The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) (4 page)

Sybil turned an eager ear toward me.

“Patrick Verdan,” I said. “He’s got the true claim and from what I hear the backing of many northern lords.” Patrick had abdicated years ago, leaving behind his rightful heirship to the throne, but he still had the Verdan name. And he was the eldest.

“That’s not the problem,” Sybil said matter-of-factly. “The problem is Vileoux Verdan isn’t dead.”

“That,” I explained, holding up a finger, “would be more than a problem.”

Sybil gently propelled herself through the water, the sharp point of her nose pricking the steam as she floated over to the opposite edge. I caught a quick glimpse of her back before she turned.

“What is that?” I asked. “That mark on your back.”

“A tree. I saw it in a dream once. Isn’t it beautiful?” She turned and treated me to the entirety of the tattoo’s elegance.

Beautiful… was not the word I would have used. No, it didn’t look beautiful or artistic or grand. It looked… well, very, very real. As if I could reach out and touch its trunk that grew sideways and suddenly surged high into the air. As if I could hang from its boughs of thick, knotted branches and smell its bounty of yellow flowers. I blinked and shook my head, drawing myself back into the present.

“Anyway,” I said. “Vileoux, er—”

“Isn’t dead,” Sybil said. “I saw his supposed dead body before Chachant did. Before anyone, except the guards. As I walked past his quarters, there was a loud bang, as if someone had fallen into a dresser or bedpost. I waited there as the guards called for him. There was no answer. They waited and called again. No answer. Eventually, they kicked in the door… and there he was, on the floor, stench of red wine in the air.”

“Sounds like a lush fell and hit his head,” I said.

She waved a finger in the general direction of her mouth. “His lips were black. Dried, burnt black… awfully terrible looking. His throat, what I could see of it, was sooty, no pink at all.”

I wiped a condensed layer of steam from my forehead. “Oils of camadan seed produce similar effects, but not as dramatic and certainly not as quick. And I don’t know of any willing participant to take camadan-oil-spiked-wine to the face.”

“Willing participant?”

“You told me Vileoux wasn’t dead, so I’m assuming someone played his part.”

“It was Vileoux who I saw dead in his room. It was Vileoux who I saw buried in the bitterly cold sarcophagus. I know the man. I know him!” she insisted. A rare glimpse into her emotions, or a calculated move to rouse me? “I’ve slept in his keep for seven years. It was him, and I am not mistaken.”

“Fine,” I said, hoping to temper her temper. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“When Chachant made way for Vereumene, I went into the ossuary to beg Vileoux — his spirit, if it remained — to help Chachant. To instill tranquility into his heart, lessen his hunger for revenge.” She touched my shoulder, as if for support, or perhaps to steady me. “I bent over his sarcophagus, nudged the top ajar so I could see his face… there was nothing, Astul. It was empty. He had left.”

“Or someone had taken him,” I pointed out.

“Semantics,” she said. She lifted herself out of the water and onto the ledge, airing out her naked body.

“Well, those are quite different things, you know. Leaving on your own accord, or being forced to—”

“Listen to me,” Sybil said seriously, cutting me off, “I saw something the night Vileoux — or his body, whatever — went missing. You’ll think I’m mental, but… I saw fire in the sky. It was a bird bathed in flames.” Her eyes narrowed, and she forced a heavy swallow down her throat. “I swear upon my life.”

“Which way did it go?”

“This way.”

Silence captured us. Prior to about ten years ago, claiming you spotted a flaming bird in the sky was enough to have a savant start chiseling into your skull, hoping to pop whatever strange fungus or parasite had clamped onto your brain. But then the conjurers arrived, or rather appeared, and with them unnatural abominations that they both created and controlled. Mostly ridiculous things, really — two-tailed squirrels, lions with the teeth of a man, rotund ravens who couldn’t soar for more than a few seconds without having to perch and catch their breath. Hadn’t ever seen or heard of a flaming bird, but if it existed, it was undoubtedly born into this world from the minds of conjurers.

