The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (9 page)

I nodded my head. “That sounds like something a Rabthorn would do.”

“I don’t know if I did it or not. I can’t remember. But my bannermen shouldn’t have believed that. Thirty years ago, they’d have called for Kane’s head and catapulted it over my walls.” Serith tossed up his hands. “Now, after nineteen years of kingship that I cannot recall, they proclaim him a visionary, an heir to the South. Ten thousand men are marching on my walls.”

The emptiness of Vereumene now made sense. “You mean to surrender to Kane Calbid, don’t you?”

He smiled. “I mean to give the city to the true heir of my throne. Let Kane Calbid gallop inside my walls and chop off my head. My daughter will remain. She will survive. She will lay claim to her queenship when Kane least expects it; she is a Rabthorn, after all. Deceit runs in her blood.”

“And the way of a conjurer nests in her heart.”

“Don’t forget your promise, Shepherd — to keep that heart beating no matter what. They say, after all, that your word is gold.”

Indeed, my word is gold. But just as gold is only good in the hands of a living man, my word does not apply to those who are not around to see it undone. And Serith Rabthorn would be dead soon enough. As would his daughter, unless she got to explaining just what a conjurer had been doing here nineteen years ago, taking over the mind of a king. Because the more I learned, the more it seemed this whole ordeal was part of a plan that had long ago been put into motion.

T
he trouble
with conjurers isn’t that they think differently. Most people don’t give a sack of cow hooves how you think, so long as you don’t flaunt it. The trouble with conjurers isn’t that they behave differently, either. Most people are indifferent to those who collect rats as test subjects, in an attempt to pervert their minds, so long as they do so in the privacy of their own home. The trouble with conjurers is that they don't have the decency to be different far away from the public eye.

They trot into villages, claiming they can heal the broken and disturbed. Problem is, humanity hasn’t survived this long without being inherently distrustful. If some jolly old conjurer with gray hair and a red smile can root around in your mind, capturing the hurtful memories, erasing the heartaches, obliterating the troubled past, then surely some ne’er-do-well could root around in there and accomplish the opposite. And that line of thinking cultivates fear. Fear spreads like fire. Fear opens the door to chaos. And soon you’ve got yourself an entire world more than willing to rid itself of a potential problem, and the conjurer massacre begins.

Too bad we never tried to learn about them before our attempt at hunting them to extinction. It would, for example, have been prudent to know that apparently a daughter of a king could be turned into a conjurer. Prevailing thought said the mind-fuckers were born that way, like freaks with six thumbs and dwarfs with stubby legs.

What else didn’t we know about them? What special little surprises would I find by sitting down for a nice chat with Lysa Rabthorn? Well, first I had to find her.

Outside the keep, Vayle was talking to a few Rots, pointing vaguely beyond the walls. She dismissed them, wheeled around with a skin of wine and saw me.

“The guards were kind enough to allow us to hunt their land,” she said, walking over. “A river runs two hours east of here, is that right?”

“East…” I said with hesitation, “or west. One of those two directions.”

“Oh, well. I told them to hurry back if they don’t find anything. Hopefully they do; everyone is tired of stale bread. Something hot will do them good. Did you boys have fun gossiping with one another?”

Always the jester, my commander. “I’ve had more fun talking to squirrels. Can’t say they provide more interesting information than Serith, though.”

After giving her the rundown of Serith’s divulgence, she flattened her finger on her lips and said, “Now I understand why Lysa appeared a broken girl. She committed murder only weeks ago. Your first one, it stays with you, as I am sure you will recall.”

“Mm,” I grunted. “Where is she?”

“Come, this way.”

A slow patter of rain fell onto the black cobbles, kicking up volcanic dust like linens beaten into submission by handmaidens.

Vayle pointed to the city center with her chin. “Unless Nilly Rabthorn has two daughters, or is playing mother to an orphan, I believe that is her and Lysa.”

