The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) (8 page)

“Where’s this secret room?” I asked.

“Hold on,” Lysa said.

I grabbed a random book from a shelf. A few waterlogged pages fell out. “Probing and Posturing Techniques,” I said. “Fascinating.”

Lysa weaved in and out of the bookcases like a bee searching for the perfect flower.

“Lysa,” I hollered, losing track of her.

She didn’t reply.

I muttered a four-letter word and put a vigilant ear forward, tracking her thumping steps. For all we knew, a reaped could be lurking about in here.

I found her near the back of the library, standing on her tippy-toes.

She grasped an old leather binding and wrenched it from its brethren.

“Found it,” she said, triumphantly.

“Found what? Something about our mystery man?”

She smoothed her fingers over the cover, disturbing a clomp of dust into the air. “Huh? Oh, no.”

“
The Sepulchering of Self
,” I said, reading the cover.

“Let me explain,” Lysa said, clutching the book tight to her breast. “I need this. I really, really need this.”

“You’re doing a poor job of explaining.”

She rolled her lips in and out, wetting them. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth. Amielle didn’t, um — there’s no secret room here, okay?”

I began counting silently in my head. A savant once told me that helps diffuse your anger.

Apparently unhinged by my silence, Lysa stammered on. “I didn’t lie about everything. I promise. Amielle really did say those things, about the world knowing if
he
came out of hiding. It’s just… well, she said it while lecturing me in her glass manor.”

“Glass manor?”

“The tower,” Lysa clarified. “It’s where she sleeps and breathes. Where she
used
to sleep and breathe. There was a knock at the door, she stepped out, and that’s when I heard everything.”

I reached for Lysa’s dear book, but she resisted.

“Let me see,” I said.

“You won’t understand.”

“You had better make me understand, because I don’t appreciate deceit.”

She wound her spindly fingers around the back of the dusty tome, cradling it as if it were her newborn child. “Everything bad that happened to me, I can make it go away. I can expunge the terrible memories I have of my father and mother. I can erase my childhood of slavery, of the mindful tortures the conjurers put me through. I can even — I think — replace the grief with happiness. Maybe it won’t be real, because it never happened, but make-believe thoughts never hurt anyone.”

Her voice began shaking, and her jaw trembled. I would have felt sorry for her, but I didn’t know what was the truth and what was a lie anymore.

“Looking for answers doesn’t quite mend the wounds, like you said, does it?” I asked.

“It helps,” she said. “Understanding why they did this to me, it kept me from going mad, I think. But no, it’s not wolf’s leaf for the mind. I still have nightmares every night. Sometimes when I’m awake, the screams of my ten-year-old self haunt me. I remember being dragged away from my home, forced to study strange books for hours and hours and days and days. If I fell asleep, they beat me.”

“Let me guess,” I said, aiming my chin at the tome. “This here is the magnum opus of murdering those pesky memories?”

“That’s the idea,” Lysa said. “I’m sorry I lied. It was selfish. I know that. But you would have never agreed to come here if I had told you the truth.”

Boy, talk about a punch in the gut. “What do you take me for, Lysa? A monster? I’ve feelings, you know. Somewhere.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, seemingly reconsidering her answer. Finally, she said, “You’re cerebral. I understand why. If you cared about everyone’s problems, you would never be the person you are.”

“And just who do you think I am?”

“A man who gets things done.”

I rolled my eyes. “Spare me the backhanded compliments.”

“You’re ruthless,” she said. “Clinical. You detach yourself from emotion so it doesn’t get in your way. Although… you did surprise me with the kind burial you offered Tylik.”

Huh. She did think I was a monster. Misguided perceptions of my character usually didn’t bother me. Hell, most of the time it was better people thought of me as a dispassionate killer — fear’s a good weapon of persuasion, after all. But Lysa wasn’t some pompous lord who I needed to intimidate. She was… well, my partner in this very fucked-up journey. Our lives were intertwined. So, yeah, her impression of me after all this time — it hurt a little.

“Well,” I said, “perhaps once that would have been an accurate description. But” — I grinned — “people change.”

