An Assassin's Blade: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  The Black Rot was my life. The Rots were my only friends and my only family. Aiding a foreign enemy in the takeover of your homeland would seem preposterous to most, but so long as I kept what I held so dearly — the only thing I held so dearly — the reputation that would follow didn’t matter.

  “Consider it done,” I said.

  The woman turned her head, and there were screams.

  Metal spikes surged from the center of the arena. They plunged through feet and calves and rears and stomachs, driving through throats and scattering bits of white skull and spongy brains along the dirt.

  My stomach churned and twisted, and I fell to my knees. I gasped for air.

  “I am Amielle, queen of the conjurers,” said the woman. “And you, Shepherd of the Black Rot, will be the key to saving my people. Your mind will be mine.”

  Through gritted teeth and sobbing breaths, I cried, “I fucking said I’d help you!”

  Amielle smiled. “The first step to subservience is hopelessness.” She paused. “Isn’t that right?”

  “You’ll learn, boy,” said a man with a grizzled voice.

  That voice… I’d heard it before. I turned around. Disbelief stifled my tears. It didn’t seem real. Life didn’t seem real. Smiling like he hadn’t died with poison in his belly, Vileoux Verdan looked at me.

  Chapter 12

  They screamed. Piercing screams, like a hawk’s cry. The wails of terror turned to gurgling shrieks as blood fountained out of their mouths.

  Or maybe they didn’t really scream. They could have just toppled over as their heads rolled away from their bodies.

  Sometimes that was what the visions showed me. Sometimes not.

  The rot of flesh was heavy in the air. A steel chain jangled and clattered against itself. Tylik fidgeted beside me. He had said nothing since Amielle’s guards returned me to this dungeon. He could probably smell the acrid stench of hopelessness as it permeated my pores like sweat.

  Tylik cleared his throat raspily. He coughed and pounded his chest. The retching echoed endlessly in this prison, cutting through the veil of blackness and banking off the cold floor and stone walls.

  Too bad the darkness doesn’t engulf your mind with a black cloud like it does your eyes. It’d be a lot easier to escape the terrors you’ve seen if you could simply pinch a candle and stare into nothingness.

  Desperate to escape my thoughts, I decided to indulge in something I excelled at: bullshit. “You know, Tylik, we may live longer than anyone has ever lived. Hell, I’d wager we might live forever.”

  “Mm. Don’t know ’bout that. Go on and take a peek at my toes; they ain’t the toes of a man who’ll be living forever.”

  “We’ll live forever,” I insisted.

  “How d’ya figure?”

  I looked in his general direction. “Because Death would sooner abandon his duties than step foot into this shithole.”

  Tylik coughed a hearty, throaty laugh. “Might be right. Ya might be damn right about that.” He hacked up what sounded like a bellyful of phlegm, pounded his chest again and sighed heavily. “Say, Astul. What would you do if you got back to that misery-place, yer homeland?”

  “Oh, I suspect I’ll return,” I said. “I just don’t think I’ll return with the same mind I left with.”

  “Pity.”

  “They’re going to take my world, Tylik. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Hmm. I ought to think someone’ll step up to the occasion. Lots of stories ’bout heroes and such, you know. And seems to me that heroes always appear at the very last moment.”

  I chuckled. “And it’s in stories where heroes stay. They never come out to play in the real world. Got a king on my side back in Mizridahl, most powerful one there is, too. But he’ll have the North bearing down on him. He’ll be forced into war, and the conjurers will sweep in and pick up the pieces. Only person who can stop that is Patrick Verdan.”

  Tylik clapped. “See there? A hero, just like I said.”

  Maybe if he didn’t sit atop a bloody mountain, secluded from civilization, I thought. Patrick Verdan, now there’s a man with a good story to tell. He and Vileoux saw eye to eye about as often as two blind men. Their hatred for one another had led to Patrick’s abdication, and with him he took a sizeable chunk of Edenvaile’s populace. Ran ’em right up the western ridge, climbed a mountain and claimed an abandoned fortress he would name Icerun. The interesting part isn’t that he and most of his people survived, but that his abdication damn near caused a civil war in the North. The lords of the North were eagerly awaiting Patrick’s future crowning and the more liberal policies he’d bring. Patrick eventually placated them, but many promised that if he ever wanted to make a claim on the throne, he’d have their full backing.

