Assassin’s Fate

‘It is. Though I have wondered if they have some ancient relationship.’

‘What’s a rooster crown?’ Spark asked.

‘Open the letter and read it, please,’ Amber fended off her question. Perseverance passed it to Spark, who handed it to Lant. ‘It’s addressed to the Six Duchies Emissaries. So I suppose that means all of us.’

Lant broke the wax seal and tugged out a page of excellent paper. His eyes skimmed down it. ‘Hmm. Rumours of your waking have dashed from the kitchen to the throne room. We are invited to dine tonight with the Kelsingra Dragon Keepers. “If Prince FitzChivalry’s health permits”.’ He lifted his eyes to mine. ‘The keepers, I have learned, are the original Rain Wilders who set out with the dragons to find Kelsingra, or at least a habitable area for dragons. There were not many of them, less than twenty, I believe. Others have come to live here, of course. Rain Wilders seeking a better life, former slaves, and other folk. Some of the keepers have taken wives from among the new folk. Their ambassadors to King Dutiful presented themselves as coming from a populous and prosperous city. But what I’ve seen here and heard from the serving folk tells me a different story,’ he mused. ‘They’ve had only moderate luck at building their population to a level that can sustain the city, even on a village level. The Rain Wild folk find that they change faster when they live here, and seldom in good ways. As you have seen, the children born in Kelsingra are not many and the changes that mark them are not always good ones.’

‘An excellent report,’ Spark said in a fair imitation of Chade’s voice. Perseverance snorted into his hands.

‘Truly,’ Amber agreed, and the colour rose in Lant’s cheeks.

‘He trained you well,’ I said. ‘Why do you think they convene and invite us to dine with them?’

‘To thank you?’ Perseverance seemed incredulous I would not have thought of that.

‘It will be the preliminary to bargaining with us. It’s the Trader way.’ Amber sighed. ‘We know what we need from them. Fresh supplies and passage as far south as we can get. The question is, what will they ask of us in return?’

THREE (#ulink_e585b9ef-f374-5633-aeb8-20d0b32950ed)

In the Mountains (#ulink_e585b9ef-f374-5633-aeb8-20d0b32950ed)

This was a very short dream. A chalk-faced man dressed in robes of green trimmed with gold walked on a beach. A grotesque creature hunched on a grassy outcrop above the beach and watched him, but the man paid it no mind. He was carrying fine chains, as if to be worn as jewellery, but much stronger. He carried them in loops on his arm. He came to a place where the sand was shaking and bulging. He watched it, smiling. Snakes began to come out of the earth. They were large snakes, as long as my arm. They were wet and their skins were bright shades of blue and red and green and yellow. The man put a looped chain around the head of a blue one, and the chain became a noose. He lifted the snake clear of the ground. It thrashed but it could not get away even though it opened wide its mouth and showed white teeth, very pointed. The pale man caught another snake in his snare, a yellow one. Next, he tried to catch a red one, but it shook free of him and slithered away very fast toward the sea. ‘I will have you!’ the man shouted, and he chased the snake and stepped on the end of its tail, trapping it near the waves’ edge. He held the leashes of his two captive snakes in one hand and in the other he shook out a fresh snare for the red snake.

He thought she would turn and dart her head at him and he would loop the chain around her neck. But it was a dragon who turned on him, for he was treading on a dragon’s tail. ‘No,’ she said to him very loudly. ‘But I will have you.’

The picture I have painted for this dream is not very good, for my father’s red ink does not gleam and glisten as the snake did.

Bee Farseer’s dream journal

I slept cold and awoke to the toe of Dwalia’s shoe nudging my sore belly. ‘What have you been doing?’ she demanded of me, and then snarled over her shoulder, ‘Alaria! You were supposed to be watching her! Look at this! She’s been chewing at her bonds!’

Alaria came at a stumbling trot, her fur coat slung around her shoulders, her pale hair a tangle around her bleary-eyed face. ‘I was up almost all night! I asked Reppin to watch her …’

Dwalia spun away from me. I tried to sit up. My bound hands were cold and nearly numb. My whole body was stiff with various bruises and cuts. I fell over and tried to roll away from her, but I didn’t get far. I heard a slap and then a wordless yelp. ‘No excuses,’ Dwalia snarled. I heard her stalk away.

I tried to stagger to my feet, but Alaria was swifter. She put a knee in my back to keep me down. I twisted toward her to bite. She put one hand on the back of my head and pushed my face down on the paving stone. ‘Give me a reason to slam your teeth into that,’ she invited me. I didn’t.

‘Don’t hurt my brother!’ Vindeliar wailed.

‘Don’t hurt my brother,’ Dwalia mocked him in a shrill whine. ‘Be silent!’ The last word she spoke with a grunt, and I heard Vindeliar yelp.

Alaria pulled at my tunic hem then sawed strips from it with her belt-knife. She cursed in a guttural voice as she worked. I could feel her fury. Now was not a good time to challenge her. She rolled me over roughly and I saw the print of Dwalia’s hand on her face, livid red against her pale skin. ‘Bitch,’ she snapped, and I did not know if she meant me or Dwalia. She seized my stiff hands and jerked them roughly toward her. She brutally sawed at the sodden rags with her dull knife. I pulled my wrists as far apart as I could, hoping she would not cut me. ‘This time, I tie them behind your back,’ she promised through gritted teeth.

I heard footsteps crunching through leaves and twigs and Reppin came to join Alaria. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘My hand hurt so much …’

‘It’s fine,’ Alaria said in a tone that said it was not.

