the Wasting? Our people have no legacies. No one in this village even bears a dynast name—we don’t even get sent for testing at birth.”

  “Everyone in Eyrie originally came from Fae bloodlines, or Fury,” Windblown said. “Sometimes combinations of traits line up just the right way, and legacies can reappear even in families who have no other hint of mind-talents.”

  “Kristoff’s eyes are brown,” Frega Zeller protested. “There’s no color in them. They’re Quiet. We’re all Quiet.”

  “Eye color isn’t a reliable indicator of legacies, not like in older times,” Stormbreaker said. He remained beside the boy, keeping his hand atop the blankets. He spoke as kindly as Windblown, yet the ever-present power in his voice made him seem more stern. The woman leaned back from him as he spoke. “Since the mixing disasters, anything is possible.”

  Dolf Zeller, who seemed somehow more aware of the workings of the world than his son or daughter-by-marriage, pulled at his beard until Dari realized this habit was probably what made the growth so uneven in the first place. “I thought it took a strong legacy to bring the Wasting,” he said. “I only hear tell of it when the Ross heirs die.”

  Dari grimaced at this, then hoped no one noticed.

  Windblown shook his head. “Any amount of mind-talent can trigger the illness. We’ve never understood why some children take sick and others never show signs. We just know it runs in some Fae bloodlines more than others.”

  And the bloodlines of my people, too. Once more, Dari was seized by an unwelcome but powerful sense of kinship with the Fae, at least the ones in this room.