Aveline (11 page)

George had a point, she ceded silently. Her
indignation melted when she thought of her friend. His life
depended upon her blending in. Assassins were never supposed to be
seen and if they were, to leave no impression on the minds of
others. Killing two slaves was not going to help her ability to
move unnoticed among the slaves or earn her the trust of those she
might need to help her at one point. By reacting instead of
thinking, she had unwittingly endangered Rocky’s life.

“By your silence, you know you were in the
wrong.” George was calming down. “For now, you will sleep on
Tiana’s floor, until I can find a way to smooth over the murder of
the family’s slaves and ensure you are not likewise murdered in
your sleep.”

As much as she hated being lectured by
someone whose hands had never known a callous, Aveline nodded. “I
apologize,” she forced herself to say. “It was not my intention to
cause a mess.”

“I appreciate your humility,” he said. “Do
not do anything like this again!”

She said nothing.

“Come. We will fetch your bed linens.”
George turned away and began walking.

“Hey, George. Why is Tiana locked away?”
Aveline asked, at his heels.

“It is not for me to say.”

“Try not to be too helpful!”

“You are fortunate I am willing to hide the
bodies and not force you to face Matilda for your crimes.” He gave
her a pointed look. “If preventing you from being burnt is not
helpful, I am uncertain what is.”

“Point taken,” she grumbled. “I am trying to
understand what I’m doing here.”

“It was my master’s belief the threat to her
life comes from inside the family,” George replied quietly.

“They already treat her worse than a
slave.”

He glanced at her. “I have heard this rumor
many times before. No slave has ever seen Tiana or accessed her
quarters. Matilda takes her food and prepares her for events where
her presence is required.”

“She lives worse than I did in the streets,
and Matilda starves her.”

George frowned. “Then you will obtain her
food directly from the kitchens from now on. My master is permitted
to see her monthly. He has no way of knowing how his sister is
treated daily.”

“He thinks Matilda will try to kill
her?”

“He believes the threat comes from within
the family, which extends to the cousins and extended family on the
floor below the Hanover’s,” George replied carefully. “To speculate
who is behind it without proof is irresponsible.”

“What I can’t figure out is why?” she asked
again, perplexed by what value there was in spending the money
Karl’s benefactor had pledged in order to kill a girl who never
left her room.

“It is not for me to speculate.” George said
and entered a massive laundry and linen room filled with pools of
steaming water and red-faced slaves scrubbing clothing and
bedding.

Aveline’s nose wrinkled at the pungent
scents of cleaners. The open bay was more humid than the hallway.
Within seconds of entering, her clothing was sticking to her skin.
George went to a shelf extending all the way to the thirty foot
ceiling stacked with folded linens. He plucked a blanket from one
shelf, sheets from another and a pillow from the third and piled
them into her arms.

His gaze lingered on her before he strode
down another aisle and pulled a cotton bag from a shelf then filled
it with soft bandages and clean rags. He piled the bag on top of
her other linens, blocking much of her vision, and motioned for her
to follow him.

Aveline trailed him through the underground
maze. Accustomed to learning and adapting to the ever-changing
streets, she instinctively chose random landmarks and recorded them
so she could find her way back. They passed several bays filled
with metal, pottery, and cotton spinning artisans hard at work
before reaching the kitchens located next to the stairs for easy
access.

George stopped walking when he reached the
stairs. “Return to Tiana,” he ordered. “No more trouble.”

Aveline snorted and started up the stairs,
balancing the heavy armful of linens.

Ten minutes later, she passed the guards
outside the Hanover’s apartment and teetered through the opulent
rooms and hallways to Tiana’s door. Aveline dropped the bedding on
the ground and straightened, checking her nose once more. The
bleeding had stopped, but she was going to have a black eye in the
morning.

Unlocking Tiana’s door, she nudged it open
with her hip while bending down to retrieve the linens. She entered
and pushed the door closed and crossed to the table to deposit the
armful.

