Born Assassin Saga Box Set

by Jacqueline Pawl

  A bout of rattling coughs tears through Atlas’s lungs. As Tamriel clutches his friend’s hand, Mercy plucks another vial from the shelf. She uncorks it and holds it to the guard’s lips. “A tincture of starvay and evenberry. It’ll ease your cough and help you sleep. Drink it.”

  Again, he obeys. Within a few minutes, his eyelids droop. His labored breaths soften as he slips into unconsciousness.

  “Bringing him here could have killed him,” Mercy says when he finally falls asleep.

  “Leaving him in that warehouse definitely would have,” Tamriel responds, never taking his eyes off his friend. “Now, at least, we have a chance of saving him.”

  Nynev, who had been watching from the shelves, starts toward the door. “I’ll get Niamh. She and the healers can—”

  “Your Highness?” someone calls. A guardswoman is standing in the open doorway. She holds a small rolled piece of paper in her gloved hand. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you. There’s been an attack.”

  Tamriel stiffens. “Firesse?” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Mercy’s hands curl into fists.

  She nods. “They marched on Fishers’ Cross. They slaughtered everyone.”

  “They what?” The news hits him like a blow to the gut. Firesse killed—she killed his people. “What of the troops my father sent?”

  “Still on the road to Cirisor, Your Highness. We did not anticipate that the elves would strike so quickly. We’ve sent word to our men, but the raven will not arrive for another day or two.” She extends the note once more. “This arrived half an hour ago.”

  Mercy takes it from her. Tamriel watches her brown-gold eyes skim the note and widen. She passes it to him without a word.

  Three sentences are scrawled across the slip of paper:

  Firesse has gathered twelve hundred soldiers. Fishers’ Cross will fall first. Calum is alive.

  —Dayna

  Tamriel stares dumbly at the note, uncertain which revelation is most shocking: that Mercy’s parents survived their return to Ialathan, that Firesse has managed to swell her ranks to thrice what they were before, or that—by the Creator—Calum’s alive. “How many people were killed in the attack?”

  “Master Adan estimates about fifty in all. It may be more if slaves were caught in the crossfire.”

  Tamriel stills, anger threatening to choke him. “I’ll speak to my father in a moment,” he says tightly. “You are dismissed.”

  The second the door to the infirmary closes behind the guard, Mercy murmurs, “Tam—”

  “Fifty people! Calum helped her murder fifty innocent people—my people.” His fury, his helplessness, overtakes him. He storms across the room and shoves every Creator-damned book in that useless, teetering pile off the desk. The covers fly open, pages fluttering as they fall and splay open on the floor at his feet. He clenches his injured hands into fists, breathing hard.

  “Firesse will burn in hell for all she’s done,” Nynev whispers, startling him. She’d been so quiet he’d forgotten she was there.

  “She and all who follow her,” Mercy agrees.

  “Did the note say anything about Isolde?”

  “No.” In the wake of everything, Tamriel had almost forgotten about Niamh’s love, who they had left in the Islands after she’d sustained a nasty cut in her leg during their escape. “I’m sure Dayna would have mentioned if she hadn’t survived.”

  He closes his eyes.

  “Hey. Look at me,” Mercy says. She grabs his arm, and when he finally meets her gaze, expecting her to be furious at him for undoing days’ worth of work, her amber eyes—usually so sharp, so piercing—are full of sorrow. “Whatever we must do, we will see Firesse brought to justice for the crimes she has committed.”

  “Haven’t you learned anything in your time here? Justice abandoned this city long ago.”

  Her grip on him tightens. Something darker than sorrow and infinitely more terrifying passes across her face: resolve—the promise of retribution. “Then we’ll just have to mete it out ourselves.”

  Nynev steps forward, picking her way through the mess of broken books littering the floor, and crouches to peer at a paper which had fallen from one of the tomes. “I’ll be damned.” She holds it up for Tamriel and Mercy to see. When the light from the hearth illuminates the drawing in the middle of the page, Tamriel can’t quite believe what he sees there.

  Cedikra.