The two were sitting on a bench beneath the rising shadows of wall-to-wall buildings.

“That’s Nilly all right,” I said. “Let’s have us a friendly meet-and-greet with the queen and her conjurer daughter, hmm?”

“Astul,” Vayle said, restricting my stride with a tug of my arm. “Wait. I will talk to her.”

“Er…”

“
You
listen.”

“Well, if you’re that eager to get inside her mind, I suppose we can both interject from time to—”

“No,” she said firmly. “Trust me, yes?”

“Never have I ever not,” I said. “But remember to ask about her earliest memory, who this conjurer was she killed, if she heard about this plan that’s seemingly been put into action, why she doesn’t appear to be following it, why—”

“Astul. I know. Trust me. Please.”

I rubbed my hands together and offered up a weak, apologetic smile. “Right. Sorry.” While it was the absolute truth that distrust was something I never felt for Vayle, I was not accommodated to playing second-in-command. What if she didn't dig deep enough? What if she couldn’t pry the information from Lysa? You often only get one shot at these things, before your target clams up and swallows the pearl. Hmm… maybe I needed to revisit my definition of trust.

Letting my commander take the lead, I fell in behind. The assumed Lysa Rabthorn kept her head down, but her eyes banked hard toward our approaching footsteps, wary as an abandoned animal who’d been spurned by humans one too many times.

Nilly was massaging her daughter’s knee. She stopped when our shadows scurried over the bench like an unwelcome cloud. The queen’s blond hair had been chopped off at her ears. Her round face, which used to be so colorful and tight, now sagged into a droopiness of pale depression.

Vayle bowed her head. “Lady Nilly Rabthorn, it is always a pleasure.”

With a voice steeped in the kind of sorrow that bards sing about in morbid ballads, she said, “I thought that perhaps Kane Calbid sent the Black Rot here to kill us.”

“We are not in the business of killing queens or kings,” Vayle said.

I simply smiled and nodded. Was that the proper thing to do? Was I trying too hard? Dammit, this onlooker stuff was more difficult than it seemed. See, had it been me, I would have said the same as Vayle, and then looked slyly at Lysa and remarked, “Or conjurers.” On second thought, seeing how vulnerable the girl was, maybe Vayle had the right idea of shutting me up.

“Am I to presume,” Vayle said, crouching, “that this is the Lady Lysa Rabthorn?”

The nineteen-year-old woman with the color of strawberries rippling through her blond hair and a beauty mark on her cheek looked up. “Lysa,” she said slowly, “will be fine. I am not a lady.”

Nilly sighed heavily and continued massaging her daughter’s knee.

“You are a Rabthorn, though, are you not?” Vayle asked.

Lysa seemingly thought about this, searching the thin lines of rain for answers.

“I do not believe my daughter wishes to speak,” Nilly said.

“It’s vital that she does,” Vayle explained.

“Why?” Lysa asked. “Because I am a conjurer? And you wish to know what sort of monster I resemble?”

“I want to protect this world. I want to keep it from imploding on itself, and given recent events, that’s proving difficult. I’m hoping you can shed some light as to why the conjurers took you as a baby, and what they’re doing now.”

Lysa clammed up, as I expected.

Vayle took the young woman’s hand in hers. “I understand how you feel, Lysa.”

Oh, that crafty commander of mine. If you ever want to draw the ire of someone, wait until the person is wallowing in sadness and then go up to them and tell them you understand how they feel.

“You,” Lysa said, her tone accusatory and vicious, “cannot possibly…
possibly
understand how I feel.”

Vayle sat her butt on the dirty ground and folded her hands. “You feel you’ve been cheated of life. You wish your parents would have ended it in the womb, and you hate them for not doing so. You hate them for allowing you to become a tool, a plaything, a slave. You’ve not seen happiness but for glimpses, and those glimpses anger you. And even now that you’re free of your chains, you’ve yet to know peace. You feel empty, alone and afraid without them, don’t you? You feel that perhaps… perhaps you cannot live like this.”

