Her name was Llorin.
The same woman who had brought Mercy here is now a cautionary tale.
Mercy stands and eases the door open wide enough to be sure no one is in the hall, but at this hour, they have all either gone to bed or are drinking in the great hall. Luckily, Mercy’s destination is in the opposite direction.
Her fingers curl around Lylia’s dagger and she tucks it into the waistband of her pants, adjusting her tunic so the folds of fabric hide the shape. She hadn’t had the chance to retrieve her own weapon, and she doubts they will trust her with one anytime soon. When she reaches the spiral staircase at the end of the hall, she lightly trails her fingers over the stone wall as she ascends. Before she steps onto the landing, the clash of angry voices drifts from afar. At the end of the hall, the door to Mother Illynor’s room is ajar. Trytain’s voice is the first Mercy can make out.
“Can’t be allowed to stay—”
“—did complete the Trial—”
“Tradition! An insult to the Guild!”
“We’ll have a riot on our hands if we let her live—”
“Enough,” Mother Illynor says. “Mercy did complete the Trial, but she broke one of our most important rules, and that is not an issue taken lightly. She not only disgraced herself, but the Guild as a whole. The punishment is death—at dawn, in the courtyard.”
The point of a dagger pricks Mercy’s back.
“Make a sound,” Lylia growls, “and I will have you gutted like a fish before they make it through that door. Understood?”
Mercy nods.
“Good. Start walking.”
She turns Mercy toward the stairs and shoves her forward. Halfway down the staircase, Lylia stumbles and the point of her dagger stabs Mercy just below her shoulder blade, a warm trickle of blood running down her back. Together, they descend toward the main floor of the castle.
Mercy’s mind races. Lylia is still weak from the aftereffects of the poison running through her veins; she shouldn’t have been allowed out of bed for another day or two. The poison and the antidote are still warring in her system, making her sluggish. If Mercy pretends to trip on a stair, maybe in those brief seconds she can grab the dagger concealed under her tunic. She can disarm Lylia, disable her enough to—
“Nice try.” As if reading her thoughts, Lylia’s hand snakes under the hem of Mercy’s tunic and grasps the handle of the dagger, dropping it on the last stair as they step into the first-floor hallway. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you steal that.” She shoves her forward, to another, almost hidden staircase. It’s dust-coated, narrow, and stinks of mildew.
If Mercy could run—
The staircase ends at a half-rotted redwood door. The bottom of the wood has been chewed away by tiny teeth, and piles of rodent droppings are scattered about the floor.
After a prod from Lylia’s knife, Mercy reaches forward and tries the handle. It turns a quarter of the way, then stops. Locked.
Lylia sighs, like this shortcoming is somehow Mercy’s fault. “Open it.”
Mercy leans her shoulder into the door, planting her feet on the stone floor. After three hard pushes, the door flies open with a crack! as the lock snaps.
A burst of wind slaps Mercy in the face.
They’re standing on the battlements.
Weathered and weakened by various attacks over the past millennium, whole chunks of gray stone have broken off and fallen into piles inside and outside of the yard. Mother Illynor has never bothered to have them fixed, and they have since sprouted a thick film of ivy and red moss.
A heavy hand on Mercy’s shoulder propels her forward, and she risks a glance at Lylia, who marches stoically behind her. “What are you doing, Lylia?” She tries to sound weary, but a note of fear slides in when her foot catches on a loose pebble which goes skittering into the yard twenty feet below. “Think of what Mother Illynor will say if she finds us out here. Do you think she will forgive you for threatening me?”
Lylia shoves her, hard, and Mercy’s stomach drops as she pitches toward the edge. Like a cat toying with its prey, Lylia catches her before she falls. “Oh, I’m going to do much more than threaten you, Mercy. By the time I’m done with you, they won’t be able to recognize what’s left.”
“I’ll forget about this. We can just go back.” Mercy eyes the edges of the wall, barely a foot away on either side.