After a while — long after her body had dried and her hair began to frizz — she spoke. “Dead or alive, what would they want with him?”

“Dead? Not a whole lot. But alive?” I chuckled as a way to cope with the thought. “If you could take the mind of a king presumed to be dead, imagine the chaos you could unleash if he would happen to show up at, say… oh, I don’t know, the gate of Edenvaile three weeks from now, eyes swollen, shirtless, rags for pants. Claims he was given a concoction to slow his heart to an undetectable pulse and then kidnapped. If war was your thing, that’s the route I’d go.”

Sybil frowned. “But
why
? What motivations would a couple of conjurers, or even a small colony, have for doing that?”

“None at all,” I said. “Unless they’re working with someone.”

There was that face again. As cool and unmoving as stone itself.

“I got wind of a couple conjurers near here,” I said. “It was a while ago, and my Rots disturbed them, so they likely moved. But it’s not far from territory my brother patrols. He may have a lead on them that’s helpful. Might not be the conjurers we’re looking for, but it’s something.”

Sybil picked her feet up out of the spring, spun around on her butt and trudged over to her clothes. “Mm. So the tragic life of Astul — from the abusive father to the estranged brother — isn’t quite so true, is it?”

“We haven’t talked in several years. But I’ve kept eyes and ears on him. He may make poor choices, but he still shares my blood. That’s got to count for something, right?”

Sybil began bouncing up and down, initiating the tried-and-true method of persuading your thighs to fit inside your pants. “I’m joining Chachant in Vereumene. I hope he’s still there when I arrive. I’m worried he’s not going there for a peaceful meeting.”

“If he’s expecting Serith Rabthorn to join him in a silly conquest against Braddock, he’s going to be disappointed. Only way that bastard joins anyone is if there’s a clear route to victory.”

She combed a soothing hand through her snorting horse’s mane. “My father detests Braddock, so Chachant already has an easy ally on his side.” She paused and added, with emphasis, “Dercy will be in Vereumene, too.”

“Won’t ever happen,” I said. “Dercy wouldn’t ever go against Braddock.”

“If Chachant plants the seed…”

“Fine,” I relented. “Make sure it
doesn’t
happen. Last thing I want while I’m in Erior is a bunch of knuckle-dragging armies to come pounding on the walls.”

“Erior?” Sybil questioned. “You said your brother—”

“He’s been in Erior for the last month, probably on leave. So I have the pleasant assignment of finagling my way into that bloody kingdom without alerting any of Braddock’s court or the king himself.”

Sybil raked her nails across her scalp, freshening up her hair. “What kind of naughty boy have you been to draw such ire from Braddock?”

“Offed his uncle,” I answered. “He supposedly burned an entire field of some lord’s crops as petty revenge. Some lord with very deep pockets who could afford a very expensive assassin. Botched it a bit and word got back to Braddock.”

“Well, try not to get yourself caught, hmm? I like you, Astul.” She smiled.

“You’ll know if I do. He promised that if I was seen within two hundred miles of his walls, he would impale me, string the Glannondil banner up through my intestines and out of my mouth and then parade me across the whole of Mizridahl.”

T
he relationship
between my brother and me was complicated, largely because I’d stabbed him five years ago. Despite my profession, I tried to reason without violence, but after he insisted on joining the Glannondil army —
good pay and free food, Astul!
— I socked him in the jaw. He tackled me, I kicked him, he spat in my face, yada, yada, yada, and I ended up taking a small chunk of flesh from his shoulder. It was hardly noteworthy in my opinion, but he made a big fuss about it, stormed off and told me never to talk to him again. Hopefully he wasn’t serious.

Pormillia had valiantly trotted along for eight days, pushing on through the bogs and swampy marshes of the Paggle Badlands. There’s a misleading name if I ever saw one.