  What I wouldn’t give to see Patrick round those lords up now and overthrow Chachant. An alliance between Braddock and the North was the only way to stymie the conjurers.

  I told Tylik all of this, and he listened earnestly. Then, he drew in a deep breath, like an old man about to embark on a story of his prime years when he wrestled with lions and made wolves submit to him.

  “I’m sixty-two years young,” he said. “Now, ’bout… oh, fifty years ago, that’s when the conjurers came. Just appeared, like they’d been born from rock or even air. They say they can heal broken minds, don’t you know? And people ’round here, well… same as on that misery-place, I’d think — lots o’ broken minds. Was all a scheme, in the end. Just a way to recruit our innocent children. Then they start doin’ it openly, just comin’ into villages and taking kids and if you resist, why, you get put in shackles, like me.

  “Now, way before, the shackles were rope and the dungeons were above the soil. They put you in these big open chambers surrounded by wooden spikes. But see, these prisoners, they’d manage to send word back to their families. Rich families would hire mercenaries to free their loved ones, and poorer ones would round up the whole brigade — even the fat aunts and lazy not-good-for-nothin’ uncles — and they’d storm the place. Sometimes you’d be freed, sometimes killed. Them’s the odds, though.”

  Tylik sniffed the air. “Anyhow, just a long story to get on with my point that it’d sure be nice if there was a way we could do that nowadays.”

  Hopeless dreams did not impress me, nor were they a rallying cry to improve my current situation. It would be nice to send for help, but it’d also be nice to sprout wings and take to the sky, and while I’m at it, I would take a pinch of fiery breath and a smattering of scaly armor so arrows and swords would deflect harmlessly off of me.

  Nonetheless, Tylik was a genuine man — one of the only I’d known — and it seemed the very least I should do was entertain him. “I’m afraid whoever would receive my letters would either smile, overcome with glee, or just as likely use the paper as kindling.”

  “Mm. No family? No little lady who has your heart?”

  “Lots of little ladies have something of mine, but it’s not my heart. Much of my family is dead, thanks to the conjurers.”

  “Gots to be someone who cares about you,” Tylik pressed.

  I considered what I had accomplished in my life. The memories were mostly foggy now, like looking at the moving pieces of the world through a marred scope. I saw bits and morsels, and I remembered them well enough, and I was fond of most of them. But something nagged me. It was big and sharp and quite painful. I believe they call it regret.

  “I made a name for myself,” I explained. “Built a reputation. Kings, queens, lords, ladies, village leaders, savants, goatherds, farmers — they knew me. And many of them wanted me and my Rots for… unscrupulous reasons. Because we delivered. We were feared and with fear comes respect. But I am, in the end, an assassin. I am not celebrated. I am replaceable if need be. I’ve never left anything in anyone’s heart except perhaps anger, resentment and respect. Those things won’t bring people searching for you when you go missing, though.”

  Tylik clicked his tongue. “Seems
to me a man like you don’t much care about that sort of thing.”

  I shrugged my clasped wrists. “No, I don’t. Well, I didn’t. I suppose knowing your mind will be taken away from you is a sobering thought that brings about strange feelings.”

  The outline of Tylik’s head was not visible, but I distinctly felt him nodding in agreement.

  “Mm hmm,” he said. “Strange feelings indeed. You’ll start feelin’ calm about it soon enough. I got a theory about that. See, I think it’s your mind’s way of giving up. Can’t get out, right? So no use in making your last few years miserable. Guards’ll do that to you just fine, believe me.”

  My fingers skittered across the dirty floor in boredom. A sharp spine scraped against my knuckle. The momentum of my hand dislodged it, spinning it into my ankle. I leaned forward and picked it up. Holding it close to my eyes, I examined it carefully.

