by Arthur Slade
He came out with a small sheet and unrolled it. “This is a copy of the palace plans that is much smaller and easier for you to carry. I shall keep my originals and use a spell to remove any smudges you have left on them — they are very dear to me.” He handed the smaller version to me and said, “The monk who made this copy is dead.” I decided not to ask how.
The form of the golem filled the door. He lumbered in, carrying a golden tea kettle and two cups on a tray. “Ah, the tea has arrived. Please drink with me.”
The golem held the tray between us and I took one of the cups. I did sniff it for poison, and that got a chuckle out of Naram-Sin. He drank from his tea.
As I sipped, the cinnamon scent filled my nose. The taste was new — there were so many rare spices that my tongue couldn’t identify. My arms felt so weak it was hard to hold the cup in my hands.
Naram-Sin held his own cup up in a friendly gesture. “Is it satisfactory?”
“It’s good tea,” I said. Despite how hot it was, I drank it down quickly. Fighting a golem had made me very thirsty.
The executioner set his cup down. “Well, I hope you have had enough time to clear your thoughts. I want you to remember everything I say in the next few minutes. I will begin by pointing out several interesting design features of the palace, ones that will be particularly of interest to assassins. And I will end with a description of a balcony, a description you’ll find quite tantalizing.” He held the paper in front of me and then began to speak. It took him several minutes to tell me where various doors, including secret ones, were. A glimmering of a plan began to grow in my head. I drank the last mouthful of tea.
“You listen well,” Naram-Sin said. “Who was your maestru?”
“Maestru Alesius.”
“That explains it. He would be proud of you. Now, I’d like you to go on your way. If you can walk, that is.”
I stood. Yes, I could walk. I nodded to the executioner and stepped past him, down the stairs and out of the bear home.
I realized I’d just accepted my first paid job as an assassin.
Chapter 6
A Dream Returns
“You did what?”
I’d expected Megan to be the first to question my decision, but it was Thord who was staring at me with narrowed eyes. Anger pinched his features together as he leaned on a long stick. Thord hadn’t yet healed enough to walk properly. A gythia in a Woden village had stitched his gut wound tightly, but his leg was not an easy fix: it was in a wooden splint and would take weeks for the tendons to heal.
“I accepted the job,” I said.
“To kill the most powerful man in all of Ellos?” Thord said. When he put it that way, it sounded impossible. “Naram-Sin will betray us in a heartbeat. He was the executioner and would have no qualms about it. He could easily warn Sargon and Corwin about our plans and set a trap.”
“That’s true,” I said. I was working hard to keep the anger out of my voice. That scenario had crossed my mind on the way back to our island hideout, and I’d even discussed it with Brax. “Though I don’t see how that would get him further ahead. He already had me at his mercy and his golem could have broken my neck with a flick of its wrist. There wasn’t any reason to release me unless he truly wants the emperor to die.”
“Maybe he wants to get in the emperor’s good books by drawing more assassins to their deaths.” Thord jabbed his index finger toward me. “Did you think of that?”
“No,” I snapped. I bit my tongue to stop my next retort. It was best to remember that Thord was wounded, and part of his anger came from not being fully healed. We’d been getting food for him and even feeding the swans. He was right to press me and to test my theories. But why him? Why not Megan, who was gifted at it? They were thinking alike now.
“Carmen did the right thing,” Megan said.
Or maybe they weren’t thinking alike at all.
“Why do you say that?” Thord said.
“The executioner is over a hundred years old. He no longer holds influence in the court and is on the far edges of the Empire in the sunset of his life. He sees this as an opportunity to change the course of his empire’s history with no one being the wiser.” She adjusted her hair, which didn’t need adjusting. How was it always in place, even when we were out on a windy island in the Aldric Ocean? She kept it short, which helped, and it was still dyed raven black. “And Carmen had no choice. She would be dead otherwise. Would you rather she was dead?”
“Never!”
Well, at least Thord said that with a bit of emotion.
“I’m just worried, that’s all,” he continued. “Our task is complicated enough as it is.”
“You children should kill the emperor first,” Brax said. He was lying near the fire, staring at us with his one eye. It glowed in the darkness.
“Why?” I asked.
“I am being amazingly magnanimous telling you this, but if you kill Corwin first, our agreement will be fulfilled and I’ll leave you in the palace surrounded by murderous Immortals.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” I said. “You have a task for me to perform.”
“Oh, yes, there’s that, isn’t there?” he said, his voice soft. “I’d scoop you up and leave your companions to die.”
Megan rolled her eyes. “He likes to be dramatic,” she said, loud enough so Brax could hear.
“Someday you must tell us exactly what you promised the dragon,” Thord said.
“Not today,” I answered. “Today we need to figure out our strategy.”
“It will be complex,” Megan said.
“No more complicated than memorizing Maestru Orgama’s cryptic code lessons,” I said. “But the best maestrus trained us.” I held up the plans, not for the first time. “At least we have these.” I winced when I moved my arm.
“Why are you wincing?” Thord asked.
“Well, I’ve not been brave enough to peek at the damage the golem did.”