‘She’s so unfair,’ Reppin said. ‘So cruel to us. We are supposed to be her advisors and she treats us like servants! And tells us nothing. Not a word of what she plans now that she has dragged us to this horrid place. This is not what Symphe intended for us.’

Alaria relented in her sulk. ‘There’s a road over there. I think we should follow it. It makes no sense to stay here.’

‘Perhaps it goes to a village,’ Reppin offered hopefully. She added in a softer voice, ‘I need a healer. My whole arm throbs.’

‘All of you. Go fetch wood!’ Dwalia shouted from her seat by the dwindling fire. Vindeliar looked up with a woeful face. I saw Reppin and Alaria exchange rebellious glances.

‘I said, “All of you”!’ Dwalia shrieked.

Vindeliar came to his feet and stood uncertainly. Dwalia stood up, a much-folded paper in her hand. She looked at it angrily, gripped it so tightly that I knew it was the source of her ire. ‘That liar,’ she growled. ‘I should have known. I should not have trusted a word that we wrung from Prilkop.’ Abruptly, she slapped Vindeliar with her paper. ‘Go. Get wood. We will be here another night at least! Alaria! Reppin! Take Bee with you. Watch her. We need firewood. Lots of it! You, Chalcedean! Go hunt for some food for us.’

Kerf did not even turn his head. He was perched on a low stone wall and looking across the square at nothing. Nothing until I eased my walls down and saw tumblers, clad all in black and white, performing for a crowd of tall folk with oddly coloured hair. Sounds of a busy market-day filled my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut, firmed my walls, and opened my eyes to the long-deserted plaza. For that was what it was. Once, this open space in the forest had been a lively market square, a crossroads where traders met to exchange wares and Elderlings gathered for amusement and shopping.

‘Come on,’ Alaria snapped at me.

I got slowly to my feet. If I walked hunched over, my belly did not hurt so badly. Eyes on the ground, I followed them as they crossed the ancient paving stones. I saw bear-scat among the sparse forest debris, and then a glove. I slowed my pace. Another lady’s glove, this one of soft yellow kid. Then some sodden canvas. Something red and knitted peeped out from beneath it.

Slowly and carefully I stooped and tugged out a red woollen shawl. It was as damp and smelly as the hat I’d found, but just as welcome. ‘What do you have there?’ Dwalia demanded and I flinched. I hadn’t heard her come up behind me.

‘Just a rag,’ I said, my words blurred by my swollen mouth.

‘There’s a lot of rubbish over here,’ Reppin observed.

‘Which shows that people use this road.’ Alaria added. She looked toward Dwalia as she said, ‘If we followed it, we might soon come to a village. And a healer for Reppin.’

‘There’s bear-scat, too,’ I contributed. ‘And it’s fresher than the rubbish.’ That last part was true. The excrement was on top of some of the canvas and unmelted by rain.

‘Ew!’ Alaria had been tugging at a corner of some canvas. She dropped it and sprang back.

‘What’s that?’ Dwalia exclaimed and pushed her aside. She squatted down and peeled the canvas back from the wet stones to expose something white and cylindrical. A bone? ‘Umph,’ she exclaimed in satisfaction. We all watched as she unscrewed a small plug from the end and coaxed out a coiled piece of parchment.

‘What is it?’ Alaria asked.

‘Go get wood!’ Dwalia snapped and took her treasure back to the fireside.

‘Move, Bee!’ Alaria commanded me. I hastily wrapped my shawl around my shoulders and followed them.

For the rest of the morning they broke sticks from storm-fallen branches and piled them in my arms for me to carry back to the campsite. Dwalia remained crouched by the fire, brow furrowed over the little scroll she’d found.

‘I am going to die here,’ Reppin announced. She was huddled under her coat and mine, her bitten arm cradled in her lap.

‘Don’t be dramatic,’ Dwalia snapped at her and went back to studying her papers, squinting as the light faded from the day. It had been two days since I’d bitten Reppin, and here we still were. Dwalia had forbidden Alaria from exploring any farther down the old roads, and had slapped Reppin for asking what we would do next. Since she had found the bone cylinder and discovered the parchment inside it, all she had done was sit by the fire and compare it to her crumpled paper. She scowled and squinted as her gaze moved from one to the other.

I stared at Reppin across the fire. The sun was going down and the cold was creeping back. The small amount of warmth the stones of the old plaza had captured would soon flee. Reppin probably felt colder because of her fever. I kept my mouth flat. She was right; she would die. Not quickly, but she would die. Wolf Father had told me and, when I let him guide my senses, I could smell the infection in her sweat. Next time, for a faster kill, you must find and bite a place where the blood leaps forth in gushes. But for a first kill, you did well. Even if this is meat you cannot eat.

I didn’t know my bite could kill her.

No regrets, Wolf Father chided me. There is no going back to do a thing or not do a thing. There is only today. Today you must resolve to live. Each time you are given a choice, you must do the thing that will keep you alive and unhurt. Regrets are useless. If you had not made her fear you she would have done you many more hurts. And the others would have joined in. They are a pack and they will follow their leader. You made the bitch fear you, and the others know that. What she fears, they will fear.

So I kept my face set and showed no remorse – though I did suspect that the proscription against eating humans had not been made by someone as hungry as I was. In the two days that had passed since we’d arrived, I’d eaten twice – if a thin soup of some bird Alaria had killed with a thrown stone and two handfuls of meal cooked in a full pot of water could be counted as food. The others had eaten better than I had. I had wanted to be too proud to eat the little they offered me, but Wolf Father said that was a poor choice. Eat to live, he had told me. Be proud of staying alive. And so I tried. I ate what I was given, spoke little and listened much.