The fury on Lysa’s face softened, and she appeared inquisitive, like curiosity had up and struck her right across the forehead.

Vayle soothed her fingers. “I know how you feel because I lived your life.”

“You’re a conjurer?”

“A slave,” Vayle answered. “In my past life. Forced to use my hands to clean and cook, my mouth to service, my back to bathe men. They wanted us unable to read and unable to think. They wanted us to depend on them. I defied them. I learned to read, and I snuck books inside the nomadic camp sites. I was lashed for it, raped, beaten until my eyes swelled shut. And when I finally broke free… I wasn’t happy, because all I understood was the life of a slave. Being a free girl was suddenly very scary, much more so than fearing the whip or the hard fists of a drunken man.”

Silence lingered. And then, Lysa spoke. “Do you believe that I’m not like them? I’m not like the conjurers that did this.”

“Why did they want you?” Vayle asked.

“To help them, but I don’t want to help them. I want to help people who are broken. They gave me a gift, Miss—”

“Vayle,” Vayle said.

“Miss Vayle. I cannot give the gift back, and I don’t want to. I want to use it for good, the way I was told conjurers had always done. But I do feel very alone in this world. It scares me.”

“Your father said you killed the man responsible for all this. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Lysa said shakily. She side-eyed Nilly and continued. “Well, he wasn’t responsible for me. Lots of conjurers are responsible for making me one of them. I was an experiment. They’d never done it before, they claimed. But he was responsible for ruining my dad. For ruining my mom.”

She blinked a tear from her eye and stared unrelentingly at the volcanic cobbles. “Did you know most conjurers can’t control the domain of two minds at once? It breaks them, sooner or later. And it broke him, that awful, awful man. Siggy was his name. He began sleeping most of the day, mumbling when awake, on the edge of mindlessness.” She glanced up, eyes swollen and swirling with blood. “I went into his room. With a knife.” She licked her lips. “I held my breath. And I moved it across his throat. Like this.”

She mimed the ripping of her knife across her throat. And again. And again, each laceration more violent than the last.

“You wanted to free your father and mother, didn’t you?” Vayle said.

Lysa sniffled. “It wasn’t the only way. I’m a conjurer too. I could have reversed the effects. I could have searched their minds, yanked out the thoughts and emotions and feelings and all the bad things Siggy planted inside them. Or maybe I couldn’t have. They’re still husks, even now. It’s been too long. Nineteen years under a conjurer’s control… I don’t know that there’s any good left in them anymore.”

Nilly covered her eyes, and began choking on tears.

Interesting. Not the crying, but Lysa’s revelation. That was a good piece of information to know, in case we were able to wrangle a few conjurers and get them on our side. Which, admittedly, seemed unlikely.

“Why,” Vayle asked, “did the conjurers need your help, Lysa?”

“I was to be the queen of the South. There was to be war between the South and North. They abandoned those plans for me many years ago.”

Vayle stood. “What could they gain from war?”

“This world,” Lysa said blankly.

W
hat a fan-fuck-tastic day
. First I discover Kane Calbid will be assaulting the walls of Vereumene in short order, and then Lysa Rabthorn informs me the conjurers intend to incite a great war that sucks in every family, major and minor. And then after the war ends, those goat-fucking conjurers sweep in and pick up the pieces, taking my world for their own.

But something wasn’t adding up. If the conjurers did manage to accomplish their goal of a great war — which was looking likely — they’d still need a sizeable force to come in and obliterate the remaining armies and families, even if most of them were weakened. You can’t exactly procure a conjurer army when the vast majority of your people have been wiped out. Unless… well, maybe they didn’t come from Mizridahl. Perhaps they came
to
Mizridahl.

The long-standing theory was that conjurers originated from a cult somewhere in the South; that’s where they showed up first, near the shores. If they sailed here, that would mean they had their own world. Own cities, own people. Hmm. That’s a slightly more terrifying thought than having Braddock Glannondil string his banner up through my intestines.