A tender smile thawed Lysa’s icy demeanor. Truthfully, I wanted to be angry with her. I couldn’t remember the last time — if ever — someone had deceived me and gotten a smile from me in return. But here’s the thing. Firstly, lashing out wouldn’t help her perceived image of me. Secondly, I rather admired her guile. She reminded me of… well,
me
.

“All right,” I said, “take your book. We’ve got a date with Amielle’s glass manor. We need to get over there before the old man rummages through the place.”

“Think he’s a thief?” Lysa asked.

“Never knew a thief who could conjure fire. I’m not sure what he is. But we’ll find out soon enough.”

Hopefully the discovery wouldn’t be made while we choked on fire and smoke.

The tower was only a five-minute walk away, but by the time we arrived, sweat drenched both me and Lysa. It was intolerably hot here. That seemed strange, since the weather was at least tolerable when we entered the library, and we hadn’t been in there long. It was as if someone had spun a dial and cranked up the temperature.

The mule side-eyed us as we passed, but the donkey couldn’t give two shits, which seemed on par with most donkeys I’d met. The duck wasn’t visible, but I wasn’t exactly a menagerist looking in every nook and cranny of the wagon to add fowl to my collection.

“Hide the book in the grass out here,” I told Lysa. “You won’t want to swing a sword with one hand.”

“No,” she said, tersely. “It’s staying with me.”

I sighed. You’ve got to pick your battles, especially with someone as stubborn as Lysa, and this wasn’t a battle I was willing to fight.

“Fine. But drop it if we come under attack, will you?”

She agreed.

With my ebon blade leading the way like a knight’s jousting lance, I crept inside the tower. A chill zigzagged across my neck as the memories of this place flooded into my mind. The last time I was in here, I’d bent the knee. And I’d bowed my head. And — remembering it perfectly now… much too perfectly — I had taken Amielle’s hand. Taken it in my fingers like her enslaved lover, and then… a kiss. A wet stamp on the top of her hand, signifying her control over me.

You know, I rather regretted not killing her myself.

Slowly creeping up the winding staircase, pinpoints of blues and yellows and reds winked in and out of my vision as the sun pierced the stained glass.

“Here,” Lysa said, stopping me from climbing any farther.

“Here? Thought her little abode was at the tip-top.”

“That’s where she entertained guests. This is the door to her quarters, here.”

A solid wooden door with a ringed iron knocker stared at me. It was closed, but upon closer inspection, it hadn’t been for very long. A thick film of smoggy dust clouded the knocker, except for where four lines had disrupted the dirt and allowed the gray iron beneath to gleam.

Lines that resembled the breadth and shape of fingers.

I silently motioned for Lysa to stay behind me. Then, with a deep breath, a crack of my neck and a lick of my lips, I gripped the knocker. And I thrust the door open, pushing the summit of my sword inside the room.

Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!

“Molly! Molly! It’s okay, girl.”

Saggy-skinned arms scooped up the duck and brought it tight to a concave chest. A shaky thumb lifted a wide-brimmed hat, and a pair of hazy green eyes looked at me peculiarly.

“Well, I’ll be nippersacked!” the old man said. “If it ain’t Louis and Bodingle.”

Hearing “nippersacked” and “Louis and Bodingle” has a way of disarming you. My arm fell limp, and I stared in disbelief, trying to work out what exactly I’d gotten myself into.

“I promise you,” I said, “I’m not Louis and she’s not Bodingle. Who are you?”

Quack! Quack! Quack!

“Mollyesterven, that is
enough
!” The man flicked his hat off and caught it in one hand. He laid the duck on the ground, then covered it with the hat. The quacking ceased.

“A bit loud at times, this one,” he said. “Of course you ain’t Louis and Bodingle. Firstly, they died six thousand years ago. Secondly, they’re fictional. Made up. It’s a saying, see. Now, I’d appreciate it if you took that black-as-night weapon of yours and put it away.”

“I saw you conjure fire,” I said. “I’m not disarming myself.”

The man bellowed a deep-bellied laugh. “Conjure fire? You sound like a tool that hasn’t been sharpened in a hundred years.”

He reached a hand deep into the pocket of his ragged pants, which elicited a threatening jab of my blade. He might have seemed like a charming, rambling old man, but those are the ones who lull you into a false sense of security.

