King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  “If we’re askin’ questions never asked before . . .”

  Oh, no. But she smiled faintly. “What?”

  “Nothing I would ask, for myself, but because of Jeredon.” Nutmeg pushed back a heavy lock of hair from her temple. “Did you feel anything when you died? I wonder because, well, I wonder if Jeredon feels anything?”

  Grace held her features perfectly still. Her thoughts darted about until she reached out to grab and steady them, wondering what she could say. She had died, and so had Sevryn, on that quest they all took to cleanse the sacred River Andredia. Two had died and Lariel had maimed herself, given a part of her flesh, to mend the river and her family’s pact with it to protect the valley of Larandaril. And Jeredon had been paralyzed. But she’d come back and so had Sevryn; Jeredon recovered, eventually, with Nutmeg’s love and nursing. Finally, she answered, “I can’t say what Sevryn felt, but my experience was all interwoven with the Goddess of the Silverwing, and she couldn’t die. A peace surrounded me, peace with healing, and I felt my mother’s presence, and I—I felt whole. I knew a kind of sorrow for leaving you all behind, but I knew the way ahead waited and I was eager to go. Then I got reknit and returned, but I had no sense of the timing of all of it. I was hardly there, Nutmeg, and there was something tugging at me, but I never got to it, never touched the awe of it before I was back.”

  “Was it . . . dark?”

  Her sister held her gaze, although Rivergrace wanted very much to look away. Slowly, she said, “Dying is not something I want to remember. It was cold and hurtful and frightfully lonely. But Death itself is entirely different.”

  “There is something beyond.”

  “I think so.”

  “Does Sevryn think so?”

  She tilted her head. “We don’t really talk about it. There’s too much to do here.” Rivergrace looked at Nutmeg’s hand, thinking of Lariel’s maimed hand and the sacrifice of flesh. “I’m sorry I can’t give you the comfort you want about Jeredon.”

  “If you don’t fear death, what do you fear?”

  Rivergrace could feel the color leaving her face, the warmth draining away, and her head jerked imperceptibly. “Quendius,” she said, her voice barely loud enough to be heard. “And Tressandre ild Fallyn.”

  Taken aback for a moment at the name of the weaponmaker outlaw as well as the rival Vaelinar, Nutmeg found the breath to make a rude noise. “Two blights on th’ face of the earth! Rotten apples they are, trying to spoil the barrel. At least they never allied.”

  “No. Not yet. Even Tressandre knows better than to partner with the venom that one is.” She shook herself. “At least we have that for luck. How much gloomier can you be, Meg?”

  “Just thoughtful. Some days the babe is so heavy, it seems all I can do is sit and think.”

  “Then think about life and baby names!”

  “It’s no matter—it’s—” Nutmeg’s hand on her belly moved, almost imperceptibly. She beamed and her expression showed the change of her thoughts.

  “Oh, there he kicks again. Want to feel it? You’re never here, and soon it’ll be too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “He’ll be born before you get back here again.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know it’s been forever since I’ve seen you.” Nutmeg’s face twisted wryly. “I think if Master Trader Bregan hadn’t had a caravan comin’ this way, you would never have visited.”

  “The caravan made for good cover. As much as I want to see you, I can’t. It could be taken as a sign that the queen has made a decision about the child, and that could be dangerous for the two of you. Lariel has not declared an heir yet, because of that. If Bregan hadn’t been coming this way, I might not have been able to come.” Machinations. Motives within motives, webs within webs. She knew that Nutmeg knew, even if both of them did not embrace the politics they’d fallen into.

  “But he kicks so strongly. Just feel it.”

  “No,” refused Grace gently, as she had every time the offer had been made on this visit. The thought of some being living inside her sister and kicking as though in protest made her faintly queasy. “And you don’t know it’s a he. You kicked a lot, according to Mother.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead, trying to hide her unease. That shadow amongst shadows had moved again, like a river of dark water across the side of the herbalist’s house. Or had it?