But first things first. Pristia, Braddock’s wife, needed to die. If the old hag would keel over before the Glannondil army marched off to war, maybe Braddock would come to and realize he was about to commit the kind of blunder that would have his name next to those of the sort of kings who’d single-handedly dismantled their own empires.

I had the perfect plan for how to make that happen. The idea was simple. Lure the Glannondil armies out of Erior with, oh… let’s say five thousand men. Then, a smaller number, perhaps one hundred assassins from, oh, I don’t know… the Black Rot, for example, could sneak inside the empty walls, find Pristia and cut her down. Voi-fucking-la.

Now, the obvious problem may seem to lie in obtaining five thousand men. While I had not yet discovered the secret to breeding five thousand boys and subsequently jettisoning them all into adulthood instantaneously, I did know that a ten-thousand-strong army was conveniently marching my way. Inconveniently, it would likely shatter the walls I took shelter behind and slaughter everyone that joined me.

But here’s the rub: the leader of this army, Kane Calbid, wanted Serith Rabthorn’s throne. Unbeknownst to my hopeful new-pal-to-be, Kane, Serith had all but transferred his kingship over. For all Kane knew, Serith’s army was waiting on him here, ready to fortify the walls and bunker down for the long haul. His spies would discover the truth soon enough, but if I could reach him before then and offer my assistance in letting him into the kingdom with nary a sword swung on his behalf, he might well agree to my terms.

And the terms would be simple: I’d need half his men for a short excursion to the northeast, to avenge my brother’s death by obliterating all slaver camps along the coast — a harmless endeavor for his skilled soldiers. The truth is that I would use those men to knock on Braddock’s door, feign an attack, then make him chase us all over. But the truth is optional in these sort of negotiations.

This plan was greeted with a healthy dose of skepticism from Big Gruff, a silent
wow
from Kale, and an “Are you fucking drunk?” from Vayle, who very rarely uses the fuck word.

But as they sipped and gulped and threw back wine before licking flames under a black sky, they all came to see it as I did. We had no other choice. If we couldn’t stop this war from happening and prevent the conjurers from taking our home… we would likely be their slaves. They’d imprison us, take our minds and use our blades to hunt down rebellious families who hadn’t sworn their servitude to the conjurers. Even if we could run free forever, darting from beyond the reach of their shadows, what kind of life is that? One I’d sooner end willingly than live until the Reaper calls my name.

After convincing Serith to let us stay in Vereumene for two weeks — under the guise that my guys and gals needed rest and it’d be awfully difficult to protect his daughter while fatigued — I penned a letter to Kane, gave it to Big Gruff and sent him to a messenger camp about a day’s ride west. The mountain of a man returned several days later, with a reply in tow.

It said this.

Huh. Well, I suppose I could never fault a man for being simple and succinct.

“When’d you get this?” I asked Big Gruff.

“’Ey,” he hollered toward a Rot repositioning a spit above a fire, “is that trout? Big lake trout? I smell it!”

I smacked Big Gruff upside his big head. “Listen, man! This is important. When’d you get this letter?”

He counted silently on his big, hairy fingers. “Let’s figger this out. I get there in one day. Send ’er out with a messenger. And then… er, let’s see. Yeah, yeah. Ten days later, I get it back. Then I sleep a night there — ale is woo-hoo strong, let me tell you that, Shepherd — then I come here today, rode hard all through the mornin’. But… I gotta know. Is that trout? You know how much I love trout.”

Afraid foam would begin to percolate out from his jowls and he’d go rabid in the eyes, I told him yes, he was smelling trout, and then released the Rot-turned-beast.

Hmm. Ten days for Big Gruff to receive a reply meant it probably took five days for it to get to Kane and five more to get back. Big Gruff spent a day at the camp and another day to get the letter to me. Well, surprise, surprise. Today was day seven. Time to pretty up this plan of mine and get it ready for its first and only date.

