The Assassin & The Skald: Liberation

by C. M. Lind

  “Yes. Somehow he’s gotten mixed up in this, which means someone is paying a fortune.”

  “But, surely it’s not the Saemund? I’ve heard stories that say he was around before I was born! An old man can’t be that powerful still.” She grabbed him by the arm, as if to pull him from his delusion. “He’s not real…is he?”

  “I know,” he said, “it sounds crazy. I’ve heard the stories too, but it’s true. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He has pathetically blindsided us.”

  “So how do you fight a man with no face? A person who is never seen? He’s said to be a shadow whose darkness makes men vanish.”

  “You don’t have to fight him. You just have to get to Jae Reinout. If you kill him then Saemund will have no other reason to be here and the Justicars will stop with the harassment.” Their eyes met for a kind moment, and he patted her hand.

  She looked at his hand. It was so warm, yet so much softer than she had recalled.

  A wave overtook her body, both simultaneously cold and hot, it radiated from her mind. It was the voice inside saying: Give us James.

  “Give me James,” she said without hesitation, unaware the words were being said until she was lingering on the S of his name.

  “You could have the money for the contract; it’s a small fortune.” He squeezed her hand.

  “I don’t care about the money.” She pulled her hand away as if he was hurting her. “I want James.”

  “I’ll tell you when you’ve killed Reinout,” he said. It was a proclamation, not a negotiation.

  “No.” She shook her head while she stressed the O, drawing out the long vowel. “Now.”

  He spoke calmly and firmly. “You should be focused on the job. I taught you that.” He smiled like a proud father. “Don’t let this cloud you.”

  “We both know that this job is going to kill me. I am alright with that. But I am not alright with the idea of that bastard outliving me, and I cannot trust you to kill him for me.” She paused. “Give me James now or I walk. You can deal with the boogeyman yourself. I won’t do damn thing, even if he kills you all in front of me, without my payment.”

  The confidence dropped. “Promise me you won’t make him suffer,” he asked. “Please remember that you loved him once, and that he loved you!”

  “I promise you he will suffer.”

  “You swear you’ll kill Reinout?”

  “You have my word, which still means something,” her words burned like hot ash.

  “Please wait until it’s over. I know you, and this won’t be your last job. I can feel it. This is a noble endeavor; Nox won’t let you die over Reinout. Don’t let James’ execution get in the way of what you have to do. No doubt James has seen your posters about town. He’ll be expecting you to find him sooner rather than later. Let him terrorize himself, wear himself down with anxiety. Then afterwards, kill him quickly and unexpectedly.” His words were quick as he rationalized the plan.

  “I put no faith in your goddess. Now: tell me.” She was stern, and what little warmth that had been between them felt distant.

  His head dropped. “He’s staying at Iron’s Rest.” He sighed. “The blacksmith’s inn.”

  “Your boy, Sylvaine, I’ll need him.”

  “He’s mine. He trusts me,” said Conyers.

  “I don’t need his trust, just his obedience. Tell him he’s mine until the job is done.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid with him.” Conyers crossed his arms.

  “You want me to kill a man that you cannot? Then give me the boy to help.”

  “Fine. Aimee knows where to find him. I’ll tell him.”

  “Be sure to do that quick.” Vitoria turned to leave, but paused and turned back to Conyers for one last moment. “Tell Janine I say hi,” she said, and then walked back through the garden. This time she paid no heed to the lilies, or the small brown mouse still rustling through the dead, decaying flowers.

  We have him! the voice cried in her head.

  Yes, we do, she thought.

  We must hurry! He will warn his brother. If you wait he’ll be gone as soon as you kill that lordling.

  Yes, he will, won’t he? We can’t risk it, she thought.

  She turned south. She wasn’t going back to Turmont’s Tinctures; instead, she headed towards Iron’s Rest. She had never been inside of the place since there wasn’t much you could steal from traveling blacksmiths and iron merchants. Besides, they were usually very strong, and you didn’t want to be caught by one of them. Vitoria was confident in a fight, but there was no reason to risk unnecessary harm. One wrong move and their fists would no doubt leave her knocked out on the floor.

