“Aye. Three we ask.”
“Then five,” she says. “I’ll pay five bits for him.”
That is Merela Karn. Always there at the last minute. Always giving more than expected.
This is a dream of what was.
Chapter 3
I woke from a familiar dream to find I was alone in a strange room.
It took a moment for me to orientate myself. I was not a scared boy at a slave auction, nor was I an assassin’s apprentice crossing the land to my next job. I was in a castle room with clean whitewashed walls, lying in the large soft bed I had slept in. A small pallet was also laid out, and my master had taken that as she preferred to sleep near the door. There was no sign she had ever slept on it: the sheets were smooth, the pillow uncreased. I was not surprised or worried at her absence as this was her way—she rarely slept more than a few hours each night. As I wiped sleep from my eyes she appeared at the door with water, bread and a porridge of grains and leftovers that was as filling as it was tasteless.
I think it was that morning, as the weak sun of yearsage shone in through the greased-paper window of our room, that I first realised my master was no longer invincible. Her hair, black and long, had streaks of grey in it and her dark skin, which gave her away as from somewhere outside the Tired Lands, had lines which gathered at the corners of her eyes when she was worried or thinking hard, and they no longer fled when she had made her decisions.
“Eat, Girton,” she said. “Eat while I tell you what the day holds.” I sat with her and took a bite of the bread. It was still warm. Good.
“How do we go about being Heartblades, Master? How do they train?”
“I suspect it is mostly through skills passed down, Girton. Just like it is with us.”
“Do they fight like us?”
“I have never fought one.”
“But if you did, Master?”
“The finest warriors are picked to train as Heartblades but, when I trained, my master told me the first Heartblades were picked from the assassins. So they probably do, yes, though you will see no tricks from them.”
“Why?”
She stared at the wall, chewing thoughtfully, then spat out a bit of grit from the bread and changed the subject.
“Adran keeps her son’s door guarded at all times. The only time he is alone is when he is under training, and even then he is surrounded by squires loyal to him and a warrior called Celot, the Heartblade Adran mentioned.”
“Why can’t he find who hired an assassin??”
“Celot is an extremely skilled warrior by all accounts, but Adran says he is not an intelligent one, and that is why she wants us.” She picked more grit from her bread. “So, Girton, an exercise. If you were going to assassinate Prince Aydor ap Mennix, how would you do it?”
“Gladly,” I said, rubbing at the bruises on my throat from the rope.
“Girton,” said my master in reprimand.
“Very well.” I forced down a spoonful of tasteless porridge, telling myself it was nothing more than fuel for my body and as such did not have to taste good. “Adran is right. I would come in with Festival and keep up whatever cover I had arranged for the length of it. Then I would find some menial job within the castle and work it until I became a familiar face and an opportunity presented itself or the queen relaxed her guard. Then I would act.”
My master continued to stare at the wall and nod slowly as she chewed. “That may take a long time. Some would say it was lazy.” She said the words quietly and without commitment, as a challenge.
“No, it is not lazy at all. It’s common knowledge that Aydor has no children and the queen intends her son to marry the high king’s sister. If I am killing to alter the line of succession there is no great pressure on me to act quickly so I wait. Patience is the assassin’s greatest ally.”
She smiled again, that yearslife shower smile—here and gone. “Patience is the assassin’s greatest ally,” she said. “That phrase is familiar.”
“It is yours, Master.”
She nodded and spat out another bit of grit. “So, if there is an assassin here, how do we stop her, my clever boy?”
“Easily.” She looked up at me. Raised an eyebrow. “We leave a message in scratch for him to contact us and when he turns up we kill him.” She nodded again and picked up her bowl of porridge, lifting a spoonful and then letting some fall, eyeing it warily before she started to eat. She did not look at me. “But we won’t do that,” I added.
“Why not?” she said, and sprinkled a little salt on her porridge in an attempt to make it taste of something.
“Stopping one assassin is pointless, and they may well not know who pays them anyway. Time is on the side of whoever wants Aydor dead. We stop one assassin and another will come. That one would not answer our scratch messages and will probably bring someone to deal with us.”
“So?”
“We must stop the assassin but it is the client we need to find.”
“Exactly.”
“Good. I do not fancy handing over one of our own. What will Adran think though?”
She was quiet then. For a long time.
“I do not think Queen Adran cares about the assassin, Girton, not really. She would like her for an exhibition, I am sure, but Adran’s real concern is in who has betrayed her.” We carried on eating in silence for a while before my master spoke again. “For this we must be able to move among the blessed.” She reached into her jacket and took out a roll of lambskin vellum. “This is for you.”
I took it from her.
“Girton ap Gwynr,” I read from the vellum. “I have acquired a family?”
“Yes, and a rather underhand one at that. I am not sure that Adran even knew the Gwynr estate was in her lands until I told her.” My master’s grasp of the geography of the Tired Lands is often astounding. “The Gwynr are perfect for us. They are a small house that keeps its head down. They live right on the edges of the eastern sourlands so most expect them to be poor, but …”
“They are not?”
“No, they are not at all. They breed mounts and own a tract of land which escaped the Black Sorcerer’s war and is as fertile as any you’ll find. They have not been paying their taxes, which will be unfortunate for them when Adran has finished with us, but for now they suit our purposes.”
“They do?”
“Yes. You are to pass as the youngest son of the house and, with your club foot, the least valuable one.” The words hurt because they contained the truth. “You have been given as hostage against tax owed to the king. While you are here you will train as a squire. Not a bad advancement for a boy with a bad foot, eh?”
“And you?”
“I am your family’s valuable jester, sent as companion to their son in a faraway place and as an apology to King Doran ap Mennix for dodging his taxes.”
“So you get to tread the boards while I get to be hit with swords?”
“Yes.”