The clomps of northern snow were in my distant past now. As I rode eastward, the quagmires dried up and the mud hardened into lush soil upon which meadows of rich green grass and rainbows of flowers grew. After another couple days, my girl and I arrived at what people around here affectionately called the capital of the world.

Its sixty-foot-high sheer walls, decorated with crimson banners featuring a grinning jackal, roosted upon the shoulders of Mount Poll, and behind it lay a skyline of sculpted peaks surging relentlessly into the clouds. When the sun was bright and would melt away the gray sky like ice, you could tilt your head till the back of your skull touched your shoulders and you still wouldn’t have seen the conclusion of those bluffs. For all intents and purposes, life on this mountain ended right here. Go up much higher and you weren’t coming down, at least not with the widely accepted definition of liveliness pulsing inside you.

I guided Pormillia inside the walls of Erior, and the capital of the world came alive.

It smelled like the sea was roasting in an iron pan of shallots and lard. A few more steps and the spunk of mutton and cloves nosed its way in, quickly elbowed aside by the sharpness of cinnamon pies and the sweetness of berry cakes.

The cobbles teemed with merchants and buyers, a haggle here, a thank-you-good-sir there. Crooks preyed upon the wide-eyed, explaining that this here stick, you see, you burn it at night and the fumes — quite strong, now, don’t sniff them — they keep away vampires, werewolves and even ne’er-do-well fairies corrupted by ekle mog. What’s ekle mog? Oh, my, my, my dear sir, step over here and take a look at this contraption of string and wire, it’s designed to blunt the essence of ekle mog which surrounds each and every one of us, and…

So on and so forth.

Rain began to fall, tinking off the garbage pails that Braddock implemented throughout the city to cut down on populations of opportunistic dogs. Then thunder came with all its bluster, and the wind whistled. Buying and selling and conning went on all the same. Storms weren’t enough to shut business down here. Rain was a way of life and it often moved on as quickly as it came. Such is life near the sea.

I offered a stable boy a few coins to keep Pormillia in a stall without any neighbors. You never know what kind of horses will shack up next to yours in a city like this. Biters, kickers, spitters — my good girl didn’t need any of that shit.

I took a secluded alley away from the hustle and bustle of the market. It’s an experience going through the market, but one that’s quite dulled when you realize the only reason this kingdom of riches exists is because of the embarrassment of resources it sits upon. And guess who has the luxury of mining and chopping and farming those resources? Slaves, the hidden pride and joy of Braddock Glannondil.

The dark alley spilled out into the heart of Erior. One artery led to the stepped plateaus which, if you climbed all three, would put you face-to-face with the keep. Another led to city’s bathhouses and entertainment. And still another took you down a sloping path to the farmlands, where my brother most certainly was not located, but I’d find him later. I had a six-year-old promise to keep first.

Unless you fancy rows of corn, beanstalks, cows, sheep, and finally goats who do not know the meaning of personal space, the farmlands weren’t particularly enticing for visitors of Erior. The smell of lemony heron and sweet custards was replaced by the repulsiveness of cow shit.

I studied the ground carefully as I walked, lest my foot plunge into an oily lumped mound that could take your breath away and never give it back.

“Gray roof, silver rooster,” I whispered, scanning the rooftops. That’s what the letter said many years ago. I squinted. “There you are.”

I started that way, planting my foot in the ground of sunken mud… at least I hoped it was mud. All the men and boys stopped plowing and milking. Their narrow eyes moved as I did. One woman stood in the middle of her farm with her arms at her side. Her stomach rolled over her pants, although that very well could have been her breasts. There’s a scary thought. I continued on toward the farmhouse, when she shrieked.

“Get off me damn crops, ya big legged lug!”

Fearful that she might charge me like a sex-deprived elk and grind my bones into her soil as fertilizer, I jumped to the side, gave her an uneasy smile, and nodded.

I walked up to the house with a silver rooster perched atop the gray roof. I knocked on the door twice and then opened it.

