Assassin's Blood Page 17

“Then we’re all good? I passed the challenge?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have the box?”

  Seriously? He was still going to demand I find the damn box after Evandir had gone crazy and tried to kill me? “Evandir said he took it.”

  Ash folded his arms. “Then get it back.”

  Fuming, I searched the bushes where Evandir had been hiding, but there was nothing there besides twigs that snagged in my hair and a few beetles that scurried away as I stomped around. This was stupid. Who cared about the damn box?

  Ash waited patiently by the shrine.

  “Not long until dawn,” he said in a conversational tone, making me realise the sky was lighter. His frown was so much clearer, now.

  “How big is this box of yours?” I asked, frustrated.

  “I’ve already given you more help than I should have.”

  “Then a little bit more won’t make much difference.”

  He sighed, then held up his hand, thumb and forefinger a little distance apart. About the size of a small jewellery box, then. Well, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have spent so much time trampling the damn bushes. I’d been expecting something a decent size.

  I knelt beside Evandir, who was still out cold. “I thought I was becoming an assassin, not a pickpocket,” I said as I rolled him over and checked the back pockets of his dark pants. Sure enough, one boasted a suspiciously square bulge. I pulled it out, triumphant, and flicked it open. “It’s empty? All this for an empty box? What was the point?”

  “You don’t need to know the reasons for the orders.” He turned that dark scowl on me. “You only have to follow them.”

  21

  “I think you must prepare yourself,” the healer says, and Ash’s face crumples in grief and denial.

  I know the woman is a healer, though I’ve never seen her before. I’m floating somewhere up near the ceiling, watching this little tableau. In the same way that I know the woman is a healer, I realise I’m in a dream, but it seems far more lifelike than my dreams usually are. The room is clean and the white sheets on the bed are fresh. A strong smell of eucalyptus scents the air, not quite managing to cover an underlying stench of vomit.

  Ash’s hair is longer, braided down his back, but I’d know him anywhere, though I’ve never seen that hard face so filled with emotion. “No,” he says, and his hands close into fists at his side. “You must be able to save her. A week ago, she was fine. How can she be dying?”

  The healer’s face is full of sorrow, too, though hers is a calmer, quieter kind than the agony in Ash’s expression. She shakes her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s like iron poisoning in the way it has attacked every part of her body.”

  They both stare down at the girl on the bed, her face as pale as the sheets she lies on. Soft brown hair is tangled with sweat, snaking across the white pillow, and she whimpers in her sleep, a small, animal sound of pain.

  Ash sits on the bed and catches her hand in his. “It can’t be iron poisoning. She’s never left the Realms in her life.”

  “I know,” the healer responds. “If it was iron poisoning, I would have been able to save her. This is something unknown to me, and she hasn’t responded to any of my treatments.”

  Ash leaps up, and for a moment I think he means to attack the healer, such is the violence of his movement. Instead, he hurls the sheet back with a snap of his wrist and gathers the dying girl into his arms.

  “What are you doing?” the healer cries as he heads for the door, the girl cradled against his chest.

  His eyes are bright with unshed tears, but a new purpose has entered his expression. “If you can’t help, I’ll take her to someone who can.”

  The healer stares after him, perplexed, as he strides from the room.

  Now I’m in Ash’s head, becoming him in that strange way you can slip into someone else’s skin in dreams. Grief and fury wage a terrible war within him/me. My love is clasped in my arms, and I clutch her warmth to me as if it’s the only thing keeping me alive. She feels so light, almost insubstantial already. She’s drifting away from me, and I can’t bear to look down into that beloved face. Instead, I bury my face in her hair, choking back a sob. I will save her. I will. There is a mighty healer among the ghosts of my father’s unholy blade. I just have to persuade him to use his power for good for once.