  Iron’s Rest was in a part of the city filled with inns and taverns. In her thieving days, she herself had met a fence or two in one of the common houses there.

  Within the hour she was there, standing in front of the place. It was an emaciated building towering above the others on the street. Five stories for James to hide in, she thought.

  The street was busy, no surprise for the area, but she knew that the window of silence would be between four and six in the morning. She walked up to the front entryway, up several stone steps towards a heavy wooden door reinforced with thick iron bands. The wood was worn from thousands of hands pushing and pulling on it, but it was still strong and unyielding. The door swung open and a tall imposing man rushed by her, nodding his head towards her as he went down the steps. She nodded back, giving him a small smile. While the door gently swung shut, she glanced inside. There were long row house style tables that filled the room. Each table was packed with strong men eating, from the smells she gathered fish cooked with vinegar and salt with peppered green beans. There was an unlit fireplace that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in decades, caked with soot and ash. Across that was the bar, staffed by three young men and an old woman, who swished about in a natural haste, serving and chatting all the while. Between them was a wide staircase up, the only way to the upper floors it looked.

  She stepped back and looked the building over. The lamp by the door was empty and cracked. There was enough grime and rust to tell Vitoria it had been broken many years ago.

  She rounded the building, walking slowly in the narrow alleyways flanking it. There were no windows on the main floor, and there were no lights in the alleys. She walked around the building and found a back door that looked thicker than the front but without a handle. She pressed lightly against the door, but it didn’t stir. She put her other hand against it, and pushed with her whole body. The sturdy thing didn’t even give a fraction of an inch.

  She pulled away, stepped back as far as she could, and looked up. There were many windows from the second floor up, and she guessed that each room had one. It was common for the inns to try to have as many windows as possible, since it was the cheapest light source and just about anyone could afford the rippled, imperfect, cloudy pauper’s glass.

  As she walked along the back of the building, she continued to look up. There was nothing running along the wall, no pipes from gutters, or shutters close enough to climb along. Even the walls themselves were crafted from bricks, but they were worn from decades of rain and wind, and there were no handholds for her to exploit. It was too smooth.

  She stumbled and caught herself before she fell. She looked down and saw a large, iron, rusted mesh that served as a water runoff port. Below were the sprawling sewers. She crouched and tugged the grate, but it wouldn’t budge. Years of rust left it adhered to the stone ground. She stood and looked around, but no one was there that she could see. She kicked the grate once, putting all her weight into the blow. The metal didn’t give; it didn’t even whine at her strike.

  She stepped away, her eyes still lingering on the grate. She was done there. She walked back out of the alley and turned north. She had to get back to Aimee’s. They didn’t have a lot of time to execute the plan she had already concocted, but they had to make due. James had to die that night.

  Chapter
11

  Not only did Soli arrive late to the Reinout Estate, she was also a few coins lighter. The doctor she paid, a horrible, skeletal Venari man who spoke broken Avelinian, was able to get the glass out that Soli’s hand with minimal digging, but he took far too long stitching it. After the first few attempts failed, the needle digging into her already damage flesh with no care, she demanded he slow down and do it right. His old, foggy eyes were wide as he took offence to her demand, and he tried to defend himself in hysterically poor Avelinian. Soli silenced him with her eyes alone, and then delicately told him in Venari, “I’m obviously a Northerner. You are obviously from the Republic. Enough with the childish behavior. You will slow down and you will do this right, or I’ll see to it that you eat that glass you pulled from me.” She was entirely calm about it, saying it as more of a fact than a threat. The ordeal should have angered her, but she felt as though she deserved the extra pain.

  It wasn’t the first time she had stitches nor would it be the last, she told herself. She sat through the discomfort of the stabbing and tugging with patience, insisting that the digging around and removal of glass was far more painful. Finally, when the man was done, he bandaged her hand with clean linen. She paid him his petals, thanked him in Venari, and hastily took off for Etienne’s appointment.

