The Assassin and the Empire (11 page)

The game had been played, and she had lost.

Now they came to the looming alabaster walls of the city, their gates thrown wide to accommodate their large party.

As Celaena Sardothien was led out of the capital, she sank into a corner of the wagon and did not get up.

Standing atop one of the many emerald roofs of Rifthold, Rourke Farran and Arobynn Hamel watched as the prison wagon was escorted out of the city. A chill breeze swept off the Avery, ruffling their hair.

“Endovier, then,” Farran mused, his dark eyes still upon the wagon. “A surprising twist of events. I thought you had planned a grand rescue from the butchering block.”

The King of the Assassins said nothing.

“So you’re not going after the wagon?”

“Obviously not,” Arobynn said, glancing at the new Crime Lord of Rifthold. It had been on this very rooftop that Farran and the King of the Assassins had first run into each other. Farran had been going to spy on one of Jayne’s mistresses, and Arobynn … well, Farran had never learned why Arobynn had been meandering across the roofs of Rifthold in the middle of the night.

“You and your men could free her in a matter of moments,” Rourke went on. “Attacking a prison wagon is far safer than what you had originally planned. Though, I’ll admit—sending her to Endovier is far more interesting to me.”

“If I wanted your opinion, Farran, I would have asked for it.”

Farran gave him a slow smile. “You might want to consider how you speak to me now.”

“And you might want to consider who gave you your crown.”

Farran chuckled, and silence fell for a long moment. “If you wanted her to suffer, you should have left her in my care. I could have had her begging for you to save her in a matter of minutes. It would have been exquisite.”

Arobynn just shook his head. “Whatever gutter you grew up in, Farran, it must have been an unparalleled sort of hell.”

Farran studied his new ally, his gaze glittering. “You have no idea.” After another moment of quiet, he asked, “Why did you do it?”

Arobynn’s attention drifted back to the wagon, already a small dot in the rolling foothills above Rifthold. “Because I don’t like sharing my belongings,” was his only response.

She had been in the wagon for two days now, watching the light shift and dance on the walls. She only moved from the corner long enough to relieve herself or to pick at the food they threw in for her.

She had believed she could love Sam and not pay the price.
Everything has a price
, she’d once been told by a Spidersilk merchant in the Red Desert. How right he was.

Sunlight shone through the wagon again, filling it with weak light. The trek to the Salt Mines of Endovier took two weeks, and each mile led them farther and farther north—and into colder weather.

When she dozed, falling in and out of dreams and reality and sometimes not knowing the difference, she was often awoken by the shivers that racked her body. The guards offered her no protection against the chill.

Two weeks in this dark, reeking wagon, with only the shadows and light on the wall for company, and the silence hovering around her. Two weeks, and then Endovier.

She lifted her head from the wall.

The growing fear set the silence flickering.

No one survived Endovier. Most prisoners didn’t survive a month. It was a death camp.

A tremor went down her numb fingers. She drew her legs in tighter to her chest, resting her head against them.

The shadows and the light continued to play on the wall.

Excited whispers, the crunch of rushing feet on dried grass, moonlight shining through the window.

She didn’t know how she got upright, or how she made it to the tiny barred window, her legs stiff and aching and wobbly from disuse.

The guards were all gathered near the edge of the clearing they’d camped in for the night, staring out into the tangle of trees. They’d entered Oakwald Forest sometime on the first day, and now it would be nothing but trees-trees-trees for the two weeks that they would travel north.

The moon illuminated the mist swirling along the leaf-strewn ground, and made the trees cast long shadows like lurking wraiths.

And there—standing in a copse of thorns—was a white stag.

Celaena’s breath hitched.

She clenched the bars of the small window as the creature looked at them. His towering antlers seemed to glow in the moonlight, crowning him in wreaths of ivory.

“Gods above,” one of the guards whispered.

The stag’s enormous head turned slightly—toward the wagon, toward the small window.

The Lord of the North.

So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home
, she’d once told Ansel as they lay under a blanket of stars and traced the constellation of the stag.
So they can look up at the sky, no matter where they are, and know Terrasen is forever with them.

Tendrils of hot air puffed from the stag’s snout, curling in the chill night.

Celaena bowed her head, though she kept her eyes upon him. The constellation had watched over her for so many years.

So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home …

A crack in the silence—spreading wider and wider as the stag’s fathomless eyes stayed steady on her.

A glimmer of a world long since destroyed—a kingdom in ruins. The stag shouldn’t be here—not so deep into Adarlan or so far from home. How had he survived the hunters who had
been set loose nine years ago, when the king had ordered all the sacred white stags of Terrasen butchered?

And yet he was here, glowing like a beacon in the moonlight.

He was here.

And so was she.

She felt the warmth of the tears before she realized she was crying.

Then the unmistakable groan of bowstrings being pulled back.

The stag, her Lord of the North, her beacon, didn’t move.

“Run!
” The hoarse scream erupted out of her. It shattered the silence.

The stag remained staring at her.

She banged on the side of the wagon. “
Run, damn you!
”

The stag turned and ran, a bolt of white light weaving through the trees.

The twang of bowstrings, the hiss of arrows—all missing their mark.

The guards cursed and the wagon shook as one of them struck it in frustration. Celaena backed away from the window, backed up, up, up, until she ran into the wall and collapsed to her knees.

