Aveline (10 page)

Knives of rare metal, spikes of silver,
throwing stars of bronze, and other essentials for an assassin were
contained in the bundle. Aveline unrolled the entire thing before
lowering her hands and admiring the valuable items before her. It
was almost a shame to sully them with blood!

Tiana’s brother understood the kind of
weaponry assassins preferred. These were high quality, well made,
balanced, sharp and polished. They were perfect in every way. When
this was over, she could sell them or keep them, depending on how
attached she became to the beautiful weaponry.

“Can you use them?” Tiana’s voice was so
soft, Aveline barely heard it.

“Yes,” she replied absently.

“I knew you were not mute.”

Burn me.
Aveline tensed and then twisted to see the girl on the bed
nearby. Tiana’s gaze remained on the ground, but there was a small
smile on her features. Up close, her skin was so pale, it appeared
translucent.

“I will not tell,” she added. “I know my
brother arranged for you to be here. It is our secret. Matilda
would have you burnt, if she found out.”

“I’m not afraid of her,” Aveline said
resolutely.

“I am.”

The words gave her pause, and Aveline tried
to understand the wriggling instinct.

Tiana shifted from the bed and went to the
table, where she picked up a red berry from her dinner plate. “I
love strawberries,” she said. “Did you know they grow on
plants?”

“Um, yes. Where else would they grow?”
Aveline asked.

“On trees.”

Aveline shook her head and rolled the
weapons back up into a bundle. Madness had to be the case with
Tiana.

“Have you ever seen one?” Tiana asked.

“Seen what?”

“A tree.”

“Of course I’ve seen a tree,” Aveline
replied. “Who hasn’t?”

Tiana’s wistful sigh was her answer.

Aveline frowned. “How long have you been in
here?”

“Since my father burnt my mother at the
stake after I was born,” Tiana replied.

The response flowed so easily, without
emotion of any kind, that Aveline was momentarily taken aback by
the brutal honesty. Was this the event that drove Tiana insane?

Tiana sat and began to nibble on the bread.
She placed the strawberries in a line on one side of her plate.

“Why do they keep you locked up in here?”
Aveline asked.

The blond girl’s hands went to her lap, and
she twisted them. Her head lowered until her chin touched her
chest, and she slumped, a beautiful, wilted flower.

Aveline did not care for how seeing Tiana
this deflated made her feel. “You don’t have to say,” she said.

After a minute, Tiana straightened and began
eating.

It was too quiet in the small space. Aveline
rose and paced. Whenever she gave herself enough time to think, her
mind slid back to her father. Being active helped distract her. The
room was not large enough for her to do any weapons or combat
training.

“I think strawberry is my favorite color,”
Tiana said.

“I don’t think
strawberry
is
a
color,” Aveline snapped, frustrated she could not release her
emotions.

Tiana went still again.

Reading the other girl’s body language, as
she had learned on the streets, Aveline sighed. “It can be if you
want it to be.”

“If you do not wish to be here, you need not
stay,” Tiana said softly, sadly. “I cannot leave, and you can
return when you desire to. We can talk more when you come
back.”

“To be clear: we aren’t supposed to be
friends, Tiana,” Aveline said. “I don’t care what your favorite
color is, and I’m not here to entertain you. Do you
understand?”

Tiana had wilted again. “Yes.” Her defeated
tone was the same she used with Matilda.

Aveline felt lower than her street caste
breeding. She gathered up her cloak and bundle of weapons,
uncertain how to react. Her original plan nudged its way into her
thoughts again.

“I’ll return before dark,” she said shortly
and then left without waiting to hear Tiana’s response.

The odd energy in the air around Tiana faded
as Aveline walked through the apartment. This time, she did not
glance once at the wealth she passed but strode as fast as possible
without running to the slaves’ lift. Another slave was waiting for
the door to open, and Aveline kept her distance, troubled by her
interactions with the other girl and the instincts she could not
decipher.

