CHAPTER
2
The rain didn’t stop the next day, and Celaena awoke to a grumble of thunder and a servant setting a long, beautifully wrapped box on her dresser. She opened the gift as she drank her morning cup of tea, taking her time with the turquoise ribbon, doing her best to pretend that she wasn’t that interested in what Arobynn had sent her. None of these presents came close to earning any sort of forgiveness. But she couldn’t contain her squeal when she opened the box and found two gold hair combs glinting at her. They were exquisite, formed like sharp fish fins, each point accentuated with a sliver of sapphire.
She nearly upset her breakfast tray as she rushed from the table by the window to the rosewood vanity. With deft hands, she dragged one of the combs through her hair, sweeping it back before she nimbly flipped it into place. She quickly repeated it on the other side of her head, and when she had finished, she beamed at her reflection. Exotic, beguiling, imperious.
Arobynn might be a bastard, and he might associate with Lysandra, but he had damn good taste. Oh, it was so nice to be back in civilization, with her beautiful clothes and shoes and jewels and cosmetics and all the luxuries she’d had to spend the summer without!
Celaena examined the ends of her hair and frowned. The frown deepened when her attention shifted to her hands—to her shredded cuticles and jagged nails. She let out a low hiss, facing the windows along one wall of her ornate bedroom. It was early autumn—that meant rain usually hung around Rifthold for a good couple of weeks.
Through the low-hanging clouds and the slashing rain, she could see the rest of the capital city gleaming in the gray light. Pale stone houses stood tucked together, linked by broad avenues that stretched from the alabaster walls to the docks along the eastern quarter of the city, from the teeming city center to the jumble of crumbling buildings in the slums at the southern edge, where the Avery River curved inland. Even the emerald roofs on each building seemed cast in silver. The glass castle towered over them all, its upper turrets shrouded in mist.
The convoy from Melisande couldn’t have picked a worse time to visit. If they wanted to have street festivals, they’d find few participants willing to brave the merciless downpour.
Celaena slowly removed the combs from her hair. The convoy would arrive today, Arobynn had told her last night over a private dinner. She still hadn’t given him an answer about whether she’d take down Doneval in five days, and he hadn’t pushed her about it. He had been kind and gracious, serving her food himself, speaking softly to her like she was some frightened pet.
She glanced again at her hair and nails. A very unkempt, wild-looking pet.
She strode into her dressing room. She’d decide what to do about Doneval and his agenda later. For now, not even the rain would keep her from a little pampering.
The shop she favored for her upkeep was ecstatic to see her—and utterly horrified at the state of her hair. And nails. And her eyebrows! She couldn’t have bothered to pluck her eyebrows while she was away? Half a day later—her hair cut and shining, her nails soft and gleaming—Celaena braved the sodden city streets.
Even with the rain, people found excuses to be out and about as the giant convoy from Melisande arrived. She paused beneath the awning of a flower shop where the owner was standing on the threshold to watch the grand procession. The Melisanders snaked along the broad avenue that stretched from the western gate of the city all the way to the castle doors.
There were the usual jugglers and fire-eaters, whose jobs were made infinitely harder by the confounded rain; the dance girls whose billowing pants were sodden up to the knees; and then the line of Very Important, Very Wealthy People, who were bundled under cloaks and didn’t sit quite as tall as they’d probably imagined they would.
Celaena tucked her numbed fingers into her tunic pockets. Brightly painted covered wagons ambled past. Their hatches had all been shut against the weather—and that meant Celaena would start back to the Keep immediately.
Melisande was known for its tinkerers, for clever hands that created clever little devices. Clockwork so fine you could swear it was alive, musical instruments so clear and lovely they could shatter your heart, toys so charming you’d believe magic hadn’t vanished from the continent. If the wagons that contained those things were shut, then she had no interest in watching a parade of soaked, miserable people.
Crowds were still flocking toward the main avenue, so Celaena took to narrow, winding alleys to avoid them. She wondered if Sam was making his way to see the procession—and if Lysandra was with him. So much for Sam’s unwavering loyalty. How long had it taken after she’d gone to the desert before he and Lysandra had become dear, dear friends?
Things had been better when she relished the thought of gutting him. Apparently, Sam was just as susceptible to a pretty face as Arobynn was. She didn’t know why she’d thought he would be different. She scowled and walked faster, her freezing arms crossed over her chest as she hunched her shoulders against the rain.
Twenty minutes later, she was dripping water all over the marble floor of the Keep’s entranceway. And one minute after that, she was dripping water all over Arobynn’s study carpet as she told him that she would take on Doneval, his slave-trade blackmail documents, and whoever his co-conspirator might be.