The silence had gone. In its absence, she could feel the barking pain echo through her legs, and the ache of the injuries Farran’s men had given her, and the dull stinging of wrists and ankles rubbed raw by chains. And she could feel the endless hole where Sam had once been.

She was going to Endovier—she was to be a slave in the Salt Mines of Endovier.

Fear, ravenous and cold, dragged her under.

Celaena Sardothien knew she was nearing the Salt Mines when, two weeks later, the trees of Oakwald gave way to gray, rough terrain, and she spotted jagged mountains against the sky. She’d been lying on the floor since dawn and had already vomited once. And now she couldn’t bring herself to stand up.

Sounds in the distance—shouting and the faint crack of a whip.

Endovier.

She wasn’t ready.

The light turned brighter as they left the trees behind. She was glad Sam wasn’t here to see her like this.

She let out a sob so violent she had to press her fist to her mouth to keep from being heard.

She’d never be ready for this, for Endovier and the world without Sam.

A breeze filled the wagon, lifting away the smells of the past two weeks. Her trembling paused for a heartbeat. She knew that breeze.

She knew the chill bite beneath it, knew the hint it carried of pine and snow, knew the mountains from which it hailed. A northern breeze, a breeze of Terrasen.

She
must
stand up.

Pine and snow and lazy, golden summers—a city of light and music in the shadow of the Staghorn Mountains. She must stand, or be broken before she even entered Endovier.

The wagon slowed, wheels bouncing over the rough path. A whip snapped.

“My name is Celaena Sardothien …,” she whispered onto the floor, but her lips shook hard enough to cut off the words.

Somewhere, someone started screaming. From the shift in the light, she knew they were nearing what had to be a giant wall.

“My name is Celaena Sardothien …,” she tried again. She gasped down uneven breaths.

The breeze grew into a wind, and she closed her eyes, letting it sweep away the ashes of that dead world—of that dead girl. And then there was nothing left except something new, something still glowing red from the forging.

Celaena opened her eyes.

She would go into Endovier. Go into Hell. And she would not crumble.

She braced her palms on the floor and slid her feet beneath her.

She had not stopped breathing yet, and she had endured Sam’s death and evaded the king’s execution. She would survive this.

Celaena stood, turning to the window and looking squarely at the mammoth stone wall rising up ahead of them.

She would tuck Sam into her heart, a bright light for her to take out whenever things were darkest. And then she would remember how it had felt to be loved, when the world had held nothing but possibility. No matter what they did to her, they could never take that away.

She would not break.

And someday … someday, even if it took her until her last breath, she’d find out who had done this to her. To Sam. Celaena wiped away her tears as the wagon entered the shade of the tunnel through the wall. Whips and screams and the clank of chains. She tensed, already taking in every detail she could.

But she squared her shoulders. Straightened her spine.

“My name is Celaena Sardothien,” she whispered, “
and I will not be afraid
.”

The wagon cleared the wall and stopped.

Celaena raised her head.

The wagon door was unlocked and thrown open, flooding the space with gray light. Guards reached for her, mere shadows against the brightness. She let them grab her, let them pull her from the wagon.

I will not be afraid
.

Celaena Sardothien lifted her chin and walked into the Salt Mines of Endovier.

After a year of slavery in the Salt Mines of Endovier, Celaena Sardothien was accustomed to being escorted everywhere in shackles and at sword-point. Most of the thousands of slaves in Endovier received similar treatment—though an extra half-dozen guards always walked Celaena to and from the mines. That was expected by Adarlan’s most notorious assassin. What she did not usually expect, however, was a hooded man in black at her side—as there was now.

He gripped her arm as he led her through the shining building in which most of Endovier’s officials and overseers were housed. They strode down corridors, up flights of stairs, and around and around until she hadn’t the slightest chance of finding her way out again.

At least, that was her escort’s intention, because she hadn’t failed to notice when they went up and down the same staircase within a matter of minutes. Nor had she missed when they zigzagged between levels, even though the building was a standard grid of hallways and stairwells.
As if she’d lose her bearings that easily. She might have been insulted, if he wasn’t trying so hard.

They entered a particularly long hallway, silent save for their footsteps. Though the man grasping her arm was tall and fit, she could see nothing of the features concealed beneath his hood. Another tactic meant to confuse and intimidate her. The black clothes were probably a part of it, too. His head shifted in her direction, and Celaena flashed him a grin. He looked forward again, his iron grip tightening.

It was flattering, she supposed, even if she
didn’t
know what was happening, or why he’d been waiting for her outside the mine shaft. After a day of cleaving rock salt from the innards of the mountain, finding him standing there with six guards hadn’t improved her mood.

But her ears had pricked when he’d introduced himself to her overseer as Chaol Westfall, Captain of the Royal Guard, and suddenly, the sky loomed, the mountains pushed from behind, and even the earth swelled toward her knees. She hadn’t tasted fear in a while—hadn’t
let
herself taste fear. When she awoke every morning, she repeated the same words:
I will not be afraid
. For a year, those words had meant the difference between breaking and bending; they had kept her from shattering in the darkness of the mines. Not that she’d let the captain know any of that.

Celaena examined the gloved hand holding her arm. The dark leather almost matched the dirt on her skin.

She adjusted her torn and filthy tunic with her free hand and held in her sigh. Entering the mines before sunrise and departing after dusk, she rarely glimpsed the sun. She was frightfully pale beneath the dirt. It was true that she had been attractive once, beautiful even, but— Well, it didn’t matter now, did it?