“Oh, stop playing the tough girl,” Megan said. “Show us your arms.” I rolled back my right sleeve. Even in the firelight it was visibly bruised.
“Well, that was a tight squeeze,” Megan said with a smile, clearly pleased with her play on words. “Now roll back the other sleeve.”
I did so, to reveal another collection of bruises and scratches along my left arm. Megan reached into her cloak and came out with a healing lotion. “Hold still,” she said. “It will sting. And it’ll hurt you more than it’ll hurt me. Which is how I prefer it.”
When she touched me, I gasped.
Not because of the pain. An image flashed in my vision — a familiar picture of her bleeding and broken at my feet and my brother laughing. It was so clear, dancing in my dragon eye.
Then it was gone.
“Sorry, did that hurt?” Megan said. “I thought you were tougher than that.”
“It. It. Surprised me,” I said.
I didn’t know if I should tell her. I was fairly certain I wasn’t seeing the future.
When I looked toward the fire, I saw that Brax was staring curiously at me. He closed his eye and lowered his head.
Chapter 7
An Awful Joke
Of all the cities in the land of Ellos, Akkadium was the finest. Approaching it silently, on a moonless night, the size and the beauty of the capital dumbfounded me. Once it had been a jumbled mess of a city, sprung from the huts of sheepherders, camel caravan stations, and docks for fishing boats. But as the Empire grew Emperor Augillian had had it razed, and then he built an ordered, awe-inspiring city on the bones of the old one.
This new city had been surrounded by a thick wall in the shape of a five-pointed star. This made it harder to attack and allowed two of those points to reach into the water and protect the port. Thousands of streetlamps burned like stars below us. Each street was in a straight line leading through the city.
I glanced at Thord and Megan. Both of them were as wide-eyed as me.
For over a thousand years this city had stood
here. It was the greatest seat of power in all of Ellos’s history. No wonder the Akkadians saw Gudheim as a goat town or the city-state of Avenus as a pesky flea.
“We don’t want to get too close,” Brax said. “There will be sky wards to detect large winged creatures. Swans might avoid them, but a big ol’ dragon with magical blood would set them screaming.”
“We’ll just circle around like we planned,” I said. “And look for a place where we can hide a big ol’ dragon and his two closest winged friends.”
“Those swans are not my friends.”
We arced away from the city, but I kept staring. My dragon eye, seeing such a great distance, showed me the outline of the Imperial Palace in the centre of the city. They had built it on the largest hill and it would be visible to any peasant, slave or merchant who walked those streets. No matter where they were in the city.
“It’s such a big palace,” I whispered. “The drawings don’t do it justice.” A sense of awe was creeping up my spine, along with fear. We were going in there.
“Losing your will, Carmen?” Brax asked.
“No.”
“Just think of it as a palace with a hundred thousand hiding spots. And a hundred thousand guards.”
Well, that didn’t make me feel any better.
Thord broke off to the right and motioned for us to follow. We did so. Perhaps he had spotted a place to land, but since Brax and I could see much farther than him, I doubted it. I was proven wrong when he swooped his swan, rather majestically I may add, down to a darkened and abandoned building.
“Leave it to the farm boy to find this,” Megan said once we had landed and the smell hit us. The building, which looked to be a large trade station, had been abandoned because it was right beside a massive dung heap.
By massive I mean it was the size of three villages. Except instead of huts there was offal from cows, sheep, camels, and whatever large animals were used by farmers and merchants. They must have haul it here from the city streets.
“This smells like a good crop,” Thord said, gesturing around like he’d discovered a treasure pile. “In the fall the farmers spread this on their fields and their wheat grows like mad.”
“Your knowledge about dung is impressive,” Megan said. “You must be such a catch at the pig-slaughter dances.”
“You laugh, but my knowledge has found us the perfect hiding place,” he said. “And yes, I was the prince of many a dance. The secret to that was always keeping my boots clean.”
“That won’t be so easy here,” I said. There was no actual ground to be seen. Even the wagon road was made of hardened manure. I did not want to know what this place was like in a rainstorm. “But it’s no worse than the dung and carcasses in the pits near Ogra,” I added. “We can survive this.” And then I sucked in a rather rich scent. “At least I think we can.”
The trade station suggested that they sold this dung. Maybe it did have magical properties for making crops grow. The building was older and long and square, with large doors that barely hung on the hinges. It likely hadn’t been used for several years.
Megan dragged open a gate, and we went inside. It wasn’t a huge space, and it was clear within a few moments, from the squawking of the swans, that they did not like bunking that close to Brax.
“I know what we can name this place,” I said. I felt rather proud of my cleverness. “The Offal House.”
“I’ve never heard you make a joke before,” Megan said.
“It wasn’t a joke, it was a pun.”
Thord laughed hard enough he had to hold his stitches. Megan gave me a grudging smile.
“Finally, something clever from you,” Brax said.
We found our places to sleep. Megan and Thord fed the swans, who had already snapped up a few mice. Brax had fed on a skinny camel only a few hours before and had promised me that would keep him going for at least a day.
