An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy

by Justin DePaoli

  Corvin locked his hands behind his head. He sighed. “Not a real interestin’ story, but we came to Amortis together. This was back when there was only one fragment. When the green hills turned to cold iron, Arken brought some of us into Fragment Zero. Gave a handful of ’em fancy titles, lords and ladies and such. Gave ’em responsibilities, eventually manors as the fragments expanded. I was a grunt, responsible for keepin’ the city maintained, gardens manicured, all that nonsense. Sister, she got married off to Lord Ragen Marbal. I heard about the rebellion. Tried convincing my sis to come along, but… she was safer there.”

  “If she didn’t run off with her brother,” I said, “what makes you think she’ll be so inclined to assist the rebellion now?”

  Corvin tugged on the lobe of his ear. “Ah… guess faith ain’t much a good answer, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s part faith. Other part trust. She told me when I escaped that if I ever was in danger, I was to send word to her. And she’d help, any way she could.”

  “How long ago was this promise made?”

  Corvin smiled a painful smile. “Wait here a tick.”

  The puffy-faced rebel retreated to his bedroom, made some noise, then returned holding a hemp necklace. An unremarkable pebble, oblong in shape and chalky white in color, was fastened onto the rope.

  “She found this when we first came to Amortis,” he explained. “Right on the ground, just sittin’ there. She gave it to me when I left Fragment Zero, somethin’ to remember her by.”

  The necklace dangled over his finger for a while. He looked at it yearningly.

  He dropped the necklace into my hand. “Good luck.”

  “’Fore ya go,” Gentry said, “I got a recomm-o-mendation for you. Keep your hood up. Butt’ry face and all. Don’t want eyes on ya in Fragment Zero.”

  I pulled the hood of my cloak up over my head. “How’s that?”

  Corvin tossed his head back and forth. “Still got a glow to ya, but better than nothin’.”

  “It’ll have to work,” I said. “I can’t exactly extrapolate a new face. By the way, this big-fuck city — how do I get there?”

  “Can’t miss it,” Corvin said. “Fragment Zero ain’t like the others. It’s small. Little thing, mostly all city. If ya ask me, it’s out on the Fringe, where the city folk aren’t allowed to go, that Arken keeps the conjurers.”

  “How do we get in?” Lysa asked.

  “What do ya mean? Ya just walk in. You’ll see.”

  Pocketing the book and Corvin’s keepsake, I thanked our hosts and left the nudist colony of Giddish Village.

  Lysa and I passed into Fragment Three within three days. Each day we were there — a total of four — was spent under a sky of swollen rainclouds and amid an immense jungle. We encountered a few camps of what appeared to be slaves, hauling off on trees with their axes and roping fallen trunks to wagons pulled by mules. There appeared to be no taskmasters or hovering lords keeping the workers in line, but neither did the slaves attempt to escape. They looked at us with flat eyes, long faces smeared with grime. They didn’t need taskmasters to keep them in line anymore; the obvious years — perhaps generations — of beatings had strangled all sense of individuality and hope of freedom they’d ever had.

  Day fifteen, we crossed into Fragment Zero, the appearance of which obliterated my expectations. Given the inky wisps of Arken and the rather dreadful perception that rose from the mere thought of Fragment Zero, I anticipated a land of death and disease.

  Instead, a land of the fantastical welcomed me in.

  A violet haze encapsulated the terrain, enclosed with distant mountains that resembled celestial ice sculptures, their craggy shoulders glinting the color of lavender, as if a plum evening sky had been frozen within.

  “This… is beautiful,” Lysa said, awestruck.

  It was certainly something. A sleek blackness unraveled across the floor of Fragment Zero. From its beady texture rose a colorful carpet of flowers, pinks and crimsons and azures, their petals as stiff and polished as glass.

  Trees took on the shape of rangy mushroom stalks, rising high into the air till their tops unfolded into wide-brimmed canopies.

  “Think we found the city,” Lysa said, nodding ahead.

  There was a city all right, with curved bridges and walkways rising over one another, leading to second and third and fourth and tenth levels.

  “It seems so peaceful here,” Lysa said. “Strange, huh?”