  I’m thrown out of Ash’s thoughts, and now I’m in another place. With a jolt of surprise, I realise I recognise it. It’s Celebrach’s study, booklined and shadowy, lit only by the fire drowsing in the hearth and a small faelight that hovers above his desk. The man himself is seated there, writing a letter, and the scratching of the quill across the paper is the only sound in the room.

  The door is flung open, shouldered aside by Ash as he enters bearing the girl. She looks even worse than she did before. Her skin has taken on a greyish hue, and the night dress she wears clings to her form, sodden with sweat. There’s a wet patch on Ash’s shoulder where her head rests.

  Celebrach puts the quill back in its stand and picks up his letter, blowing on it to dry the ink. He doesn’t seem surprised at this unceremonious interruption. In fact, he doesn’t show any emotion at all, merely laying the letter to one side and clasping his hands in front of him on top of the desk.

  Ash staggers toward him, and for a minute I think he’s going to dump the girl on the desk, but he falls into one of the armchairs in front of it instead, the girl cradled in his lap. His limbs are trembling, though whether from the effort of carrying her or the storm of emotions that rages within him, I can no longer tell. I’m only an observer of this scene, once again watching from outside.

  “Help me, Father,” Ash says.

  Celebrach is his father? Shocked, I look more closely at Celebrach’s impassive face. Their eyes are different. Celebrach’s are a piercing blue, unlike Ash’s cold grey ones. But now that I’m looking for it, there is a resemblance in the shape of their faces and the straight line of their noses. Celebrach’s hair is darker than Ash’s mid-brown, but they share the same full lips.

  “Who is this?” He gazes at the girl without interest.

  “Her name is Hattah. She sickened a few days ago. The healers can do nothing. But I know you can save her.”

  Celebrach leans back in his chair, regarding Ash with impatience. “Her name means nothing. What is she to you that you care so much about her fate?”

  Ash lifts his chin as if in defiance. “She is my intended.”

  “Your intended? Did you think to discuss your plans with your father before you made promises to some girl?”

  “She’s not some girl. I love her, and my life isn’t yours to dictate.”

  “Oh, you love her?” His voice drips with scorn. “What does love have to do with anything? You are my son, destined for a great place among the Vipers. I should never have let your mother have the raising of you. It’s made you weak.”

  “Father, she doesn’t have much time.” He looks up, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows hard. I can tell the next words don’t come easily. “Please, will you help her?”

  Celebrach reaches behind him for the twisted dagger that always sits on its stand there. Leaning back in his chair, he holds the blade in one hand, tapping it against his other palm while he considers Ash’s request.

  Finally, he says, “No.”

  “No?” Ash practically snarls the word at the other man. “Look at her, Father. She’s dying—and I know you can save her. How can you be so heartless?”

  That surprises a laugh out of Celebrach. “Heartlessness is what I do, Ashovar. Why should I save this nobody when her life is standing between me and what I want?”

  “What do you mean, what you want? She’s done nothing to you. She’s an innocent!”

  Idly, Celebrach spears the letter he’d been writing on the point of his dagger. “Yes, an innocent who will distract you from your true calling. An innocent who will tie you to some mundane life, when your place is here, at my side.”


  “I’ll never be a Viper.” There is a world of loathing in Ash’s tone. I search his face, surprised, but find nothing but truth there. For the first time, I notice that he’s not wearing assassins’ black. He looks a different person in a sky-blue shirt and brown pants. Fresher. More wholesome.

  “Are you sure about that? Never is a long time.”

  It seems an odd thing for a fae to say. They are the specialists in eternity, used to thinking about time in centuries.

  The girl chooses that moment to moan again, a sound of such pain I flinch. Whatever is wrong with her, she’s clearly in agony.

  Ash strokes her face, then looks up, a new determination in his eyes. “I’ll do anything. I’m begging you, Father. Name your price.”

  Celebrach sits up straight, his eyes gleaming with interest. I almost expect him to rub his hands like an old-timey villain. “You know what my price is. You must join the Vipers.”