The next morning, Celaena looked down at herself, her mouth caught between a smile and a frown. The neck-to-toe black outfit was all made from the same, dark fabric—as thick as leather, but without the sheen. It was like a suit of armor, only skintight and made from some strange cloth, not metal. She could feel the weight of her weapons where they were concealed—so neatly that even someone patting her down might think they were merely ribbing—and she swung her arms experimentally.
“Careful,” the short man in front of her said, his eyes wide. “You might take off my head.”
Behind them, Arobynn chuckled from where he leaned against the paneled wall of the training room. She hadn’t asked questions when he’d summoned her, then told her to put on the black suit and matching boots that were lined with fleece.
“When you want to unsheathe the blades,” the inventor said, taking a large step back, “it’s a downward sweep, and an extra flick of the wrist.” He demonstrated the motion with his own scrawny arm, and Celaena echoed it.
She grinned as a narrow blade shot out of a concealed flap in her forearm. Permanently attached to the suit, it was like having a short sword welded to her arm. She made the same motion with the other wrist, and the twin blade appeared. Some internal mechanism had to be responsible for it—some brilliant contraption of springs and gears. She gave a few deadly swings in the air in front of her, reveling in the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the swords. They were finely made, too. She raised her brows in admiration. “How do they go back?”
“Ah, a little more difficult,” the inventor said. “Wrist angled up, and press this little button here. It should trigger the mechanism—there you go.” She watched the blade slide back into the suit, then released and returned the blade several times.
The deal with Doneval and his partner was in four days, just long enough for her to try using the new suit. Four days was plenty to figure out his house’s defenses and learn what time the meeting would take place, especially since she already knew that it was occurring in some private study.
At last she looked at Arobynn. “How much is it?”
He pushed off the wall. “It’s a gift. As are the boots.” She knocked a toe against the tiled floor, feeling the jagged edges and grooves of the soles. Perfect for climbing. The sheepskin interior would keep her feet at body temperature, the inventor had said, even if she got them utterly soaked. She’d never even heard of a suit like this. It would completely change the way she conducted her missions. Not that she needed the suit to give her an edge. But she was Celaena Sardothien, gods be damned, so didn’t she deserve the very best equipment? With this suit, no one would question her place as Adarlan’s Assassin. Ever. And if they did … Wyrd help them.
The inventor asked to take her final measurements, though the ones Arobynn had supplied were almost perfect. She lifted her arms out as he did the measuring, asking him bland questions about his trip from Melisande and what he planned to sell here. He was a master tinkerer, he said—and specialized in crafting things that were believed to be impossible. Like a suit that was both armor and an armory, and lightweight enough to wear comfortably.
Celaena looked over her shoulder at Arobynn, who had watched her interrogation with a bemused smile. “Are you getting one made?”
“Of course. And Sam, too. Only the best for my best.” She noticed that he didn’t say “assassin”—but whatever the tinkerer thought about who they were, his face yielded no sign.
She couldn’t hide her surprise. “You never give Sam gifts.”
Arobynn shrugged, picking at his nails. “Oh, Sam will be paying for the suit. I can’t have my second-best completely vulnerable, can I?”
She hid her shock better this time. A suit like this had to cost a small fortune. Materials aside, just the hours it must have taken the tinkerer to create it … Arobynn had to have commissioned them immediately after he’d sent her to the Red Desert. Perhaps he truly felt bad about what happened. But to force Sam to buy it …
The clock chimed eleven, and Arobynn let out a long breath. “I have a meeting.” He waved a ringed hand to the tinkerer. “Give the bill to my manservant when you’re done.” The master tinkerer nodded, still measuring Celaena.
Arobynn approached her, each step as graceful as a movement of a dance. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “I’m glad to have you back,” he murmured onto her hair. With that, he strolled from the room, whistling to himself.
The tinkerer knelt to measure the length between her knee and boot tip, for whatever purpose that had. Celaena cleared her throat, waiting until she was sure Arobynn was out of earshot. “If I were to give you a piece of Spidersilk, could you incorporate it into one of these uniforms? It’s small, so I’d just want it placed around the heart.” She used her hands to show the size of the material that she’d been given by the merchant in the desert city of Xandria.
Spidersilk was a near-mythical material made by horse-sized stygian spiders—so rare that you had to brave the spiders yourself to get it. And they didn’t trade in gold. No, they coveted things like dreams and memories and souls. The merchant she’d met had traded twenty years of his youth for a hundred yards of it. And after a long, strange conversation with him, he’d given her a few square inches of Spidersilk. A reminder, he’d said. That everything has a price.
The master tinkerer’s bushy brows rose. “I—I suppose. To the interior or the exterior? I think the interior,” he went on, answering his own question. “If I sewed it to the exterior, the iridescence might ruin the stealth of the black. But it’d turn any blade, and it’s just barely the right size to shield the heart. Oh, what I’d give for ten yards of Spidersilk! You’d be invincible, my dear.”