  I clutched the book in my pocket. Strange indeed.

  Chapter 16

  When Corvin had told us that we could simply walk into Devous, Lysa and I had both thought he was full of shit. I mean, sure, you could simply waltz into Edenvaile or Erior or most cities in Mizridahl, assuming you weren’t covered in blood and didn’t have a crazy look in your eye. But this wasn’t Mizridahl. This was Amortis. More importantly, this was the heart of a domain that belonged to a god.

  Turned out this particular god was fairly welcoming to visitors. Devous had not a single wall. No gate. No door that guards stood behind, ready to halt your advance. Nothing but a wide-open city which featured amalgamations made of what looked like chiseled amethyst and moss agate, red jasper and malachite, crystal and jade mottled with pearl.

  Before you got to the city, there was a small lake where people fished and swam. An archery field where arrows whizzed by and stuck into straw targets. There was a training ground where wooden swords clashed against shields, the combatants laughing and carrying on.

  “This,” I whispered to Lysa, “isn’t what I expected Fragment Zero to look like.”

  “They seem so happy,” she noted.

  A faux happiness, or the real kind? I’d seen this sort of facade before, where lords and ladies pretty up the face of their manors, but soon as you step inside the walls, the front collapses, and the ugliness reveals itself. It’s all for show, because appearances hold as much importance as anything else — and probably more.

  But what reason would Arken have for a carefully crafted ruse like this? Lord Ass Kisser the Third would want to maintain an appropriate presentation when entertaining high-ranking guests, for example, but that didn’t apply here.

  Also, Devous’ display of freedom and happiness didn’t end once Lysa and I found ourselves in the belly of the city. By the time you take twenty steps into most cities, at least in Mizridahl, you’ll have encountered the smell of the poor and the sight of the slums. Beggars’ll plead with you for a coin, or a crumb. And the vagabonds and drunks are fast asleep, heads on their cobblestone pillows.

  The homeless were curiously absent in Devous, and it seemed the closest you got to slums here were wall-to-wall buildings of marred jade that served as watering holes and eateries and places for merchants to hawk the newest fashion trends.

  “People here dress weirdly,” Lysa said.

  “My good man!” cried a squat lad, jogging toward us. “And my good lady! Allow me to relieve you of your burdens.”

  His hair was dyed the color of woad, bangs painfully separated into individual strips of hair that lay flat against his forehead, the tips touching his brows. A sapphire the size of a coin was embedded in his forehead. He knelt before Lysa and extended an outward hand. She considered this gesture for a moment, then took the invitation and climbed off her boar.

  “Lut the Sixth at your service,” the man said, scooting over to me.

  “It’s only a boar, not a plower horse,” I said, clambering down on my own. “Thanks all the same.”

  Lut the Sixth hastily straightened himself and smoothed out his striped trousers. He wagged a finger in front of Lysa. “Coming from Quarm, perhaps? Those slippers say Quarm, but the dress says… well, I’m not sure, if I’m to be honest.”

  Lysa curtsied. “Quarm indeed. A pleasure, Mr. Lut the Sixth.”

  Er… well, I guess Lysa must’ve learned proper uppity manners from her days as the Rabthorn heiress, but this was one side of her I hadn’t ever seen.
<
br />   Lut the Sixth’s cheeks flushed. “The pleasure’s all mine, Lady…?”

  Lysa folded her hands in front of her belly. She smiled. “Lady Tolous. And this is my love, Lord Tolous.”

  Lut the Sixth shifted his penguin-like frame around, eying me up. He may have been trained in refined social behavior, but even beneath his neatly trimmed brows and finely parted hair, he couldn’t hide the look of inquisitiveness as he searched my face for answers.

  I really needed to do something about this buttery complexion of mine.

  “Well!” Lut the Sixth said, clapping his stubby hands. “My dear lord and lady, have you visited Devous recently? Plenty of changes underfoot, some you may well wish to know about if you intend on staying for a while.”

  Never one to pass on free information, I welcomed the little imp to tell us all he knew.