  I laughed. Only while sitting in the abyss of a dungeon could a man possibly find curiosity with a thin rock chip — a wafer, really. The pointy end had a nice bite to it, but not enough to stick through a guard’s throat. Great tool for drawing a little blood, though. Could trace a few tattoos into your flesh, maybe dig up those annoying moles.

  Maybe even write a poem across your arm, give yourself something to read…

  I passed the rock between my hands. Tylik spoke, but I ignored him, opting to give this sharp stone my full attention. I followed its craggy edges that formed the shape of a teardrop with a severe point.

  I held it like the disfigured quill that it was and pressed it into the soft flesh of my hand. I pressed until a trickle of warmth slid down to my thumb and dripped onto the floor. It stung as I angled it and gently etched a letter into my skin.

  The blackness of this place allowed me only a vague glimpse into my art, but it appeared eligible, if a little crude thanks to the raw, red tissue surrounding it.

  “I miss the birds,” Tylik said. “Their singing and—”

  “Tylik,” I interrupted, “you were a farmer, right?”

  “Farmer is generous,” he said. He coughed and added, “Like to think of myself as a fielder. I had a field. One cow, one row of corn and one row of tomatoes. Not much of a farm, if ya ask me.”

  “Fine, but you used tools to carve up the land and sow your seeds, yeah?”

  “Of course.”

  I gave a satisfying nod, even though he couldn’t see me. “Could you still do it now, with those old hands? Pretend for a moment your toes were not rotting off. Pretend you were home, in your field. Could you till the dirt? Pull a harrow across the soil? Could you carve up the land to sow your crops?”

  “I suppose so,” Tylik said. “Hands are a slight bit shaky now — I reckon from all this sittin’ around. But they work.”

  “Good. Because I need you to carve my flesh.”

  “Er. What?”

  A looped chain tethered me to the pillar. I scooted across the floor, toward Tylik’s voice, moving around the pillar like a fish caught in a maelstrom. “Can you slide toward me?”

  Tylik made a series of grunts — some bordering on the edge of painful whimpers. When he spoke again, his voice sounded nearer. Better yet, the faint outline of his shadowy silhouette materialized.

  “Stretch your hand out,” I said. “Far as you can.”

  A swollen stub with tendrils at the end lurched toward me. I placed the rock in his palm. “I’m going around the other side of the pillar so my back is facing you.”

  “Astul, what is the meaning of this? I don’t understand.”

  I scooted my ass along the stony floor. “Conjurers want me alive, to do their bidding. They aren’t going to kill me.” My chains clangored and scraped against the pillar. All this moving was not helping my urgent need to piss. “They’re going to take my mind. But I know someone who may be able to take it right back, if she’s still alive. I need a way to deliver her a message. And what better way to conceal that message than having it on me at all times?”

  I took my soiled shirt off.

  “I… I don’t like hurtin’ people,” Tylik said, his voice trembling.

  “It’s a mild pain. It’s relieving, in a way. Start in the middle so my shirt will cover the words entirely. And press firmly: make me scar.”

  Tylik swallowed loudly. “Aren’t you scared they’ll find out?”

  I turned back, my chin on my shoulder. “Of course I am. But that’s no reason not to try. Now, can you reach?”

  There was a grunt and a groan and a grumble. The cool prick of the rock stabbed lightly beneath my shoulders.

  “Good,” I said. “A little lower. Yes, right there. Write these words… actually, better yet. Can you draw? A riddle or puzzle, to throw off the conjurers if they see this.”

  He hesitated. “That depends. Drew a heart once, for my love. She thought it looked rather like a bum.”

  “Right. Let’s just go back to the words. Are you ready?”

  “Suppose so.”

  After some time of sitting in solemn silence and trying not to think about how badly my back burned from being cut open, the door to the world above croaked and creaked. A rivulet of fire flooded into the dusty dungeon, glinting off the unfashionable iron bracelets attached to my ankles and wrists.

  “Food,” Tylik said, with a hint of demented happiness in his voice, like a man whose only joy came from a few morsels of ground-up mice tails.

