by J. C.
"Already?"
"Word travels quickly in Miiska, especially if you know what to listen for."
"Don't play coy with me, Welstiel," she snapped, stepping farther into the room. "I'm not in the mood."
"Then stop denying what your own eyes see and begin accepting reality," he answered back, just as harshly.
"What does that mean? What does any of this have to do with me?"
He put the book down and leaned forward, pointing at her neck.
"Those amulets hidden beneath your clothes and the falchion you usually carry are telltale signs. If I were a vampire, I'd hunt you down the moment you set foot on my territory."
She blew a breath out her nose. "Don't start all that again."
But her voice pretended a confidence she no longer felt. If she truly believed that nothing unnatural was happening in this town, then why had she come to Welstiel, who spoke of such things?
He studied her face as if it were the cover of one of his books, hoping to catch a hint of what lay behind it.
"You can't escape this. They see you as a hunter and will therefore hunt you first. Take the battle to them."
She no longer had the strength nor inclination to argue and sat down slowly on the foot of his bed.
"How? How do I find them?"
"Use what is already available to you. Use your dog and the facts you've gathered. Use the skill of your half-elf and the blacksmith's strength."
"Chap?" she said. "What can he do?"
"Do not be dense. Let him hunt. Haven't you at least figured that part by now?"
He was mocking her, and she felt a sudden edge of hate for his superior manner. How could he possibly know so many things that she did not?
"If you know so much, then why haven't you hunted these creatures down?"
"Because I am not you," he answered calmly.
She stood up again, pacing. "I don't even know where to look. How do I start?"
Without warning, his expression became closed, as if he were a living book suddenly tired of producing information. He got up, went to the door, opened it, and repeated, "Use the dog."
Her fear concerning her fate threatened to emerge once more as the tangle of coincidences grew more entwined. How did Chap fit into all this?
Welstiel's opening of the door announced the end of her visit. Besides, he was apparently strong willed, and any further pushing on her part might lead to alienating the only outside source of information she'd found so far. She stepped into the hall and then turned back to him. "How do I kill them?"
"You already know. You've practiced it for years." Without another word, he closed the door. Magiere made her way quickly back up the stairs, and hurried through the lobby, glancing once at Loni on her way out of the foyer. For all Welstiel's cryptic discussions, only two points truly bothered her. First, to the best of her knowledge, Welstiel had never even seen Chap, but he knew a great deal about the animal. And second, he either knew or pretended to know aspects of her past that she did not. Though that last issue troubled her some, she'd never really cared about her past. There was little worth remembering.
In the years before Leesil, all she had was loneliness, which turned to hardness, which turned to cold hatred of anyone superstitious. A mother she'd never known was long dead, and her father had abandoned her to a life among cruel peasants who punished her for being spawned by him. Why would she want to remember such things? Why would she want to look back? There was nothing worth concern in the past.
As she walked quickly toward home, she noticed the sun had dropped a bit lower. She suddenly felt an urgency to get back to Leesil. For all his cryptic words, Welstiel was right about one thing. They had to give up their defensive position and go after their enemies—and they had only a few hours to prepare before sundown.
* * * *
Sitting on his bed in his room, in complete solitude, Leesil decided that he hated uncertainty more than anything else, perhaps even more than sobriety. At the moment, he was as sober as a virtuous deity, and that condition gave him clarity— another distasteful state of affairs.
Unlike Magiere, he'd neither bathed nor slept and the odors of blood, smoke, and red wine permeated his nostrils. He knew he should go downstairs and wash, but something kept him here in his room.
Brenden had left the tavern for his home, promising to return soon with appropriate weapons. Caleb had taken Rose into their room several hours ago so he could speak with her. He had closed the door and not come out. Chap still lay by Beth-rae's body, which Caleb had carefully cleaned and laid out in the kitchen in case anyone stopped by to pay respects. And Magiere had disappeared sometime during the afternoon.
