by Ford, Lizzy
Some of her doubt melted. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” she admitted.
“I believe, once a new leader is chosen for the Guild, I might be able to convince him or her that this task should be considered your final trial.”
“You would do that?” she asked, startled by the offer.
“My … our benefactor will be swept away with gratitude. His money will support the Guild for years. In honor of your father, it only seems right that such a task is rewarded in a way benefitting you as well,” Karl said.
Aveline smiled. “I’d be forever grateful, Karl, if you can speak to the new Guild leader about this. And … please take care of Rocky.”
“My pleasure.” Karl bowed his head again. “Consider this a sign of good faith.” He pulled the strap of the satchel he wore over his head and handed it to her. “Standard assassin’s tool kit, awarded upon acceptance into the guild.”
Aveline accepted it. “Thank you, Karl,” she whispered, starting to tear up once more, this time out of gratitude edged by exhaustion. Her father had made her a kit when she was younger and taught her how to use the herbs, poisons, weapons and other tools of the trade within.
“I must leave before they notice I’m here. I’ll contact you through the standard Guild methods in two to three weeks. Rest assured I’ll speak to our benefactor immediately about Rocky,” Karl said.
She nodded eagerly.
Karl pulled his mask on and opened the door, exiting the carriage the same way he had entered.
Aveline closed the door behind him and sat back down, her mind whirling with everything that had happened. Her father’s death, her narrow escape from the brothel, Rocky’s capture … and the promise of becoming a full assassin. The events of the past twelve hours were some of the worst, and potentially best, of her life.
All she had to do to turn her life around, to make her father proud and take her place in the Guild, was break an oath to a stranger.
As the long ride out of the inner city continued, she sank into thought once more. Karl had been as vague as the masked stranger. What kind of person had one wealthy man willing to spend untold amounts of money to protect him and another to see him dead?
I’ll do anything for Rocky. She was somewhat relieved to know her agreement would protect him while he was imprisoned. It did not quite seem like enough, but she trusted Karl to protect her friend when she could not.
Aveline focused on her numbed leg, on making her father proud, on how incredible she would feel when she became an assassin, on saving Rocky’s life … on anything except the whisper in her mind warning her that something was wrong, if Karl was asking her to break two sacred Guild rules.
Chapter Three
“Your father should have burnt you at the stake alongside your mother.”
“Yes, Matilda,” Tiana replied stoically. With her eyes on the floor, she dared not wince as the woman behind her wrenched a brush through her tangled hair. Fingers laden with expensive rings containing brilliant gemstones flashed by her face as Matilda leaned forward to grasp another handful of wavy hair.
“I was not born to be a slave to a freak! My father is the …”
Tiana zoned out, accustomed to the lecture that came whenever her stepmother had to help her prepare for a ceremony. The events requiring her attendance were few and far between, numbering four annually. Somehow, each one this year only seemed to make Matilda angrier, and Tiana began to think her father was souring on his wife of seven years. Matilda was too determined to remain in the family for Tiana to understand what might have happened. In front of her father, Matilda was sweet, doting, and perfect.
In private, her stepmother’s frustration had recently exploded into an increase in violence and ranting. Matilda’s usual resentment had taken on an unusual vehemence. Tiana’s father never saw what happened in private, and she never spoke a word of it to anyone except her brother.
Tiana traced her fingertips along the scars crisscrossing the soft skin of her inner forearm. Her latest cut still stung, though not as much as her eye, which was rendered black during another of Matilda’s temper tantrums. She was accustomed to physical pain, too, to the blows and cuts and bruises.
Matilda flung the brush onto the vanity and stomped towards the wardrobe, a flurry of anger and tinkling sounds emanating from the bells on her slippers and layers of pearls sewn into her gown. The heavy gold necklaces around her neck glimmered with jewels, and even more gems had been braided into her hair.
Tiana released her breath and peeked towards her stepmother, a beautiful woman with pale skin and blue eyes. At twenty five, she was closer to Tiana’s age of seventeen than to the husband twenty years her senior.
Matilda’s fingers trembled as she yanked a gown from the wardrobe. She studied the different lengths of silk before selecting a veil featuring fantastical animals Tiana had embroidered into the silk. Her nose was red, a sign she had been using the medication she stashed in Tiana’s room so no one else would find it.
Warmth bloomed within Tiana. As miserable as Matilda made her, she could find only pity for the woman who had dealt with her and her father for so many years. To be a member of this family was to wield great power – and to be confined by it as well. That Matilda had learned a slave’s duty of dressing her was more than Tiana’s previous two stepmothers had done for her.
“Do not look at me with those ghoulish eyes!” Matilda snapped. “One could never guess your mother’s family bred with those creatures. Your father burnt every last Webster in the city after he saw your crippled little body, and rightly so. ”
Everyone but my brother and me, Tiana corrected her silently and returned her eyes to the floor.
“You should be ashamed to bear the mark of a Hanover!” Matilda continued.
Tiana reached back instinctively to feel the raised tattoo on her shoulder. Every Hanover born was etched with the symbol of a diving eagle, the family crest.
