A Crown for Assassins

by Morgan Rice

  There must be some people out here, though, because Lucas could see the tracks of feet on the road. Some of those tracks were strange, larger than they should have been, far larger than anything human.

  “These look fresh,” Kate said, and Lucas knew that she’d spent enough time hunting to tell the difference. “Too fresh.”

  You think they’re still here? Lucas sent to her, not wanting to warn anyone listening.

  I think we need to check, Kate sent back.

  Lucas extended his senses, knowing that his sister would be doing the same. He felt the presence of minds just ahead, in a patch of scrubby bushes near a watering hole. He’d had enough lessons in strategy to know that it was a good site for an ambush; people would have to come to the watering hole, simply because failing to do so would mean dying of thirst.

  There are enemies ahead, Lucas sent to Sophia.

  And we can’t avoid them because we need the water, she sent back.

  No, Lucas agreed.

  Then what option do we have? she asked.

  I think a direct approach might be best, Lucas sent, and then called out aloud. “Hello! We know you’re there. You might as well come out!”

  “And I thought I was the impulsive one,” Kate said.

  This wasn’t about being impulsive, though. It was about getting them to reveal themselves before they found themselves in a fight. It worked, too. Men came out from the bushes and rocks around the watering hole. Men, and more than men. Creatures that had never been human stood amongst them, with tusks and horns, claws and patches of scales. Some of them dragged a group of men and women, their hands bound, tied to one another with a length of rope.

  At the creatures’ heart, a creature who had to be fully eight feet tall stepped forward, a single eye glaring balefully at them. Lucas had never seen a cyclops before, but he had heard of their strength and their ferocity, their cruelty and their cunning.

  Apparently, this one was well traveled enough to have learned their language too.

  “Surrender, little humans. If we fight, then many of you will die, and dead folk make poor slaves.”

  “Perhaps you’re the ones who’ll die,” Kate snapped beside Lucas. He could feel her anger, and he could guess the reason for it. He knew she would not stand by while people were treated as poorly as the ones there.

  “A little thing like you will not live long,” the cyclops said. “Perhaps I will eat you, or perhaps I will keep you.”

  Sophia was walking forward now. “Or perhaps you’ll lose too many men fighting us,” she said. “Why not turn around and walk away?”

  Lucas could feel the power Sophia was pushing out, but he’d heard enough about cyclopes to not be surprised when the one in front of them took a step forward.

  “That won’t work, witch,” it said. “And I’ll enjoy skinning you.”

  “If you fight us, you will lose many men,” Lucas said.

  “So you think I should just let you go?” the cyclops suggested.

  “Obviously not,” Lucas said. “If you do that, your men will no longer respect you, and then you will have to fight all of them.”

  “So what do you suggest?” the cyclops said.

  They both knew where this was going, but Official Ko had often said that the form of a thing mattered.

  “How about you and I fight instead?” Lucas suggested.

  “And why would I do that?” the cyclops demanded.

  Lucas looked over to Sophia, asking silent permission. She nodded.

  “Win, and the others here will surrender to you,” Lucas said. “You’d take far more than if you fought all of us.”

  “And if I lose?” the cyclops asked with a laugh that suggested how likely it was.

  Lucas looked over to the prisoners it had already taken. “Your men leave, leaving the people you’ve taken behind.”

  “You’re asking a lot,” the cyclops said.

  “It’s just what each of us would take if we won the battle,” Lucas said.

  The creature drew a sword as long as Lucas was tall. “True. Very well.”

  You know they won’t keep their word? Kate sent.

  We’ll deal with that when we get to it, Lucas assured her, then drew his own curved blades.

  He stepped forward to meet the cyclops, and it swung at him faster than anything human could have. Lucas barely leaned back from the blow in time. With another foe, he would have leapt in then, trusting in the weight of the blade to carry it well past while he struck, but the cyclops brought it back around as easily as Lucas might have wielded a short sword. Lucas barely swayed aside in time.

  He struck low, then high. Each time, the creature he faced parried, its greater reach and strength giving it room to deal with the blows. It struck back, and it took all of Lucas’s strength to absorb the blow with his swords.

  “Humans are so weak,” the creature said, and swung blow after blow at him. Lucas blocked and dodged, gave ground, and did everything he could to survive. It was all he could do.

  Against another opponent, he would have read their movements using his gift, or used the speed and strength that his powers gave him to overcome them. Yet the cyclops was a blank slate to him, and its size and strength left him feeling like a child fighting with an adult.

  He couldn’t lose, though. Not when the freedom of everyone with him was on the line. He couldn’t.

  Instead, Lucas attacked.

  He attacked with all the skill that his tutors had drilled into him. Know your enemy, they had said. Well, what was a cyclops’s weakness? They only had one eye, which meant that they couldn’t judge distance precisely. They were huge, so they couldn’t hope to deal with threats down by their feet. They were strong, so it was all too easy for them to overcommit.

  Lucas struck from the very edge of the distance where the cyclops could reach him, rolling forward and striking at the cyclops’s ankles. He came up, striking again and again, forcing the creature to look one way, then striking the other. He cut again and again, drawing blood from a dozen places.