Her initial impression, that Tiana was
likely insane, left her dissatisfied. The girl, while different,
had not seemed so mad once she spoke. If anything, she seemed
lonely locked away in her room. Their interaction only perplexed
Aveline more as to why anyone would want to harm the isolated,
neglected Tiana.

As an assassin, it did not matter why anyone
wanted her dead, if he was able to pay for the murder. Death was a
business transaction, and the relationship between sponsor and
target was not her concern. Aveline had this facet of killing
drilled into her. So why did her instincts urge her to examine more
closely the two conflicting jobs she was hired for? Why did
Matilda’s treatment of Tiana irritate her? For all she knew,
Matilda was the benefactor Karl had discussed. Aveline had spent
all of two minutes in Matilda’s presence and would not doubt the
woman’s ability to murder her own stepdaughter.

Disturbed as much by her own thoughts as her
circumstances, Aveline stepped into the elevator box when it opened
and rode the lift down to the base of the pyramid. She paused to
orient herself before descending the stairwell into the
basement.

The halls were narrower here and
whitewashed, lit by electricity but showing the wear of generations
of slaves walking these paths on their way to serve their masters.
She began walking without knowing exactly where she was supposed to
go and soon discovered the connecting corridors and random
intersections to be a confusing maze. She crossed the paths of
several other slaves but feared asking for directions when she was
supposed to be mute. Tiana was probably not going to tell her evil
stepmother about Aveline, but she dared not risk trusting other
strangers with the secret.

At long last, after half an hour of
searching, she reached a long hallway lined by dozens of doorways,
each of which was marked by a different color sash. She slowed and
peered into the first few doors. Large bays containing wooden bunk
beds stacked four high and armoires appeared well kept, if worn.
Several people were sleeping in the bunks, and she quickly assessed
the dorms on the right hand side were for men, those on the left
for women.

Doorways designated by green sashes were at
the far end of the hallway and numbered twice as many as any of the
other sashes. She entered one of the three on the women’s side at
random.

“That’s her.” The quiet voice came from a
corner near the door.

Aveline glanced towards the five women
seated at a round table, eating. All of them glared at her with
varying degrees of unfriendliness. Unconcerned, Aveline ventured
farther into the dorms and sought some sign the bunks were assigned
or claimed before she selected one.

“You don’t belong here, new girl,” one of
the women called gruffly.

Aveline returned to the front of the bay.
She pointed to the dorm on the right and then the one on the left
then shrugged, hoping to convey she did not know which was
hers.

“I don’t mean you don’t
belong in
these
barracks,” the woman said. “I mean, you don’t belong here at
all.” She stood. Aveline was startled by her size. At close to six
feet tall, with short hair and an athletic build, the woman before
her resembled a soldier in the Shield.

“You stole Jacque’s position. She was
supposed to be promoted to a Hanover’s personal slave,” another
piped up.

“My family has been serving
the Hanover’s for nine generations.
Nine.
And they give the position to a
mixed girl off the streets?” Jacque, the towering woman, shook her
head.

Don’t push me,
Aveline warned silently. While nothing suited her
mood or spiked her Devil’s need for blood more than a
confrontation, she recalled how many times George had tried to tell
her not to make waves. For his sake, she decided to ignore Jacque.
Aveline paced towards the door. She could return later, after
talking to George, or take up residence in one of the other
dorms.

Jacque moved quickly to block her path.

Aveline assessed her with expert eyes. She
had nothing to fear from anyone here. If they had been servants
their whole lives, they had no experience surviving on the streets
or fighting.

But she did.

“I don’t like you, new girl.” Jacque said
and shoved her. “You ought to know your place here. You should be
on the bottom floor, serving the Willows and not all the way at the
top where I belong. I deserve this!”

Aveline’s anger sparked. If only George
hadn’t claimed she was mute! Once again, she tried to avoid the
confrontation she knew was coming by skirting Jacque to reach the
door.