Leesil was alone and sober. He was not sure which of those conditions he disliked more.
He went over to a small chest Caleb had given him for storage. Since Constable Ellinwood's examination of the murder scene—or lack of it—Leesil had taken a few private moments to remove Ratboy's dagger from under his clothes, clean Chap's blood from the blade, and store it away. He now pulled it from the chest, careful to grab it by the blade and not the handle. Even while cleaning it, he'd been careful not to wash the handle, for that was the one place he could be certain Ratboy had touched. He would have need of any lingering trace of presence the dusty little invader had left behind.
And once again, uncertainty gnawed at him. Dropping to his knees, he pried up two floorboards that he'd loosened the first night they'd arrived. A long, rectangular box lay inside where he'd hidden it. Even touching the container made him shiver with revulsion, but he never once in his life considered throwing it away. He pulled out the box and opened it.
Inside lay weapons and tools of unmatched elven craftsmanship, given to him by his mother on his seventeenth birthday. They were not what any boy would have wanted as a gift. Two stilettos as thin as darning needles rested beneath a garroting wire with narrow metal handles. Alongside them was a curved blade sharp enough to cut bone with minimal effort. Hidden inside the lid behind a folding cover was a set of thin metal picks that in his hands could unlatch any lock. Just inanimate objects, but the sight of them almost drove him down to the wine barrel and his cup.
He closed his eyes and breathed deep, long, and hard for several moments. Drunk, he was no use to Magiere. But the close proximity of these items and his current sobriety allowed in a rush of memories he'd fought for half his life to keep at bay. Eyes still shut, he could feel the pain.
Rich green shades and the enormous trees of his birthplace appeared. So beautiful. Magiere had never traveled north as far as Doyasag, his place of birth, and he'd never bothered describing it to her. Joining the game with her had been the start of his new life, his erasure of past deeds. He'd left it all behind the night they met.
The fresh smells and scenery of his homeland were merely a painted canvas that hid a mass of power-hungry men who struggled for domination. Instead of being ruled by a king, the country was held by a warlord named Darmouth, who saw treason all around nun. Warlords who rule need spies and other hidden servants, and Leesil was fifteen years old and nearly seven years into his training before realizing his father and mother did not simply work for Lord Darmouth. Darmouth owned them.
Leesil's mother's tan skin and golden hair, her exotic elven heritage, made her a useful weapon as she created the illusion of a tall but delicate girl or a rare foreign beauty. His father, for his part, could blend into the shadows as if made of dust in the air, and his passing left no mark and made no sound. They betrayed whomever they were told to betray and killed whomever they were told to assassinate. And they taught Leesil everything they knew. It was the family craft and art, and he was the family's only inheritor.
"We have a tenuous position here, Leesil," his mother whispered to him late in the night. "Necessary, highly skilled—and expendable. If we refuse or hesitate, we will be the next ones to die unexplainably in our sleep or be exposed and executed for our crimes. Do you understand, my son? Always nod and do as you ar
e bid."
No matter what the monetary rewards, Leesil did not possess the temperament required for a life of isolated servitude. Spies and assassins make no friends. His mother must have felt his loneliness. On the day of his fifteenth birth celebration, she presented him with a large, silver-blue puppy that crawled all over him with uncontained wiggles and licked his face. It was the one moment of pure happiness that he could remember.
"This is a special hound," she said, her graceful hands held outward. "His great-grandfather protected my people in frightening times long past. He will watch over you."
That was all she'd ever told him—that he recalled—of Chap or of her homeland, wherever it might have been. And Leesil gave few thoughts to her words at the time. If he hadn't been so happy in that one moment, he might have asked more questions, or even remembered to ask later, but he only cared that some part of his life seemed like other boys'. He had a dog.
When Leesil turned seventeen, his father declared his training finished, or perhaps did so at Lord Darmouth's insistence. His mother presented him with the box filled with all the tools he would need for his duties.