I cleared my throat once we had settled in. “Well now that we are done, I am wondering if we could get to the matter at hand. How do we enter the palace, kill the emperor and my brother, and live to tell the tale?”
Chapter 8
A Stuffed Inn
“I need fresh air,” Megan said after we’d spent a couple of hours setting out various strategies. We had begun to repeat ourselves and she was bored. She flipped the hood of her cloak up. “Bye.”
And before either Thord or I could answer, she was out the door.
Thord lay down on a small pile of straw, set his head against his knapsack, and promptly fell asleep. I was certain he was aching more than he let on.
I lit a candle, placed it in the dirt, and continued to read Bartum’s Revenge. It was the tale of a group of pirates who lived on islands west of Avenus five hundred years ago. Every sentence was crisp. Every turn in the story delightful.
“Did you get to the part where the rudderman dies?” Brax whispered.
“What! No! Don’t tell me things like that.”
His teeth glittered in the candlelight. “I was kidding. I’d never give away an important part of the story. Plus, it’s the drum master who dies.”
“Oh, shut up and go to sleep,” I said, and kept reading.
An hour later there was a cough outside and the creaking of wood followed by a chittering bird sound. Megan had returned.
She opened the door and bumped it closed with her hips. She was clutching a body in her arms, which she promptly dropped in the straw near my feet. It didn’t land with a thud; instead it fell softly.
Not a body. But a bundle of clothes. My eyes had deceived me.
“I brought clothing, bread, roast goose and dried meat and berries.” She dug into the pile and came out with a cloth bag stuffed with food.
I took the bread and a goose leg from her open hand. “Where did you get it?” I asked after several bites.
“There’s an inn a league away called the Salted Pig. Nasty place. I’d spotted it when we were flying in. My guess was that being so close to the dung hills, it wouldn’t be that poopular.” She waited as if she expected me to laugh. “Oh, your jokes are funny and mine aren’t? Whatever!”
I hadn’t picked up on the wordplay. “Oh, poopular. I get it. I get it. Good one.”
“Don’t fake your laughter ever again or I’ll kill you.” She didn’t smile when she said this. “Anyway, the inn is stuffed with visitors. I slipped in and relieved two sleeping patrons of these clothes and the kitchen of the food, but before doing that I listened. And I smiled.”
“You smiled?”
She had a grin now. “Yes, because the goddess Belaz is with us! We have arrived at exactly the right time.” She waved her turkey leg around like it was a baton. “It’s the Feast of Friends.”
“That sounds rather inviting,” Brax said.
“Feast of Friends?” I said. A mild perturbation coiled around my thoughts: How was Megan remembering something from class that I hadn’t? “Why does that sound familiar?”
“We studied it in Historical Happenings. Don’t you remember?” She stared long enough to watch me curtly shake my head. “It was the feast where Emperor Rexen invited all of his allies and the leaders of the Five Realms. He placed his generals at the head table. These generals had plotted against him with support from those allies. So the Immortals dispatched the generals right in front of the invited guests, leaving the bodies at their places. The emperor commanded everyone to continue to eat. And ever since that time, the Akkad emperor has held a feast to celebrate.”
I shuddered — it was one horror from a long list of horrific things the emperors had done.
“This is Sargon’s first time hosting,” Megan said, “and he has invited every leader in Ellos. This is his chance to impress them with his power.”
“Let us hope he doesn’t start poking holes in his guests,” Brax said. “It’s hard to pull off an assassination amid chaos.”
“The festival is why the Salted Pig is full, along with all the inns in all the city. And that’s why I’m smil
ing.” Her teeth almost glowed. “There was a poster on the wall. The palace needs to hire extra staff.” She pointed at the clothing she’d found. “Which is why I stole those clothes. I hatched a brilliant plan.”
And then she told me the plan.
Chapter 9
A Familiar Face
The next morning I walked alone into the city dressed in a labourer’s trousers, a shirt and a brown robe. The clothes Megan had found were clean, a sign that the owner had wanted to impress her potential employer. The ward to disguise my eye was in place and a female mask hid my features, even though I knew the chance of someone in a city of so many souls recognizing me was very low. I’d tied back my hair and used bear-claw pins, popular in this area, to keep the bun tight.
Megan had left before me in a maid’s dress. It had fit her as if a seamstress had sewn it around her during the night. The white bonnet somehow, and I swear this was magic, made her look innocent and kind. She would enter through the western gate.
And Thord waited at the barn for the day. Since this was only reconnaissance, there was no sense in him tearing his wound again. And his limp meant he would be memorable.
The dawn sun was over my left shoulder as I approached Akkadium’s northern gate. I joined the morning craftsmen and other labourers, those not rich enough to live within the city but who worked on the gardens or stables of their masters. The traffic gate was wide and Immortals in their golden armour stood on either side of it, surveying the lines of people. Their helmets were in the shape of a bear’s head, and their cloaks were rumoured to be from bears the Immortals had to kill themselves. I kept my eyes cast downward, sneaking glances as I passed. Some of those men had killed my fellow students and my maestrus.
The stone street led toward the market but was built in such a straight line that even from there I could see the Imperial Palace looking down upon the city. It was the beating heart of the Empire.