Her thoughts scattered every which way, Jade opened her eyes to a dim light.
“Welcome back, Master Assassin,” someone said. A man. The voice was vaguely familiar.
Jade raised her head only to find it strapped down. She couldn’t move her legs and arms either. Panic settled in her chest, and she couldn’t breathe. Jade frantically arched her neck, trying to find the owner of the voice.
“Your heart rate is too elevated. I’ll give you something,” the man said.
A long, mechanical arm crossed over her and descended toward her arm, a needle whirring at the end of the metal appendage. She made to scream, but no sound escaped her lips. The needle lowered until it pricked her skin. Cold liquid spread through her veins, and as it reached outward, her eyelids felt heavier until she couldn’t keep them open any longer.
When Jade woke the next time, dizziness made her see double. Two mechanical servos hovered over her, their rusted triangular heads merging at the center. She blinked once. The servos became four, their tubular limbs mixing as they moved swiftly around her.
“Good, you’re calmer,” a man said.
Jade’s scrambled memories told her it was the same voice she had heard earlier. “Where am I?” she thought she said, but her tongue felt double its size, and it stuck to the roof of her mouth.
“Don’t try to talk. The cerebral chemicals are still working,” he explained.
Jade’s heart jumped in her chest as she gasped for breath.
“It’s better if you sleep some more.” An ominous whirring followed the words.
Like déjà vu, a long, metallic arm slid over her. Her chest rose and fell, and her vision blurred at the edges. The now-expected piercing sensation came, and her mind soon drifted to dreamless shores.
Jade vaguely remembered waking up several times, and each time, she felt increasingly more aware of her surroundings until she opened her eyes and recognized where she was.
The tang of expired antiseptic and the clogging smell of dust in the air were exclusive to Vivaldi & Sons’ fine establishment. She had been here once to escort a recalcitrant assassin for an Academy’s prescribed neural procedure. The medicus and his associates, none of whom were his biological progeny, dealt with innovative technology and illegal treatments. Vivaldi himself had lost his license several decades ago and holed up on Belarus, where he opened shop again for clients who were either desperate or rich, or a combination of the two.
“Why am I here?” Jade asked, knowing she wasn’t alone in the room.
The sound of regular breathing came from behind her, giving away the medicus’ position.
“You paid me to perform an erasion,” the man said, walking around the medical bed.
“Why?” Jade frowned.
The Academy had sent her to Solaria to kill the High Lord, a dragon shifter who liked to ride without his escort. She remembered flying to the planet and picking a safe location to hide herself if things went south. A single memory stood against the murkiness of her recollection. She flew by her target’s house to study the geography of the place. Megalithic Rocky Domes followed the winding path of a river. Green waters. Pink rays. Purple clouds. The smell of the wilderness filling her nose. A sense of peace descended upon her.
“Why am I here?” she repeated her question. What had happened that she traveled so far away from her target?
“Let me unbuckle you,” Vivaldi said, his hands reaching to the strap at her wrist and freeing her. He repeated the operation for her other wrist, her ankles, and finally her head. “How do you feel?” With a gentle touch, he helped her sit on the medical bed. “Still dizzy?”
She breathed in and out, getting her bearings back. When the room stopped dancing around her, she looked up at the medicus. “I’m fine. Do you have anything for me?”
An erasion cancelled memories but didn’t alter someone’s personality. Jade wouldn’t have gone through the procedure without leaving precise instructions for when she woke. And if the Academy had sent her here, then her escort would have provided instructions as well. Just like she had done for the other assassin.
“Of course.” Vivaldi clapped his hands to draw the servos’ attention.
There were four of them in the small, crowded room, and they all moved at once.
“Letter,” Vivaldi said, and one of the servos turned on its wheels and left, while the other three froze on the spot.
After a few seconds, the sputtering and whirring resumed as the mechanical servo reentered. The medicus plucked an ivory envelope from the servo’s hooked fingers.
“I’ll give you some privacy.” He handed Jade the letter. “If you feel faint, just call,” he added, walking toward the opposite corner.
Jade looked at the paper resting on the palm of her hand. Her fingers trembled as they traced the edges of the letter.
“Whatever it is, face it,” she said out loud, opening the envelope.
Words covered one side of the paper. Her hasty calligraphy smudged the ivory letter. She had been in a hurry. Or emotionally distressed.
You were compromised.
Your target is a no-go. He saved your life and you owe him a life-debt.
Run and hide from the Academy.
Leave Belarus as soon as you read this note, but avoid a vessel named Jewel—hide from them.
Do not ever come back to either Solaria or Celestia.
8
“Jade left and never came back to the Jewel,” Dragon said. He stared at the cable message Lars had handed him, but the words blurred before his eyes.
Silence fell in the room. Even Valemir stopped his suction noises.
“Have the Glory readied.” Dragon looked up from the brown paper to Valerian and Lars. “I’m leaving today for Celestia.”
He had meant to deal with the Assassin Academy immediately after Jade left, but a High Lord’s time was never his own, and the attacks and the princesses’ business had detained him on Solaria. Now he couldn’t wait any longer. The sooner he paid the Academy for Jade’s life and his, the sooner he could sail toward the Outer Belts.