  She had never been late since taking Etienne on as a client, and she had no idea how he would react. Perhaps he would be angry and send her away. Maybe she would be free for the night? What would she do with the time? She was suddenly struck with the thought of finding a local common house, and trying to find something tolerable to have a glass of. A memory slipped into her mind: a sweet, cold bottle of blackberry mead poured by her own mother who looked so much like her, except her mother’s braid was always pulled to the back and decorated with smooth bone beads. She remembered having a small cup of the drink with her siblings for important days, but what she recalled then was her seventh birthday—her last with her family. There were so many assorted sweet flat breads topped with honey, whipped butter, and cooked berries all over the table they sat at, that one could not even see the long, hard, beautifully carved creation (the likes of which she has never seen since) underneath.

  Then she recalled her last birthday, her twenty-fourth. Roed cooked her pan fried sweet bread that he topped with sugar and blueberry preserves he bought from the market. They didn’t have mead, but Roed did buy a small bottle of blackberry brandy for the two of them. Blackberry anything was always her favorite, and every year he managed to give her something with blackberries in it. She found the drink pleasant but different. They shared the sweet bread, eating it with their fingers. The thing was as big as the pan he cooked it in, which left the middle a little undercooked, but Soli loved it.

  Roed was gone. All of her family was truly dead now, and she was alone in a foreign land.

  She walked through the barren stone streets up to the black iron gates of the Reinout Estate, her heavy instrument bag slung over her shoulder. Beyond the gate was a lush and manicured lawn, bur oaks and silver maples, bushes filled with small purple flowers, vibrant garden beds, and the large, hollow manor. She took a few moments at the gates, feeling as if she was at an impasse. She hated the place and wanted to leave, but she couldn’t leave. She hated the Avelinians, but she was surrounded by them. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. To cry for the dead was to call them from their paradise, Alskarn, and to cause them grief and longing for their living loved ones. Her family, if she could really believe what she was told, was feasting, hunting, fighting, loving, and singing without care. Who was she to deny them that happiness?

  The guards opened the gates for her as they were used to doing by then. They eyed her with hunger as if she was a harlot, but, thankfully, they kept their comments to themselves.

  She walked through the main door of the manor, which was kept unlocked during the day. The two guards at the door shot their eyes towards her, but, upon recognizing her, they returned to their discussion, a heated debate about the best cheese in Aveline: the creamy and soft southern cheddar that was aged for only a few months, or the crumbly and dry western cheddar that was aged for years. Last time it was what bakery made the best crescents, before that, what apples were better, the arbitrary distinction between sweet or semi-sweet.

  The guards weren’t vexed by any thoughts such as Soli’s, and she hated them in that moment for it. They were frustratingly simple, she concluded: happy to be in Aveline, happy with their own world, happy with their small existence. She walked by them but stopped her pace and turned to confront them. “Really?”

  They turned their heads towards her in unison. “What?”

  She would have rather smashed another pane of glass with her fist than even think about listening to them for one more evening. “Is this your life? Every day?” They didn’t answer her. They stood like stunned cows with large, empty eyes. “Who are you two even?”

  The stout man with shaggy brunette hair answered first. Shaking away his surprise, he placed a hand upon his chest. “I’m Val.” He pointed to his friend, the man who clearly shaved his head daily. He had eyes like pale green apples and a wavy nose that looked like it had been broken more than a few times. “That’s Guy.”

  “Well, Val and Guy, is this you do all day? Just… bicker?”

  Val flared his bulbous nose. “We…don’t… I mean,” he babbled, stuttering all the while. “Come on, we aren’t bickering.” He let out an exaggerated guffaw. “We’re debating!”

  “Yeah,” Guy said, hesitantly opening his wide mouth. “We’re guarding the door. It’s not our fault that not much happens!”

  Tsk, tsk, they heard from the parlor nearby. Randolph swaggered out into the hallway, his finger scolding the two guards. He was wearing simple clothing. Gone was his motley collection of leather and chain. Instead he wore a simple, fitted, sleeveless shirt and plain slacks. He looked bigger, but in a healthy way. Soli was shocked. She already thought the man was a mass of unmovable stone, but now his arms looked as thick and strong as a tree trunk.

