The Assassin and the Empire (8 page)

Illuminate …

Each step brought her closer to the body on the table. She didn’t know where to look first.

At the fingers that went the wrong way, at the burns and careful, deep slices in his flesh, at the face, the face she still knew, even when so many things had been done to destroy it beyond recognition.

The world swayed beneath her feet, but she kept upright as she finished the walk to the table and looked down at the naked, mutilated body she had—

She had—

Farran had taken his time. And though that face was in ruins, it betrayed none of the pain he must have felt, none of the despair.

This was some dream, or she had gone to hell after all, because she
couldn’t
exist in the world where this had been done to him, where she’d paced like an idiot all night while he suffered, while Farran tortured him, while he ripped out his eyes and—

Celaena vomited on the floor.

Footsteps, then Arobynn’s hands were on her shoulder, on her waist, pulling her away.

He was dead.

Sam was dead.

She wouldn’t leave him like this, in this cold, dark room.

She yanked out of Arobynn’s grasp. Wordlessly, she unfastened her cloak and spread it over Sam, covering the damage that had been so carefully inflicted. She climbed onto the wooden table and lay out beside him, stretching an arm across his middle, holding him close.

The body still smelled faintly like Sam. And like the cheap soap she’d made him use, because she was so selfish that she couldn’t let him have her lavender soap.

Celaena buried her face in his cold, stiff shoulder. There was a strange, musky scent all over him—a smell that was so distinctly
not
Sam that she almost vomited again. It clung to his golden-brown hair, to his torn, bluish lips.

She wouldn’t leave him.

Footsteps heading toward the door—then the snick of it closing as Arobynn left.

Celaena closed her eyes. She wouldn’t leave him.

She wouldn’t leave him.

Celaena awoke in a bed that had once been hers, but somehow no longer felt that way. There was something missing in the world, something vital. She arose from the depths of slumber, and it took her a long moment to sort out what had changed.

She might have thought that she was awakening in her bed in the Keep, still Arobynn’s protégée, still Sam’s rival, still content to be Adarlan’s Assassin forever and ever. She might have believed it if she hadn’t noticed that so many of her beloved belongings were missing from this familiar bedroom—belongings that were now in her apartment across the city.

Sam was gone.

Reality opened wide and swallowed her whole.

She didn’t move from the bed.

She knew the day was drifting along because of the shifting light on the wall of the bedroom. She knew the world still passed by, unaffected by the death of a young man, unaware that he’d ever existed and breathed and loved her. She hated the world for continuing on. If she never left this bed, this room, maybe she’d never have to continue on with it.

The memory of his face was already blurring. Had his eyes been more golden brown, or soil brown? She couldn’t remember. And she’d never get the chance to find out.

Never to see that half smile. Never to hear his laugh, never to hear him say her name like it meant something special, something more than being Adarlan’s Assassin could ever mean.

She didn’t want to go out into a world where he didn’t exist. So she watched the light shift and change, and let the world pass by without her.

Someone was speaking outside her door. Three men with low voices. The rumble of them shook her from sleep to find the room was dark, the city lights glowing beyond the windows.

“Jayne and Farran will be expecting retaliation,” a man said. Harding, one of Arobynn’s more talented assassins, and a fierce competitor of hers.

“Their guards will be on alert,” said another—Tern, an older assassin.

“Then we’ll take out the guards, and while they’re distracted, some of us will go for Jayne and Farran.” Arobynn. She had a foggy memory of being carried—hours or years or a lifetime ago—up from that dark room that smelled of death and into her bed.

Muffled replies from Tern and Harding, then—

“We strike tonight,” Arobynn growled. “Farran lives at the house, and if we time it right, we’ll kill them both while they’re in their beds.”

“Getting to the second floor isn’t as simple as walking up the stairs,” Harding challenged. “Even the exteriors are guarded. If we can’t get through the front, then there’s a small second-story window that we can leap through using the roof of the house next door.”