“Lauren and Gilda?” Valerian asked.
“Inform them I’m leaving.” Dragon’s mind was already on the voyage ahead.
“What about the Front Pro Humanity’s threat?” Gabriel asked.
Dragon shrugged. “They’ll probably follow me. In any case, Solaria is safer with me far away.”
Nothing was more important than finding Jade. He would find any excuse to justify his actions, but was glad that at least one of the men present knew Dragon didn’t have a choice.
“We’ll escort you on our way home,” Valentine said.
“Time to go back home for me as well,” Gabriel chimed in before taking another sip from the chalice.
After a day spent in preparation, Dragon could barely sleep. Instead, he used the night to send letters to his business associates in the Merchant Guild, informing them he would be gone for several months.
He also took advantage of the nocturnal lull to take care of a conversation he knew wouldn’t be easy.
“Did you want to see me?” Valerian asked after a perfunctory knock on the open door of Dragon’s studio.
Dragon nodded and pointed at one of the sofas facing the fireplace. “Sit, please.” He stood from his desk and walked around the table.
“I’m coming with you,” Valerian said point blank as he sat.
Dragon chose the vacant sofa. “No, you are not.”
“Are we doing this again?”
“Only because you’re more stubborn than Contessa.” Dragon stretched his legs before him and leaned his head against the back of the sofa. Had he eaten dinner? He couldn’t remember, but his stomach grumbled loud enough to elicit a raised brow from Valerian. “Let’s have this conversation before a plate.” He stood and walked to the door. “Otherwise I’ll end up saying things I’ll regret later.”
Valerian followed him to the kitchens where the cook received them with a smile.
&nb
sp; The staff at Sol Manor was accustomed to the High Lord coming and going through the servant wing. He liked to eat in the more intimate setting of the retainers’ dining room, because although the chamber was spacious enough to accommodate more than thirty people at once, the place managed to remain cozy. Also, Lauren and Gilda would never enter those quarters, and given the disastrous result of their recent encounters, having a meal without having to confront his ex-betrotheds was a definite plus.
“What can I prepare for you, High Lord?” the cook asked from the doorway of the dining room, already turning toward the kitchen proper.
“Whatever is left over from dinner is fine,” Dragon answered.
“I’ll have some more of the roast,” Valerian said. “It was divine,” he explained to Dragon, swinging one of the upturned chairs to sit at the long wooden table that stretched from one end of the room to the other.
“You are staying behind because I need you to protect Lauren and Gilda while I’m gone, and Lars is coming with me,” Dragon said, lowering his tired body to the chair that groaned under his weight.
“Why are you taking Lars and not me?” Valerian was like one of those wild winged-goats roaming through the roughest parts of Solaria, determined to a fault and never stopping before an obstacle, no matter how high or impervious the climb was.
Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe it was that Dragon had enough of skirting around the topic, but he asked, “Do you want to switch places with Lars and leave Gilda behind?”
The question had the desired effect to silence Valerian. His lieutenant stared at Dragon in shock, and his composure crumbled. For a moment, the mask Valerian always wore fell. His friend’s unguarded expression shown more than words could have ever expressed. It lasted but a moment.
“I am the obvious choice and should be the one protecting you.”
“I don’t want you to sacrifice your happiness for me.”
Valerian gave him another long, hard gaze before relaxing against the back of his chair, his arms folded across his chest. “My happiness was never part of the job description when I accepted the task of being your lieutenant.”
“And my destiny called for a triad marriage, and here I am, changing my stars.”
On silent feet, one of the scullery maids approached with a tray heaped with food.
“Thank you.” Dragon smiled at the girl as she bowed and stepped back before turning and leaving.
He was hungry but couldn’t eat before the air between him and Valerian was clear. “We are past conventions and duty. I don’t care to live a long life if I am miserable.” He looked past Valerian to the large window that opened into the Green Valley.
“What about your heir?”
“I won’t have one.”
“You are the High Lord.”
“By a quirk of fate. I’m not any better than you or Lars. I was just born into this position, and I can always abdicate.”
“You are not talking seriously.”
“I can’t even think straight, but one thing I know, I can’t go on living without Jade by my side.”
“And what if she doesn’t want you? Have you thought of that?”
Dragon had thought of nothing else. “I still have to try.”
“Because you love her.”
“There’s no greater power in the universe.” A little smile curved Dragon’s lips. “It makes grown men fight for the wrong reasons—”
“And big idiots gallivant through the galaxy in search of women who might never want them,” Valerian finished.
“You should try it, too.”
“The gallivanting or the fighting? I could start with the latter.”
“Letting yourself love.”
Valerian groaned. Instead of talking, he stabbed a piece of roast from the meat plate. “It’s getting cold.”
“Gilda loves you.”
“She wasn’t meant for me.”
“Jade was not meant for me. It isn’t stopping me from fighting for her.”
The piece of roast dangling from Valerian’s fork landed abruptly back to the tray as he threw it down and stood. The chair slammed against the table, knocking over a few of the long-stemmed chalices. Wine stains bloomed on the white tablecloth.
