Sliding the lady’s ill-fitting silver ring on for luck, I lined the window with nails and laced the shutters with wire and bells. Least I’d have time to wake up before they broke in, and if they did, there was no dodging an ax in this small room.
“First night,” I said to the mice. I tipped the dirty bath water down the drain in the corner, made a person-shaped bump in the bed, and leaned against the drying tub. The ax was heavy in my hands. “Think they’ll come?”
Let them. They’d get an ax in the face and a handful of pain.
Seven
The bells rang once that night, soft and chiming beneath the screams echoing down the halls. Someone’s hand plucked the wire, but the bells sent them back into the night. I spent the morning removing nails from the door.
“There’s blood,” Maud said when she entered, shuddering with each word. “You’re expected at breakfast if you can walk.”
I snatched up a roll from her small—thankfully covered—tray and squished the thick yellow butter between the two halves. “You get sick at the sight of blood, we’ll have problems.”
“Breakfast will be served every morning, and you’re to attend so the Left Hand can do a head count.” She frowned, ignoring my comment about blood. “I won’t bring you anything again unless you ask for it.”
I nodded. “Where’s it at?”
Maud led me down the hallway, servants bowing out of the way.
Food, a room, and no fear of getting robbed the moment I turned my back—I could get used to this. Should get used to this. It would be this way till I died, no matter if that was tonight or twenty years from now.
Might get stabbed to death at any moment, but that could happen anywhere.
Maud had slipped a long black dress with thick leggings into the basket for me this morning. With a quick twirl, flaring the dress out around me, I nicked a plum from a wide-eyed servant’s tray and slipped it under my mask. If we were eating with the Left Hand, we were eating well. I needed to take full advantage of it, gain some weight so I could stand against the others. Maud wrinkled her nose.
“Breakfast.” She opened a door at the end of the hall and opened her mouth again, but a soft voice cut her off.
“Can’t imagine you sleeping in with those bells.”
I spun, plum flying out of my hand. Four, a boy about my age with curly black hair peeking out from the back of his mask, leapt down from a hallway rafter. He was stout and muscular and barely made a sound walking next to me. His hands were a map of pitted scars.
“Don’t worry—loved those bells.” He followed me into the breakfast hall and held up a freshly stitched arm, the catgut neat and white against his dark skin. He was handsome and he knew it, flashing me a smile when I only glared at him. “Told everyone where I was. Clever, clever.”
I rolled my shoulders back and tried to take up as much space as possible next to this firm powerhouse. “I figured I’d get one night of sleep before the real competition started.”
“You’d a better night than Twenty-One.” Four winked and wandered to the far side of the table, sitting next to Two and Three.
The tall long-nosed auditioner was out then. Of course, the ones I couldn’t tell apart didn’t have the decency to die first and make it easy on me.
I dropped into a chair near Two, Three, and Four. They had come to breakfast together and Four kept calling Two “Lady Luck.” She waved him off each time with a bandaged hand.
Most of us were young, no wrinkles around the eyes or spotted hands. All the easier to mold us into the assassin The Left Hand wanted. If we lived.
Nine auditioners were missing. The only invited auditioner not at the table was One, and I’d no idea if Ruby would be impressed or disappointed.
Didn’t matter much either way. I was here and nine of the others weren’t. Only fourteen left.
Five snapped at a passing server. His hands—the blistered pink of sun-seared white skin—cut through the air, fingers pointed and straight as knives, and jabbed at the servant as he whispered. He rudely pointed at what he wanted and where he wanted it. No one else paid him any mind.
Five definitely grew up with servants.
Four too. At least he spoke to his servant like they were a person and thanked them for the little mug of fruity red tea steaming up our end of the table. I clasped my hands.
No use eating unless I knew it was safe for sure. I’d no knowledge of poisons.
The main doors burst open. Ruby swirled into the room in a storm of colored silk with his sword belt bound around his narrow hips and arms thrown wide. His sword hung in a silver-plated sheath, and the melon-shaped pommel slapped his upper thigh. The blade was curved and long as my arm.
“Nine dead. Lovely. If you keep taking my advice, we’ll be out of here by dinner.” Ruby meandered around the table, trailing his fingers along the back of our chairs, and sat at the far end. He tilted his head to the side in mock consideration. “You’re doing so much better than my year.”
His invisible gaze raised the hair on my arms. His audition was seven years ago, and I’d been running my first jobs for Grell. Amethyst was the newest member, winning her mask three years back, and gossip about her hadn’t spread far either. Emerald was the only original left—handpicked by the Queen at the end of the Mage War as a personal guard. The dead Opal had joined right after her.
“Hardly anything to be proud of—your audition was full of pissants,” said a lilting voice behind me. “I bet only auditioners Two through Eight did anything last night other than cower.”
I ground my teeth together and twisted round in a huff.
My retort rushed out of me.
Emerald, a vision of steel and green silk, glided through the doorway. She was lithe and muscled, arms bare and flexed, streaked in scars with a pale silver dust shining over her skin like white-capped waves on the cool, deep black of distant ocean. She walked past me in a breeze of perfume and peppermint, the apothecary scents clinging to her like the old black ink of the dead runes scrawled across her. The silk layered and draped over her shoulders matched her high-cheeked, mouthless emerald mask perfectly. Beetle wings stitched into the train of her dress glittered in the light.
Emerald was the only person to ever face a mage’s shadow alone and survive—the scar slicing through her hairline and peeking out from behind her mask proof enough of that—and she was only a few strides away from me.
“Killing is simple,” Emerald said as she folded herself into a chair and plucked up a teakettle, pouring a small measure in her glass. She added a splash of milk. “Secrets are hard.”
Ruby rested his chin on his laced fingers. “Who was seen?”
“Thirteen is disqualified and dismissed.” Emerald handed Ruby her cup. “Your servant will gather your belongings and a guard will escort you out. Thank you for trying.”
“Who?” Thirteen cracked her hands against the table, upending mugs and sending her plate flying. “You have to tell us who—give us an appeal. There wasn’t anyone there.”
Emerald picked up a spoon, holding it like a knife, and Thirteen stilled. “Four people reported your blunder. You’re dismissed.”