“Don’t manhandle him, you lunkheads! He might be injured!”
Blade tried to agree with that statement, but only a hiss issued from his dry throat. The soldiers eased him back onto the straw, and several more men descended with torches and lamps. The one who was in charge shouted for a healer, and the crowd around the doorway shifted as someone ran to fetch one. Blade recognised Captain Redgard, whom he had met at the palace several times. The captain looked tired and worried, but triumphant as he knelt at Blade’s side.
“Lord Conash, are you all right?”
Once again, he could only manage a hiss.
Redgard turned to the nearest soldier. “Give me your canteen.”
The captain raised Blade’s head and pressed the flask to his lips. The assassin tried to take the canteen, but discovered that his right arm would not move, and his wounded hip prevented him from sitting up. Since every movement hurt, he relaxed and allowed Redgard to hold the flask while he drank. Redgard eased him back onto the straw.
“The healer will be here soon, My Lord.”
“I am all right,” Blade croaked. “Just help me out of here.”
“You’re wounded, My Lord.”
“I know, but nothing is broken.”
Captain Redgard shook his head. “You’ll tear open your wounds and bleed again. It’s not a good idea.”
Blade sighed, closing his eyes. “How did you find me?”
“The housewife down the road told us that she had seen a man dragged this way four days ago, but we had to search every house and cellar on this street. It took some time.”
“Four days?”
“No sir, she only told us this morning.”
Blade smiled. “I meant: I have been here for four days?”
“Yes sir.”
“It seems longer.”
“I would imagine so, My Lord.” Redgard hesitated. “As soon as you are well enough, we will arrest whoever is responsible for this. The Queen has promised them execution.”
“The bastards who brought me here are just pawns. I have no idea who hired them, although I should think they do.”
A commotion at the door heralded the healer, who hurried down the steps. He knelt beside the captain and examined Blade’s wounds, cutting away his clothes to bandage them.
Blade was barely aware of the journey to the palace. The healer gave him a draught for the pain, which made him sleepy and pleasantly detached. Four soldiers bore him along the streets on a litter, a squad of men surrounding him. He drifted off to sleep before they reached the palace.
Minna-Satu looked up from the petition she was reading at a strident knocking on the door. Chiana came in, flushed and smiling, hurrying to make her prostration.
Minna signalled for her to rise. “What is it? What news?”
“They have found him, My Queen.”
The Queen dropped the parchment and rose. “When? Where?”
“A few time-glasses ago, in a cellar somewhere in the slums. They are taking him to his rooms.”
Minna crossed the room with swift strides. “Taking him? He is wounded?”
“Yes, My Queen, but not too seriously.”
“How seriously?” Minna demanded, then gestured. “Never mind, I shall see for myself.”
Minna made her way to Blade’s rooms with Chiana pattering in her wake, and opened the door to enter a crowded chamber. A dozen people fell to their knees, and she went to the bed. Blade was asleep, his face swollen and bruised, a clean bandage around one arm, the sheet covering the rest of him. Minna swung to confront the kneeling crowd.
“Which one of you is the healer?”
A balding man rose to his feet. “I am, My Queen.”
“How bad are his injuries?”
“They are grave, but he will recover in time.”
“How long?”
The doctor shrugged. “Three tendays, maybe a little more.”
Minna gazed at the assassin again, her mouth set in a grim line. “Whoever did this will pay dearly. I shall have their heads.” She paused, eyeing the healer. “You have tended to him? Given him a draught to make him sleep, I assume?”
“Yes, My Queen, I have done all I can.”
“Then you may go.” Her eyes raked the crowd. “All of you, save my chief advisor.”
The soldiers, servants and healer left, and Blade’s manservant closed the door behind them. Minna studied the sleeping assassin a little longer, then turned to Chiana.
“I suppose you are wondering why I make so much fuss over a worthless assassin.”
“He is also a lord, My Queen, and one who has done you a great service.”
The Queen gave a derisive snort. “Do not insult my intelligence, Chiana. You know full well that does not warrant such zeal on my part to find him.”
The chief advisor inclined her head. “Your reasons are your own, My Queen.”
“Still, I would not have you think I favour Blade unduly without good reason.” She wandered over to the windows. “I shall need him in the times to come. There are those who will plot against me once they know of my plans. Sending Prince Kerrion back to the desert does not solve all of my problems. I am facing a difficult time, and I will need Blade’s particular skills to defeat those who will turn against me.”
“You need him to kill your enemies,” Chiana murmured.
“Precisely, and do not preach to me about how inadvisable that is. I have not asked for your advice. Nothing and no one must stand in the way of my plans. I have not the time to go through the courts, nor the certainty that I shall find justice there. The judges are not as impartial as they claim to be, and there are those who will stop at nothing to prevent peace with the Cotti. I must be as ruthless as them, if I am to achieve it.”
“But the Prince is gone....”
“I do not need Kerrion here. My plans have no call for that.”
“Might I ask what your plans are, My Queen?”
“No.” Minna softened her answer with a stiff smile. “Not yet. All in good time.”
“But Blade knows.”