In hindsight, it’s probably better to knock first, and then wait for the door to open. Especially if you aren’t certain whether your good friend still lives there. It had, after all, been six years since he sent me that letter.

With the door swinging open and slamming against a wooden wall, another sort of slamming greeted me: the slamming of flesh on flesh.

Picture the cranky gal outside, except without clothes and doing her best to mimic a standing dog. Her pasty white blubber, covered with wrinkles and a few brown dots for good measure, jiggled and wriggled as her bony man, bald as a rat, pulled back and entered her again and again and again. His jutting ribs wimpled as he thrust, as if they were swinging back and forth, determined to break free of his decrepit body and find a healthier abdomen to live inside.

There were ancient grunts, throaty roars and sharp spankings. The sheets were bitten and balled up and kicked aside. Vigor apparently grows with age.

The woman’s face slammed into the bed, twisting around as it did. She opened a twitchy eye, and that’s when she saw me.

Her mouthful of rotting black gums produced the kind of shrill wail so piercing that if you would attempt to parrot it, you’d probably avulse the soft skin of your throat and raw your voice with a single screech. It was, in fact, the sort of wail that you’d expect to make if Death jumped out of the bushes late at night.

“Apologies,” I coughed, “wrong house.” I promptly turned, walked out and closed the door.

If I didn’t have every bloody farmer looking at me before, I sure did now. Most had an angry look to them, the kind that foreigners often receive after accidentally eviscerating cultural morals when visiting another kingdom, and just before they get mauled to death by an angry mob.

A younger man nearby, however, was grinning.

“I’m looking for someone,” I told him. “Goes by Rivon. Rather short, whitish-gray hair. Has a great fondness for roosters.”

The man flashed me a crooked grin. “Yeah, yeah, the rooster keeper.”

The
rooster keeper?

“Up there on the Gleam,” he explained. “Can’t miss ’im, got a little home with some fencin’ around it and ’bout twenty roosters. Plenty of fat hens too. Lots of eggs.”

I thanked the man and hurried off to the second plateau, which was affectionately known as the Gleam.

The Gleam is where you went to get your fill of entertainment and cleanliness, but only if you were wealthy enough. Up here were enormous bathhouses with water that ranged from lukewarm to just a smidgen under a rolling boil. I used to anticipate relaxing in them before Braddock barred me from his kingdom. They shared the plateau with a theater, archery competitions, dirt rings for wrestling, horseshoe tracks, hammer-throwing events, and, apparently, a rooster coop.

Something strange caught my eye as I climbed up to the Gleam. The third plateau of Erior, where the keep was situated, bled out in a mishmash of crimson tents. Faint outlines of soldiers — hundreds and perhaps thousands — crowded amongst the tents, like a platoon that’d been mobilized for war. I’d have to ask my brother about this.

Near the far edge of the Gleam stood a triangular building with a roof that split into two sweeping panels anchored into the ground. As I approached, I was reprimanded by a symphony of angry crowing. In a wire pen that must’ve been thirty feet long, hens and roosters shuffled about, pushing their beaks up against the fence curiously. Or perhaps threateningly.

I knocked on the peeling cedar door of the house and waited. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

An urgent pitter-pattering of feet droned from inside.

“One moment, please,” a breathless voice called out. “Just one moment.”

“An old friend is here to see you,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” he said automatically. “One moment,
please.
”

The door creaked open, and an arm swung through, followed by a shoulder, and then a leg. Rivon Eyrie squeezed the rest of his tall, unwieldy self through the tight space like a kitten beneath a door frame. He quickly shut the door behind him, heaved a heavy breath and smiled uneasily, like a murderer hoping a pair of inquisitive guards standing before him hadn’t seen the trail of blood leading into the kitchen.

He scratched the salty bristles on his face and poked a headful of silver hair forward in surprise. “Astul?”

His anxious smile twisted into one of joy, scrunching up all the wrinkles on his acorn face. He swung a birdlike arm behind my back and embraced me.