  15

  Calum

  When Drake arrives at the workshop the next morning, the rest of the Strykers are already hard at work crafting weapons for the Cirisians. True to her word, Firesse had provided the supplies they need. The pile of spears beside the door grows steadily as Amir affixes long, barbed blades to the end of each shaft. Beside him, Oren hammers red-hot steel into daggers. The cool water hisses when he tempers each knife.

  Nerran dumps a handful of arrows into a bucket, then wipes his forehead with a sleeve. He raises a brow at Drake. “Good morning, dear. Enjoy your beauty sleep?”

  “Immensely.”

  “Have you seen Hewlin this morning? The man’s been stomping around with a glower for hours.”

  “If you’d slept as poorly as he had, you’d be grumpy, too,” Amir cuts in. “Something kept him tossing and turning all night long.”

  “Please—you were dead to the world the minute you collapsed into bed.”

  “Exactly. His snoring usually keeps me up all night. That’s how I know he didn’t sleep.”

  “Maybe it was bedbugs,” Oren suggests with a shudder. “I think one bit me last night.”

  “Those are just your fleas.”

  “I don’t have fleas.”

  The door bangs open and they fall silent when Hewlin strides through, scowling. The blacksmith ignores Drake completely as he fixes the three other men with his stern, cold gaze. “I hope you were able to get some work done while you were standing around gossiping like a bunch of old crones.” He pushes past Amir and Oren and examines one of the spears they’d crafted. “Good,” he says, weighing it in his hands. “Make as many as you can with the supplies in this shop. Firesse’s people need weapons, and I’ve vowed to provide them.” At last, his dark eyes slide to Drake, and Calum can see the residual rage burning in their depths.

  The Strykers wordlessly resume their work. Calum hopes that none of the men had noticed the shadow flit across Hewlin’s face when he had finally deigned to meet his eyes. He cannot stop picturing the horror on his mentor’s face as he had watched his skin split and peel at Firesse’s touch. If she’d let the infection go any farther, she would have killed him, and the blood would be on Calum’s hands. It’s his fault the Strykers are here.

  Firesse has power over the plague. For the millionth time, the revelation slips unbidden through Calum’s mind. She can control it.

  But how? Why?

  He remembers the day the guards had quarantined Beggars’ End, and the panic and chaos which had ensued after news of the plague had spread. Hundreds of citizens had gathered outside the city gates. They’d been clamoring to purge the slums. If Firesse is truly behind the outbreak, why did she choose to target the elves in Beggars’ End first? What could she hope to gain by killing her own people?

  Calum is so consumed by his worries that he doesn’t realize the sun has gone down until a loud, pounding drum beat pulses from the center of the camp, startling him from his thoughts. Drake pauses with his hammer in mid-swing.

  “What’s happening?” Oren asks as, outside, several elves begin shouting in Cirisian. He turns to Drake, eyes wide. “What are they doing? W-What are they yelling about?”

  “I don’t know.” He strides to the window—which, without glass or shutters, is little more than a hole in the shop’s wall—and peers out at the dozens of Cirisians running from house to house, hastily donning their mismatched leather and plate mail. “But I think there’s going to be a battle.” There’s a thump behind him, and Drake turns to see Oren slumped against one of the worktables, a cold sweat across
his brow. The poor man is trembling so hard his knees look like they’ll give out at any moment.

  He gets seizures, Calum says quickly, panic for his friend overriding his animosity toward Drake. They come faster when he’s stressed. Help him, please.

  “Nerran, grab that stool,” Drake orders. “Oren, sit.” He schools his features into an expression of concern, invisible tendrils prodding around Calum’s memories until he finds the one for which he had been searching. “You haven’t neglected your treatment, have you? Did you run out of Lusus blossoms?”

  Oren shakes his head. His eyes go unfocused for a moment as he nearly gives in to unconsciousness. Outside, the elves still shout to one another over the pounding of the drums.

  “Hang on, friend,” Hewlin murmurs. He places a hand on Oren’s shoulder and pulls him upright when he begins to slump off the stool. “Breathe deeply. Hang in there. Don’t let it take hold.”

  “Has he been taking his medication?” Drake snaps to Amir, impatient now.