Matilda gasped. “Cease this display. Now!” she snapped.
Her stepmother was pointing at the pillows floating three feet in the air above Tiana’s bed. It took effort to undo what she had not felt herself do. Tiana willed the pillows to return to the bed. They obeyed and dropped in place, where they belonged.
Matilda cursed at her then snatched slippers from the wardrobe and slammed it closed. “Be quick. Your father does not forgive tardiness. I will deal with this incident later!”
Tiana stood and closed her eyes to shield Matilda from the most repulsive of her deformities. She tugged off her sleeping gown and then lifted her arms. Matilda pulled the ceremonial gown over her head with gentleness she never showed Tiana, careful not to wrinkle any of the layers of silk, lest she earn the displeasure of Tiana’s father. The green sash and metal insignia, marking Tiana’s position as a colonel in the Shield – an honor bestowed upon the children of the city’s hereditary leader – went on next. The last piece of her ensemble was the most important one: the translucent layer of silk preventing the public from seeing her deformity.
Matilda’s long nails grazed Tiana’s skin as she maneuvered, tucked and pinned the veil in place, skillfully covering Tiana’s face and neck while leaving her hair exposed. The wrapping of the veil was a privileged art only select members of the city were permitted to learn, and it was one of Matilda’s duties to approve which women from wealthy families were allowed to display the veil. The trend was started by none other than Matilda as a simple solution to the dilemma Tiana’s father faced on Tiana’s thirteenth birthday. He was required by the laws of the elite to present his debutante daughter. Doing so would have revealed her deformity and seen her burned at the stake, alongside everyone else who knew of the deformed girl.
Initially an act meant to conceal Tiana, the wearing of the veil had become an instant symbol of power among the women of the city, and teenage girls everywhere began copying the fashionable trend.
Once she had finished positioning the thin layer of silk, Matilda clipped strings of gems
and gold to Tiana’s hair around the edges of the veil and stepped back to examine her critically from head to toe.
“You look like a Hanover,” Matilda pronounced.
The way she said it left Tiana convinced that Matilda was worried about her position in the family. Free to look around without anyone seeing her deformed eyes, Tiana looked Matilda’s clothing over.
“May I straighten your gown?” she asked quietly.
“Drink your tea first.”
Tiana did not grimace the way she wanted to. Every day, Matilda brought her an herbal tea meant to bolster her health. Tiana drank the warm tea down fast, hating the pungent flavor and the strange smell.
“Good. Now, with haste.” Matilda went still, waiting.
Tiana smoothed out a layer of silk bunched up near Matilda’s right hip and then very carefully realigned the strings of gemstone beads that had shifted out of position in her stepmother’s hair.
Lowering her hands, she moved away before Matilda could shove her. Despite the rough treatment this morning, she felt a spark of excitement at the prospect of seeing the world outside the room where she was confined.
A rap at the door was followed by her brother’s entrance sans permission. Dressed in the official scarlet Shield uniform, he also wore the same green sash and honorary medals and ranks as Tiana. His hair was damp from bathing, and the green-gray eyes he had inherited from their father flickered over both of them with similar coolness. The wealthy families had always cooed over how much Arthur Hanover resembled his father, from the strawberry blond hair to his near identical build to the natural leadership ability.
The only significant difference between father and son was one that made Tiana adore her brother. Whenever he saw her, he smiled, and the skin around his eyes softened with genuine warmth. No one else was ever happy to see her.
Lightheaded from being on her feet too long, Tiana forbade her shaky knees from buckling beneath her. She leaned against the wall to support her weak body.
“Arthur. You must wait after you knock. What if we had been in a state of disarray?” Matilda’s reprimand was spoken with maternal affection and a smile. Her ability to switch from resentful loathing to dulcet sweetness in a fraction of a second never failed to impress Tiana.
“Father awaits us,” Arthur replied without acknowledging his stepmother.
“Of course.” Matilda’s tone cooled.
Tiana did not need to glimpse her stepmother’s face to understand the tension between stepmother and stepson remained. She was unable to pinpoint the day it began, but it had become much more apparent the past six months until the two barely spoke when in each other’s presence.
Arthur stepped aside for Matilda to exit. She did so gracefully, a cloud of silk, tinkling and jasmine perfume. She began belting orders to the slaves awaiting her in the foyer, calling for her cloak and reprimanding one of them for the bunched skirt Tiana had straightened.
Arthur strode to Tiana’s wardrobe and removed her heavy cloak, consisting of a silk shell lined by the warm fur of animals he had trapped for her fifteenth birthday. He placed the cloak over her shoulders, and Tiana reached up to button it around her neck.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Like my body will collapse, if I let it,” she replied candidly.
He held out his arm, and she eagerly slid her hand around it, relieved to have his support.
“One day, Tiana, I will take you to a proper physician,” he vowed.
“Matilda would never allow anyone else to see me. I am well enough, Arthur.” Tiana spoke the words with what strength she could muster, already aware her brother would not be fooled.