  Turned out that new doings in the grand city of Fragment Zero weren’t very interesting to people from the living realm. Sure, an actual lord from Quarm would have been fascinated that the spiraling structure of red jasper was home to ninety new tenants, half of whom seemed to sell exotic-sounding teas, while the other half were fashion merchants. But as someone merely looking to, uh, free this fragment of its conjurer burden, that information did nothing for me.

  Eventually Lut the Sixth took our boars — free of charge, because Devous is just so grand, don’t you know — and offered Lysa and me two silver pins, each centered with a single ruby. Good for four free drinks or two free plates at the Gravendeer Tavern.

  Eager to fill my stomach with something more than mushy berries and soft vegetables, I took my little pin and headed straight for Gravendeer Tavern.

  The eatery allowed Lysa and me an escape from the overwhelming violet tint saturating Fragment Zero, but the tradeoff was that now we sat in an overwhelming blue tint, courtesy of the blue agate from which the tavern was forged.

  Upon entering the tavern, we were greeted by a frightening man with glittering gems seemingly stapled into his brows. He sat us in the back, near an oval window. The table was made from glass, with a menu beneath the top pane. After he skipped off — literally skipped — Lysa and I glanced at one another with a shared expression of bewilderment.

  “What is this place?” Lysa said.

  “My nightmares in color,” I answered.

  These seemed the type of people who’d bend over and spread their cheeks if a random lord happened by and needed a fresh piece of ass to satisfy his lust. Speaking of which, what in the piss was with the lord and lady business?

  I mean, it made some sense for Arken to cultivate an organized society to sit atop. It likely made overseeing Amortis simpler when he had innumerable sets of eyes in each fragment. But that didn’t explain why there was nobility present in Fragment Zero. Unless he was using them for practice. If he was intent on taking the living realm and acting as king and god of its lands… actually, I had better things to think about than that. Like, for instance, locating Corvin’s sister.

  “If you want, I can hold the book for a while. You’ve been carrying that sack since you left Scholl.”

  “I trust you, girl,” I said, “but this thing ain’t leaving my side.”

  She shook her head and began skimming the menu. “Blue fish. Hmm. I haven’t had fish for a long time. I wonder what cromalo is, though. Think it’s some sort of spice?”

  “We’re going to find out what our server knows,” I said.

  Lysa frowned. “I don’t want to look ignorant.”

  “Not about the damn menu. About Corvin’s sister.”

  “Oh. We should have asked Lut. I bet he would have known.”

  I’d considered that. But we’d already risked enough by creating fake identities. Last thing we needed was an imp of a man waddling around talking about how Lord and Lady Tolous from Quarm were here, asking about Lady Marbal.

  That wouldn’t seem suspicious at all, particularly once someone who was actually from Quarm heard the news and questioned how he’d lived there his whole life and never heard of the name Tolous.

  “My dear sir and madam,” our server said, strolling up to the table in his ruffled blue shirt. “Have any of our delectable offerings caught your eye, perhaps?”

  “Give me your strongest wine,” I said.

  “E’tou Famril it is. A glass of quartz, or would sir prefer diamond?”

  Yeah, this was the stuff of nightmares, all right. I wanted to tell him this sir didn’t give two shits whether the E’tou Famril came in a driftwood mug that smelled like the sea or stained glass lifted from the coffers of the Verdans. But as Vayle had taught me, nobles and those who liken themselves to nobles respond in a much more pleasant manner when you entertain their haughty nature.

  “Quartz will be fine,” I said.

  “Quartz it is. And to fill your stomach?”

  “The basted boar.”

  “Ah,” he said, lifting his brows, “an excellent choice. And for the lady?”

  Lysa chewed her cheek. Her finger went from one item on the menu to the other. “Um. The blue fish, please. Oh, and… ohh, you have honey mead? I’ll take that!”

  “Honey mead and blue fish,” the server parroted. “I assure you will be pleased with your choices. I will return with complimentary salads soon. Lemon and pepper is satisfactory, I assume?”

  Lysa smiled. “That will be fine.”

  The server turned to leave, but I spun him back around with a question.

  “We’re in from Quarm to see Lady Marbal. I, regrettably, cannot recall the location of her quarters.”

