Thus Calum is reduced to sitting on his horse and staring out at the sparkling rivers and untamed plains they pass. The scenery is beautiful, of course, but a man can only sit under the hot sun for so long before every bush and tree begin to look the same.
They arrive in Xilor that evening, early enough for them to secure lodging at an inn on the main street. Lylia and Faye decide to eat later that night and disappear into their rooms without so much as a goodbye. Torn between sharing an awkwardly quiet meal with Kaius and lying on an uncomfortable hay mattress in the privacy of their room, Calum opts for the latter and leaves Kaius to dine alone in the inn’s common room. The sun has only just set, but the nights of little sleep and days of riding are catching up with him, turning his skin sallow and casting dark shadows under his eyes.
He slumps onto one of the beds in their room, the ropes suspending the mattress groaning under his weight. He kicks off his shoes before slipping his shirt over his head and tossing it aside. The air is warm, humid, and reeks of stale urine from the chamber pot in the corner of the room. Calum hardly notices the stench as he stretches out on the bed, his eyes falling shut to a blessedly long sleep.
For the first time in a long time, Calum awakens feeling refreshed and rested just after dawn. Like the day before, Kaius is still asleep, snoring lightly from somewhere across the pitch-black room. As quietly as he can—as carefully as he can—Calum puts on his shirt from yesterday and gropes blindly for his shoes. He misses them twice—and nearly trips over the chamber pot—before finding them and slipping them on.
Holding his breath, he eases the door to the hallway open an inch at a time. He knows Kaius will be furious when he finds Calum missing, but he will go mad if he’s forced to spend another minute with the humorless elf and the not-quite-Daughters. After glancing down the hall to make certain Lylia and Faye aren’t awake, Calum creeps out of the room and down the stairs.
The cool morning air is a welcome reprieve from the stifling heat of the inn. Most of the people out at this hour are workers: shopkeeps, traveling merchants, bakers, tailors, maids, and slaves. Calum follows the flow of people toward the center of town, tying his hair back at the nape of his neck in a vain attempt to appear more respectable . . . as if the wrinkles in his shirt and the suntanned skin could possibly mark him as anything but a commoner—and a low-class one, at that. He suspects that the pretty young woman who walks in front of him would laugh in his face if he were to tell her he grew up in a castle. She’d smile patronizingly at him and nod like she’s indulging an overly imaginative child’s fantasy. In fact, so much crazy shit has happened over the course of the past few weeks that he could almost believe he’d dreamt it all.
Perhaps he really has lost touch with reality. Perhaps if he focuses hard enough, he’ll wake up in his nice, comfortable bed back in Myrellis Castle.
One can always hope, right?
As Calum wanders closer to the center of town, he notices more and more shoppers than workers, mostly women dragging young children and elven slaves behind them as they move from store to store. At first, it strikes Calum as odd that housewives would choose such an early hour to begin their shopping, but then he rounds a corner and the town square comes into view, overflowing with merchants and tables. The market spills over the sidewalk and into the street, slowing the horse-drawn carts and carriages to a crawl.
He allows the current to carry him through the market, stopping every few tables to browse a nearby merchant’s wares. He wishes he had money to give them; being a traveling merchant is often a lonely existence. Most of these people don’t own much more than the cart in which they arrived and the wares they sell.
Calum pauses before a colorful blanket covered in hand-carved children’s toys: little wooden soldiers, horses, griffons and unicorns and other fantastical creatures. Years ago, when they were young, Calum and Tamriel had persuaded their tutors to take them to the market in Myrellis Plaza. There they’d made a game of trying to lose the tutors in the crowd. It hadn’t been difficult. They’d raced through the aisles of tables, laughing maniacally with the rush of adrenaline which came from escaping their tutors’ watchful eyes. When they’d finally reached the statue in the center of the Plaza, young Tamriel had collapsed in a fit of breathless giggles, his gap-toothed grin revealing dimples in his babyish cheeks. Calum had flopped onto the ground beside him and laughed until his sides ached.