  The blacksmith nods. “We stocked up when we left Castle Rising.”

  Firesse strides in, looking frazzled. Her hair is wild, half of her braids hanging free around her face, and the belt with her sheathed dagger hangs low around her hips. She’s clad in the fighting leathers Hewlin had repaired for her back on the Islands. “My scouts spotted a troop of Beltharan soldiers headed toward the Islands. We’re going to intercept them before they reach the archipelago. Strykers, I need you to distribute the weapons you’ve made so far. Calum, join my ranks once you’ve finished helping them. I need you.”

  In the back of the shop, Oren lets out a groan. Nerran and Hewlin stretch him out on one of the worktables as his eyes roll back and tremors wrack his body. Amir forces a strip of leather into his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue.

  Firesse’s brows draw low. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

  “And you? You’ll join the fight?” She wrings her hands, then leans close, lowering her voice. “We were supposed to have more time. The Beltharans weren’t supposed to mobilize so quickly.” She bites her lip. “I don’t know if my people are ready.”

  You should have considered that before you chose to invade, Calum thinks darkly.

  “They’ve been practicing their drills. Kaius, Myris, and I are fine teachers.” Drake offers her a crooked, charming smile—the kind he must have flashed to all the pretty noblewomen in his youth—and Firesse seems to calm. “I’ll be at your side when we face my countrymen. How many?”

  “Six hundred.”

  “Then you outnumber them two-to-one.” He crosses the room and plucks two daggers from the chest of weapons Oren had made, tucking them into his belt. Then he grabs a spear from the far wall. The shaft is longer than he is tall, and the spearhead had been crafted with a serrated edge to cause as much damage as possible to its target. The cold rush of Drake’s anticipation dances down Calum’s spine. Let the slaughter begin, Drake whispers.

  “And just what do you expect us to do while you’re off fighting?” Hewlin asks, accusation thick in his voice. Calum inwardly flinches, recalling what Hewlin had said the night before: The Calum I knew would never have agreed to this. On the table between them, Oren has ceased shaking, but he’s still unconscious, a thin trickle of saliva dribbling out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Do as the First commanded! Distribute weapons, then get back to work. If we run out, everyone without a weapon will just have to be creative.” When Firesse stiffens, Drake turns to her, smiling. “Don’t worry. We’ll teach those humans the cost of crossing you.”

  She takes a deep breath, adjusts her armor one final time, then picks up a sword from the nearest table. She examines the razor-sharp blade as, in the distance, the drum beat grows faster and louder as the Beltharan troops draw nearer. “Don your armor,” she orders, every hint of her fear trampled down, locked away. The scared little girl is gone; the First of the most fearsome clan in the Islands stands in her place. “The battle begins in an hour.”

  What a sad, desperate bunch we must appear to the Beltharan soldiers, Calum thinks as Drake marches onto the plain which is soon to become a killing field. Despite standing in neat lines, the elves look like children playing at war—their leather armor worn, their stolen steel ill-fitting and bearing the crests of the Beltharan and Feyndaran royal families. Before they had left Fishers’ Cross, Drake had helped the Strykers outfit the elves with the new Stryker-made weapons—a dozen daggers, two dozen spears, and nearly fifty arrows. It isn’t much, but it’s more than they’d had before Hewlin and the others arrived. Firesse, Kaius, Myris, and the other Firsts are armed with the finest blades. The rest of the elves carry bows and arrows, swords they’d collected during the Cirisian Wars, or knives they’d found in the village.

  Across the plain, Ghyslain’s soldiers stand in perfect rows, their armor shining under the light of the stars which have just begun to twinkle overhead. Each of the six hundred men and women carry a sword and shield. Nearly one-quarter of the troops are cavalry, Drake notes with some concern. If not for Firesse’s supernatural powers, the elves would not stand a chance.

  The Beltharan commander—whom Calum might have been able to identify if not for the distance—shouts something to his soldiers, and they respond with a rallying cry of their own. The elf beside Drake begins to tremble.

  “Stand still,” he snaps, and the woman instantly stills, her knuckles white around the grip of her sword.