“Our stepmother is fickle, but she can fold a veil like no other,” he said dryly. Once Matilda was out of sight, his smile became wide.
“You should be nicer to her,” Tiana said. “You have seen what happens to our father’s wives.”
“You should be less forgiving of her. She deserves our father’s wrath for how she treats you.”
“Father would not fault her for trying to fix what I am.”
“But I do.”
“At least she tries to heal me with her teas,” Tiana murmured.
“Tea will not cure any malady, ever.”
Tiana pursed her lips. She did not fully disagree with Arthur, but neither was she one to condemn a woman in a position like Matilda’s. Their stepmother had seen the two women who preceded her burnt at the stake. She understood the danger inherent in her position, as Tiana did hers.
“I do not care to argue with my beloved sister over someone who means so little to me,” Arthur added.
She hugged his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder briefly as they walked to the door. “I wish you would come see me more often,” she whispered, thoughts on how displeased Matilda was going to be after Arthur’s cold shoulder. When he was present, Matilda dared not touch her.
“I will, Tiana, after the Winter Hunt.”
But that’s three weeks, maybe longer. She almost sighed and shifted from her own inevitable peril to her brother’s. “What will you do if you see the Ghouls?” she asked.
They exited her room and fell into line behind their stepmother, who was flanked by half a dozen slaves. The party began walking through the family’s gilded, private quarters to the elevator at the center of the apartment.
“What I always do. Tell them to leave me alone,” Arthur quipped. “I do not fear creatures that may not exist, Tiana. The natives pose the greatest threat.”
“We are at peace with them, are we not?”
“Meat is scarce in winter, and any truce we form with them during a time of plenty is gone when we are both trying to feed our people,” he explained. “Those to the north, where the buffalo herds are, have never agreed to our treaties anyway.”
“I would love to meet the natives in the villages near the city and see buffalos!”
“You are safe here.”
“Am I?” She allowed the soft question to escape.
His jaw tightened to the point the muscles snapped in his cheek. “I know,” he said. “I found someone to guard you while I am away for these two weeks.”
“Matilda will not approve.”
“Matilda will not know.”
“You can take me with you,” she said wistfully. “I want to witness snow fall upon the prairies and walk across the frozen lakes!”
“Someday.”
It was all he ever said when she expressed an interest in leaving the city. Tiana’s cheeks warmed at the reminder even her dear brother believed her deformities casted an egregious shame upon the family, one that had to be kept hidden from everyone forever. She would never leave her room, aside from obligatory events, let alone venture from the city to the world beyond.
“I heard the slaves talking about the Free Lands to the north,” she continued and then held her breath, waiting to hear what her brother said on the matter. Slaves often spoke of nonsense, according to Matilda. Tiana, confined her entire life, had no real experience or basis to help her determine what was true and what was not.
“Tiana, if I knew somewhere you could go, where you would be safe, do you not think I would do everything in my power to send you there?” Arthur replied.
“You would,” she said. She hid her disappointment, aware of how much her brother cared yet suspecting he either did not know about the Free Lands or did not wish to encourage her in her desire to eventually leave the city.
They fell into comfortable silence as they joined their stepmother’s party. Trailed by her train of slaves, Matilda went first down the elevator from the top of the pyramid to the indoor village contained within its base, where their father and other members of the privileged awaited them. The massive structure, guarded by a sphinx and obelisk, had survived the destruction of the Old World, the period five hundred years before when Lost Vegas had existed as a city of luxury before it became a refuge for the few that survived the demise of the Old World. The weal
thiest survivors had gathered here, and since then, only the most powerful families in the city were permitted to live in the great pyramid.
From the apartment at the tip of the pyramid, the word, Luxor, could be seen written across the floor far below. Tiana had often gazed at it and wondered what it meant, why someone had named the exotic building this.
She and Arthur followed in the second lift, lowered from the height of two hundred feet by electricity – existing only in the elite outer city – and by a team of mules at the bottom when the electricity was not working, which was half the time.
She kept hold of her brother’s arm as they left the elevator and were immediately surrounded by throngs of the wealthiest members of the city. People always stopped to stare at her, curious about the elusive daughter of their leader. None of them had ever seen her face, and the slaves often spoke about how various men and women would try to bribe those working for the family for information about the mysterious Hanover daughter.
For her part, Tiana did not mind the excessive attention, as long as she was safe behind her veil and at her brother’s side. She had eyes only for what lay beyond the confines of her home.
She and Arthur moved into place behind their father and stepmother, who led the small parade from the pyramid, outside into the outer city and onward to the top of the commemorative wall, where they would watch the Shield depart for the wilderness.
The procession out of the pyramid housing the elite families of Lost Vegas was solemn, a reflection of the importance of the Winter Hunt. It was the first day of the annual hunt, which began every year on winter solstice. Led by her brother, half the Shield members left Lost Vegas in search of the meat the city needed to make it through the rest of the winter. Her father spent the week before the Hunt honoring the gods of every major religion in the city and visiting various clergy members, scientists and clairvoyants to determine the type of weather to expect and in which direction the great herds of buffalo and deer would be found.