He opened his fist, revealing a handful of black grains. “Black powder. Good for a quick light, hot burn and makes for a damned fine celebration at the end of a long day. No conjuring required.”

“Put it away,” I barked.

He looked offended, but did as I asked. “What do you think I’m going to do? Cover myself in black powder and run at you like a crazy? Come on, now. Killing myself ain’t much of an appetizing thought, and why would I want to hurt you? Now, those bastard reaped, that’s another story.”

“Tell me your name.”

The old man folded his wrinkly hands in front of his belly. “Put away your sword.”

“Do it,” Lysa whispered in my ear.

I hated negotiations, particularly those that required me to disarm myself. Seemed I wasn’t getting answers without being somewhat agreeable, though. So I begrudgingly sheathed my sword and took the blade I’d given Lysa and stuffed that one back in its scabbard as well.

“Got your wish,” I said. “Now let me have a name.”

“You want the full name or the short name?”

What kind of bloody question was that? “Just give me your fucking name.”

He stuck out his lips like a fish and took a deep breath. “Ravoldtillisminithcorsifaulgoldenparforikemisglasenmik. Or, Rav, for short.”

After trying to digest more than three syllables, I blinked and gave up. “What the fuck kind of name is that?”

He wagged his finger. “Uh-uh! My turn for a question now. But first, you really ought to come in and sit. Plenty of space, see?” He spread his arms out wide, taking in the entirety of the expansive room.

There were bookshelves half empty and ones so full the shelves sagged under the immense weight. There was a large desk, several wooden chairs, a couch upholstered with brocade fabric, and one enormous painting featuring a small village sleeping before a calm night sea.

I walked farther into the room, but I didn’t sit. I wasn’t stupid.

“You,” Rav said to Lysa, “seem more cooperative. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a phoenix pass through. What gives?”

What gives? This guy’s lexicon ranged from the arcane to the bizarre and everything in between.

“Sightseeing,” I said.

“We’re looking for someone,” Lysa replied.

I sighed. Of course she would.

Rav snapped his fingers. “I like her. She doesn’t give me trouble.”

“How’d you know about the phoenix?” I asked.

“Saw a blazing fire tear through the sky, and thought either the end of days had come, or a pretty bird was flying low. Now, to answer your question, my name is the kind of name that is very old. But language evolves, and if you fail to evolve with it, you become incapable of relating to your fellow man and woman. It’s my turn to ask a question.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “I don’t care how old your name is.”

“Bullocks to you! You preempted the question, and so I answered. Now, let’s move on. Who are you looking for?”

Before I could cover our tracks, Lysa spilled our secret like she was gossiping with a good friend.

“Someone who’s out of hiding,” she answered.

Rav lifted his head sagely. “I see.” The spunk evaporated from his voice. “And how do you know about this?”

“It’s our turn to ask questions,” I reminded him.

“We’re not playing that game anymore.”

A grave undertone cut through his words. My hand instinctively went for my hilt.

Lysa stepped forward. “My name is Lysa Rabthorn. I was trained to become a conjurer.”

For the next hour, I sat in despair, rolling my head from one shoulder to the other, as she explained in excruciating detail everything that had transpired over the course of her life and during the past year.

Rav listened with a concerned face as she spoke, nodding occasionally, grimacing at other points.

After she finished, he scratched his deeply freckled face. And he said, “We’re looking for the same person. Which is why I am here. Unfortunately, there is nothing of value in this place. It has likely already been taken.”

“The same person?” I asked. “You sure of that?”

Rav lowered his head. “Quite sure. He is, after all, my brother.”

I clapped my hands. “Perfect. Then you know where to find him.”

Rav looked ill. His eyes seemed to cloud over like a rolling mist across the sea. “I have not seen him in a very…
very
long time.”

There was a question I felt needed answering, because it’d begun to worry me. “How old are you, Rav?”

His ancient lips tightened into a grim visage. He said nothing.

R
av covered
his headful of stringy gray hairs with his wide-brimmed hat and plucked Molly the duck off the floor.

“We will speak further at my house,” he said. “It’s safer there. You may ride in my wagon.”