Minna cast the assassin a rueful glance. “He guessed.” She schooled her expression to a haughty one and made her tone brisk. “I want the men who did this. They must be made to confess the names of their employers, who will be rounded up and put to death.”
“My Queen, if you use Blade to kill your enemies, you will put him in extreme danger.”
“I know that.” She sighed. “He has lived all his life with danger, and I shall do my utmost to protect him. I do not need you to point out the obvious.” She swung away and headed for the door. “Tell me the moment he wakes. I wish to speak to him.”
“Yes, My Queen.”
Chapter Fourteen
For three days, the doctor’s draught kept Blade in a deep sleep, and when he roused, his manservant, Arken, fed him more of the potion. Chiana visited him several times, concerned for his health, which seemed fragile. He looked oddly vulnerable when asleep, she thought, and did not resemble a killer by any stretch of the imagination.
When he was allowed to become fully alert, Chiana went to see him.
He scowled at her. “What do you want?”
“How are you feeling?”
He looked away, presenting the less bruised side of his face to her. His skin was stretched too tightly over his bones, and lines of suffering bracketed his mouth and furrowed his brow. “Imagine being trampled by a herd of horses, then having your head beaten on the floor, and finally knives stuck into you. That may give you some idea.”
“The Queen wishes to see you.”
He sighed. “Not now. I am in no mood to be good company, and I fear my manners will fail me.”
“They never were that good,” she said, the words skipping off her tongue before she could bite them back.
He raked her with glacial eyes. “You have a sharp tongue for a woman of doves, but yes, you are right. It is hard to learn courtly manners in the gutter.”
“Surely a
ssassins do not live in the gutter? I thought it quite a lucrative profession.”
“I was not always an assassin.”
“I find it hard to imagine you as anything else.”
“Do not bother to try.”
“A message has arrived for you,” she said.
“From whom?”
“I do not know. Do you wish me to read it to you?”
“I can read.” He tried to sit up, but grimaced and sank back with a groan. “God, does that damned healer have nothing to stop the pain?”
“The draught for pain makes you sleep, and now you must eat again and regain your strength.”
Blade held out his hand, and Chiana placed a black-edged missive in it. The assassin’s eyes narrowed as he studied it, and he shot her a hard glance. “When did this arrive?”
“This morning.”
“You may go.”
Chiana opened her mouth to rebuke him, then recalled his rank and shut it. Spinning away, she marched out, banging the door behind her.
Blade contemplated the square of coarse yellow paper, its edges dipped in ink. He knew who it was from. Only the assassin’s guild used such a distinctive trademark, and he pondered its probable contents. Previous missives had been invitations to attend one of their gatherings or defend his title as Master of the Dance. Aside from defending his title, he had not gone, or replied. He had found no use for the guild since receiving his tattoo, and was annoyed to receive a summons now. With a flick of his fingers, he broke the wax seal and opened the letter, reading the few lines written in blood.
The letter bore only a drawing of a dagger at its end, and was another invitation of sorts, but there was more to it than that. It held a warning, which, although not spelt out, was sufficiently obvious to cause him slight alarm. That the guild should seek to warn him was unusual; assassins were not prone to protecting their own. The date of the meeting was two days away, and the place was a sacred site of ancient stones outside the city, where the guild always met.
A knock at the door startled him, and two liveried flunkies opened it to admit the Queen. Minna-Satu wore a floating, pale green silk morning gown over a deep blue, form-hugging dress. The colours enhanced her eyes and paled her skin, accentuating the contrast of her hair. Her eyes sparkled, and he wondered if it was with happiness or anger. Her first words solved the mystery.
“How dare you refuse to see me?” She came to his bedside and glared at him.
Blade glanced past her at Chiana, who hovered by the door, looking smug. “I fear that my message was ill conveyed, My Queen. I merely said that I was not yet well enough to receive you properly, since I cannot arise from my bed to give you a proper greeting.”
Minna’s brow smoothed, and her eyes narrowed as she too glanced at the advisor, who now appeared ill at ease. “I see.” She turned back to him. “Obviously I do not expect you to leap up and bow. You are ill.” She hesitated, then sat on the edge of the bed. “I am most pleased to see you awake. How do you feel? Have you much pain?”
“I am alive.”
She inclined her head. “Those who injured you will be brought to justice just as soon as you name them, or describe them accurately to Captain Redgard.”
“I do not know their names, and describing them would do little good. They look like common street thugs. They were hired men. I never saw their masters.”
“But they would know who hired them. They can be made to talk.”
Blade shook his head. “As I have said, I cannot describe them.”
“Surely you must have fought when they captured you? Did you not injure any of them?”
“Yes. All of them. One has a shallow cut across his chest, another I stabbed in the stomach, one has a broken hand, and the fourth….” He looked away. “I cannot remember what I did to him.”
“That is enough. You will describe all this to Captain Redgard, and he will find them.”
Blade shrugged, wincing. “They may not know who hired them either, My Queen. If the traitors were clever, they will not have revealed their identity to these thugs, or their faces.”
“Then we shall hope that those who hired these men were not that clever. I shall find out who is plotting against me. Such treason cannot go unpunished.”