  Firesse, Kaius, and Myris wander together down the rows of their newly-trained soldiers, shouting commands and encouragement. When she reaches the front lines, Firesse pauses and begins speaking in Cirisian—something about redeeming their ancestors, if what little Cirisian Calum has picked up over the past few weeks is to be trusted. Although, in truth, she could be describing how to make a ham sandwich in painstaking detail and he’d be none the wiser.

  Drake glances to the side, and Calum uses the opportunity to study the elves around him. He notices the woman with jet-black hair almost immediately; she’s standing a few rows in front of him, her unmistakable wild curls like a mane around her head.

  Dayna—his mother.

  The man standing beside her, tall and stoic, is undoubtedly Mercy’s father. They had been Drake’s slaves for years, but their former owner must not recognize them, for his eyes glide past them without a pause.

  When Firesse finishes her speech and starts down the line to where Faye and the Firsts wait, Calum whispers, Please tell me you’ll endeavor to not get me killed.

  Have some faith in your father, my dear boy, his father croons.

  “Ajo!” Kaius shouts, and the archers nock their arrows, several dozen arrowheads glinting in the moonlight when they take aim at the Beltharans. Across the plain, the human soldiers do the same. The woman beside Drake lowers her head and murmurs a prayer under her breath.

  “Retalla!” Kaius commands, and the archers loose their arrows. They soar through the air, whistling, as the archers scramble to nock more. The Beltharans fire a moment later.

  An elven man screams when an arrow pierces his chest. He falls, blood bubbling over his lips. The woman beside him shrieks and jumps back, straight into the path of another arrow. She crumples to the ground when it tears through her throat.

  All around them, the Cirisians are falling out of line, panicking amid the arrows which fall upon them like rain. Without the natural cover of the Islands’ wilderness, they’re open targets, easy pickings, and they know it. Calum can hear Firesse yelling, but her words are lost in the cacophony of terrified voices.

  “Fall back!” Lysander shouts from somewhere to his right. The elves of his clan surge toward him, crying out when arrows pierce flesh.

  Drake shoves his way through the chaos and grabs the First by the arm, yanking him close. With his other hand, he presses the point of his dagger to Lysander’s side through a gap in the elf’s armor. The First’s eyes widen. “Order your men to hold
their position,” he growls, pricking him with the dagger.

  Chin wobbling, the elf obeys.

  “Retalla!” Kaius shouts again, and the archers fire another volley. Across the field, most of the Beltharans deflect the arrows with their shields, but a few stumble and fall when bolts hit their marks.

  “Go!” Firesse screams. “Advance!”

  “Go, go, go!” Drake cries. He lifts his spear and rushes forward with the surge of elves. Their faces blur as they run, their intricate tattoos blending into one another in the darkness. Calum catches glimpses of Firesse’s leather armor, Kaius’s bronze skin shining in the moonlight, Faye’s dark locks streaming behind her, but they vanish a second later.

  “Release!” the Beltharan commander orders. Another wave of arrows rains down upon Drake and the elves. When the elf in front of him crumples to the ground, an arrow sticking out of his chest, Drake merely leaps over the body, pushing himself faster.

  The Beltharans rush forward. The two sides meet in a crash of steel, swords clanging, blades scraping against armor. Cries of pain fill the air. Drake thrusts his spear upward and catches a Beltharan in the throat. The man sways and slashes out weakly with his sword as blood paints his armor crimson. He falls.

  Dead.

  One by one, Calum’s countrymen fall to his father’s blood-coated spear, dead before they hit the ground. Drake hisses when a sword grazes his arm. He turns and shoves his spearhead through the offending soldier’s eye. The man wails, and a quick jab of one of Drake’s daggers through a gap in his mail sends him to his knees. Hot blood sprays on Drake’s face when he yanks the spearhead out of the soldier’s eye.

  Another soldier, dead.

  Someone bumps Drake’s shoulder. He whirls around, trading his spear for daggers, only to see an elven kid staggering toward him, one hand on the hilt of the knife protruding from his stomach. Ivris, Calum realizes—the boy who had sailed with them from the Islands. His leather armor is coated with blood.