“Safer?” I asked. “What do you have, a castle reinforced with ebon walls and surrounded by a moat? Because shit doesn’t seem too safe out here.”

Rav walked out of the room. Lysa and I looked at each other.

“I think we should follow him,” she said.

Frustration flung my hands into the air. “It’s not like we have much of a bloody choice. Let’s see: mindlessly scour this wasteland of a world in hopes we stumble upon some mysterious guy who we wouldn’t recognize if he skull-fucked us, or… tag along with Rav, Mr. My-name-has-a-hundred-syllables. Just keep alert, huh?”

“I don’t think he’s dangerous,” Lysa said. “Maybe a little peculiar.”

“A
little
?”

Lysa and I caught up with Rav at the bottom of the tower. The sun set him ablaze in an amber glow as he stepped outside. He looked like a thieving wanderer looking for clothes and food as he rummaged through the carriage, what with his tattered linens.

“It’ll be a bit cramped,” he noted, “but it’s good for you. Gives you more respect for how big the world is when you step out.” He glanced back and tapped a finger to his skull. “Positive thinking there. Keeps you young and wiry.” He flashed me a smile full of old teeth that time had whittled down.

“I’ve heard a handsome supply of wine keeps one young and wiry too,” I said. “Got any of that stuff by chance?”

“Mead, wine, ale, even stumpkorf. Got it all back at the wonderland of Rav.”

“Stumpkorf?”

“First ingredient is tree stumps,” Rav explained, much to my disgust. “Second ingredient is korf, which rather fell out of usage, oh… well, several years ago. Now you might call it stumpcoral. See, you get the shavings from the stump, mix them with some fresh coral from the sea, make magic with fermentation, toss in a few other widdly-diddly things, and you’ve got yourself a spicy miracle drink. Strong, that one.”

I leaned in to Lysa and whispered, “Don’t drink that.”

“All righty,” Rav said, knuckling the wooden frame of the carriage. “Think we’re… ready…to…”

He was standing on the tips of his toes now, arms held close to his lanky body like an inquisitive cat on its hind legs. He regarded the horizon curiously, scanning the entirety of Lith’s curved walls.

In the distance, thunder.

“Oh, no,” he whispered, hand moving shakily across his mouth. Apparent fear tenderized his voice into mindless muttering. But I was close enough to him to hear every word. “I thought too loudly… he heard me. He knows I’m here.”

Rav spun around and thrust a bony finger at the tower. “Go! Up to the top, now.”

Ebon gnashed its teeth along a leather scabbard as I withdrew my blade. “No way out up there. We’ll fight through whatever’s coming.”

A louring scowl darkened Rav’s face. His body seemed to inflate like a rabid animal in the throes of a hunt. He radiated anger… malice, unlike anyone I’d ever met.

“Go,
now
,” he growled.

There were not many people in the world who intimidated me. In fact, I couldn’t recall a single one, unless I traveled back to a place I didn’t like to go — my childhood. Standing before this minacious creature who called himself Rav — who’d had such a blithe spirit only moments ago — hearkened back to a time in which I had cowered before the punching fists of my father. A time when the bottoms of my teeth would clash against the tops. When I just wanted to run away.

That was how I felt now… a little boy again, held in the clutches of fear.

Lysa tugged at my arm. “Come on!” she urged.

At my feet, the grass wavered as the palpitations of a stampede boomed ever closer. I saw them. They were on horseback, most of them. An acrimonious gray cloud of death rolling in from the fields, charging through the gate.

“Astul!” Lysa begged.

I turned and ran into the glass manor.

Lunging and lurching, I skipped every other step, pausing only for a moment at the third floor to take a gander at Rav. His face was nestled into the fur of his mule’s neck. Then he drew back and patted its butt, and the wagon raced away from the approaching ball of death, the seat empty. That was a good sign, at least. But the paranoid devil on my shoulder kept telling me this was a trap, that Rav would abandon us.

“Astul,” Lysa yelled, “come on.”

We made it to the top and inside the halo of stained glass. A pair of feet echoed throughout the tower, interrupted by a ragged voice that said, “
Motherfuckers
.”

Breathless, Rav fell into the room. Molly the duck spilled out of his hands onto the floor, quacking enthusiastically. Behind Rav lay a fine layer of black powder that trailed to the steps and presumably beyond.

