Born Assassin Saga Box Set

by Jacqueline Pawl

  4

  Tamriel

  Tamriel wakes early the morning after Elise’s arrest, groaning when he rolls over and realizes that, beyond his window, the sky is still dark, shining with bright stars. After dealing with Elise and her father and attending to his other princely duties, he had finally fallen into a fitful sleep late that night. He had tossed and turned for hours, his mind plagued with memories of Pilar’s red, inflamed skin, her bulging blind eye, and Calum crumpling to the ground in Xilor, an arrow buried deep in his chest.

  He stares at the ceiling high overhead, his mind going to the chests of Cedikra sitting in the infirmary a floor below. It’s only a matter of time before the fruit begins to rot, before their supply runs out, before more of his people fall deathly ill. The last thought chills him to the bone. Cassius’s visions don’t always come true. They can exhaust every resource trying to find the cure, but all their efforts could still amount to nothing. All of the infected people across his country might die. Meanwhile, Firesse is gathering her forces and preparing for war.

  At this moment, his father’s troops are marching toward the border. The king had dispatched six hundred men immediately after Tamriel had told him what they had witnessed in the Islands. Even if her numbers have increased beyond the four hundred elves they’d seen at Ialathan, six hundred soldiers will be more than enough to defeat her untrained clansmen. The Cirisians are fierce fighters, but only when they have the advantage of the wild landscape of the Islands. They have no experience fighting in the wide-open plains and rolling hills of the fishing district. Even so, he fears Firesse might have more tricks up her sleeve than Myrbellanar’s power to manipulate the Beyond.

  Tamriel rises, his troubled thoughts making him restless, and changes into fresh clothes. He starts toward the door, stepping over the tangled sheets he’d kicked off his bed during the night, then stops. After a moment’s consideration, he returns to his wardrobe and slips his sheathed sword onto his belt. The Daughters are still hunting him and Mercy, and he won’t be caught unprepared the next time they dare set foot in his home.

  The guards outside his door bow when Tamriel steps into the near-empty hallway. Unlike the rest of the castle, no red and gold rugs cover the gray stone floors, no enormous gold-framed paintings line the walls, no decorative suits of armor stand watch at the end of the hall. Every bit of decorum in the guest wing had been removed after his mother died. No foreign dignitaries have stayed in the castle in Tamriel’s lifetime. They’d all been scared away by the rumors of the king’s madness, and as a result, the guest rooms were locked up and forgotten. They’d remained that way until Tamriel’s party returned from the Islands two days ago. Mercy, Nynev, and Niamh had needed a place to stay, so he’d had the rooms cleaned and prepared for them—including one for himself. It’s too soon after the Daughters’ attack, too soon after he’d watched his guards die at their hands, too soon after he’d nearly lost his own life, to return to his own chambers.

  When he starts toward Nynev and Niamh’s room, one of the guards clears his throat. “They’re not in there, Your Highness. They went with the Assassin to meet the healers.” The tips of his ears flush when Tamriel shoots him a sharp look. “Er, with Mercy, I mean.”

  Akiva elbows the guard. Tamriel had requested the young Rivosi join his personal guard after they’d returned, and Akiva had gone straight to work after his injured leg healed enough for him to stand upright. “Would you like us to accompany you, Your Highness?”

  “No, thank you. Remain at your posts. How is your leg faring?”

  “It aches, but I’m alive, so I cannot complain overmuch.” Grief passes across Akiva’s face. Of the handful of guards who had accompanied them to the Islands, Akiva is the only one who had survived. The weight of the men’s deaths hangs heavily on Tamriel, but he had not known them as well as Akiva had. He cannot imagine how painful the deaths of his brothers-at-arms must be to him.

  Tamriel continues down the labyrinthine corridors and climbs the stairs to emerge in front of the library. He ignores the instinct he had developed as a child—to hide from his mad, grieving father and lose himself in a make-believe world—and forces himself to march down the hall to his right. A few minutes later, the door to his father’s study looms before him. Although he has learned not to show it, he has always hated this room. Ghyslain had often locked himself in here when his grief was the most profound—the earliest years of Tamriel’s life. His memories from that time are fuzzy, but his father’s wailing sobs haunt him still.