"You are now anmaglâhk," she said, her voice quiet and hollow—a statement of fact filled with no pride.
She seldom spoke her native tongue in all of his life that Leesil remembered. Though he'd learned several of the land's dialects, she never taught him the elven language other than a few words he'd picked up on his own. Once, when he tried to beg her to teach him, she turned coldly angry.
"There will never be a need for you to speak it," she said.
And as he left her, quick to exit her chamber, he was uncertain of what he saw. As she sat on the window bench, looking out, her face turned away from him, a shudder ran through her body as if she were sobbing silently.
Looking at the box in his hands she had given him as a birthday present, he did not need to ask what the word she had used meant. He knew what he'd become. The same day, he was ordered to assassinate a baron believed to be plotting against Darmouth. The command came from his father.
That night, Leesil scaled the walls of Baron Progae's fortress, slipped past a dozen guards, and climbed down from the tower into the target's bedroom window. He drove a stiletto into the base of the sleeping man's skull, just as his father had shown him, and then slipped out again. No one found the body until nearly noon the next day. What servant would willingly disturb the late sleep of a nobleman?
Progae's lands were confiscated. His wife and daughters were driven into the street. Leesil sought out information about the family later. One daughter was taken in as the fourth mistress of a loyal baron. The wife and two youngest daughters starved to death as everyone feared assisting them. Leesil never asked about the families of his victims again. He simply slipped through windows, picked what were often considered unpickable locks, carried out his orders, and never looked back.
At twenty-four, he still looked as young as a human in his late teens. One night Lord Darmouth summoned him personally. Leesil loathed being in his lord's presence, but he never even considered refusing.
"I don't want you to kill this time but gather information," Darmouth told him through a thick, black beard. "One of my ministers has given me cause to doubt his true interests. He trains young scribes as a hobby. Your father tells me you speak and write several of our dialects?"
"Yes, my lord," Leesil answered, despising the brutal hands and unwashed face of the creature who owned his entire family.
"Good. You will live as his student and report to me on his activities, his comments, his daily habits, and so forth."
Leesil bowed and left.
He was allowed to bring Chap to his new residence, which was a comfort since the dog represented his only link to a life beyond his duties. But the first meeting with Minister Josiah was almost unsettling to him after years of plots, schemes, and silent deaths. A small, white-haired man with violet, laughing eyes, Josiah grasped Leesil's hand in open warmth and friendship. Rather than armor or clothing designed for stealth, the man wore cream-colored robes.
"Come, come, my boy. Lord Darmouth tells me you're a promising student. We'll find you some supper and a warm bed."
Leesil hesitated. He'd never met anyone like Josiah. The merry minister mistook his pause.
"Not to worry. Your dog is welcome, too. A handsome creature and a bit unusual, as I don't think I've ever seen his kind before. Where did you get him?"
Chap's back now reached a grown man's thigh. His long, silver-blue fur, pale, near-blue eyes, and narrow muzzle often drew compliments from those who saw him. The dog trotted straight up to the old minister and sat, with a switching tail, waiting to be petted. It was the first time Leesil had ever seen Chap do such a thing with anyone but himself and his mother.
Leesil wasn't sure how to answer and tried quickly to figure out what purpose the question served, what agenda might be hidden behind it.
"My mother," he finally answered.
Josiah looked up from scratching Chap gently on the head.
"Your mother? Why, I would have thought him to be a father's gift, but no matter"—he laughed softly and smiled— "a mother's gift is even better."
With that, the old minister ushered both Leesil and his dog into the house and into his life.
Josiah's loyalties became clear in the days and weeks that followed. He had no intention of creating insurrection, but he had turned his large country estate into a haven for those displaced by Darmouth's continuing civil wars and intrigues. Barracks and small cottages had been built to house refugees. Leesil spent part of his days in lessons with Josiah, and the other part helping to feed or care for the poor. He found the latter acts somewhat futile, since these tragic people would still be poor tomorrow. The poor were poor. The rich were rich. The intelligent and resourceful survived. That was the way of things.