The memory makes Calum smile, nostalgia warring with grief for the life he outgrew. Then he turns and freezes in shock. Tamriel, as if summoned by Calum’s memory, stands at the edge of the market, gaping at him. Mercy and Master Oliver flank him on either side, identical expressions of surprise and confusion on their faces.
For a moment, none of them moves. The shoppers continue to wander through the market, moving around Calum as a river parts around a boulder.
“Calum!”
The shout comes from behind him. He whirls around. Lylia, Faye, and Kaius are working their way down the street, identical scowls on their faces. Faye and Kaius glance down every alley they pass. A long sword is strapped to Faye’s back.
Thank the Creator, they haven’t seen him yet.
“Calum!” Lylia shouts again. Calum’s heartbeat pounds in his ears. Her longbow is strapped to her back, her daggers in plain sight. The three of them are armed to the teeth, and Calum doesn’t have so much as a child’s toy sword to defend the person he loves most in this world.
If he doesn’t do something, they’ll see Tamriel—and this time, they won’t fail to kill him. They’ll haul Mercy back to the Guild to be punished at Mother Illynor’s hand. Everything Calum has done to try and protect his cousin since leaving Sandori will be for nothing. But if he warns Tamriel, helps him run away before Kaius and the Assassins see him, maybe he’ll make it back to the capital in time to cure the plague.
But if you fail to save them, warns a voice in his head, it’ll be your head on the chopping block. If Firesse finds out you crossed her, your deal to save Tamriel will be worthless. She’ll let you be Drake’s puppet, and you’ll get to watch as they raze everyone and everything you love.
He makes his decision.
“RUN!” he roars, barreling toward Mercy and Tamriel. Before they can react, he seizes their arms and drags them behind him through the market. Clyde, Akiva, and two Cirisians he doesn’t recognize let out curses and cries of surprise as they try to maneuver their startled horses around the crowd.
“He’s there!” Lylia yells. “In the market!”
“Calum—What—You’re alive?” Tamriel sputters, his face still pale with shock.
“Not for long if we don’t get the hell out of here.”
Master Oliver runs alongside them. His breaths come out in loud puffs, his face contorted in pain. “Who’s after us?”
“The Daughters.”
Mercy turns slightly green. “They found us?”
“Yes,” Calum says. He won’t admit to bringing them here. Mercy will figure it out soon enough.
A scream rings out behind them. Calum hazards a glance back. Lylia, Faye, and Kaius are sprinting through the market, shoving people out of their way as they trample over blankets of wares. In the chaos, women cry out and tug their children close, fighting to escape the crowded pavilion. For a moment, a bright spark of hope fills Calum’s chest. They might be able to escape.
No one will have to die.
Then an arrow flies over Calum’s head and pierces a tavern’s wooden sign.
The crowd splits before Lylia, people stumbling back to avoid being hit with one of her arrows. The crash of voices reaches a cacophony. Terrified children scramble to hide under the merchants’ tables, wailing and sobbing. The path clear before them, Lylia, Faye, and Kaius hurtle through the market after them.
“This way!” Calum shouts. He darts down a side street, then an alley branching off that. Mercy and Tamriel keep pace beside him, exchanging horrified looks. Behind Calum, the horses’ clomping hoofbeats echo against the bui
ldings surrounding them, the cart’s wooden wheels screeching against the cobblestone at every sharp turn. They’ll lead the Daughters straight to them. “Lose the horses!”
“We can’t!” Clyde responds. “The cart—”
That’s when Calum realizes the cart holds the Cedikra they’d gathered at Ialathan. If they lose that, everything they’ve done—everything they’ve lost—will be for naught.
“Clyde and Akiva, take the cart out of the city, to the western road,” Tamriel orders between pants. “Nynev and Niamh, ride with them. Take the horses.”
“But—”
“That wasn’t a suggestion. We can’t lose the Cedikra and we can’t lose Niamh. GO!”
The second they’re out of sight, Calum starts running, gesturing to the others to follow. He leads them to a narrow alleyway and squeezes though, to a secluded courtyard hidden from the street. “Catch your breath,” he wheezes. “We’ll have to run again soon.” He can still hear Kaius’s and the others’ pursuit behind them. They’re only a few streets away and catching up quickly. Hopefully they’ll assume Tamriel and Mercy had left on the horses with the others.