  “She does say that.” Nutmeg rubbed the end of her nose. She circled back to Rivergrace’s question. “What did I think beyond Jeredon?” She waved her hand to indicate the guards. “Not of that, to be certain. Not that Lariel would have guards set upon me and others there,” she twitched her thumb to indicate an even more shadowy corner a little down the street, not far from a small but raucous tavern. “Diort has three Galdarkans who come and go, but mostly stay.” She made a huff. “Did I ever think I would attract th’ attention of the Galdarkans and the east? Never.”

  Rivergrace tried not to show her surprise that Meg was aware of the Galdarkans, for she’d been in Calcort three days on this visit and Sevryn had only informed her that eve of the watch he had been keeping, not only on Lariel’s guards but the others he tabbed as being from the warlord Diort. The Vaelinars had been assigned for protection but there was no knowing why Diort’s men stood watch. She dragged her concern back to the ox in the middle of the room, as it were. “You must have had some inkling of complications. Jeredon was the Warrior Queen’s brother. His death doesn’t diminish that. You can’t tell me you didn’t think of it. You’ve never climbed a tree where you did not know exactly where you’d land, if you fell.”

  Nutmeg rolled her eyes. “Listen to you. If we ever get home, no one will know a thing you say. You sound just like one of the elven with words of honey and spidersilk to trap the listener.”

  By home, Nutmeg meant the orchards and fields of the groves by the Silverwing, a place of hard work sunup to sundown and faraway neighbors, a home overrun by Ravers and abandoned because of that. The folk they’d left behind were not city folk, far from it, and their ways held a directness of their own. The diplomacy and tact she’d learned in the courts of the Warrior Queen would not go far there. Grace bumped her shoulder. “Forget what I was saying. What are you saying?”

  Nutmeg fussed with her hair, pulling it off her shoulders and away from her face, fastening her heavy tresses into a ponytail which, the moment she took her nimble fingers away, sprang out of its knot and came tumbling back down. “I was thinking,” she said quietly, “that I was foolish t’expect that he might ever stay with me, but while I had him, when he was wounded and healing, I was good for him. He needed Dweller common sense and care in heaping spoonfuls, and he got it. When he began to walk again, a step at a time, the beauty of his happiness took my breath away. An’ I did that. Part of it. I think he loved me then. When he left me for the war, and he went to Tressandre, I told myself he was decoying the ild Fallyn away from me. Keeping me safe so that they would not harm me or use me t’ twist him in their ways. I told myself that—over and over.”

  “And I think you were right. But . . .” Grace hesitated to ask. “Did he know you were with child? Did you ever get a chance to tell him?”

  Nutmeg shook her head. “No. I barely knew it myself, and he . . .” She stopped as memory flooded her eyes and an unshed tear sparkled on her eyelashes. “I think somehow he sensed it at the end. War and blood all around us. Yet he touched me, and said my name, and a wonder seemed to fill him, just for a moment, before his life winked out. Did I imagine that? I hope not. I hope it was real.” She put her hand on Grace’s arm. “I knew how t’ dance. Kiss. Laugh an’ flirt. But I had never been with a man before. I took what precautions I knew about, but Vaelinars have such a power runnin’ within them.” She looked into Rivergrace’s eyes. “If you’re asking questions for Lariel, I don’t plot against her rule. If you’re asking for yourself, it
happened, Grace, because I loved him so blessed much. And now look where we are. I have a babe the size of a tree growing inside me, and a pack of guard hounds on my heels. And you wearin’ a sword on your belt. Who’d have thought?”

  Rivergrace reached out and took Nutmeg’s hand, found it chilled despite the lingering warmth of the day, and she squeezed gently. “I wear this sword as much because of Sevryn as I do for any other. I wish I could say the others don’t matter, but we know they do. Still,” and she did not resist this time when Nutmeg took their laced hands and placed them over her stomach and she could feel the tiny but insistent bumps under her palm, “it would be nice if you could raise him as a Farbranch like you did me.”

  “Would it not? Just think, a Vaelinar with th’ roots and sense of a Dweller! Look at you. Lariel could do worse for an heir.”

  Rivergrace freed her hand to place her finger across Nutmeg’s lips. “Words like that could cause a wagon load of trouble.”

  Nutmeg flashed a look. “I may be small, but I am not simple.”