“No.” Lylia spins her around, and her face is more rage-filled than Mercy’s ever seen it—which, she’ll admit, terrifies her. “You have humiliated me for the last time. This Trial was supposed to be mine—not yours, not your pathetic friend’s. All these years, everything you’ve ever done has been to undermine me. Around that corner. Go.”
They slip through the watchtower, and Lylia stops in the center of the battlements, above the gate. Does Lylia intend to hang Mercy, or push her off? Either way, her body will be on full display for anyone who sets foot outside.
Lylia pushes her forward until the toes of her boots hang over the edge, the cool nighttime air an empty void in front of her. Her knife rests at Mercy’s throat, her mouth a hair’s breadth from the point of her ear. “Look down,” she whispers. “Can you see it? Can you imagine yourself lying there? Broken, bloodied, pitiful Mercy.” A smile sounds in her voice, and Mercy swallows painfully. Lylia’s hand is splayed in the center of her back. Not pushing—not yet.
“The walls are high, but they’re not high enough to kill you. I imagine they’d break some pretty significant bones, though. How long do you think you’ll last, lying there, before the agony becomes too much for you to bear? I bet after a few hours you’ll be begging me to kill you. Can you see it? Lying in a pool of your own blood, feeling it get colder and colder around you, tasting the dirt in your mouthful of broken teeth.”
Mercy’s knees begin to quake.
One push is all it takes.
“I will enjoy hearing you beg,” she whispers.
Mercy swallows. “I would never.”
The pressure on her back intensifies until she can’t keep her balance anymo—
Something clicks.
“Let go of her.”
In one dizzying instant, Mercy is yanked away from the edge. Lylia’s hand is knotted in her shirt. Her free arm snakes around Mercy’s throat, tightening, choking. Calum stands fifteen feet away, a crossbow aimed straight at Lylia.
Mercy is caught between them.
Calum stalks closer, pausing when Lylia tightens her hold on Mercy, cutting off her air supply entirely. Mercy sputters, her hands clawing Lylia’s arm.
“This is not your business,” Lylia spits.
Calum steps closer, his eyebrows furrowed, the rest of his face obscured by the enormous limb of the crossbow. His feet are planted, his posture tense, his finger on the trigger. “I assure you it is my business. Should any harm come to her, I will show you just how serious I am.”
Lylia’s grip doesn’t waver, but Mercy feels her hesitate. Mercy’s lungs are gasping, igniting, failing. Stars dance in her vision.
“A demonstration, then?” Calum says, his voice betraying no emotion.
The crossbow’s string releases and the bolt whizzes through the air, cracking as it thuds against stone.
He missed.
Lylia sucks in a breath and releases Mercy, who crumples to her knees, gasping as she sucks in the cold night air. Without so much as a glance in her direction, Calum strides past Mercy and murmurs something to Lylia in a low voice. A second later, Lylia’s running footsteps pound past Mercy, then the door to the battlements slams shut.
Kneeling atop the wall, Mercy presses her forehead to the cool, rugged stone. She chokes on a breath, wincing. Two arms encircle her gently, but it doesn’t stop the alarm going off in her head. She elbows Calum and scuttles a few feet away, then glances at the grass far below and thinks better of it.
Strong hands clasp hers and she stills.
“You’re okay, love,” Calum whispers. He kneels in front of her, his earnest gaze
searching her face. His hair is loose and hangs in front of his face, softening the lines of his sharp features. “You’re safe,” he murmurs, and Mercy pulls her hands away.
She stands. Her knees tremble, but she’s determined not to show it. “You should be asleep by now, like everyone else.”
He pretends not to hear the tremor in her voice. “We’re lucky I’m not.”
She tugs on the hem of her tunic. “Thank you,” she whispers, and Calum nods gravely.
He steps around her and picks up the crossbow as if it’s made of nothing but air, which—given the Strykers’ skill—hardly seems impossible.
“What did you hit?” Mercy asks, then swallows the words as her gaze lands on a crossbow bolt embedded on the stone tower several yards behind her, at exactly the height of Lylia’s head. The bolt is buried up to the fletching, a spider web of cracks blossoming across the brick. “Oh.”
“I never intended to kill her. Usually a demonstration is enough to scare people away.”