  That probably sounded absolutely absurd coming from a hooded man who looked like he had just rolled in from the mire, fighting bog giants.

  And indeed our server didn’t look very convinced. Actually, he seemed rather unhinged: he folded his lips in, swallowed uneasily. Finally, he smiled, but not with his eyes. Only his mouth.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know of a Lady Marbal.” With a curt nod, he whipped himself around and strutted off.

  “He’s not very good at lying,” Lysa said.

  “Not at all,” I agreed. “Nor is he very good at concealing himself. Look.”

  Around the bend of the bar, in between the comings and goings of patrons, our suspicious server had the ear of a tall, lanky woman. Fragments of gemstones sparkled in her eyes, pieces of rubies and sapphires and tiger opals. Their prismatic shine cut right into the sockets of my own eyes as she leered at me.

  I winced, snapping my head away.

  Lysa reached out for me. “Are you okay?”

  “You know that feeling when you eat too much snow because you’re drunk and you think it’ll quench your thirst?”

  “Um. No?”

  “Well, the cold goes right to your head. Like someone taking a knife to your skull. That’s what this felt like. That woman with the sparkly eyes — is she still looking over here?”

  Lysa glanced that way. “No.”

  Hoping Lysa was mistaken, I looked for myself.

  “Shit. I think we’re in trouble. Something about Corvin’s sister doesn’t sit right with these people.”

  “Maybe they think we’re here to cause her harm.”

  I drummed my fingers on the glass table. “Possibly.”

  No matter what misgivings we’d cooked up, we needed to eat quickly and leave. Gems-in-the-eyes woman made me rather uncomfortable, much in the same way coming face-to-face with a Warden did. We would need to be far more subtle with our approach from now on and select our contacts more carefully. This was where bums and drunks would come in handy; they don’t much care about the questions you ask, so long as you provide them payment in the form of food or ale.

  A different steward brought out our drinks, each served in a deep quartz goblet. Lysa licked her lips, cupped her goblet with both hands and poured that familiar honey mead right down her eager throat. You could see the tension easing from her muscles like waves wimpling away from a boat.

  “Ah,” she sighed. “I’d
missed this. Good thing I tried some with you before; I would have never tasted it on my own.”

  I almost told her that she needed to be more adventurous, but reconsidered. She was plenty adventurous as it was, taking the mind of a Warden and tracking me down for seven days. Plus that whole business a few months ago involving sneaking out to Vereumene and getting herself killed in the process.

  The fewer adventures Lysa undertook, the better.

  It’d been about twenty minutes since gems-in-the-eyes lady had disappeared. And equally long since we’d seen our server. In the meantime, two other servers had passed by, checking up on us and explaining to Lysa that while they’d be happy to fetch her another goblet of mead, they could not bring two out at one time.

  A third server presented himself, wearing a blue scarf. “Hallo. Your meals will be right out.” Something dropped from his hand, into my lap. As he whirled around to leave, he said, “If you value your life, you will leave when you smell the smoke. Meet me in District Four, beneath the blond octopus.”

  In case the E’tou Famril had gone straight to my head — it was strong, after all — I looked at Lysa. And she at me. Then I glanced at my lap, to a tiny wooden figurine carved into the shape of a lion. Looked identical to the lion stitched into the flag flying high above the city of Scholl: the rebellion’s coat of arms.

  “Was that a riddle?” she asked.

  As it turned out, no.

  The smoke was quite literal smoke. The kind that’s gray, chokes your lungs and burns your eyes.

  Gravendeer Tavern was on fire.

  “My goodness!” Lysa said, spitting her mead back into her goblet. She slammed herself backward, skidding her chair across the floor.

  Flames licked into the seating area from the kitchen. Guys and gals shot up from their chairs, panic widening their eyes. A woman screamed, as if the fire thirty feet away would somehow jump, swivel through the exiting crowd, and swallow her up.

  Most calmly, but urgently, shuffled toward the doors. Lysa and I were already halfway there when a pair of glitzy eyes searched frantically above the parading necks and heads of exiting patrons.