“What were you thinking?” Mercy snaps at Tamriel. “We should have gone with them!”
“No, we’re ending this now.” Tamriel’s words would have sounded strong had he not been gasping for breath. He leans against the wall of one of the buildings which surround the courtyard, his face tilted up toward the sky. “I’m not running from the Daughters any longer. Besides, there are four of us and three of them.”
Calum raises a hand. “I don’t have a weapon, and Master Oliver is injured. Look, we’re expendable”—he gestures to himself, Master Oliver, and Mercy—“but you’re not. All it takes is one well-aimed arrow to kill you.”
Tamriel lets out a disgusted sound. “You should be so lucky.”
“What?”
“That’s what you’d like, wouldn’t you? Me dead so you can take my place?”
Calum freezes in horror, his mouth hanging open in a gaping O. Tamriel knows. Tamriel knows the truth. No, no, no. Nononononononono. “Tamriel—”
The prince pushes off the wall and cocks his fist, his face contorted in fury. Calum flinches and steps back, his cheeks flushing with shame. He waits for the prince to hit him, but the blow never comes.
Tamriel’s shoulders slump. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
Calum closes his eyes, wishing for the Creator to strike him down so he doesn’t have to see the look on Tamriel’s face when he confesses.
If the Creator exists, he has no sympathy for Calum, for he does nothing.
“Yes.”
Tamriel is quiet for a long moment, then he says, “Go.”
“What?”
“Go! Leave now!” Tamriel lunges at him. Calum has never seen his cousin so enraged, so hurt, so hateful. The look on the prince’s face makes him want to wither away into nothing. “You are a traitor, a selfish bastard. You’ve always been interesting in no one but yourself. Frankly, I don’t know whether this is a plot to get me killed or if you think you can repent by saving us from the Assassins, but I don’t care. I want you out of my sight. We’ll find our own way out of the mess you’ve created.”
“I’m not leaving until I know you’re safe,” Calum insists. “Now, we don’t have much time before we have to run again, so let me explain quickly: Firesse has powers. Magical powers. She strengthens them by murdering human soldiers—that’s why Leitha Cain and her troop disappeared without a word.” Tamriel’s face pales, but Calum continues: “She wants to use what I know about Beltharos to attack Sandori. As long as I help her, she won’t hurt you. That’s why I’m here with Kaius. She’s hoping to bolster her numbers with the Daughters and outfit her troops with the Strykers’ weapons and armor.”
“Mother Illynor would never involve the Guild in a war,” Mercy scoffs. “She prefers to work in the shadows.”
“She’ll do it for coin. And . . . for you.”
“What?”
“Calum, what have you done?” Tamriel asks, a warning in his voice.
“Lylia and Faye think Mother Illynor will want to punish you herself. They’re here to take you back to the Guild.”
“Over my dead body,” Tamriel growls.
“That’s what I’m trying to prevent,” Calum shoots back.
“We need to keep moving,” Master Oliver calls from the mouth of the alley, where he’d remained to keep watch on the street. “They can’t be far behind us.”
Calum nods. “This way.” He starts toward the opposite end of the alley, then stops. He turns to Mercy. “Give me one of your daggers.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’m unarmed.”
“While there’s still a contract on Tamriel’s life, you’ll remain that way.”
“Fine. Just stay close.”
“I can’t believe we’re trusting him again,” Mercy says to Tamriel.
“There’ll be plenty of time to bicker when we’ve escaped the Assassins,” Master Oliver urges. “We need to get out of here.”
“Right.” Calum sticks his head out of the alley and, seeing no sign of Kaius or the others, gestures for the others to follow him. They sprint down the street, away from the center of town and—hopefully—their pursuers.
Master Oliver begins to gasp as they make their way through the maze of a city. The bandages on his shoulder are soaked through with blood. When they turn a corner onto a relatively busy street, hoping the crowds will hide them, Master Oliver stumbles to a stop. Behind them, cries of alarm from the townspeople punctuate the sounds of the Daughters’ chase.