Tiana had eaten everything except for one
strawberry, which sat in the middle of her plate.

Aveline glanced from it to the bed, where
the girl was curled up in a fetal position, her back to the center
of the room. The defensive position drew Aveline’s thoughts once
more to the bizarre statement Tiana had made about her father.

Aveline’s father, an assassin leader, had
mourned the loss of his wife so much, he lost all control of
himself and went on a rampage, the Devil’s Blood Massacre, to try
to soothe his pain. Their time on the streets had been rough, but
he had always doted over Aveline, always spoken warmly of her
mother and ensured none of Aveline’s native past and history was
lost.

Unable to imagine a scenario where her
father hurt her mother, Aveline grappled with the idea of being
abandoned by the only family she had. Was this why Tiana crumpled
every time someone spoke harshly to her? Refused to look at anyone
and curled up on her bed as if waiting for someone to hit her?

“You didn’t finish your strawberries,”
Aveline said awkwardly.

“I saved it for you,” came the soft
response. “As an apology for angering you. I should not have spoken
out of turn.”

The words punctured the veneer of control
Aveline had over her emotions. She imagined Tiana expressing the
same exact sentiment to Matilda, after her unstable stepmother had
hit or screamed at her. After George’s explanation about no one
being allowed to see Tiana except Matilda, Aveline did not doubt at
all that Tiana’s bruises and fear came from Matilda’s wrath.

Not only that, but Matilda had given Tiana
the most bruised of the bowl of strawberries sitting on her table.
Tiana was already waifish and had admitted to loving strawberries.
That she saved one, when she had to have been hungry, bothered
Aveline.

Rarely did Aveline feel
unable to adapt to her circumstances. This situation, which called
for a level of empathy she was unaccustomed to receiving or
sharing, stumped her.
Kindness
was not among her tools for surviving the streets,
and she did not quite grasp how to express it to someone who
appeared to need it.

Aveline returned her gaze to the berry then
to the linens. Tiana’s bedding consisted of rags sewn together, and
she possessed three flat pillows.

“I brought you new bedding,” Aveline said.
“I need to strip your bed.”

There was a pause and then Tiana shifted.
She sat up and twisted, away from Aveline, and left her bed. Her
eyes remained trained on the floor. The lighting of the room was
too weak for Aveline to see their color.

She pulled the rags off Tiana’s bed. The
slaves had better bedding than the Hanover daughter, and Aveline
puzzled over this as she moved. At first, she had thought Tiana’s
childlike fascination with strawberries indicative of madness. As
she made the bed, a second possibility emerged.

Tiana never looked up. Was she blind? Or was
it a combination of factors the wealthy Hanover’s were ashamed of?
A little madness and complete blindness certain to make Tiana
clumsy in public?

Aveline reached for the pillow at the end of
the bed and paused.

Was it just her, or was it floating?

She blinked, and the pillow was where it
belonged on the bed. Chalking the incident up to her swelling eye,
which was blurry, she grabbed and tossed the pillow at the head of
the bed before stooping down to gather up the old bedding.

Without an explanation to Tiana, she left
and traversed through the apartment quickly one more time, down the
lift and to the basement. Using the landmarks she had memorized,
she found her way back to the washroom and deposited the dirty
linens into a random bin without caring what it contained. She
followed George’s initial footsteps through the aisles, invisible
among the other bustling slaves, and collected her own bedding.

On her way back, she paused in the wide
doorway of the kitchens. Massive stone ovens lined one wall while
the far wall contained an entrance to a pantry whose entrance
featured bundles of herbs hanging from the top of the doorway. Rows
of counters stretched between the two walls along with a line of
ten spits.

Aveline juggled her bedding and made a
mental note of where slaves wearing different sashes were lining up
to pick up trays of food. In the morning, she would join them and
ensure Tiana was fed a full meal instead of scraps.

She returned to the top floor and to Tiana’s
room. The blonde girl was lying down again, hugging the fluffy
pillow.