A shiver tore through me, and I slapped myself like I was putting out flames. In reality, I was brushing off the grime that soiled my body, the filth that wrapped me up in a big, dung-filled hug, and the muck I slowly sunk into like quicksand. I felt dirty, all right? Real fuckin’ dirty. Putting this plan into action meant I was playing the game. There are plenty of games in this world, but most people only play two. The first is a game that everyone participates in. You don’t have a choice. Soon as you pop your head out of your mother’s womb, you’re in it, baby — you’re playing the game of survival.

The second game, it doesn’t have an official title, but it revolves around power: trying to obtain it, attempting to increase it, or, if you enjoy playing the first game, trying to lose it.

I enjoyed the game of survival. Living’s pretty nice, as it turns out. But generally, if you’re a fucker-up of the whole realm stability thing, your stay in this world will be quite short. Aiding a usurper and then using half his ten-thousand-strong army for my cause, that… that’s not good for realm stability. But it was the only choice I had if I wanted to keep surviving.

I sipped hot tea as I walked into the bleakness of underground. Years ago Serith’s court had ordered the construction of a new sewer system, but plans had changed and now all that remained of that sanitary promise was a big hole in the ground. At the far end, where a wall of dirt lay piled high, a shadow sat by its lonesome.

“I heard a whisper you might be here,” I said. “I’m surprised to find you alone. Your mother seems to follow you wherever you go.”

“She is sleeping,” Lysa answered. “She sleeps much of the time. It’s better that way.”

“Do you love your mother? Your father?”

“I’ve tried, but”—she looked at me, hazel slits in the darkness—“why are you asking me this?”

“Your father has asked me to protect you. I don’t know if he’s told you, but this city—”

“I don’t need someone to protect me,” she spat. “And it doesn’t take a great deal of independent thought to understand my father intends to surrender to Kane Calbid. You have still not answered my question. Why did you ask me if I loved my parents?”

Boy, this girl didn’t take kindly to being given the runaround. I appreciated the no-nonsense type, but only if they were on my side. And I wasn’t sure which side Lysa was on yet.

“Things,” I said, “may happen to your father. And—”

She lifted a hand, silencing me. “You might have too much cowardice in you to plainly tell me you intend to kill my father on behalf of Kane Calbid, or as part of a larger scheme. But I am not a coward. I will tell you the truth: No, Mr. Assassin, I do not intend to avenge his death in any form and certainly not by obliterating your mind. I also do not intend to allow you to protect me under the guise of perverting my gift into a weapon of war.

“I will leave this place soon, so do what you must. I have a gift, Mr. Assassin, and it can be used for good. It can be used to help those in the throes of despair. My mother and my father are too far gone, but the little boy who lost his puppy, the little girl whose father never returned from war, the farmers whose crops have been ravaged — their sanity can be restored. I
am
a conjurer, Mr. Assassin. One unlike you have ever seen. Goodbye.”

I sat there dumbfounded as the nineteen-year-old girl verbally slapped me across my face and promptly got up and walked away. I had clearly underestimated Lysa Rabthorn, and it saddened me she was not on my side. But thankfully she didn’t play sides, and fear of her retribution was one less worry on my mind.

A small band of rainclouds arrived near noon, and then… I wasn’t sure what happened. I became less intrigued by my surroundings and more lost in my thoughts, until the encroaching darkness of night had me on my feet, walking my camp and prepping my assassins.

Satisfied my men and ladies knew their roles, I went off toward the gate, where winding ramps led up to the parapet.

I took no more than two steps when my commander caught up to me.

“You’re sober now,” she said.

“And you’re not,” I replied.

“Sober as I’ll ever be. You haven’t changed your mind about a thing?”

“No.”

“This isn’t justice,” she said sharply.