“A leap like that could be fatal,” Tern countered.

“
Enough
,” Arobynn cut in. “I’ll decide how to break in when we arrive. Have the others ready to go in three hours. I want us on our way at midnight. And tell them to keep their mouths
shut
. Someone must have tipped off Farran if he knew to set a trap for Sam. Don’t even tell your servants where you’re going.”

Grunted acquiescence, then footsteps as Tern and Harding walked away.

Celaena kept her eyes closed and her breathing steady as the lock turned in her bedroom door. She recognized the even, confident gait of the King of the Assassins striding toward her bed. Smelled him as he stood over her, watching. Felt his long fingers as they stroked through her hair, then along her cheek.

Then the steps leaving, the door shutting—and locking. She opened her eyes, the glow of the city offering enough light for her to see that the lock on the door had been altered since she’d left—it now locked only from the outside.

He had locked her in.

To keep her from going with them? To keep her from helping to pay back Farran for every inch of flesh he’d tortured, every bit of pain Sam had felt?

Farran was a master of torture, and he’d kept Sam all night.

Celaena sat up, her head spinning. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Food could wait. Everything could wait.

Because in three hours, Arobynn and his assassins would venture out to exact vengeance. They’d rob her of her claim to revenge—the satisfaction of slaughtering Farran and Jayne and
anyone
who stood in her way. And she had no intention of letting them do it.

She stalked to the door and confirmed that it was locked. Arobynn knew her too well. Knew that when the blanket of grief had been ripped away …

Even if she could spring the lock, she had no doubt that there was at least one assassin watching the hall outside her bedroom. Which left the window.

The window itself was unlocked—but the two-story drop was formidable. While she’d been sleeping, someone had taken off her suit and given her a nightgown. She ripped apart the armoire for any sign of the suit—its boots were designed for climbing—but all she found were two black tunics, matching pants, and ordinary black boots. That would do. She hadn’t become Adarlan’s Assassin for nothing.

There were no weapons in sight, and she hadn’t brought any in with her. But years of living in this room had its advantages. She kept her motions quiet as she pulled up the loose floorboards where she’d long ago hidden a set of four daggers. She sheathed two at her waist and tucked the other two into her boots. Then she found the twin swords she’d kept disguised as part of the bed frame since she was fourteen. Neither the daggers nor the sword had been good enough to bring with her when she moved. Today they would do.

When she’d finished strapping the blades across her back, she rebraided her hair and fitted on her cloak, throwing the hood over her head.

She’d kill Jayne first. And then she’d drag Farran to a place where she could properly repay him and take however long she wanted. Days, even. When that debt was paid, when Farran had no more agony or blood to offer, she’d place Sam in the embrace of the earth and send him to the afterlife knowing he’d been avenged.

She eased open the window, scanning the front courtyard. The dew-slick stones gleamed in the lamplight, and the sentries at the iron gate seemed focused on the street beyond.

Good.

This was her kill, her revenge to take. No one else’s.

A black fire rippled in her gut, spreading through her veins as she hopped onto the windowsill and eased outside.

Her fingers found purchase in the large white stones, and, with one eye on the guards at the distant gate, she climbed down the side of the house. No one noticed her, no one looked her way. The Keep was silent, the calm before the storm that would break when Arobynn and his assassins began their hunt.

Her landing was soft, no more than a whisper of boots against slick cobblestones. The guards were so focused on the street that they wouldn’t notice when she jumped the fence near the stables around the back.

Creeping around the exterior of the house was as simple as getting out of her room, and she was well within the shadows of the stables when a hand reached out and grabbed her.

She was hurled into the side of the wooden building, and had a dagger drawn by the time the thump finished echoing.

Wesley’s face, set with rage, seethed at her in the dark.

“Where in hell do you think you’re going?” he breathed, not loosening his grip on her shoulders even as she pressed her dagger to the side of his throat.

