My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  "Shite!" Reiss cursed at herself, then promised to give two canticles for her sister. Shaking off the pain she knew was coming, Reiss ran full bore into thin air letting the Maker smash her down to the packed mud. It was mostly dirt still, the rain only beginning, but her heel skidded as she twisted her leg and broke into a full run. Her assailant wasn't in armor, but that wasn't going to slow her down. Using the run to knock her ankle back in place, Reiss pursued him around the bend in the tower. Her boots skidded in the wet grass as she turned, catching sight of his sun bleached clothing. Not even a cloak obscured him. The man tried to tip over a few crates to slow her down, but Reiss easily hopped around them, never slowing, never giving up.

  Leading her back to the square, the assassin aimed for the gate. It was small, barely large enough for a few horses to come through. Not that getting through it would help him. Reiss had his scent and...Oh no. The sound of a multitude of people erupted from beyond the palace walls. Market time. Shit, shit, shit. If she didn't stop him now, he'd easily slip into the group and vanish.

  There was only time to react. Yanking her arm back, Reiss aimed her sword at the gate control and hurled it with all the force she had. It wasn't elegant, but the blade skittered against the latch and the gate plummeted to the ground just in front the assassin. He froze, probably saying a prayer that he didn't get caught in the plummet of the portcullis, before turning around and remembering he was under pursuit.

  The assassin made it a step to the side before Reiss pummeled her shield against his nose thrice in rapid succession. Ramming forward, she pinned the man a good foot taller than her against the wall and growled, "You're under arrest by order of the guard. The royal guard."

  "Ha," he spat blood on the ground, his fingers gripping onto the shield. "That so?"

  "Yes!" she screamed, adrenaline rampaging through her system.

  "Have it your way, knife-ear," the assassin grabbed onto her shield and shoved it back towards her. Reiss forgot to plant her feet and stumbled back. Stupid. In berating herself the shield dropped a moment and the assassin lashed out with a dagger. She met it quickly, her reflexes saving her when her brain failed. Sparks scattered through the rain as the blade etched against metal, each one she fended off with certainty. That seemed to be slowing the assassin down, the man not used to fighting someone trained for war.

  Knotting her shoulder back, Reiss plowed the bottom edge of her shield into one arm, sending the dagger skittering across the grounds beyond either of their reach. But in doing that, she left her flank open, which normally would have been covered by the man at her side. The assassin rebounded faster than expected and the blade slit across her upper arm. Some of it was knocked away by the armor, but the dagger worked through a groove and bit apart her skin. Pain roared up her arm, but she didn't stagger back, didn't curl up to whimper. That beast that she kept chained and leashed inside her leaped forward.

  Instinctively, Reiss smashed her shield into the man's chin and let go. As he cried out in pain, she grabbed onto his arm with both of her hands and wrenched out the elbow until hearing a pop. "GAH!" the assassin screamed, agony no doubt circling through his bones from the one she dislocated. It dangled limply, the dagger falling from his fingers.

  "Right," Reiss lifted up her fists, "you wanted to do this the hard way." This was no friendly sparring. Smashing her knuckles against the man's jaw and then cheek, he fell back to the wall.

  "Knife-eared bitch!" he hissed.

  She couldn't kill him, he needed to be kept alive, but there was no reason for him to know that. "Give up now and I'll let you live," Reiss taunted.

  "Fuck you," he growled before dropping down and running at her with his shoulder. She tried to step away, but the slick ground turned her foot, sucking her in place. With nowhere to go, the man smashed against her chest, flattening Reiss to the ground.

  Air fled from her lungs and she watched as he rose above her, that cocky glare in his eyes. Below her, Reiss felt the dagger she'd freed from him. Staggering up to a sit, she tried to grip it with her fingers while the assassin slid back and forth on his feet.

  Grinning like a fat tom, the assassin yanked out another damn dagger off his never ending sheathe. "Sorry, flatfoot. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time," he taunted, raising the blade above his head.

