Cameo the Assassin (16 page)

“What, and died like a dog on the road? No thank you, sir.”

“Wretched servant,” Derbec spat.

Opal flinched at the words he used. He took several steps back toward the coach. “Ladies,” he said as he opened the carriage door.

Claire and Lorelei hurried over with their mother right behind them.

“Forgive me, Lady, but there’s only room for the three of us,” Opal said to their mother, shutting the door before she could join them.

“Four!” Kyrian yelled from the driver’s bench.

“Ah, yes,” Opal said as he jumped into the coach. “Drive on, Kyrian. I’m ready to go.”

Opal sat back in the dark cushion and watched as his fellow travelers disappeared in the distance, lost in the darkened woods between Plunyport and Llandyport. He cursed himself for not setting up a meeting place with Cameo, and now he wondered whether he would see her again.

Lorelei’s eyes fell to the pistol across Opal’s ruffled shirt.

“You aren’t going to brood for this whole trip, are you Black Opal?” Claire blushed as she used his real name.

Opal looked over at the young women with his head still perched in his hand, and smiled crookedly. “Certainly not.”

* * * * *

Cameo stood beside Ivy’s grave. It seemed small in the darkness behind the shrine. Her face seemed to be made even more pale in the glowing light of a lantern. Its eerie light bounced about, seeming to give the entire backdrop ethereal movement.

The headstone was slim, tall, and white, with half of a sun on it, giving it the appearance that the sun was either coming up or going down.

“Isn’t that the symbol Kyrian wears?” Bel asked. He glanced up at the assassin as she stood reverently over the grave.

Cameo had the appearance of someone defeated. Grave robbing that was just about as low as she could have sunk in the world of thieves.

“What happened to her?” Bel said.

“Men killed her.”

“I’m sorry.”

She lifted her grayish eyes to look at him for a moment, then let her gaze drop back to the sodden ground beneath her. “We were both molested and killed by these men...these men of noble blood. Only I didn’t die, and she did.

“I think that’s why Haffef is so upset.” She met Bel’s rather stupefied expression. “He wanted her. But she died before he had the opportunity to make her his own. So he ended up with me. I was still breathing, barely.”

She sunk her shovel deep into the Faettan soil and sent the first shovel of dirt out of her sister’s grave.

Bel followed suit, depositing his shovel into the grave and tossing the dirt to one side. “They left you to die?”

“Yes.”

“Over the years, you must have been able to eliminate the men who did that to you?”

“No. Someone else did,” she said.

Bel piled up another shovel of dirt onto the side of the grave. They were nearly three feet down. “Why wasn’t she buried in the Yetta Graveyard?”

Cameo forced her shovel through a tree root violently. “Someone apparently felt we were religious.”

“I could see that about you.”

“Yeah.” She looked around at the other headstones, approximately ten others. “I can see that it’s not all that popular to be buried here these days.”

He wiped the sweat from his brow and replaced it with cemetery dirt. “These days? So does that mean we’re digging for a casket or loose bones?”

“I don’t know, how long does it take for a casket to deteriorate?” she asked.

“With this shrine so close...is that why your vampire friend didn’t dig her up himself?”

She gestured to the headstone with the religious symbol; the engraving of the sun coming up. “I think that’s why.”

“I’m going to kill Opal when I see him again. No offense to you, but this isn’t exactly how I foresaw things going. I was thinking—oh, I don’t know—we would be robbing a bank or something slightly more glamorous, less tiresome, and a bit less dirty.” His shovel hit something hard.

Cameo shined the lantern down into the grave.

A smattering of several bones were visible in the light.

Bel gazed somewhat horrified from the human bones to Cameo’s saddened face.

She leapt five feet out of the grave and rummaged through her pack for a large canvas sack.

“Is that what you’re planning to carry your sister’s body out of here in?”

She climbed back down and sighed, “ I can’t believe I’m doing this.” She grabbed onto a bone and pulled it out. The bones came out of the ground like vegetables waiting to be plucked.

Bel climbed from the hole staggering and holding his forehead. “Ghastly,” the highwayman hissed.

“Like your poetry, Bellamy?”

Bel startled.