  Then the cyclops kicked him.

  The force of it sent Lucas sprawling, the impact crashing through his chest. It felt as though his ribs had been crushed, and he lay there, trying to breathe. The cyclops reared over him, its sword raised.

  One other thing about cyclopes: they tended to be overconfident.

  Lucas sprang up, his blades slashing out. One plunged into the creature’s chest, while the other slashed across its throat. Blood spurted, almost black, spraying across the ground around them. The cyclops stood there, its sword still raised as if it might strike down even now. Lucas braced himself, knowing that there would be no way to stop the stroke if the cyclops managed to lash out now. It would be worth it, though, because his sisters would be safe.

  Then the cyclops toppled over backward, dead before it hit the ground.

  Lucas stood up, his blades in his hands still, looking around at the creatures in the cyclops’s band. Sophia stepped up next to him, and Kate on the other side, ready to fight if they tried to go back on their word.

  “The prisoners,” Lucas said.

  The creatures grumbled amongst themselves, then shoved the bound humans in Lucas’s direction.

  “We have more,” one of the tusked creatures muttered, before the group of them started to shuffle away. “You’ve saved these, but others will suffer.”

  They headed out into the wastelands, and Lucas didn’t relax his grip on his swords until they were almost out of sight. Beside him, Sophia breathed a sigh of relief.

  Kate didn’t.

  “You’re thinking about whoever is left where they’re going?” Lucas said.

  Kate nodded.

  “We can’t fight them all, Kate,” Sophia said. “There aren’t enough of us.”

  “I know,” Kate said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  “You’re not thinking of fighting, are you?” Lucas asked.

  Kate shook her head.

  Sophia p
ut a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll need to stop and camp here anyway,” she said.

  “Do you need help?” Lucas asked.

  Kate shook her head. “If we all go, they’ll see us.”

  We’ll be here if you need us, Lucas sent.

  I know, Kate replied.

  Lucas watched as she set off in the direction that the creatures had gone. Right then, he didn’t feel frightened for her, only for the monsters she was tracking.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kate stalked the tribe of desert creatures the way she might have hunted deer with her cousins back in Ishjemme. The tracks were easier to follow though, in a broad wash of prints and scruffs, broken ground and dust in the distance. She could even feel their thoughts if she stretched her powers out, the cruelty and the thoughts of what they would do to those prisoners they did have all too easy to pick up on.

  “I can’t leave them,” Kate whispered over the wind of the wastelands. She couldn’t abandon people to creatures like this, any more than she could have left the other children in the House of the Unclaimed. She might be a princess now, might have lost the gifts Siobhan’s fountain gave her, might have her own mission to find her parents, but she still couldn’t stand by while there were slave takers there.

  She followed the tracks for a couple of miles, until a low encampment rose up ahead. There were stakes set around the outside, and it was only as Kate got closer that she realized that there were as many bones there as wooden ones. Skulls and ribcages showed where people had gotten too close, or perhaps where they had tried to escape.

  Inside, she could see the cages, set among the tents. She could see the men, women, and children held there, and anger burned in Kate at the sight. If she’d still been everything she was as Siobhan’s apprentice, she might have charged down there and taken on the creatures right away.

  Instead, she waited and watched, forcing herself to remain still while the creatures moved among the slave cages, while they struck out, or dragged people from them.

  “You have to wait,” Kate told herself, clenching her fists and crouching down among a stand of prickly bushes.

  Darkness fell quicker than it might have done back home, falling like a curtain, punctuated only by moonlight. Kate finally dared to move from her hiding place, creeping forward while sticking to the shadows.

  There were guards, of course. Kate could feel their minds, and thankfully, unlike the cyclops, it was an easy thing to reach into them, watching where their awareness lay, picking out the blind spots. She slipped forward in silence, moving up behind the first of them.

  She struck out with a dagger, and even if she didn’t have the speed or the strength that she’d once had, she still knew exactly where to strike with it to bring a foe down in silence. Up, under the base of the skull and into the brain while she dragged the sentry back. Swiftly, quietly, she moved on to the next one.

  She couldn’t have fought them openly. She’d watched the fight between Lucas and the cyclops. The speed with which her brother moved had been amazing to watch, but it had also been a reminder that she couldn’t have done it. There were things she could do, though.

  Kate moved through the camp like a ghost, killing as she went.

  It was gruesome work, but there was a dark part of Kate that felt a kind of savage joy in it; the same joy that she’d felt in taking vengeance at the House of the Unclaimed. This was the reason that she’d come alone: it wasn’t just that it was easier to slip in without help; she didn’t want her siblings seeing this side of her. In the moonlight, she could see the red of the blood on her hands, but Kate didn’t regret it. Creatures who could keep people in cages deserved to die.

  Kate took a breath. She hadn’t killed all of them yet, but she didn’t want to leave the prisoners in their cages any longer. She moved among the dead, finding keys on the corpse of a creature with teeth like a wolf and setting them to the chains that held the cages closed.