Aveline made her bed in the middle of the
floor, where she would be alerted if anyone entered. She stretched
out on the floor with a grimace, her body beginning to stiffen
after her fight. The sunset edged the boarded up window, and she
watched the orange-pink colors splattered across the ceiling.

Tiana’s breathing was deep and regular. She
was asleep at an early hour, though Aveline was accustomed to
staying up much later. Bored, she stood and went to the books on
Tiana’s vanity. She picked up one. It was much heavier than it
appeared to be, and she opened the cover. Reading was not an
essential trait for an assassin, and she had never learned. The
squiggles inside had no meaning to her, though she stopped to study
the drawings and pictures when she reached them.

Her interest waned, and she replaced the
book. Tiana’s belongings consisted of the tomes, the empty perfume
bottle, a brush and a few pins for her hair, an armoire filled with
fancy clothing and shoes, a trunk of nothing but brightly colored
threads and other sewing supplies, and a closet containing a dozen
more of the plain sleeping gowns. Aveline assumed the drawer full
of vials was not Tiana’s but Matilda’s. She examined one of them
before replacing it.

Was this how Tiana had spent every day since
she was born? Trapped in the most restrictive place Aveline was
able to imagine?

As soon as the sun set, the poor lighting in
the room became even more evident. It was downright gloomy. Aveline
lay down and forced herself to stay still when she wanted to do
anything else. She placed two knives under her pillow and another
under Tiana’s bed. The room was utterly silent, as if the walls had
been soundproofed. Nothing was unusual or out of place, except for
the strange charge that seemed to exist solely in Tiana’s room.

Aveline’s mind went again to her father and
then to Rocky, and she stared at the ceiling, doubting she was
going to sleep at all this night. Too much was depending on her
success. Of everything to be concerned about, why was she hoping
the kitchens had a bowl of strawberries for her to grab for Tiana
in the morning?

Arthur and his closest friend, Warner, sat
on one side of a bonfire at the edge of their encampment, their
native tracker opposite them. Dressed similarly in layers of
cotton, leather and fur, the native was distinguished from the
Shield members by the three feathers in his long hair and the lack
of sash anywhere on his body. Arthur wore his around his bicep and
Warner around his waist.

Arthur gazed into the dancing flames,
pensive. The night was cold enough that he wore a fur-lined hat
with flaps to protect his ears in addition to thick clothing,
winter boots and a scarf made by his sister he kept wrapped tightly
around his neck.

“You have determined our path tomorrow?”
Leaping Deer, the native tracker, one of the few surviving members
of the Comanche Nation, asked quietly.

Arthur glanced up at him then around to
ensure they were not being observed by the other Shield soldiers.
Withdrawing a steel knife from the satchel at his side, he placed
it on the ground before him, rested his hand on it, and closed his
eyes.

Show me where we will find
game,
he willed the weapon.

It began to move beneath his fingers, and he
lifted his hand and opened his eyes.

The tip of the blade pointed northwest.

“Then northwest we will go,” Leaping Deer
said with a half-smile.

Arthur replaced the weapon. His unusual
gift, while saving the city many winters from starvation, was
likewise forbidden. If anyone discovered exactly how his family was
so successful finding food, he would be burnt at the stake,
alongside his father and sister. His stepmother, he guessed, would
probably lie her way out of everything. She had a survivor’s
instinct he would have admired, if not for the accompanying
ambition he suspected would drive her to turn on her husband at a
moment’s notice.

Leery of one of the Shield soldiers noticing
his magic, Arthur twisted all the way around to survey his
surroundings.

“No one saw,” Warner assured him.

“I would claim it to be native magic if they
did,” Leaping Deer added. A friend of the family for two decades,
the native living in a village near the city was permitted to he
use magic whereas those inside the city were not.

“Thank you.” Arthur smiled at his
companions.

“You are normally more eager for the annual
hunt. Your father would not allow his heir apparent to leave the
city, if we did not need your special magic to find game,” Leaping
Deer observed.