“Go on.” He unsheathes his sword with a trembling hand. “I’ll only slow you down. I may be old, but I’ve still got some fight left in me. You three can get away.”
“No!” Tamriel cries. “I’ve already lost you once, I’m not letting you die again.”
Master Oliver smiles. “I’ve lived a lot of good years. Ensuring you have that same privilege is the highest honor for which I could ask.”
Tamriel blinks away tears, and Calum can feel his own prickling his eyes, blurring his vision. “You can’t sacrifice yourself for me,” the prince says desperately. “That’s an order. Do you understand? I’m not letting you die.”
“You can’t order me to do that. I serve your father and this country.” Master Oliver reaches out and ruffles Tamriel’s hair, like he used to do when Tamriel and Calum were young. “Make me proud, son.”
He turns to Calum. His lips twitch into an almost-smile, but his eyes don’t hide his true emotions: sadness, disappointment, and remorse. “I don’t know what’s gone wrong in your head, boy, but I expect you’ll do everything in your power to make it right. You may never have known your real father, but I raised you to be better than this.”
Calum’s throat is too tight to respond, so he simply nods.
Mercy snorts. “Slim chance of that.”
Master Oliver turns to her last, studying her with his appraising gaze. Calum wishes he could know what goes through Oliver’s mind when he looks at her, the girl who had been sent to kill his charge. “Protect him,” is all he says to her, nodding to Tamriel.
Mercy returns the gesture, pressing her lips into a thin line. “Always.”
“Good. Now, if you’re going to run, this is the time to do it. I’ve already wasted too much of your time with goodbyes. I’ll earn it back for you when they arrive, I promise.”
Tamriel roughly wipes his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Thank you for your service. When we return to Sandori, I’ll see your family paid for your sacrifice.”
“You two are my family. Survive this, and I’ll consider the debt repaid.” Master Oliver smiles. “Go now.”
They run.
As they near the corner, Calum glances over his shoulder. Master Oliver holds his sword out in front of him, facing the street from which they’d come. Kaius and the Assassins will arrive any moment.
A second later, Master Ol
iver howls in pain when two arrows pierce his chest, immediately darkening the front of his shirt with rivulets of blood.
Calum bites back a cry of rage. He stops when they round the corner and watches as Lylia and Kaius let loose another two arrows, these striking Oliver’s injured shoulder and his abdomen. Either they’re too far away to land a kill shot, or they’re toying with him.
Calum can’t make himself look away. Master Oliver’s death is yet another punishment Calum must endure for his mistakes, and he will have to live with that knowledge for the rest of his wretched life.
He watches as Faye hurtles down the street, her rapier unsheathed and glinting in the morning light. Master Oliver blocks her first and second attacks with his longsword, but the wounds in his chest are quickly weakening him. He staggers, thrown off by his own momentum, and Faye thrusts her sword through his stomach.
Calum goes numb.
She pulls her rapier out of Oliver’s stomach and shoves it through him one more time. Blood sprays from his mouth and splatters across her face when she yanks it out. Master Oliver staggers and falls, arrows sticking out of him like a human pincushion. His blood leaks out onto the gray cobblestones as he struggles for his last few breaths. His head lolls to the side.
He’s staring straight at Calum when he dies.
Faye wipes her face with her sleeve, then plucks the arrows out of Oliver’s still chest.
Calum shakes himself and hurries after Tamriel and Mercy, trying to push the image of Master Oliver dying from his mind. It’s not enough. It plays on the backs of his eyelids every time he blinks.
Where did Mercy and Tamriel go? Calum grits his teeth as he runs. They had left him behind. He shouldn’t be surprised. His heart pounds in his chest. With every life lost, he imagines it fracturing a little more. Soon there will be nothing left at all.
“Stop!”
His blood turns cold when he spots Lylia standing in the street a few blocks ahead of him, her bow in her hands, an arrow aimed straight at Tamriel’s chest. Kaius stands beside her, his bow tensed and trained on Mercy’s heart.
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