  Lily Farbranch emerged from the doorway of the farmhouse, wiping her hands on the hem of her apron, a half-smile curving her lips. “Grace has not been gone from us long enough to think such things, Meg.” She smoothed her apron down as both her daughters adjusted on the bench to make room for her, but she stayed in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against it. The dusk softened the lines in her face and laugh creases about her eyes, but added to the shimmer of gray strands among her dark hair. Nutmeg echoed some of her looks, but not all, for she carried her father Tolby’s looks as well. Their mother watched them for a long moment before adding, “I know it’s getting late, but the two of you need t’be thinking of letters to draft in thanks to Lord Bistane and Lord Tranta for their birthing gifts.”

  “Think of,” Nutmeg responded. “An aryn wood cradle. D’ you wonder if Lord Bistane carved it himself?”

  “I think he might have planned the crafting of it. He’s been at Ashenbrook so much cleaning the battlefield and preparing for another, it’s hard to tell if he’s had time while bolstering the lines there. The wood, though, came from his forests, no doubt of that.”

  Aryn wood was a wonder, a bane against wild magic and corruption still lingering in the lands from the wars among the Mageborn centuries ago. It was considered such a beneficial wood that baby toys were made from it, when it could be gotten, to carry good fortune and guardianship for the young. To have an entire cradle made of it—well, that was a gift beyond compare. Bistane took after his father Bistel, stepping into his position as a warlord whose strategy and execution were incomparable, but who also held a deep love for his land and for the aryn trees which had come from the unknown lands of their Vaelinar past, a handsome, straight-backed man who carried his legacy well. Rivergrace smiled in fond remembrance.

  “I had not expected anything from th’ Lords, what with all that.” Meg fell silent, her gaze dropping to the dirt lane. When she looked up, it was to say, “Lord Bistel protected me, you know. At Ashenbrook. From the Raymy and all. I heard his last words.”

  Lily dropped her hand onto her daughter’s shoulder. “We know. You told us the tale.”

  Nutmeg opened her mouth as if to add more, but tightened her lips instead, her hand working on her lap, twisting a knot and then letting it go.

  “What about the baby cart?” Rivergrace prompted, to ease Meg’s sudden mood. “Not aryn wood, but a fine mahogany ship, with those ocean waves carved into it.”

  “It is a fine carriage, with a ride as soft as wool.”

  “Tranta said the making of it was one of the things that eased the loss of his brother.”

  Lily murmured, “Every war has its losses, but this last is almost too much to bear.” She dropped one hand to caress the top of Nutmeg’s head.

  In the memory of dark times, a flicker of movement caught Rivergrace’s eye.

  “He still works on the Jewel of Tomarq, does he not?” Lily asked softly. “Putting the Jewel to rights after it was shattered?”

  “Aye, he does. Obsessed with it. He says he can see the Way pulsing still within those bits of gem and Jewel, and swears he will find a way to put the Jewel back together. I don’t know if he can, but Lariel says if anyone can, it will be Tranta Istlanthir. I say it cannot come quickly enough, for I miss his light and quick wit.” The lord of the coast, with his sea-blue hair, was one of her favorites. Even as she rued the loss of his humor, something sharp stabbed at her senses like a knife in the dark. She turned her head about.

  Nutmeg stood abruptly. “I’d better get t’ those letters. They have to be grand ones. I’ll be glad for your help, Rivergrace.”

  Grace surged to her feet as well, but not because her sister stood. She saw a movement in the shadows, a thrusting lunge that caught her attention, and she cried out, throwing the bench over and Meg behind it, as men and steel launched at them. Even as Nutmeg rolled in the dirt, she reached out and grabbed the heavy three-legged stool next to the bench and grasped it firmly in her hands.

  Rivergrace pulled her weapon and unlatched the chain belt worn about her waist, snapping it into the air, thick and sturdy, into the face of the first Vaelinar coming at them, sending his sword arm awry. She slashed him across the throat, and took a second out with the back swing of her blade. Nutmeg got the third in the knees with a smashing blow of her stool, and then a second to the head. He moaned but once. Grace cried out, “Attack!” worried, as she saw no sight of Sevryn. Lily made a smothered sound in the doorway before getting out, “I’ll find Hosmer,” and disappearing into the depths of the farmhouse, no doubt to go out the back way in search of Nutmeg’s brother who had joined the city’s Guards.