Mercy tugs on the bolt. Except for freeing a chunk of pulverized stone from the wall, it doesn’t budge. “You’re not getting this back anytime soon.”
“I can make more.” Mercy turns to find his gaze locked on her. “I did not kill her, Mercy, but make no mistake,” he says, “if she ever comes for you again, I promise I will not hesitate to drive a bolt through her skull—or anyone’s, for that matter.”
“Why do you care?”
Calum stares at her for a long time, his lips a tight line. When it becomes apparent he isn’t going to answer, Mercy hugs her arms around herself and shivers.
“I should go inside, make sure Lylia isn’t plotting her next murder attempt.” Mercy says it lightly, but one look at Calum’s expression and the joke falls flat.
“You should leave.”
“Leave?”
“No one needs to explain to me the punishment for breaking the Guild’s rules, especially over something as sacred as the Trial. I know”—he holds up a hand when Mercy objects—“that I pushed you to do it. I had thought when they saw the way you fight—the way you really fight, like you have everything to lose—Mother Illynor would change her mind. She didn’t. Leave, Mercy. Pack your things, grab the daggers you won, and run.” He closes the distance between them and presses a heavy iron key in her palm. “I stole this key for the smithy from Hewlin. Take the daggers, mount your horse, and ride north.”
Mercy shoves the key back at Calum. “I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“I made my choice. I will not run and hide like a coward.”
“You may not survive the night.”
Mercy gestures to the bolt in the stone. “You think I don’t realize that?”
Calum tugs at his hair and begins to pace. “Then why, Mercy? Do you have a death wish?”
“The Guild is all I have! It’s all I am!” Mercy lowers her voice to a whisper, casting a glance at the castle. “I will either be a Daughter or dead. I refuse to be no one.” She pivots on her heel and marches toward the castle door.
“Mercy?”
She stops, but doesn’t turn back.
“You were extraordinary today.”
Pride swells in her heart and she laughs, ignoring the soreness of her throat. She squares her shoulders and grins to herself as she strides across the battlements and into the castle.
11
The next morning, two Daughters arrive to escort Mercy to her execution.
Tanni walks on her right, Sienna on her left. They clasp Mercy’s upper arms, her hands bound behind her back with a length of rough rope. When they had barged into her room an hour before dawn, they had found her standing in the center of her room, meeting them with a leveled gaze and no expression on her face. Their eyes had roamed from the points of her ears to the faint shadows under her eyes, to the dark bruises coiled around her neck. They hadn’t said a word as they searched Mercy for weapons and tied her wrists together.
Tanni opens the door to the yard and shoves Mercy through. The sun has begun to rise, tingeing the sky a pale, rosy pink. Mother Illynor stands under the gate, exactly where Mercy’s body would have lain had Calum not intervened last night. Mercy shivers at the memory and searches the crowd for Lylia, spotting her flaming auburn hair near the front of the group. She looks every bit as exhausted as she should, but she wouldn’t miss Mercy’s execution for the world. Mistress Trytain stands on Illynor’s right, although she doesn’t look smug, as Mercy had expected.
Faye is nowhere in sight.
“Is Faye alive?” Mercy whispers, looking sidelong at Sienna.
The Daughter ignores her and prods Mercy forward.
Everyone has gathered in a half-circle around Mother Illynor. Tanni and Sienna push through the crowd, but the people quickly part of their own volition, drawing back from Mercy like she’s diseased. As she nears Mother Illynor, someone snakes her foot out and hooks Mercy’s ankle, sending her stumbling forward. Mercy sets her jaw and glares at the crowd, her cheeks flushing with anger and mortification.
“Mercy,” Mother Illynor says, her voice filling the courtyard, “you disobeyed my direct orders. You drugged one of your Sisters, poisoned another, and cheated your way into the Trial, our most sacred ceremony. Turn, face the family you have betrayed, and kneel.”
Awkward and off-balance, Mercy kneels, to snickers from the crowd. The Strykers are scattered throughout, but Calum is not among them. Perhaps he couldn’t face her death.
“I. Betrayed. No one,” Mercy growls.