His attitude toward Minister Josiah, however, was quite different. Never given the opportunity to admit or recognize admiration, he did not understand his feelings of protection for the old man. Indeed, he was foolish enough at first to believe he could save himself, save his family, and save Josiah by simply reporting nothing to Lord Darmouth. After all, he disobeyed no orders, refused no tasks, and there was nothing to tell.
"What do you mean, 'he's loyal'?" the bearded lord demanded when Leesil had returned once on a "visit home."
Leesil stood rigid and attentive in Darmouth's private chambers. Although tired and thirsty from his journey, he was offered neither a chair nor water.
"He bears you no ill will, speaks no treason," he answered in confusion.
Anger clouded Darmouth's eyes.
"And what of all these peasants flocking to his fields? No other minister gathers armies of the poor. Your father believes you are skilled. Is he wrong?"
Leesil never answered any question before thinking carefully, but now he felt adrift. How could Josiah's act of feeding the poor possibly be construed as treason?
"Is this task beyond you?" Darmouth went on after taking a long drink, draining a pewter goblet filled with wine and then slamming it back on the table.
"No, my lord," Leesil answered.
"I need evidence, and I need it quickly. His peasant hordes grow. If you can't bring me simple information, I will assume your father is a fool as well and have you both replaced."
Cold shock washed over Leesil as he realized Lord Darmouth didn't want the truth. He simply wanted something with which to justify Josiah's destruction. If Leesil refused, both he and his father would be replaced, and servants of their kind did not just leave service. At best, they disappeared one night never to be seen again—as the first task of their replacements.
He traveled back north to the warm embrace of his new teacher and ate a supper of roast lamb and fresh peaches while making up stories at the table when Josiah asked all about his visit home.
That night, he slipped downstairs into Josiah's study, picked a simple lock on the old man's desk, and began reading re
cent correspondence. He stopped going through the parchments when his gaze scanned a draft of a letter not yet sent.
My Dear Sister,
The situation grows worse with each month, and I fear a loss of both vision and reason in our highest places. I would resign my seat on the council were it not for my work here with those in most need. I pray each dusk for some sign of change with each dawn, for some legitimate change for the better in the command of this land, for a change is needed. These unending civil wars will destroy all of us…
The letter went on, touching upon Josiah's simple daily routine, queries of family and friends, and other personal topics. It even mentioned a young half-elf as a promising new student. Leesil ignored the rest of the letter. The first paragraph, though not clearly pointing to Lord Darmouth, would be enough for someone like him to justify charges of treason. Leesil shoved the parchment inside his shirt, found Chap, and headed out that night for Darmouth's castle.
Three days later, soldiers swarmed Josiah's estate and arrested him. They dispersed the refugees, killing a handful in the process. After a brief trial by Darmouth's council, composed of ministers now staunchly loyal to their lord as they sat in judgment over one of their own, Josiah was hanged in the castle courtyard for treason. A letter to his sister proved his guilt.
Leesil was well paid for his services and lay in bed that night shivering, unable to get warm. He tried to focus on loyalty to his parents and not on his own tenuous grasp of Master Josiah's lessons on ethics and morals. Ethics were for those who could afford such luxuries as time for philosophical thought, and morals should be left to clerics and their doctrines. But he had destroyed a man he admired— one who'd cherished a young half-blood stranger in his own house—on the orders of the one man Leesil despised the most.
No, that was no longer correct. He loathed himself even more than Darmouth.
He couldn't stop shaking.
That night, Leesil left behind most of the blood money he'd earned for his parents, knowing they would have need of it once his own disappearance was discovered. He took a few silver coins, his everyday stilettos, his box of tools, and ran south for Stravina with Chap at his side.