“Get out of my way,” she growled, hardly recognizing her own voice. “Arobynn can’t keep me locked up.”

“I’m not talking about Arobynn. Use your head and
think
, Celaena!” A flicker of her—a part of her that had somehow vanished since she’d shattered that clock—realized that this might be the first time he’d ever addressed her by her name.

“Get out of my way,” she repeated, pushing the edge of the blade harder against his exposed throat.

“I know you want revenge,” he panted. “I do, too—for what he did to Sam. I know you—”

She flicked the blade, angling it just enough that he reared back to avoid her slicing a deep line across his throat.

“Don’t you understand?” he pleaded, his eyes gleaming in the dark. “It’s all just a—”

But the fire rose up in Celaena and she whirled, using a move the Mute Master had taught her that summer, and Wesley’s eyes lost focus as she slammed the pommel of her dagger into the side of his head. He dropped like a stone.

Before he’d even finished collapsing, Celaena was sprinting for the fence. A moment later, she jumped it and vanished into the city streets.

She was fire, she was darkness, she was dust and blood and shadow.

She hurtled through the streets, each step faster than the last as that dark fire burned through thought and feeling until all that remained was her rage and her prey.

She took alleys and leapt over walls.

She’d slaughter them all.

Faster and faster, sprinting for that beautiful house on its quiet street, for the two men who had taken her world apart piece by piece, bone by shattered bone.

All she had to do was get to Jayne and Farran—everyone else was collateral. Arobynn had said they’d both be in their beds. That meant she had to get past all those guards at the front gate, the front door, and on the first floor … not to mention the guards that were sure to be outside the bedrooms.

But there was an easier way to get past all them. A way in that didn’t involve possibly alerting Farran and Jayne if the guards at the front door raised the alarm. Harding had mentioned something about a window on the second floor that he could leap through … Harding was a good tumbler, but she was better.

When she was a few streets away, she climbed the side of a house until she was on the roof and running again, fast enough to make the leap across the gap between houses.

She’d walked past Jayne’s house enough times in the past few days to know that it was separated from its neighbors by alleys probably fifteen feet wide.

She leapt across another gap between roofs.

Now that she thought of it, she
knew
there was a second-floor window facing one of those alleys—and she didn’t give a damn where that window opened to, just that it would get her inside before the guards on the first floor could notice.

The emerald roof of Jayne’s house gleamed, and Celaena skidded to a halt on the roof next door. A wide, flat stretch of the gabled roof stood between her and the long jump across the alley. If she aimed correctly and ran fast enough, she could make that leap and land through that second-floor
window. The window was already thrown open, though the curtains had been drawn, blocking any view of what was within.

Despite the fog of rage, years of training made her instinctively scan the neighboring rooftops. Was it arrogance or stupidity that kept Jayne from having guards on the nearby roofs? Even the guards on the street didn’t look up at her.

Celaena untied her cloak and let it slide to the ground behind her. Any additional drag might be fatal, and she had no intention of dying until Jayne and Farran were dead.

The roof on which she stood was three stories high and faced the second-floor window across the alley. She factored in the distance and how fast she’d be falling, and made sure the swords crossed to her back were neatly tucked in. The window was wide, but she still needed to worry about the blades catching on the threshold. She backed up as far as she could to give herself running space.

Somewhere on that second floor slept Jayne and Farran. And somewhere in this house, they had destroyed Sam.

After she had killed them, perhaps she’d tear the house down stone by stone.

Perhaps she’d tear this entire city down, too.

She smiled. She liked the sound of that.

Then she took a deep breath and broke into a run.

The roof was no longer than fifty feet—fifty feet between her and the jump that would either land her right through that open window a level below, or splatter her on the alley between.

She sprinted for the ever-nearing edge.

Forty feet.

There was no room for error, no room for fear or sorrow or anything except that blinding rage and cold, vicious calculation.