  She nodded to him. “Mr. Randolph.”

  He smirked and rolled his eyes at her formal tone, before turning his attention to Val and Guy. “You two,” he said while he snapped his fingers at them, “don’t talk to ladies that way. Tomorrow you’ll join me for some sparring.”

  The two looked incredulously at each other, like two school boys who got caught with pilfered candy.

  “But it was Val!” said Guy.

  “You asshole, it wasn’t my fault!” Val slapped Guy on the shoulder.

  “That’s enough. I’ll see you two tomorrow.” He pointed his finger with such ferocity that all mothers everywhere would have been jealous of his technique, and both of the men fell silence.

  “Mr. Randolph, is this the behavior you allow? And what are you wearing? Ugh.” The woman’s voice was high pitched and tense, as if her vocal chords were clenched at all times.

  Soli turned to see a woman with tight, cherry-red curls that framed her painted face. All her features were delicate, which looked more bizarre than attractive. While her nose was conventionally beautiful and slightly upturned, her eyes looked oddly small and weak. Her slight chin was just a little too sharp for her face, and her thin limbs made her look malnourished. She was layered in heavy brocaded cloth of deep burgundy, creamy white, and silver, and Soli couldn’t help but think that it must have been exhausting to haul around so much clothing.

  The petite woman paraded over, but kept a healthy distance from Randolph, Val, Guy, and Soli, as if they were visibly crawling with fleas. “How dare you dress that way here?” she softly squealed through her bright red painted lips. “You are a representative of this house!” She turned her tiny, raging eyes towards Val and Guy. “And you two, using such language! It’s disrespectful! What if Lady Lilane heard you saying such things? Disgraceful!”

  “The boys got a little bit out of line, but that’s my problem. And this?” He put his arms out and slowly pointe
d to himself up and down. “You’re welcome.”

  “You are a disgusting low life, mercenary!” She hurled the title as if it was the most depraved epithet she could imagine.

  “Oh, Ms. Monvel! A disgusting low life?” Randolph dramatically put his hand over his heart, as if mortally wounded. He turned to Soli and briefly gave her an exaggerated pout, looking to her for comfort. Soli ignored him, and he turned back to Irene. “I may very well be that Irene. But in the words of every child from here to eternity, it takes one to know one.”

  Val and Guy burst out into laughter like children, and they made no attempt to hide it. Soli smiled but managed to swallow her laughter while looking away so that the others wouldn’t see.

  A “How…dare…you!” was all she could mouth and her face flushed redder than her painted lips.

  “No, Irene. How. Dare. You.” Randolph stepped forward to be close to Irene. Soli hoped that if he did have fleas that a few would make the three foot jump onto her ridiculous hair. “You’re Jae’s assistant. You only deal with him. It is not your job to talk to my men. You do not talk to my men. Don’t you ever talk to my men, and it is certainly not your job to talk to me. I don’t care how far you think you’ve crawled up Jae’s ass, but you don’t talk to me like that. Ever.”

  Soli’s eyes were glued to Randolph while he growled at the woman, and she held her breath until he finished his stern, cavalier reprimand.

  Irene tried to reply with something, but instead she trembled, her red face deepening to the shade of her ridiculous curls.

  “Oh!” He snapped his fingers mockingly as if coming to an earth shattering realization. “But you’re not interested in his ass, are you?” He leaned in and loudly whispered so that Soli could still hear, “It’s his cock you want, right? It must kill you to plan his evenings with those whores, huh?”

  Irene found her phantom voice. “That’s awful! How dare you!” She was shaking as if it was the dead of winter and she had lost her clothes.

  With everything that Soli had heard about Lord Jae Reinout, she was surprised that this Irene Monvel hadn’t been with him. Perhaps he did indeed have some standards? She smirked, but no one noticed. All eyes were on Irene Monvel.