A young man with long, black hair was standing at the other side of the open grave. His face was pale and thin, with the scar of a
F
burned into his cheek.

Bel went for his pistol, but the young man held his out in front of him. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re the man who burned the Tavern Pipe Inn.”

“The very one,” he grinned.

“Why are you chasing me? I’m just a poet.”

The young man laughed and cocked his head to one side. “You’re a highwayman. More importantly, the king has a large bounty on your head.” He looked down at Cameo, who was standing up at the bottom of the grave, a ghostly pale visage, staring into his eyes. “I got two of you. How nice.”

“Have you been tracking us?”

“Of course, Bellamy.”

“How flattering.”

“More flattering to me. You didn’t even notice!”

Cameo frowned, noticing the Association badge on his cape.

He met her eyes, grinning, “I can’t believe I caught up with you in a graveyard. You are so predictable. Just like a song my mother sang to me when I was a little boy.”

She smiled at the rather obvious note of wonder and awe in his voice.

“Jules, isn’t it?”

He was taken aback. “How do you—”

Cameo leapt from the grave suddenly and knocked the pistol from his hand.

Jules fell back, trying to pull another weapon from under his cape, but she pushed him, and he toppled to the ground. He hit his head on a gravestone and landed on the cold ground, unconscious.

“Sorry, Jules.”

Bel wandered over to get a better look. “This is the man who has been chasing me all this time?”

Cameo inspected the trickle of blood on his forehead. “Works for the Association.”

“He’s so young.”

“Determined though,” she said.

“Do you know him?”

“Just his name.” She rummaged through his backpack, finding a few typical items: food, weapons, matches, wanted posters for the group of them. “What’s this?”

Bel knelt down. “Another cape?”

“With a bullet hole.... This is my cape. But I thought I left it at the Temple of the Moon.”

“If he stopped there—”

She met his eyes, “I wonder what happened to Cyrus.”

“Kyrian’s grandfather?”

She took the rope from his things.

Bel watched her as she bound his hands. “Aren’t you going to kill him?”

She looked over her shoulder at him, “I don’t kill everyone, Bel. That’s just part of the fairy tale about me.”

“He’s just going to come after us if we leave him tied up here!”

“No, that wasn’t my plan,” she said.

“We’re going to carry a bag of human bones and an assassin with us?” Bel asked, dubious.

“You never know. He might come in handy.”

It started to rain.

“Uh oh....”

Cameo slid back into the open grave, “I have to finish up here. Keep your eyes on him.”

“Yeah,” Bel muttered, pulling his pistol on the unconscious assassin.

Then the sky opened up and the rain pounded down on them.

Chapter Eight

“W
HAT IS THAT ON YOUR
cheek anyhow? An
F
? I’ve heard that some towns brand people for things like theft, but I’ve never seen that one before,” Bel asked as he dragged Jules along by his bonds.

“Wick is going to kill you utterly when she discovers you have me,” Jules grumbled.

Bel smiled, “So you must be one of her little favorites if I’m to be killed
utterly
.”

The assassin pulled back on his leash, causing the highwayman to fall back a bit.

“Don’t trip,” Jules sneered.

Cameo glanced back at the two of them. She had a large bag of bones on her back and looked completely like an undead, an observation that hadn’t gone unnoticed by Bel.

“I have more rope for your mouth, Jules.”

“Oh, really? From my backpack? No kidding.”

“Yes. Thank you for being so diligent with your survival gear,” Cameo said.

Jules shot her a bitter look.

“
F, F...
hmm, really leaves out gambling, pimping, theft...could it be fighting?”

“You ask a lot of stupid questions.”

Bel laughed.

Cameo was readjusting the bag on her shoulder when she saw a shade standing on the path in front of her. It was a slender silhouette of a man just standing in the forest. She nearly missed it in the darkness of the wood. Bel and Jules came close to running right into her.

“What?”

Suddenly she saw Opal in her mind.

Then the shade walked away.

“Cameo?” Bel said.

She lowered her sister’s bones to the wet ground. “Your friend is nearby.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it,” she said.

She took the leash that Jules was on and tied it around the trunk of a slender tree.