He crouched near the doorway and produced a chunk of flint and a small knife. “Break a window,” he ordered. “And hurry it up.” His head flung around and his eyes were big. He looked like a madman hyped up on a cask of wine.

All right. Fine. Break a window, sure. What could possibly go wrong with shattering a pane of glass when you’re only, oh… fifty feet above solid ground? To be fair, experiencing flight right before death didn’t seem like a bad way to go. At least in comparison to corpses sticking you with sharp swords. I’d a feeling the latter was something that might haunt me forever in the afterworld, if such a thing existed.

An unintelligible chant droned from within the belly of the tower.

I hauled ass over to the edge of the room and inspected the glass with my hand. “Right,” I said, baffled as to how I’d break a window with nothing but a couple ebon blades and my fists. Ebon might be sharp, but glass generally doesn’t care if you cut it up.

Lysa yanked the other blade from my scabbard.

“Whoa, whoa!” I said, jumping out of the way as she turned the sword around so that its serrated tip pointed at me and its hilt at the glass.

She struck the pommel against the pane, then looked at me proudly.

“Good idea,” I said.

“Keep screaming, motherfuckers!” Rav hollered insanely.

They did keep screaming, their cries insulating the tower in a chilling gnarl that reminded me of the way my assassination targets used to burble as they’d scream with blood filling their throats.

Lysa and I took turns punching the knobs of our swords into the glass, and each time the glass would answer back with a loud
clunk
. What was this stuff made of, bone?

Oh
, I thought, remembering Amielle describing the process by which it was produced.
That’s right. It is made with bone.

As it turns out, ground-up bone — while resilient — isn’t quite as tough as the unblemished kind. A crack finally appeared in the glass, spreading like tendrils across the pane. A final solid hit and it shattered into an explosive burst of shards that fell fifty feet to the ground below.

“What now?” I asked Rav. “Jump and flap our arms?”

“Come on, come on, come on!” he said, striking his knife to the flint.

A hand stripped down to the white of bone flashed into view from the short corridor leading to the steps. A mangled frame of rot barreled forth. The reaped held a sword vertically, the blade halving the thing’s skull.

A flick of the reaped’s wrist and the sharp cusp charged toward Rav.

More corpses rounded the corner now, a flock of cadavers with the black of madness anchoring their eyes.

I put an arm across Lysa’s chest and stepped in front of her, as if I were a protective father. Why’d I do that? She could fend for herself. I wasn’t her guardian.

The reaped heading the charge had its mouth gaped like a hungry bird. It would be on Rav in seconds. Its sword would slice right through the old man’s body and poke out the other side, ripping through vital organs and spine.

We’d be alone, Lysa and I. Forced to fight until they’d overtake us, or to jump to our death.

“Vah-ha-ha-ha!” Rav cried dementedly.

The tiniest of sparks, that’s all it was. A little flicker of meager light, till it touched the black powder. Then, like a dry sponge splashing into water, it grew. Quite unlike a sponge, however, the spark became a roaring spine of flame that hissed down the trail of black powder. The reaped in front of the pack had no chance. The others at least had time to turn and consider running, even if they couldn’t get one foot in front of the other before the fire consumed them.

Rav jumped up and grabbed Molly. “Hotter than you can imagine,” he said, hurrying over to Lysa and me, “but quick-burning. It’ll be out before you know it, and there’s more down there. Whole bucketfuls of the bastards. So we’re catching a flight out of here.”

Before I had the opportunity to ask the inevitable question of how we’d be doing that, Rav stood by a newly created hole that had come courtesy of Lysa and myself.

And he chucked Molly the duck off the tower.

Then Molly the duck shifted into a Molly-what-the-fuck-is-that beast with vast wings. Her cute yellow bill became a baleful beak from which spikes grew. Her tail was thick enough to break your leg in one swipe, and her talons came in trios of knives that looked as though they’d been sharpened on the sheer face of mountains. She resembled a prehistoric monster.

A prehistoric monster that Lysa and I suddenly found ourselves on. Lysa wrapped her arms around my stomach as the whale of a bird — there’s a good name for it… whale-bird — flapped its enormous wings and surged high over the city of Lith.