“Master Hewlin,” Illynor calls.
Hewlin waves to Oren, who walks toward Mother Illynor with the double-sided dagger in his hands. Mercy glares at him. Weak, pitiful, puny Oren will watch as she is beheaded; he will probably piss himself, or vomit, or both.
Oren passes the dagger to Mother Illynor over Mercy’s head. Mercy closes her eyes and hangs her head, every muscle in her body clenched to the point of pain. Mother Illynor stands behind her shoulder, out of sight, but Mercy can tell when Illynor aims the blade at her neck by the collective intake of breath from the crowd.
She bites her tongue to keep from letting out a terrified cry when the dagger whistles through the air, aimed straight for her exposed neck.
Instead, the blade slices through the rope around her wrists, which falls to the grass with a soft thump. Mercy’s arms fall limply to her sides; her face goes slack with shock and relief.
“Rise,” Illynor commands.
Mercy does as instructed, her knees wobbling, and Mother Illynor places the double-sided dagger in Mercy’s hands. Confused whispers erupt across the yard.
“Everything you did proves your dedication to the Guild. You emerged victorious from the Trial, so tradition will be honored. Kneel once more—as an apprentice, not a prisoner—that you may take your vows.” Mercy gapes at her, disbelief etched across her features, until Illynor leans in and whispers, “Kneel.”
Mercy sinks to one knee, twists the dagger so it becomes two, then holds the blade of the knife in her right hand in front of her face, her forehead brushing the cool metal. When Mother Illynor places her hand atop Mercy’s head, she begins to recite the vow she has held sacred since her earliest recollection.
“On this day, before the rising of the sun,
I pledge myself to the Guild.
My mind, my body, my sword, my dying breath is yours to take,
from this moment to my last.
I shall have no family but my Sisters, shall serve none other than my Mother.
From this moment forward,
I am your Daughter.”
No one hears the last line. The crowd is angry, cheated out of the blood they had expected Mother Illynor to spill. Their shouts reach a cacophony, drowning out Illynor’s attempts to calm them, and—for the first time—a flicker of fear crosses her face. She removes her hand from Mercy’s head, and Mercy jumps to her feet.
The sunlight breaks over the trees, shining with such brilliance Mercy must hold her h
and over her eyes to see. The crowd stills.
Mother Illynor jumps at their distraction. “The Great Creator, with his all-seeing eye, shines his light on Mercy. He has accepted her vow.”
“None of you may lay a hand on her,” Trytain adds, “unless in retribution for the breaking of her vow.”
“Come, dear.” Mother Illynor slips an arm around Mercy’s shoulders and guides her forward. As before, the onlookers part as they approach, watching with barely concealed outrage. “This is only the beginning of your journey.”
Half an hour later, still overcome with relief, Mercy sits on the plush couch in Mother Illynor’s room, the same one on which the tutors had sat as they debated whether to kill her. Laying on the cushion beside her is Mercy’s newly-won dagger, back in one piece, and the beauty of it strikes her anew. The grip is smooth brown leather, and the crossguard has been inlaid with tiny orange and red crystals, the same shades as the leaves of the forest. Mercy wonders briefly if Calum had had any input on the design; it seems like the kind of absurdly sentimental thing he would do.
As if Mercy could ever forget her origins.
Mother Illynor has taken off her thick fur cloak and is wearing a long-sleeved shirt and riding pants, the crackling fire in her fireplace providing more than enough heat for her cold-blooded, reptilian body. She settles into a high-backed chair across from Mercy, propping her elbows on her knees.
“I have a contract for you.”
Calum was right. Mercy perks up. “What contract?”
“A very important one. Usually, I prefer to give a new Daughter a few days to recuperate and adjust before sending her out, but I thought it best with your . . . extenuating circumstances”—she fixes Mercy with a pointed look—“that you leave right away. Aelis and the Strykers will accompany you to Ellesmere, where Sorin is now. She will accompany you to Myrellis Castle, in the capital.”
“The castle? Who is my target, the king?”
“Close,” she says. “His son.”
Merciless Page 7