“That’s it? We’re just leaving him here?” Bel took a step forward, ready to follow her.

“No; you both have to stay here for a minute.”

“What?” Bel protested.

“Look, I can’t flag down Opal with this ...bag here. You have to guard it and our prisoner.”

The highwayman looked around at the all-encompassing darkness of Lockenwood forest, then turned to her in dread.

She leaned in, “You’ll be all right. I’m not going to leave you here.”

He nodded unhappily.

* * * * *

“And then what did he do?”

“He threatened to kill me,” Opal smiled, toying with his pistol.

“Good heavens!” Claire said.

“Indeed. Luckily I had this very pistol with me at the time. It was loaded and ready, just as it is today.”

Lorelei met his eye with an impish smile playing on her lips, “Weren’t you drunk?”

“Certainly not.”

“But...didn’t you just say you had been drinking in that tavern for hours?”

“Ah, that .... Well, I may have been a little tipsy, but if anything, it only made the fight a fair one. Walter was a bit older than I was at that point, and he needed some advantage,” Opal said.

“That’s so sweet,” Claire touched his arm gently.

“Not half as sweet as you are, my dear, I’m sure.”

She looked up at him coyly.

“When do you think we’ll be in Llandyport?” Lorelei said.

Opal turned to looked at Lorelei, who was in turn looking out the window. “Are you so anxious to depart, my dear?”

“No ...” she hissed, “but...it does seem like it’s taken a long time to get there doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps Kyrian is a bit lost.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?” Claire grasped his shoulder as she leaned in toward him, her breath hot against his cheek.

Opal searched her dainty face as he turned toward her, “Terrifies me.”

“You must be terrified yourself, Claire,” Lorelei said. “Whatever will Derbec say when he finds out you threw yourself at such a scoundrel?”

Opal put his nose in the air. “Scoundrel? That’s rather harsh.”

“And you’re going to tell him, Lorelei?” Claire sneered. “You’re one to talk.”

“I’ve been positively an angel, Claire, and you have a boyfriend, so shove off!”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Claire said.

“I suppose all that talk of marriage meant nothing to you?”

“Ladies, ladies, please. It’s just a carriage ride to Llandyport. Claire is still free to marry whomever she wishes—”

“I’m not engaged to Derbec!”

Opal rolled his eye and checked himself in the reflective surface of the handle of Claire’s fan. He looked rather well, actually, for all he had been through. That bath had done loads of good. Soothed his spirit as well as his mind. He smiled to himself and then began to wonder where Kyrian had taken them.

“And after all, Opal is free to see whomever he chooses.”

Black Opal felt suddenly thrust back into some idiotic conversation. “I beg your pardon?”

“Claire was just informing me that you can do as you please,” Lorelei surmised.

Opal smiled at the two of them. “Well, I never really did say that, did I?”

Lorelei tilted her head to one side, intrigued. “Oh, that hadn’t occurred to me. I suppose someone of your age could easily be married and have about twelve children.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Opal pressed his lips together, trying to reapply rouge to his mouth, as he stared at the ceiling, feeling a bit insulted.

“Lorelei can be very rude.”

“I speak my mind! I’m not afraid to say what I feel passionate about.”

Claire rolled her eyes, then looked over at the highwayman compassionately. “I bet you have a lady love, someone elegant, who pines for your return?”

Opal nearly laughed. “Something like that.”

“She’s probably pining away for you right now, you know? I would be.” Claire slid back into the bench seat next to Opal.

“Hmm...oh, would you?”

Her eyes lingered on him, “You have no idea how I’d pine—”

There was a loud blast, which sounded to Opal like a pistol, and the carriage halted suddenly. The three of them were thrown from one side of the compartment to the other as the coach overturned. They finally came to rest against a tree, dangling in a cockeyed position off the road..

“Is it Derbec?” Claire squealed in delight.

A second gunshot caught the girl in the face as she peered out the window. She tumbled backward, like a shattered doll.

“Claire!”

Opal threw himself in front of Lorelei instinctively. “Take my pistol.”

The door was ripped open violently by two figures in dark clothing. “It’s Opal! Don’t let him get his sword!”