Blade closed his eyes, wishing that she would go away. As if reading his thoughts, Minna stood up. “I will leave you to rest now, Lord Conash. Captain Redgard will be sent to you when you are feeling well enough to receive him.”
He nodded, feigning utter exhaustion. “My Queen.”
When the door closed behind his visitors, he found that his exhaustion was not wholly feigned, and soon fell asleep.
The following day, he described his assailants to an attentive Captain Redgard, then spent the day in a restful doze, rousing only to eat and drink. Arken tiptoed in and out as he tended to his patient, and the healer came in the afternoon to change Blade’s dressings again.
The day of his meeting with the assassin’s guild, Blade forced himself to rise from the bed. His knees almost buckled when he tried to stand, and he hung onto the bedpost, wondering how he would attend the meeting when he could barely walk. Trying to ignore the pain, he tottered across the room to peer into the mirror, examining the fading bruises on his face. The swelling had gone down, but greenish marks dappled his skin like sickly shadows. He fingered his nose, glad it was unbroken.
“Do not worry. You are still as handsome as ever.”
The sound of Chiana’s voice made him turn too quickly, and his bad leg buckled. He grabbed the table under the mirror as he fell, bringing several ornaments crashing down around him. The advisor hurried over and tried to help him up, but he slapped her hands away.
“Are you all right?” she enquired.
“No thanks to you. Do you never knock?”
“I thought you might be asleep. I did not want to disturb you.”
“Mighty considerate of you.” He levered himself onto a chair. The pain made sweat pop out on his brow, and he gritted his teeth.
“I did not expect to find you out of bed. You are still too weak.”
“I noticed.”
She raised a brow, a slight, mocking smile tugging at her lips. “Was it so important to look in the mirror?”
Blade glared at her. “What do you want?”
“The Queen wishes to know how you fare.”
“I was much better until you sneaked up on me with your rude comments.”
“I did not sneak up on you, nor was my comment intended to be rude.”
He snorted. Chiana moved to sit on a chair in front of him, arranging her skirts. Blade noted the slight flush in her cheeks, and the way her eyes avoided his.
“I only spoke the truth,” she went on, “although I am surprised by your concern.”
“So you find me handsome, and think me vain?”
“Yes.”
“And what possible reason, do you suppose, would I have for being vain? Do you think I wish to attract members of the opposite sex?”
Her cheeks reddened further. “No, I suppose not.” She hesitated, then glanced at him. “So why are you so concerned about your appearance?”
Blade gave her a gentle, mocking smile that made her look away. “I have to attend a meeting tonight, of the assassin’s guild, and I do not relish the idea of meeting my peers looking like I have been beaten to within an inch of my life. Call it pride, if you will, but not vanity. Spare me your girlish assumptions.”
“But you are not well enough. You cannot travel.”
“I will decide what I can and cannot do.”
“You will tear open your wounds, and you barely have the strength to stand.”
“I am not planning on doing anything more strenuous than riding a horse and talking to some old acquaintances.”
She shook her head. “The Queen will not allow it.”
“You will not tell the Queen until I have gone. I will need new daggers, and a horse tonight.”
Chiana looked sca
ndalised. “You cannot order me to keep secrets from the Queen.”
“Why not?”
“She has a right to know where you go.”
Blade raised his brows a fraction, and his lips curled at the corners. “She is not my keeper. I am free to go when and where I wish. Should she wish to prevent me, she must throw me into the dungeons and put me in chains. For this she has no reason.”
“You endanger yourself, and she has need of you.”
Blade leant forward, wincing. “Chiana, whenever she sends me to do her killing, she puts me in danger, so do not claim that her concern is for anything other than selfish reasons. As long as I am a free man, my life is my own to do with as I see fit. I will not die from my wounds, and this meeting is not dangerous.”
Chiana shivered, and he wondered at the cause of it. Her mutinous expression told him that she would protest further, and he smiled, knowing it would cause the words to die on her lips.
She averted her eyes. “Then take someone with you, to help you, should you need it.”
“You?”
“No. Not unless you wish it.”
“I must go alone, and I require no help.”
She nodded. “If this is your wish, Lord Conash, I cannot prevent you, but the Queen will be angry when she hears of it.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “I am not afraid of her. Can you procure another dagger?”
“Of course.”
“Bring me one before dusk, and arrange for a horse to be made ready. I shall ride out after dark.”
“As you wish, My Lord.” She rose to her feet. “And since you are feeling well enough to travel around attending meetings, I am sure you will have no trouble getting back to your bed.”
With this tart remark, Chiana spun in a swirl of skirts and left, banging the door behind her. Blade gazed after her, then shook his head and struggled from the chair to continue his gentle exercise, loosening stiff muscles and forcing some strength into his legs.
By nightfall, the combination of exercise and good food had returned some of his vigour. Arken brought him a silver-hilted dagger, and a message that his horse was ready. The servant’s frown held a wealth of disapproval for his charge’s ill-advised jaunt. Blade dressed in his black leather garb, which had been washed and mended since the fight.
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