  Grace moved cautiously behind the small barricade of the wooden bench, searching the deepening shadows across the way. No movement, not of Sevryn or Vaelinar or Galdarkan. She glanced down at the one attacker who remained alive at their feet, the second she’d caught with her backhand. Crimson spilled over his chest and bubbled from the corner of his mouth, but he lived. His eyelids fluttered as she knelt over him.

  “Who sent you?”

  His mouth pulled. His breath bubbled as he answered, “No survivors.” With a hand too quick to stay, he grabbed her sword to slit his own throat.

  “Velk,” muttered Nutmeg.

  Rivergrace stood carefully. “To be expected, I suppose.” Though the assailant was undoubtedly a Vaelinar, she did not recognize him and he did not wear the colors of any affiliation.

  A sound across the way caught her attention, and a body toppled from the depths of the dusk. One of the queen’s Vaelinar guards. Just beyond, she could see shadows grappling, one being shrugged off with a grunt and a cry that stopped abruptly. That body, too, fell out into the street, and Sevryn jumped into the open, clear of it. So Lariel’s guards had been at work defending Nutmeg, although not successfully. She wondered how big a force had been sent against them and tightened her grip on both the sword and chain.

  “Get her inside,” Sevryn ordered. He turned to set himself in the street.

  Grace hesitated but a moment, before seeing what he turned to meet.

  Kobrir, the assassins all assassins hoped to be one day, spilled out into the lane. Sevryn stepped into a stance to face them.

  THEY ATTACKED WITHOUT WARNING. What assassin worth his salt would do otherwise?

  He pivoted and countered by letting fly with daggers readily at hand: one, two, and three. They dropped and lay unmoving in the afternoon shadows, but from the quiet, he knew there were more and he was also fairly certain his downed opponents were not dead or dying but injured enough to stay out of the fray. Sevryn drew back quickly to find a defensible spot among the shanties footing the dirt lane and when he turned around; the three bodies were gone, melted into the late afternoon shadow, retreated. The Kobrir did not leave their dead or wounded behind.

  He could tell the Kobrir by the d
eadly stealth with which they moved and how quickly and soundlessly they closed on him out of the sidelines even as they blurred in and out of the narrow buildings and ditches. He recognized the odd smell of their skin and the stain of kedant venom on the weapons they grasped. And he knew that as soon as they regrouped, they would attack again.

  He felt strangely alone in the middle of the street, not liking it. He made his way down it, toward the city itself until he reached a tavern. The Kobrir did not kill just for the sake of it. They had their targets and kept their collateral damage as low as possible. So if they were after him and him alone, it behooved him to add numbers to the fight, milling about in the street, engulfing both forces. He backed up and kicked the door twice, hard, yelling “Fight! Fight!”

  The tavern doors flung open with a crash, spilling out spectators both drunk and sober. A few took to their heels, shouting for the Guard. Master Trader Bregan emerged into the last of the sunlight and threw his head back, taking in the Kobrir just out of range.

  “Ho, Sevryn. What are you up to here?”

  “I appear to be having a bit of contract problems.”

  “Let me help you with the negotiations.” Pulling at his leather sheaths, Bregan ended up next to Sevryn, his own vicious swords in his hands. “Trouble always did shadow a Vaelinar’s heels,” he said, kicking away a drunk who staggered off, muttering. His own breath held a faint haze of liquor.

  “Good timing.”

  “Too early for dinner and too late for lunch. Truth be told, I should be down at the stables, packing for the road.” Sevryn knew Bregan had been a sword master in his youth before his accident, and despite a weakness in his right side, he was still formidable. And game. He had not always been thus; he had fallen into drunken ways in self-sorrow after his maiming, but judging from his current form, those self-destructive times were far behind him. A master trader with a powerful guild and an even more powerful father behind him, Bregan still fought most of his own battles. Sevryn felt him move instinctively to his flank as the two of them backed into an alley. “What’re we facing?”