I looked around, just in case a city guardsman was lurking about. Convinced we were alone, I stabbed a meaningful finger in her chest, right between her breasts. “Honor and justice might keep you afloat in this life, Vayle, but they do nothing for me. And they’ve never been the foundation of the Black Rot. You can pick and choose jobs as you will, only accept ones that make you all hot and bothered with the idea of justice, but what happens here tonight is necessary for the survival of the Black Rot as a whole. One will never be greater than the whole.”

Shaking her head, she threw a hand toward the general direction of the city gate. “Set them free. There’s less than two hundred of them. Kane Calbid won’t care if there are two hundred guards sworn to Serith running free. He won’t pursue them; they can… they can rejoin their wives, their mothers, fathers, brothers… their babies! Everyone who Serith allowed to leave this city.”

“That’s not the agreement I made with Kane.”

“Fuck your agreement. He’s going to see a dead king. That’s not good enough for him? Hell, Astul, why can’t these men lay down their arms soon as you do the deed? Allow them to surrender to Kane’s armies.”

She’d been needling me about this for days, although not with quite so much vigor. It was getting tiresome. I slammed my hand against the wooden siding of a building in frustration, punching it straight through.

“You know why?” I said, much too loudly. Spit flung on the tail of my words. “Because all it takes is one proud guardsman, the man who thinks his destiny is to protect the bloody king. And suddenly the city guard sees us as unrightful usurpers, and the Rots are fighting two hundred well-armed men. We won’t escape without injury. I won’t let that happen. The guards will die with their backs turned, unable to mount a resistance, unable to harm our Rots.”

Through gnashed teeth, she said, “We could have gone about this systematically.”

“We didn’t and we won’t.”

“We could have convinced Serith to dissolve the city guard.”

“He’s batshit insane. Wouldn’t have worked. He’s convinced they took an oath and that perishing under Kane Calbid’s assault is the only proper way for their contract to expire.”

“Using Lysa as a negotiation point would have made him think otherwise.”

A sense of profound anger rose up in my stomach like a bad burn after a hot meal. “I’m done with this conversation. It’s over. It’s getting late. It’s time to end this.”

She blew air out her nose like a disgruntled dog. “You don’t think this is the right decision, either. You don’t know what the right decision is, do you? Look at you! You’re smitten with anger. When you’re confident, I’ve seen you deflect criticism like plate deflects steel. You laugh at it, and give it a wink and move on. You’re… you’re scared, aren’t you, Astul? Scared that I’m right. Scared that—”

“Maybe I fucking am,” I spat. “Let’s drop the shit, can we, Vayle? Letting these men go free, or making them surrender to Kane Calbid, whatever it is you want to do with them, has just as many pitfalls. It’ll end with their butchering all the same. At least this decision will save their families and our Rots. The guardsmen themselves will die quickly, and Kane Calbid will honor our agreement.”

“I hope you understand,” she said, “you will be the one who will live with the misery of butchering two hundred lives, of widowing two hundred wives, of orphaning hundreds of children when the wives lose their minds. And all to better your position in the game. Our position. It’s not an easy thing to endure, a scarred past. Trust me, hmm?”

“I can handle it,” I said.

She smiled gloomily. “I’m sure you can.” She took a drink of her wine. “I’ve handled it for years. It’s easy at first. Starts out as nightmares that you wake up from and forget about as you eat your breakfast. But soon, they linger a little longer. A little longer. A little longer, till you go to sleep with the same horrors you awoke with.” She bit her lip as she regarded her skin of wine. “Soon you drink to chase away the nightmares. Then you drink to chase away the headaches. Then the sickness. Then the shakes.”

“I won’t let that happen,” I said.

“You won’t have a choice. But I’ll be here for you when it happens, forever and for always, because I love you, Astul, as much as a friend can. I’ve been with you for fifteen years, and it’s been the greatest time of my life. But it makes me very sad to know that in those fifteen years”—her mouth twisted into a frown—“you haven’t grown one bit.”