  “Go quietly,” she said in a soft voice, then put a finger to her lips, hoping that the people there would understand that part at least.

  They started to slip out, moving in knots and clumps, parents holding onto children, husbands to wives. They started to move out into the night, slipping through the stakes on the edge of the camp and disappearing into the darkness.

  That was when an alarm went up, in cries and howls and the clattering of armor. Groggy monsters, and men who were as bad as monsters, started to scurry out of their tents, looking around for enemies.

  Kate drew her sword, killed one with a backhand slash across the throat, and sprinted away in the opposite direction to the prisoners she’d freed. She hurried through the stakes at the edge of camp, felt the presence of an enemy close behind her, and spun to thrust her saber through his chest.

  She kept going, out into the night, changing direction as often as she could just in case an arrow followed her. Kate found a hollow, lay down in it, and spread her attention. They were searching for her now, thoughts of their prisoners forgotten. Kate was both grateful for that and worried by it; it meant that the people she’d come to save were safe, but it meant that she would have to play cat and mouse now with a group of people who were a lot less friendly than any cat.

  “And I’m no mouse,” Kate reminded herself.

  She waited for them to spread out, searching, then closed in on a pair of humans who were hunting off to one side, moving in near silence. Kate brought one down with a whisper-quiet flick of her sword, but even so, the other turned, obviously sensing that something was wrong.

  Kate was on him without hesitation, striking out with her sword and her dagger in almost the same instant, slicing through flesh and bone. The man cried out, but Kate was already running away into the dark.

  It reminded her a little of the beach where she’d called up fog to hide her while she’d struck at the New Army’s men. Here, though, there was only darkness, and Kate had no way of knowing if any of the non-human creatures could see in it better than she could make them out by moonlight, using their thoughts as a guide.

  She snagged another of them, coming around it from the side and rushing in with her sword a flash of red and silver in the moonlight. She killed another in the dark, and another. This was what she was made for, what Siobhan had apprenticed her to do, but she chose her own targets now, and there was no doubt that beasts who threatened her family, and who enslaved ordinary people, deserved it.

  She could feel them banding together in the dark now. Worse than that, the remaining half dozen of them were moving in her direction. From their thoughts, she could make out that they were doing it through a combination of small sounds, scent, and the better vision of one of their number. There would be no hiding from them.

  Kate could run, she supposed, but she had no way of knowing how fast they were. Worse, that would leave them free to hunt more people, and Kate couldn’t allow that. She had to stop them. Readying her sword, her pistols, and her dagger, she waited on a patch of open ground well-lit by moonlight for them to come to her.

  They stepped into the moon’s shine together, a tight band of some of the largest of the creatures, and Kate started to regret waiting for them. If she’d still had her strength and speed, killing them would have been easy, but now, how many could she take? One? Two?

  One of them growled something at her. Kate didn’t understand the words, but she could guess the sentiment.

  “Yes, yes, you’ll kill me slowly. Or you’ll do it if I don’t surrender. Why do people always talk so much before fights?”

  Then Kate heard another growl, and she smiled, because this hadn’t come from the creatures. This was the growl of a forest cat.

  Kate drew a pistol and shot down one of the creatures just as Sienne leapt in at them, rending and tearing at another. Lucas slammed into them from the other side, his sword swinging, while another of the beasts seemed to be having trouble remembering how to move, presumably thanks to Sophia. Kate leapt forward, her sword feinting high, then slashi
ng low as one of the creatures went to parry. By then, Lucas was already on a second opponent, while Sophia stepped forward and stabbed the creature she’d frozen in place with indecision.

  As quickly as thinking about it, the fight was done. Kate cleaned her weapons, then rushed forward to hug her siblings.

  “I know we said we’d leave you to it,” Sophia said, “but I thought it might be nice to even the odds at least a little.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said. Sienne brushed against her legs. “Yes, thank you too.” A thought came to her. “You weren’t watching at the camp, were you? You didn’t see all of it?”

  In spite of her joy at freeing the prisoners, Kate had no wish for her brother and sister to see the ease with which she’d slid back into killing her foes by stealth, or the lack of mercy that she’d shown in hunting them down.

  You have nothing to be ashamed of, Kate, Lucas assured her.

  “If you hadn’t killed them, I would have,” Sophia agreed.

  Kate cocked her head to one side. “I thought you were all about being the merciful queen?”

  “I try to be,” Sophia said. “I try really hard, but there are some people where the best thing to do for the world is kill them.” She hugged Kate again. “Anyone who threatens my little sister, for a start.”

  Lucas wrapped his arms around the pair of them. Kate had never felt as loved as in that moment, or as much like she belonged. She just hoped that it would be like this with their parents when they found them.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Master of Crows commenced the assault with a night bombardment, ordering his artillery to fire on the outer circle of houses, enjoying the beauty of the flames that licked up from the successful hits.

  “Personal combat,” he said to the nearest of his aides, “is a dance. A skirmish is a butcher’s work. A battle is little more than commerce: I trade you these lives for those, offer you that piece of ground in exchange for your slaughter.”