  “She will never marry a Viper.” Ash has the look of a man who knows he is cornered, a look of hollow defeat.

  “Then that’s the decision you’ll have to make. Give her up and let her live without you, or keep her and watch her die.” Celebrach shrugs, as if he doesn’t much care which option Ash chooses. “You’d better not take too long deciding. She looks as though she won’t last much longer.”

  The girl is making a funny whistling sound now as she breathes, her chest rising and falling in shallow, desperate breaths.

  Ash looks up with despair in his eyes. “You leave me no choice.”

  “Nonsense,” Celebrach says briskly. “You have a choice; you just don’t like the options.” He locks gazes with his son for a moment. “I take it you will be joining the Vipers?”

  “Yes.” There are storms in those grey eyes. I’ve seen that look before, and I’m glad that, for once, I’m not the target of that glare.

  But Celebrach seems unconcerned. “Excellent.” He stands up and walks around the desk, the twisted dagger in his hand. “Hold out her arm.”

  22

  A week passed, during which Ash drove me harder than ever at training each night, so that I went to bed every morning a mass of bruises and aching muscles. I worked hard, remembering what he’d said about wolves and lambs.

  In that whole week, he never once cracked a smile. It was hard to reconcile the cold reality with the man I’d seen in my dream. That man had known overpowering love and great grief. Perhaps also great happiness, though I never found out, since I had woken up before the dream ended.

  I was kind of embarrassed by my subconscious self, to be honest. From where had I conjured that man full of feeling and empathy? Certainly not from anything I’d seen in the waking world. Oh, sure, he’d covered me with a blanket once, and I guess he’d saved me from Evandir, but I wasn’t sure if that was even about me. It would probably hurt his professional pride to have someone take out his new apprentice so early in the piece. It reflected badly on him, I supposed. People would think that if he’d trained me better, I wouldn’t have needed rescuing.

  Had I suddenly developed psychic powers, to be having such oddly specific dreams about Ash? That would be a joke, wouldn’t it—to long for power all my life, then when I finally developed some, have it turn out to be the ability to have completely random dreams about people’s pasts.

  Not that there was anything to suggest there was any truth to the dream at all. Trying to blame it on non-existent magic was just an attempt to make myself feel better about my soppy subconscious.

  Well, my dream self might be prepared to imagine that Ash had a softer side, but my conscious mind knew what a hard bastard he was, blankets or no blankets.

  Nothing was said about that night in the forest, not by Ash—he’d shut me down when I tried to ask him about it—and not by Nuah, who’d disappeared for a couple of days and then reappeared acting as if nothing had happened. I might have thought I had dreamed all that, too, except for the glimpse I caught of the bandages on her shoulder and the fact that her training regime changed to something slightly less punishing. Evandir was much the same as ever. He had already disliked me, so it was hard to see any difference in his sneers and insults, though I took care never to be alone with him.

  Not that I really had to worry about that. Ash stuck to my side like glue, playing the sheepdog in spite of his words. When we weren’t training, he was quizzing me on the books I had studied, making me draw endless pictures of plants and memorising their uses.

  “Are you sure I’m studying to become an assassin and not a botanist?” I’d grumbled to him once.

  He had merely waved at me impatiently to continue.

  “Half of them look the same to me anyway,” I said. “Look at this one: ethenerell. It looks just like starbright, which is nothing special. It grew next to the creek where I used to play as a kid. How am I supposed to tell them apart?”

  “If you read the whole entry, you will discover that starbright is one of ethenerell’s common names,” he said reprovingly. “And also that Spring is the only Realm in which it grows, and even there it is rare. The juice of its pod, if mixed into food or drink, can induce a death-like sleep.”

  “Sounds handy.” Oddly specific, too. Did he mean it did nothing on its own, but only when it was mixed with food or drink? How did anyone ever figure that out? I studied the drawing of the familiar tiny flower with renewed interest.