“Six years!” he said, taking me by the shoulders and probing me from head to toe with his eyes. “I’d say they’d been kind to you, but you look worn, old boy.”

“Hunting down a king slayer will do that to you.”

“A king slayer?”

“Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you all about it. And you can tell me how Rivon Eyrie went from a Rot to the rooster keeper of Erior.”

His eyes swung side to side vigilantly, then he opened the door. “After you,” he said.

He framed the doorway, forcing me to go around him. Soon as I stepped inside, he was at my heels.

He kicked the door shut and slid a crateful of heavy-looking ceramics in front of it.

“Interesting arrangement,” I said, noting the peculiar emptiness of the room. Well, empty except for the cluster of drawn satchels and cloth bags bursting with pots and pans and cups and sheets and pillows and paintings and various knickknacks.

He chuckled nervously. “Bugs,” he said.

“Bugs?”

“Oh, sure, sure. Got a nasty, er, infestation. Roaches, spiders, that sort of thing.”

“I see. Does giving off the appearance that you’re moving out scare them away?”

“It’s the oils,” he said, scratching his neck. “They, er… kill ’em off. The bugs, that is. Just got to apply them all around the house and in the morn you wake up with shells and corpses of, um…”

“Roaches and spiders,” I reminded him.

He snapped his fingers. “Yes, yes, roaches and spiders. Don’t want the oils touchin’ all your belongings, though. Anyways, sit, sit. Have some peppermint tea with me.”

He went over to the corner of the room and began rummaging through some bags.

“Hmm,” he muttered. “Now I could have sworn I sat them on top here. Or maybe it was in this one.”

“Rivon,” I said.

“No, not here either,” he said mindlessly. “Now where in the hells…”

“Rivon!”

He picked his head up and brushed his stringy hair from his eyes.

I pointed to the collection of bags littering a small table and both chairs. “It seems your chairs are in use.”

“Oh, don’t mind those things,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. He plodded over to the table and tossed the bags to the floor. “Ah,” he said, stuffing his hand inside a small pouch, “here they are.”

He produced a thin leather casing that when opened up revealed bright green leaves.

“There, there,” he said, pouring them onto the table. “Now, where is that pot…”

For the next twenty minutes, I twiddled my thumbs as Rivon raced around his house, riffling through his stowed-away possessions, cursing, muttering to himself that he ought to have really prepared this in a much more orderly fashion, and generally mumbling whatever four-letter word came to mind. He eventually found the teapot, but then he had to go fetch water from the well. And of course that meant meticulously sneaking out of and back into the house for no discernible reason.

Finally, the tea was steeped, warmed and poured into two clay cups that had handles carved into the shape of rooster tails.

“Enchanting,” I said, nodding at the craftsmanship apparently inspired by a chicken fetish.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, got a potter ’round these parts to fix them up for me. For free too! Monetarily speaking. I did provide her with twenty-four extra-large eggs laid by Big Momma out back.”

I sipped on the scalding tea, sighing as the coolness of peppermint soothed my throat and warmed my belly. “How long have you had bugs?”

He lowered his cup. “Bugs?”

“Roaches, spiders.”

His eyes grew big. “Oh, oh. Yes, roaches and spiders, all around here. Infestation! Er, a couple days now. Started getting real bad for a couple days, yeah. Been hanging around here weeks, though, just a few here, a few there, you know how those little bastards are,
anyhow
what’s this about a king slayer?”

“Someone put Vileoux in an early grave. I would have just waited for the old coot to die, but not all assassins are as patient.”

Again, he lowered his cup and his eyes got big. “Killed him? Oh, my. No, no, never heard that. Word got around that he was dead, but I thought it must’ve been natural.”

“More like magical,” I said.

Rivon choked on his tea, spewing forth frothy peppermint and spittle into his hand.

“Are you all right?” I asked, watching him carefully.

He pounded his chest and licked his lips. “Fine, fine. Went down the wrong tubule there. Anyways, you said, er… magical?”