The air bleated as those wings beat the ever-loving fuck out of it. In a matter of seconds, Lith was behind us, and the shore was to our left. And beyond, I wanted to imagine a vast, sandy beach where crabs patrolled and birds flew. There was a vast, sandy beach. And maybe even some crabs and birds, too. But something else crawled across the beach. Marched, really. Not crawled. Definitely a march.

They marched in orderly rows, probably fifty wide, as deep as the haze that filtered out the edge of the world.

“First legion,” Rav hollered back. “About twenty more to come.”

Later I’d probably want clarification as to what that meant. But not now. I wanted to shut my mind off and gaze without thought into the mountains that crescendoed into the horizon, golden light pouring over their peaks.

We flew a short ways before the beast aimed its beak toward the ground. It landed beside a familiar wagon.

As if he was dismounting a regular old horse, Rav climbed down from the winged animal and inspected his wagon.

“Hmm. Nicely done, Tick and Tack.” He petted the heads of his mule and donkey, then faced Lysa and me. “Mind buggerin’ off my dear Molly so she may go back to being a duck?”

“Oh,” Lysa said. “Sorry.” She jumped down. “Um, what is she now?”

“A weavler. Used to command the skies above Evastra long ago. Mostly fossils beneath the dirt now.”

“Evastra?” Lysa said. “Where’s that?”

Rav put his hands on his hips and looked at his feet, then back up at Lysa. “You’re standing on Evastra right now. Mizridahl’s sister continent, some call it.”

“I’d heard this place didn’t have a name,” I said.

“It’s been forgotten by most, but that doesn’t mean it never had one.”

“Never mind that,” I said, jumping off the weavler and putting my feet back on solid ground. “You’re telling me you whipped a duck into some extinct beast? Just like that, with the snap of your fingers?”

“I don’t snap,” Rav said. “Be advised Molly does not particularly enjoy this activity. She understands it’s necessary at times, but that does little to lessen her annoyance. She will be a chatterbox the entire way home, and she may bite. Do not pet her. Especially under the chin.” He drifted toward me on the tips of his toes and in a dreadful voice said, “
Never
under the chin.”

What happened next I could not recall. It’s not that the sun blinded my eyes, or a reaped wandered up and clubbed me across the head. It’s just that, well, time rather skipped a beat. Molly had been a weavler one moment, and the next she was waddling about as a duck again, and I never saw the in-between phase. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen the in-between phase when she had become a weavler, either.

“Off we go now. Load yourselves in. Mind the knickknacks, please. Valuables and such.”

“I don’t like wagons,” I told Lysa as I positioned myself across from her in the wooden bed. “Bad experiences.”

“Too bad we couldn’t fly any longer,” she said. “Did you see how lovely the forests looked from above?”

“Not really, no.”

“Oh. You really missed out.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t drop that,” I said, noting the book she still held.

“I’d sooner drop myself.” She opened the cover and thumbed through a few pages. “I think I’ll read this now, if you don’t mind.”

“By all means,” I said, scooting up to the front, behind Rav. “I’ll just talk to Rav here, who says he’s not a conjurer. Liar.”

“Not a liar,” he said, jerking the reins. The cart bumbled forth over uneven terrain.

“You conjured a weav-what-the-fuck-ever out of a duck. Counts for a conjurer in my book.”

“By that order, a soldier is an assassin because he kills.”

“Well, no. Not quite. See—”

“Ah,” Rav said, reeking of condescension, “he only has the skill of killing as an assassin does, yes?”

I saw where this was going, but I was helpless to turn the tide in my favor. So I sat there quietly.

“What do you know about the conjurers?” he asked. “Their history?”

“Not enough,” I admitted. “Only that they came here some fifty years ago.”

He chuckled. “Appeared right out of thin air, did they?”

“Don’t know. Wasn’t around fifty years ago.”

“Consider smoke,” Rav said. “It doesn’t appear from the ether. It’s infused into the world by flame. Something is responsible for the flame, and so something is responsible for the smoke. The conjurers weren’t born from oblivion. They were created, and they were your last hope.”

“Hope is what you call the end of my world, is it?”