  “Occasionally. It’s more of an oddity, since the death sleep only lasts a few minutes. There aren’t many practical applications.”

  “I’ve never heard starbright had any uses at all. Does Spring know about this?”

  He shrugged. “If they do, they certainly aren’t spreading the information around.”

  If it wasn’t long lists of plants, he had me memorising histories of the Vipers, complete with names and dates. And believe me, when people live as long as the fae do, that was a shitload of dates. Even when my head was buried in those books, he was usually somewhere close by, reading or just staring gloomily into the fire. No doubt he was regretting his charitable impulse to take me on, now, and thinking that seven years with his apprentice felt like a hell of a long time.

  That was bothering me, too. If only he wasn’t underfoot all the time, I could have tested to see whether the gate would let me out now. If I could make it to Willow’s sith, it wouldn’t matter that Ash knew where I was, he wouldn’t be able to follow me there. I was fretting more about my friends with each passing day. Willow would be beside herself, and Raven would be thinking this was all his fault for letting me get involved. They probably thought I was dead. Anxiety tightened my throat and burrowed into my chest every time I thought of home. I wasn’t normally a patient person, and this waiting was killing me.

  One night, after we finished our training bout, Ash took me into the forest again. This time, he led me away to the west, along a track I hadn’t seen on my previous visit.

  “Where are we going?” I asked his back as he strode ahead of me. A small faelight bobbed in front of him, lighting his way, but his bulk blocked most of it, leaving me to stumble in the dark behind him. Resentfully, I sent up my own faelight, glaring at the back of his head.

  “To the pits.”

  Well, that was no answer at all. The pits? This whole place was the pits. His habit of technically answering a question without actually giving the information requested was really beginning to get on my nerves. I’d never met anyone who kept his cards as close to his chest as this guy.

  How was I supposed to learn anything if he treated information like precious drops of blood, never to be spent except in the most serious of causes? I was his apprentice; he was supposed to be bloody teaching me.

  “You know, it probably wouldn’t kill you to explain things a little more thoroughly now and then.” Resentment seeped into my voice.

  “I presume it’s the human blood in you that makes you so impatient,” he said in a dismissive tone.

  “No, I just hate being kept in the dark.”

&nbs
p; “Then you’ve chosen the wrong profession. A Viper obeys orders without question.” He glanced over his shoulder, his frown clear even in the dim glow of my faelight. I was so exhausted from the constant training I didn’t have the strength to make a brighter one. “And without needing to know the reasons behind the orders.”

  “So you think you’re doing me a favour, then, getting me used to the Viper way. You know, even if you hadn’t told me, I would have guessed that you’ve never trained an apprentice before.”

  “Really.” His tone discouraged going any further down this path, but what did I have to lose? I wasn’t actually going to be his apprentice for the next seven years.

  “Yes, really. People tend to do better when they feel like they’re part of a team. People learn better when the why’s are explained, not just the what’s.”

  “And you speak from your vast experience of training Vipers, do you?” He held a protruding branch aside for me, then looked back questioningly when I didn’t move.

  I faced him, hands on hips. “I have just as much experience at it as you do—which is exactly none. What I do have is an understanding of people. That, and the fact that I actually care about anyone other than myself.”

  “You think that I’m selfish? That I don’t care for anyone but myself?” His eyes were black in the fitful light of my flickering faelight, but for a minute, I thought there was something soft in them, despite his harsh tone. Something vulnerable that recalled that dream Ash. “Then you should watch and learn, apprentice. Vipers cannot afford the so-called finer feelings. Other people will only twist them and use them against you.”

  I had the feeling we were no longer talking about his lack of communication, but I was still mad. “So I should stalk through life like a robot with no feelings at all, like you?”

  He stared at me so long I started to feel uncomfortable, but I’d be damned if I’d look away first.

  “It would hurt less that way,” he said at last, then spun on his heel and continued along the path.