She smiled slowly. “As long as it guards the heart.”
She left the tinkerer in the hall. Her suit would be ready the day after tomorrow.
It didn’t surprise her when she ran into Sam on her way out. She’d spotted the dummy that bore his own suit waiting for him in the training hall. Alone with her in the hallway, he examined her suit. She still had to change out of it and bring it back downstairs to the tinkerer so he could make his final adjustments in whatever shop he’d set up while he was staying in Rifthold.
“Fancy,” Sam said. She made to put her hands on her hips, but stopped. Until she mastered the suit, she had to watch how she moved—or else she might skewer someone. “Another gift?”
“Is there a problem if it is?”
She hadn’t seen Sam at all yesterday, but, then again, she’d also made herself pretty scarce. It wasn’t that she was avoiding him; she just didn’t particularly want to see him if it meant running into Lysandra, too. But it seemed strange that he wasn’t on any mission. Most of the other assassins were away on various jobs or so busy they were hardly at home. But Sam seemed to be hanging around the Keep, or helping Lysandra and her madam.
Sam crossed his arms. His white shirt was tight enough that she could see the muscles shifting beneath. “Not at all. Though I’m a little surprised that you’re accepting his gifts. How can you forgive him after what he did?”
“Forgive him! I’m not the one cavorting with Lysandra and attending luncheons and doing … doing whatever in hell it is you spent the summer doing!”
Sam let out a low growl. “You think I actually enjoy any of that?”
“You weren’t the one sent off to the Red Desert.”
“Believe me, I would rather have been thousands of miles away.”
“I don’t believe you. How can I believe anything you say?”
His brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. None of your business. I don’t want to talk about this. And I don’t particularly want to talk to you, Sam Cortland.”
“Then go ahead,” he breathed. “Go crawl back to Arobynn’s study and talk to him. Let him buy you presents and pet your hair and offer you the best-paying missions we get. It won’t take him long to figure out the price for your forgiveness, not when—”
She shoved him. “Don’t you dare judge me. Don’t you say one more word.”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. “That’s fine with me. You wouldn’t listen anyway. Celaena Sardothien and Arobynn Hamel: just the two of you, inseparable, until the end of the world. The rest of us might as well be invisible.”
“That sounds an awful lot like jealousy. Especially considering you had three uninterrupted months with him this summer. What happened, hmm? You failed to convince him to make you his favorite? Found you lacking, did he?”
Sam was in her face so quickly that she fought the urge to jump back. “You know nothing about what this summer was like for me. Nothing, Celaena.”
“Good. I don’t particularly care.”
His eyes were so wide that she wondered if she’d struck him without realizing it. At last he stepped away, and she stormed past him. She halted when he spoke again. “You want to know what price I asked for forgiving Arobynn, Celaena?”
She slowly turned. With the ongoing rain, the hall was full of shadows and light. Sam stood so still that he might have been a statue. “My price was his oath that he’d never lay a hand on you again. I told him I’d forgive him in exchange for that.”
She wished he’d punched her in the gut. It would have hurt less. Not trusting herself to keep from falling to her knees with shame right there, she just stalked down the hall.
She didn’t want to speak to Sam ever again. How could she look him in the eye? He’d made Arobynn swear that for her. She didn’t know what words could convey the mixture of gratitude and guilt. Hating him had been so much easier … And it would have been far simpler if he’d blamed her for Arobynn’s punishment. She had said such cruel things to him in the hallway; how could she ever begin to apologize?
Arobynn came to her room after lunch and told her to have a dress pressed. Doneval, he’d heard, was going to be at the theater that night, and with four days until his exchange, it would be in her best interest to go.
She’d formulated a plan for stalking Doneval, but she wasn’t proud enough to refuse Arobynn’s offer to use his box at the theater for spying—to see who Doneval spoke to, who sat near him, who guarded him. And to see a classical dance performed with a full orchestra … well, she’d never turn that down. But Arobynn failed to say who would be joining them.
She found out the hard way when she climbed into Arobynn’s carriage and discovered Lysandra and Sam waiting inside. With four days until her Bidding, the young courtesan needed all the exposure she could get, Arobynn calmly explained. And Sam was there to provide additional security.
Celaena dared a glance at Sam as she slumped onto the bench beside him. He watched her, his eyes wary, shoulders tensed, as if he expected her to launch a verbal attack right there. Like she’d mock him for what he’d done. Did he really think she was that cruel? Feeling a bit sick, she dropped Sam’s stare. Lysandra just smiled at Celaena from across the carriage and linked her elbow through Arobynn’s.