  She didn't blink, her fingers finally gripping onto the dagger. There was only one chance at this, roll over as he attacked and stab him in the arm, keep the assailant alive and yourself. Focus on that last part in particular, Rat. The assassin's arms flew down and Reiss twisted her body, her head the last to move, when a bolt embedded into the man's chest. He paused, not seeming to be in pain from the piece of wood sticking out of the gap between his ribs, but in shock. Cupping a hand around the bolt, the assassin moved, when another bolt shot through his chest. That caused him to fall to his knees, when the last shattered into his eye socket, the eye bursting from the force like a popped zit.

  Reiss kicked at the mud, scurrying to turn and challenge whoever killed him. As she staggered to her knees, she watched as Commander Cade calmly restrung his crossbow and nodded at her. "Are you all right, guardsman?"

  "Yes, Ser," she stuttered.

  "Is he dead?" Cade asked.

  Scrambling over the mud, Reiss ran her fingertips over the assassin's lips, but there was no breath. Damn it! She'd nearly had him! Broken, her head fell down and she mumbled, "Yes, Ser."

  "I guess we're back at square one then," Cade groaned. "I'll get my men to inspect the body, you should return to the King. You know, the one you're supposed to guard."

  Reiss staggered to her feet feeling foolish beyond measure. She wasn't hired to chase after wily assassins, especially ones that could easily take her down. "Sorry, Ser."

  Cade eyed her up, the man unmoved by her self loathing, "I ain't the one you need to apologize to. And get that looked at, don't want it getting infected."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Headache

  His headache was growing exponential, the throbbing assisted by the chattering voices of people panicking after they realized they were fine but suckered onto an ample excuse to draw attention. Their illustrious Orlesian ambassador was enjoying a faint across the floor. After she folded to the ground, most Fereldens walked over her, hustling into the courtyard in pursuit of his bodyguard and the assassin. Seeing as how no one seemed to care about Cherie hitting the floor, she seemed intent to wait there until someone did. It was the strangest stalemate to have a grown woman laying upon the stones like a petulant toddler with no endgame in sight. Alistair wished he could stay and watch but there were a dozen other problems to solve.

  "Ghaleb," he jerked his head to the Spymaster who kept prodding at the arrow shaft embedded into the table and watching it quiver.

  Those watery grey eyes wandered over to Alistair's left ear before he slid out of the evacuated room. "Sire?"

  "Tell me you know something, anything. A clue, an idea?"

  Ghaleb spoke in his jagged breath, words crammed together with pauses inserted sometimes between syllables. "Perrin's wearing three pairs of smallclothes, Chancellor Eamon has taken up with a distinguished Mother without his wife's knowledge, and the Madam Ambassador is trying to slide a handkerchief out of her bodice without anyone seeing."

  At that Alistair spun on his heel, catching only a shiver from Cherie's fingers as they froze before she resumed her dead faint. Growling, he whipped back to Ghaleb, "About the damn assassination attempt that just happened."

  "Oh...no."

  "Don't you think you should...?" he rolled his hands through the air waiting for the man to catch on when a voice called out through the antechamber.

  "Milord, the assassin has been stopped," the tell tale timbre of Cade shouted from below. Alistair scurried to the railing and peered down off the landing to watch his Commander of the guards stopped upon the muddy carpets, his beefy arms thrust back. But what drew Alistair's eye was the woman that ran without thought for herself throu
gh the window and leaped off a roof in pursuit of a criminal. Her head hung low, the eyes skirting the ground, but she seemed no worse for the wear. Thank the Maker, he sighed, then tried to shake it off.

  "What is the state of him?" Alistair shouted out to his Commander. "Hopefully awake enough to answer a few rather pertinent questions. His favorite color? His opinion on mixing plaids with stripes? Thoughts on this sudden trend of Orlesians wearing cheese instead of eating it? Oh, and if there's time why he and his ilk are suddenly trying to kill me."

  "I," Cade paused a moment, those sunken in eyes darting over to the elven woman staggering to the side. "He is dead, Sire."

  Alistair's head snapped back and a groan reverberated up through his bones. "Of blighted course he is. You know, alive would have been preferable. Unless you know a good mortalitassi that can get a few answers from a corpse we're back up that creek without a paddle or the ability to swim."