  He takes a deep breath and opens the door, the familiar scent of woodsmoke rushing over him. The fireplace isn’t lit, but the aroma has seeped into everything: the chairs, the bookshelves crammed into the corner, even Ghyslain’s massive desk. Tamriel stumbles through the dark room, cursing the maid for leaving the heavy velvet curtains closed, and lights the candles in the gilded candelabrum on the desk. He opens the topmost drawer and shuffles through the papers until he finds the one for which he had been searching.

  The contract on his life was written on a simple piece of parchment. He doesn’t bother to read the paragraphs of elegant, swirling cursive which detail the specifics of the contract and the payment and whatever else is needed to arrange the assassination of a royal; he skips straight to the bottom. His father’s signature is there, plain as day: His Majesty King Ghyslain Myrellis. Every facet is identical to his father’s signature, except for one—the smudging. Like his son, Ghyslain is right-handed, so his words never smear when he writes. But on the contract, the ink blots from the pen are smeared to the right, dragged by someone writing with her left hand.

  Tamriel sighs and drops the contract on the desk. The differences are barely discernible. Alone, they won’t be enough to convince the nobles of Elise’s guilt. He can only hope that the guards will find more evidence at Pierce’s home.

  He traces the signature, struggling to imagine Calum and Elise plotting his murder. After all they had endured growing up in the castle, how could Calum be so callous and cold as to murder his only cousin, his best friend? Was his need for vengeance truly that great? Or was he simply hiding his own selfish desires—to win the throne and Elise’s hand in marriage—behind a false demand for justice?

  Soon, this will all be over, he tells himself for what feels like the millionth time. When Fieldings’ Plague is finally cured and Firesse and her band of warriors defeated, he and Mercy will destroy the contract together. They’ll pay off the Guild if possible, then watch this terrible deed crumble to ash, severing the hold the Assassins have on their lives. For now, Tamriel returns the contract to the drawer in which he had found it and slams it shut with more force than is necessary. The flames of the candelabrum flicker and gutter with the movement.

  “Are you proud of yourself, you stupid, stupid fool?” he murmurs to the empty room. He has no idea if Calum is alive. If he survived his wound in Xilor, Tamriel hopes he will have the good sense to stay far away from Beltharos. As much as he wants to see his cousin brought to justice for his crimes, he doesn’t know how he would react to seeing Calum in the flesh. Calum has shifted allegiances so quickly it makes Tamriel’s head spin. He’d helped them escape in Xilor—had taken an arrow for him, for the Creator’s sake—and had warned them about Firesse’s intentions to go to war, but that doesn’t completely exonerate him of buying the contract in the first place.

  If he is alive, Tamriel thinks as he snuffs the candles and strides out of his father’s study, Creator have mercy on him, for he’ll receive none from me.

  Half an hour later, Tamriel arrives outside the council chambers only to find the advisors already engaged in a heated debate. Even through the closed doors, their raised voices spill out into the hall. Tamriel sucks in a tight breath and gestures for the guard his father had sent to summon him to open the door.

  “You think it’s right for her to be locked up without a shred of evidence?”

  “There must be a reason—”

  “—a reason which the
king has, thus far, declined to tell us. Pierce said—”

  The advisors are so caught up in their debate that, at first, they do not notice Tamriel when he enters. Landers Nadra and Edwin Fioni are glaring at each other from opposite sides of the table, while the rest of the councilmembers mill about, murmuring to one another. Ghyslain is seated at the center of the table, rubbing his forehead under the band of his diadem.

  When the king’s eyes at last slide to him, Ghyslain abruptly stands and announces, “The prince has arrived. Now we may begin.”