“You think I don’t want to fight for Gilda?” Valerian sputtered the words as if they were acid corroding his lips. “You believe I liked the idea that she was going to be with you, carrying your child while I watched from the shadows?” He slammed both hands palm down against the table, toppling more glasses as the china rattled. “Is that what you think?”
Dragon had surmised his friend’s emotions ran deeper than he had ever allowed anyone to witness, but he was still surprised by Valerian’s vehemence. “You should have told me.”
“What exactly?” Valerian stood back, stepping away from the table. “That I hated the idea of you spending your nights with the love of my life?” Angry tears welled in his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall. “Or that I felt like the worst person in the universe for desiring my best friend’s future bride?” He opened his clenched fists and closed them again. “Imagine the conversation.”
“We are like brothers—”
“Cousins,” Valerian reminded him. “That’s what we officially are, and it doesn’t change the fact that I could never tell you that I am in love with your betrothed.”
“Ex. And I give you my blessing to pursue Gilda,” Dragon said.
Valerian stopped rocking on his feet. The first glimpse of hope illuminated his eyes.
Stomping feet preceded Lauren’s entrance into the dining room and prevented Dragon from adding to the conversation.
9
Jade stared at her calligraphy. A deep frown creased her forehead. The words her past-self had left behind posed more questions than they answered.
What had happened with her target? She owed a life-debt to the dragon shifter. How could that be? She was a Master Assassin and never failed. The marks on her body and around her eye attested to her superior rank and devotion to the Academy. What could make her betray the institution that had saved her from a life of prostitution or worse?
She couldn’t come up with any possible explanation, and it left her vulnerable. Without the full knowledge of what had transpired, she couldn’t defend herself. And owing a life-debt was serious.
To someone who had grown up among assassins, there was nothing more sacrosanct than owing one’s life to someone else. Raised to believe that everyone wanted you dead made the idea of being saved or even spared by someone else all the more significant. And for that person to be your target, the man she had been sent to terminate, it meant that no matter what happened next, she could never kill him, not even to save her own life.
What did you do, Jade?
The whirring of a mechanical servo wheeling past the medical bed startled her. Jade looked up from her note and directed her gaze toward the medicus. Vivaldi had remained in the corner, silently observing her from behind clockwork glasses.
“What else do you know?” She raised the paper, showing the written part to him.
The clockwork lenses focused on the letter, then back to her face. Vivaldi’s magnified eyes seemed to read beyond her exterior and made Jade shiver. He shook his head, and the lenses shifted and hummed before they settled back. “Less than you do,” he said. “This is the first time I read your note.”
“I didn’t tell you anything else. Nothing at all? Try to remember.” Of course, she hadn’t revealed anything more than the strictly necessary. It would have gone against any safety protocol, but Jade still had to make sure.
“You arrived, looking out of sorts, if I may say.” He cocked his hip against one of the metal cabinets. “And immediately asked I perform an erasion.”
“How much did I want to forget?”
“Two months and a half,” he answered. “And you paid me thirty thousand parsecs. You wired the money to my account in less than an hour.”
Jade swore. She had spent alm
ost all of her savings to erase two months of her life. Why? A sudden wave of nausea hit her midsection, and she doubled over.
Vivaldi pushed himself off the cabinet’s edge and bent to open one of the drawers. “I can give you something to ease the discomfort,” he said, retrieving a syringe.
Jade’s hand shot out as she nursed her stomach. “No.” She needed to keep her wits about her if she wanted to decipher the mystery behind her decision.
“Side effects from the procedure may occur,” Vivaldi said, studying her. His lenses focused and refocused on different parts of her body.
The sounds unnerved her. “Stop doing that.”
The whirring from the reading glassed ceased at once, but the servos kept scurrying across the room, wiping, vacuuming, or who knew what else they were doing.
“I need a quiet place,” she said. “I can’t even think here.”
“I can rent you a room for an additional fee.” The medicus lowered the syringe into a ceramic tray sitting on top of the cabinet.
Jade scoffed. “I have nothing left to give you.” Past-Jade had left her just enough to plan her next move. She couldn’t spend credits on something as frivolous as a sleeping cubicle.
“Then I’m afraid my services here are done. The opiate is on the house, in case you reconsider,” he said, opening his arm to the side.
She shook her head, refusing the offer.
He motioned toward the open door.
Jade jumped off the medical bed and landed on unsteady feet. She swayed, but the medicus reached her before she collapsed.
“It will go away in a few minutes. Walking will help.” He accompanied her outside the medical bay, into a brightly-lit hallway. “I need to attend to my other patients,” he said pointing his chin at the doors opening on both sides of the corridor.
Jade counted seven per wall. If the people behind those doors had paid even a fraction of what she had given him, the medicus was one rich, lawless practitioner. The stark metal of the interiors gave away a mortician vibe, and Jade’s steps lengthened, even though she could barely walk without leaning on any surface available to help her reach the outer door.
The Fifth Moon's Assassin (The Fifth Moon's Tales Book 5) Page 4