  "Milord, I..." Cade began before Reiss interrupted.

  "It is my fault, Ser," she said lifting her weary head and staring at him. Alistair was struck by bruises dotting her wan face and he finally noticed she was clinging tight to her arm.

  "Are you alright?" he asked, stepping down the stairs to her. The pack of lost diplomats followed on his heels like homeless hamsters with nothing better to do. Only Cherie remained where she fell, her fingers drumming against the floor.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Alistair walked towards Reiss, when Cade intercepted him. "The Corporal here engaged with the assassin but he overpowered her. I had no choice but to finish him off before he killed her."

  She didn't look up at him, only glowered at the floor and shifted on her feet. Absently, Alistair tugged his hair up and sighed, "Well, dead assassin is better than dead guard. You made the right decision, Cade."

  "Obviously," the man didn't grin. He seemed incapable of it, but he slid back on his heels and folded his arms in that smug satisfaction way.

  "Your Majesty, I just heard about..." another voice echoed through the halls, the door to the kitchens flying open as their newest mage flitted in. She looked out of breath, as if she'd been running the entirety of the palace with a towel of all things tucked into the belt of her robes. "An assassination attempt? Maker, is it true?"

  Alistair shrugged, and the woman reached over to grab up his hand. While she patted it the same way one would comfort an abandoned dog, Alistair groaned, "The rate these are coming they could become a daily attraction. Come to the palace for our hourly assassination attempt on the King. First ten visitors get a free toe if it's successful."

  "You survived unscathed?" she stopped petting his hand, giving Alistair the chance to tug it away. He tried to not wipe it off on his pants in the view of everyone but it felt sticky from her grip.

  "I'm fine, but Ser Reiss..." he turned to his bodyguard.

  "It's nothing, a scratch," she insisted.

  Ignoring the mage clinging to his shoes, the Commander doing his damnedest to fill the room, and the hordes of diplomats milling about, Alistair slid over to Reiss. She kept that verdant gaze burrowing into the ground, her breath unsteady as her fingers gripped tight to try and stench the blood.

  "May I?" he asked, indicating her hand. Shrugging, she let him lift it off the bent armor to reveal a gash of scarlet dribbling crimson tears to the ground. "A scratch can still be deadly when assassins are around. They're big fans of poisons and all," he whispered to her which the woman slowly nodded her head at. Then he lifted his voice, "Linaya." Maker's sake, the woman practically glowed from the fact he spoke her name. "Do you know any healing?"

  "Aye, I am well versed in..."

  "Good, heal her," Alistair released his soft hold on Reiss' elbow and stepped back to let the mage draw near. "Please," he tacked on. She blanched at the blood, probably too young to have been involved in a lot of the rebellion as she tried to inspect the wound.

  "I will, of course, your Majesty," Linaya curtsied deeply. Alistair was about to tell her to get up and get to it but the mage rebounded quickly and a sheen of professionalism took over as she escorted Reiss to a bench. She accepted the help and didn't flinch even as the mage dug her fingers down through the armor. Alistair however did. Not all healers needed skin to skin contact to do their work, both Wynne and Lanny could slap your leg back on through your pants and then turn around to pummel darkspawn. Over the violent years, Alistair had run into a few mages that weren't as versed in the power of spirit healing and Linaya seemed to be one of them. Reiss tried to shake her off, but the mage kept pointing at the wound and insisting on something. Groaning, Reiss dropped to a bench and her fingers began to work apart the inner buckles of her armor.

  "Milord," Cade spoke close to Alistair's ear, jerking him out of his thoughts and causing the King to leap an inch in the air.

  "Maker's sake, a little warning. Unless you want to kill me stone dead, then sneak around like that. What is it?"

  Cade didn't gesture at the woman pulling off her breastplate and groaning as it slipped to the floor but he made it obvious who he was looking at. "You've had your...whatever your point was, but this was a close one. I cannot allow you to put your life in some untested woman's hands any longer."

  "Untested? She caught two of the arrows on her shield, then ran down the assassin on foot," Alistair scoffed. He knew he shouldn't sound impressed having to be kingly and all but he couldn't dampen it out of his voice. If he'd jumped out the window, he'd probably have slid on the tiles and fallen face first to the dirt.