  Every pair of eyes in the room swings his way—some with curiosity, others with annoyance. Tamriel forces his face to remain impassive under the weight of their gazes, fixing them with a flat, level stare. Before Calum and the Daughters attempted to kill him, he had never cared much about the nobles’ opinions of him. Now, after so many brushes with death, he knows better than to trust in their loyalty. If Calum had had no qualms with having his own blood assassinated, what is to keep the nobles from doing the same?

  “You waited for me?” he asks his father. He can’t help the note of surprise which slips into his voice. The king has always been content to give him meaningless jobs around the castle, and he’d certainly never cared whether Tamriel attended council meetings.

  “Would you like to share the news, or shall I?’

  “I . . . will.” He scans the faces around him—nobles who have served his father since before he was born. Some of these men might have even helped plot Liselle’s murder; Ghyslain had never managed to find everyone involved in her death. “You are all aware that someone tried to have me assassinated. Several weeks ago, three Assassins snuck into my chambers with the intent of murdering me and my guards. Without Mercy’s help, they would have succeeded.

  “The night of the attack, I fled Sandori with Master Oliver and several guards for my own protection,” Tamriel explains, sticking to the story he and his father had concocted upon his return—that he had only left to escape the Daughters. There is no reason to tell them about the possible cure until they know more about Cedikra and its uses. “I have since learned that Calum was the man who paid to have me killed.”

  “Calum?” Landers repeats, bewildered. Tamriel can tell from the advisors’ expressions that it’s not the answer they’d expected—or wanted. “How?”

  “He and Elise forged my father’s signature on the contract. They planned to reveal it to the citizens after my death to frame my father so you would remove him from power, leaving the throne empty. He was then going to petition you for the crown.”

  Landers scoffs. “If this were true, why would he assume we would place a commoner on the throne?”

  “We would certainly give the crown to one of the sons of the nobility over him,” Porter Anders says, nodding.

  Tamriel clenches his jaw to keep from gaping at them. “You take issue with his reasoning? He tried to have me killed!”

  “Allegedly.” Landers glances sidelong at Ghyslain, eyes narrowing.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I’d like to, Your Highness, but have you any evidence?” He leans in close and lowers his voice. “Forgive me, my prince, but considering Calum is not here to defend his innocence, this story seems like a scheme devised by your father to fool you into trusting him. Isn’t the Guild’s rule that only a royal can buy a contract on another royal?”

  Tamriel fights to keep a rein on his temper. He knows the story sounds insane, but it’s the truth, for the Creator’s sake. He’s their prince, after all; who are they to question him? “Shall I go into detail, then?” he asks, his words clipped and cold. When several of the councilmembers nod, he continues, “Calum attacked me in my mother’s house because he thought Mercy was taking too long. He framed her for the attack and, after she was arrested, wrote to the Guildmaster to have more Assassins sent here to kill me. After one of the Daughters snuck Mercy out of the dungeon, she managed to slip away and found my guards and me fighting the Assassins. She fought against her Sisters to save me. She killed one of her own to protect me.”

  The advisors exchange uneasy looks. A few of them murmur to one another, their eyes flitting to Ghyslain between whispers. Tamriel can tell they’re not convinced.

  “Elise does calligraphy,” he supplies desperately. “She forged my father’s signature. We can show you the contract. She agreed to help Calum because they wished to marry after Calum took the throne.”

  “Calum wanted revenge for his father’s death,” Ghyslain adds. He stares down at his hands as he continues, “He wished to hurt me. It was a stupid thing to do, buying that contract on Drake, but I couldn’t let what he did to Liselle go unpunished.”

  Landers crosses his arms over his round stomach and peers at Tamriel. “So . . . your only evidence is a piece of paper bearing the king’s own signature, testimony from an Assassin of all people, and the fact that Elise does calligraphy? Does that really justify jailing a woman? Especially Elise LeClair, whose family has faithfully served yours for generations?”

  Tamriel turns to his father with wide eyes, wordlessly imploring him to do something. How can he just stand there and allow the nobles to question him so brazenly?

  His father doesn’t meet his gaze as he sighs, “Leave us.”