  A pair of feet tread carefully down the steps. Not slowly, but carefully. The nuances between the two are subtle, but obvious to anyone who’s spent a lifetime of sneaking around. Whoever was the owner of those feet cared greatly about arriving at his destination silently.

  He or she or it moved like a placid river that you know in your heart of hearts is being swept toward the sea, but you can’t for the life of you figure out which way the sea is.

  “I don’t think it’s food,” I said.

  “Mm,” Tylik grunted.

  The fingertips of orange flames flickered closer, scrawling designs on the chalky floor, reaching and stretching and swooping over bits of loose rock. Finally, the toe of a leather boot appeared and then another.

  “Uncle,” the voice whispered. It sounded familiar. “Are you awake?”

  “Don’t sleep much,” Tylik answered.

  Burbling flames came into view, licking the damp air and expunging every shadow they came across. They cast a glow that illuminated the torch they raged from and the face of the man who carried it. Or perhaps the face of the boy who carried it.

  “Was wond’rin’ what you were doin’ as a conjurer guard,” Tylik said. “Figured they’d turned ya into a slave.”

  The conjurer guard was the young lad who’d helped Crooked Tooth haul me up to have a quaint meeting with Amielle.

  “You two are familiar with one another?” I asked. “How nice.”

  “He’s my nephew,” Tylik said. “His name’s Karem.”

  “I’m here to break you out,” Karem said.

  What a courageous act. It was too bad the voice did not match the intentions. The boy was scared shitless. He couldn’t even hold the torch steady. It wavered like a battered ship on the ocean. Confidence begets success, and if you don’t have much of the former, you probably won’t see much of the latter.

  “How do you plan to free him?” I asked.

  Karem looked at me, eyes wide and face smeared with dirt. He dangled a key. “Gots this. Figure it’s dark up there. Not much going on, so we can sneak out.” He turned back to Tylik. “Dalleria is doing well, and Evander is too. I promised I would return their father to them, and I will make good on that.”

  The darkness between Tylik and me sped away as the reach of the flames pushed onward. The older man raised his head and looked at me with tired, heavy eyes. “I will only go if you free my friend here as well.”

  A better man than I may have jumped up — as much as one can jump when tethered to a pillar — and put on a show about how this was madness and to leave him here and don’t risk it.
But I was not that kind of man. I sat silently, enjoying the confusion that twisted and wrinkled on Karem’s oval face.

  “We create more risk by bringing others, but—”

  “He is my friend,” Tylik said. “I will not leave him behind.”

  Karem nodded. He knelt and stabbed his key into the thick iron locks along the chains woven around Tylik’s body.

  “I’m curious, Tylik,” I said. “Can you walk?”

  The old man’s eyes thinned at the sight of his toes, which were swamped with a congealed green liquid. “Mm. Can’t say I’ve tried in quite some time.”

  “Karem,” I asked, “are you scared of death?”

  The boy made his way over to me, holding his iron key out proudly. “I’m sorry?”

  “Death. Are you scared of it? Or him, if you prefer. It’s just that you don’t look the type who can carry a grown man for more than a half mile.”

  “I will carry him the whole night without stopping, if need be.”

  “We’ll see soon enough.”

  Karem glared at me. I hoped I had offended him. He looked like the kind of kid who’d been doubted his entire life. He was scrawny and pale. The hair on his face looked in a perpetual state of confusion as to whether it should grow properly or not at all. His voice was a bit squeaky. He was the kind of kid who, if you expressed doubt in his abilities, would do every bloody thing in his power to prove you wrong, if just to spite you.

  A few twists of Karem’s hand later, followed by a few clicks, and I could once again raise my hands over my head. More importantly, I could stand. Unfortunately, as I did, the code engraved into my back widened like the innocence of a virgin. It hurt. Quite badly.

  I cursed under my breath.

  “I am going to lift you, Uncle,” Karem said, his voice steeped in uncertainty.

  I snapped my fingers to grab his attention. “Here, give me it. I’ll be your torchbearer.”

  Karem’s eyes trailed from my feet to my head.