The woman moved into her way again.

Aveline sighed. A fight on her first day was
not the best way to start off, but neither was she going to take a
beating or abuse. She rolled the bundle of weapons into her cloak
and set them on the ground nearby then returned to the position in
front of Jacque, prepared to set the boundaries the tall woman
desperately needed to learn.

Ready for a fight, Aveline was willing to
let Jacque throw the first and only punch when her instincts blared
a warning. Before she could whirl to face the danger, one of the
other women had thrown a blanket over her head and torso and then
grabbed her, trapping her arms against her body.

Blinded, Aveline grunted when Jacque punched
her in the abdomen and then the chest.

The other women began to cheer and encourage
the jealous slave, their voices swelling as more slaves joined
their ranks to watch.

A familiar sense of calm fell over Aveline
as her training and instincts synced with one another and began to
guide her. She lashed out with her legs and felt them strike flesh.
She threw her weight around to try to dislodge the woman holding
her. More blows fell all over her torso, and she bore them without
making any sound that might give away her secret.

Aveline managed to throw off the balance of
the woman holding her by swinging her legs and knocking them both
to the ground. She thrashed loose from the blanket amid vicious
kicks. With her vision unhindered, she snatched the next kick aimed
at her head and twisted the woman’s foot, yanking her leg all the
way around and sending her tumbling to the ground.

Launching to her feet, Aveline fearlessly
entered the fray with fists and kicks swinging. The crowd around
them was somewhere around a dozen, and six additional slaves were
trying to hit her.

Six untrained combatants were a nuisance but
nothing Aveline was unable to handle. She slammed the head of one
into the wooden post on a bunk bed, smashed her heel into another’s
throat, and unleashed an avalanche of rapid punches into two more.
Her father had required her to be trained in street fighting as
well as the more traditional, dignified martial arts, and she held
nothing back as she fought off the slaves who meant to bury her so
one of them could take her place. Her Devil’s blood cheered her on,
urged her to every last one of her opponents.

“Stop this! Immediately!” The sharp command
came just as Aveline dropped the last of her attackers.

The women fell silent and created an opening
for George to walk through. He was accompanied by two Shield
soldiers.

Aveline lifted her chin in mild defiance,
not about to apologize when she had been the one attacked.
Straightening, she dabbed at her bloody nose and mentally assessed
her body as George stared at the damage she had done. By her count,
two slaves at least were dead, another two unable to walk anytime
soon and the final two unconscious. Jacque, who had started the
fight, was one of those she knocked out.

“Check them and tell me who still lives,” he
instructed the Shield soldiers. His gaze settled on Aveline. “You.
Come with me.” He pointed at her.

She went, eyeing the crowd she walked
through. No one lunged or lashed out at her, and she snatched her
bundle from the ground near the door. Aveline did not start to
relax until she was in the hallway. George continued walking
quickly, down the opposite direction she had come, and turned a
corner before confronting her.

“That cannot happen again,” he said.

“I didn’t start it.”

“Did I ask?” he snapped. “You are here for
one reason only! If you are expelled or worse, burnt, by the end of
the first day, who will protect my master’s sister?”

Aveline resisted the reaction of rolling her
eyes. She dabbed at her bloodied nose. Bruises were forming on her
torso and legs, and her nose was starting to hurt. The fight,
however poorly timed, had the result of freeing some of the tension
she had been carrying since she woke up in a brothel.

“Do you understand we cannot risk bringing
anyone else in here? That you are the only hope?” he continued.

“I know how to do what I was hired to do. I
don’t need you lecturing me,” she retorted. “That bitch came at me.
What was I supposed to do? Let her beat me?”

“Yes. Because then, she would have left you
alone, and no one else would be talking about how the new slave to
Tiana fought off six slaves! I thought your ilk were supposed to be
discreet! Is that not one of your primary directives? Do you have
no concern for what is at stake?”

Rocky’s life.