  Tamriel gawks at him, dumbfounded, as the councilmembers bow and shuffle out of the room. When the last one shuts the doors behind him, Tamriel explodes, “Why did you let them speak like that? Why won’t they believe me?”

  Ghyslain sinks into a chair, a look of abject hopelessness on his face. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see it in their eyes. They think I bought the contract on your life—just as I told you they would. It’s the logical assumption, and you don’t have enough evidence to prove them wrong. They think it’s an elaborate lie I created to cover my own tracks, and probably that I bribed Mercy to corroborate the story.” He rubs his temples, at last meeting Tamriel’s eyes. “The nobles despise us, Tam. We can only trust their loyalty as long as they have something to gain from keeping us on the throne. They’re simply biding their time until we outlast our usefulness. The moment we do, they’ll cast us aside and stick a pawn in our place.”

  Tamriel slumps into the nearest chair, his father’s words turning his stomach. These are the most trustworthy men his father could find to advise him? Are they truly so cutthroat that they would usurp the family who has been ruling Beltharos for centuries simply because they aren’t being given the power they desire? Or is this another false rationale his chronically cynical father has crafted out of madness?

  “How can we convince them of the truth?”

  Ghyslain shakes his head. “Unless you find explicit, undeniable proof of Elise’s involvement in Calum’s crime, there’s no way to justify imprisoning her.”

  Tamriel is out of his seat before his father finishes his sentence. “That’s what I’ll do, then. I’ll find something—anything—to convince them of her guilt, like you said.” He’s out the door before the king can respond. He trembles with anger as he shoves his way through the crowd of advisors waiting in the hall. As he passes Landers, the balding old Rivosi places a hand on Tamriel’s shoulder, stilling him.

  “Your Highness, you know this isn’t personal, don’t you?” he asks. “It is simply our duty to uphold the laws of the land. Despite being king, your father is not above them.”

  Tamriel shakes off Landers’s hand and glares at him with such hatred that the advisor actually stumbles back a step. “Lay a hand on me again and I’ll have it struck from your body,” he growls, low enough for only Landers to hear, and storms away.

  5

  Mercy

  After two excruciating hours of trying—and failing—to decipher Alyss’s haphazard notes, Mercy crumples up the papers she had been reading and tosses them onto the desk. Needing to move, needing to do something, she walks to the shelves and examines the rows of vials and bottles. The shelf to her right holds a familiar sight: the tonics and ointments Alyss had made when she was we
ll enough to work on the cure. She’d left the infirmary a mess—bottles broken on the floor, the contents spilling out across the stone—but a slave must have come in and cleaned it while Mercy and Tamriel were in the Islands. Mercy squints at the tiny handwritten labels. She recognizes some of the recipes from her work in the Guild’s infirmary, but others are completely foreign to her.

  “What about this?” Nynev asks. She is seated on the floor beside the fireplace, bent over a massive tome on medical treatments and surgery. She points to the center of the page and reads, “Pink laurel, tulsi, aarajalda—whatever that is—and bitter wormwood?”

  “That may work. Tulsi reduces swelling and bitter wormwood can be used to cleanse wounds.” She stops and plucks a half-empty vial from the shelf. “Alyss thought the same. Perhaps it would work with the addition of Cedikra, but we need to make sure we don’t exhaust our supply on prototypes. Once we figure out the cure, we need enough to cure all the sick in the country.”

  Nynev curses under her breath and closes the book, shoving it aside. “Then we have to hope that the healers know more than we do about the plague.” She glances at the infirmary door, clearly wishing she could be with her sister, who had left hours ago to meet with the healers Ghyslain had summoned.

  “I’m not one to stake much on hope.” Mercy turns her back to the shelves, shoving the infuriating mystery of the cure out of her mind, if only for a little while. “Let’s take a walk. If we spend any more time in this dank little room, I’ll go insane.”

  Nynev jumps up and grabs her bow and quiver of arrows—with which she has not parted since leaving the Islands. She slings them over her shoulder and says, “I couldn’t agree more.”