  "Exactly my point," Cade said. "She was not hired to pursue criminals, her job is to protect you. What if there had been another assassin lurking in a second tower? You were left open and vulnerable."

  "I'm not a blighted baby bird, Cade. I can handle myself," Alistair snarled.

  Cade's beefy eyes traveled up and down his King's form, barely able to suppress a sneer from what he probably considered a weak and fragile body. "Be that as it may, it is in my professional opinion as the Commander of the royal guards that you take Brunt as your personal bodyguard." Cade turned away and sneered at the woman trying to roll up her sleeve to expose the wound. It wasn't going well and Linaya seemed to be no help. "If you like the elf so much, assign her to your children. She seems to have a knack with little ones."

  "Belittle her all you want, but if she hadn't chased down that assassin he'd have slipped out before you or any of your guards caught up to him," Alistair fumed.

  "Luck isn't a high watermark in this profession, Sire," Cade spat at him.

  The King rolled his eyes at that. Luck was the only reason he was still breathing a good dozen times over. If it weren't for that little kiss from the Maker upon his brow he'd have been ash on the wind at Ostagaar, any time during the Blight, Fort Drakon, Seheron, those other assassins at his palace (the horned kind), or while in the Anderfels. If luck blessed his bodyguard then he saw that as a good reason to keep her around instead of not.

  "What's really got your knickers in a knot, Cade? You're being smugger than usual while there's an arrow still vibrating inside my table."

  He turned to face the Commander and waited. Cade wasn't a fiddler, he didn't prod at his buckles or knock his sword about. Instead, he folded his arms tighter together and glowered over Alistair's shoulder, no doubt at the elf that seemed to jump up his craw for some reason. "She answers to no one."

  "Pretty sure she answers to me. I think that's how the whole 'I'm your boss, here's money for the work' goes." Grinning at his comeback, Alistair swung around to catch the eye of the woman in question. She wasn't watching either of the men scrutinizing her as Reiss was too busy yanking the hem of her shirt up over her head.

  Oh Maker. Alistair felt his cheeks turn bright red as he whipped back around to face the not naked woman area. In the brief second before he blinked hard, he caught a flash of skin pale as moonlight with a hint of marks up and down her stomach. Pinching into his nose, he tried to blot out the image. Professional. Be professional.

&
nbsp; "There? Is that exposed enough now for you to heal it?" he heard Reiss snipe at the mage, her voice crackling on the edges as she sat half naked before the assembled heads of state. Alistair wished he could toss a blanket to her or something, but in his state he'd have to walk backwards and would probably throw it onto a chandelier where it'd catch on fire.

  "Your Majesty," Cade began, trying to wheedle into Alistair's light panic attack.

  "Look, your complaints have been recognized and recorded, or they would be if my clerks hadn't run out the door pinwheeling their arms at the first sign of trouble. We keep things as they are. It was just getting into a routine. I don't see any reason to rock the boat once again." Alistair expected more needling from the Commander, he'd been grumping and groaning about Reiss for over a week. It got to the point Alistair was surprised he didn't wake up with a portrait of Brunt and a lock of his hair to convince the King just how perfect of a man he was.

  Instead, Cade parted his hands and slid back. "As you say, Sire. It is after all your neck on the line." He scrunched up those meaty lips and smacked them once. "However..."

  "Andraste's sword, here it comes," Alistair groaned to himself.

  Cade barely dropped his voice down, but he glanced over at the half naked woman with only caginess in his face. "Be careful putting your trust in someone so unknown to us. There are reports of sightings of your bodyguard slipping into the stables at night."

  "What? That's..." Alistair wanted to insist it was impossible, but it wasn't as if he was around her constantly. That would make using the privy even more awkward than usual. Forgetting himself, Alistair glanced over his shoulder. She'd slipped her tunic back on and was inspecting the gash to her shirt above the dried blood. What did they truly know about her? What did he? If he couldn't trust Ghaleb then there was no reason he could trust the Spymaster's information either.