The Seven Markets (9 page)

The first shot struck him in the thigh, twisting him back into the wall. The second took him in the arm below the elbow. His hand curled into a withered, darkened claw. It twitched, withdrawing into the Prince’s body, seeking shelter in the shadow of his torso.

“Nooooo!” She reached out across the ballroom to him. If she was only closer she could have shielded him with her own body.

The third and fourth shots hit together, the former striking his chest and the latter catching him high up on his temple. The Prince flashed in agony, blazing for a moment like a summer star, before collapsing onto the floor.

There was not a single drop of blood anywhere on either the wall or the floor where he came to lie.

Ellie raced to his side, cradling her beloved’s head in her lap. She expected, for all the world, to be comforting him as he spoke his dying words. If it wasn’t too late already. She wept. Her hands shook. The world was a bottomless pit from which she could never escape.

“Where is he?” the Prince said, using her shoulder to push himself up off the ballroom floor.

He had been shot four times, in the leg, the arm, the chest and the head. Yet there was not a single mark on him. His fine clothes were unmarked. Ellie glanced at the hand squeezing her shoulder—it had been a gnarled claw only moments ago—and saw only the familiar hand of the man she loved.

“Here, sire!”

Cutter knelt over the assassin, his knee pressed into the man’s throat, the strange pistol and the curved blade cast aside where they could do no more harm.

The Prince helped Ellie up from the floor. Together they went to Cutter and the assassin.

“Who sent you?” the Prince said, bending down.

“Revenge!”

“Ah, that.” He turned to Ellie. “Revenge is so tedious, don’t you think, my dear? Look at this poor fellow. He’s gone mad with it.”

“Revenge!”

“Yes, so you said. Your revenge, or are you working for someone? Please do tell, it’s so important to be specific with these things.”

“Sire,” Cutter said, an anxious tremor to his voice.

“Yes?”

“There may be more, sire. We should continue someplace safer.”

The Prince rolled his eyes. “If there are more, let’s hope they’re as incompetent as this fool. Still, we must credit him for showing up at a formal ball all in black. Masked even. Why, Cutter, I can’t remember the last time a masked man attempted to dispatch me.”

“No, sire,” Cutter said. He flexed his hands, opening and closing his fists. All his attention was focused on the man beneath his knee.

“Revenge!” It came out less as a warning and more as a sob.

Ellie was standing back several paces. Not as near as the Prince and Cutter but still closer than the others in the room. She studied the man sprawled out helpless on the ballroom floor. His clothes were curious. More than mere cloth, but like no armor she’d ever seen. It bent and flexed when he shifted his position. Cutter’s knee was not held back by its strength, but accommodated. Still, there was a hardness to it that was plain to see.

“I’ve never been a fan of masks,” the Prince said. He reached down and tugged at the man’s hood, pulling it back. His eyes were covered in thick, dark goggles, and beneath that, a mask of the same material as the rest of his dark uniform. The Prince removed mask and goggles in a single motion. As he stared up at them from the floor, the assassin’s eyes met Ellie’s. For an instant, she saw a flash of recognition cross his face. And something else: fury.

“You,” he said, his voice scarcely more than a croak.

And then, with a scream that was equal parts rage and agony, he turned to dust before their eyes, crumbling as if aging whole centuries in the span of a single heartbeat. Cutter thumped heavily to the floor, his knee suddenly unsupported by the man or his odd armor.

The Prince stared at the mask and goggles in his hands. It might have been the assassin’s head he’d removed and not his garments.

“Sire?”

“Strange evening, Cutter,” the Prince said. He dropped the mask and goggles onto the empty pile of clothes and reached to examine the man’s weapons. He picked up the blade by its bone handle, turning it over in his hand, appraising the workmanship. “Exquisite,” he said, a smile growing on the edges of his mouth.

He picked up the pistol and shrieked in pain. The Prince fell back. The pistol clattered to the floor, its single hollow eye still searching the ballroom for a fresh target.

“Sire!”

The Prince panted, tucking his injured hand into the folds of his jacket. Ellie could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead. He licked his lips before speaking.

“Iron,” he said, gasping in pain. “A child’s mistake, really. To survive the attack unscathed and then suffer so foolish an injury . . .”

Cutter stared across the floor at the discarded weapon. It seemed to have its own gravity, its own unspoken strength. A faint steam rose from its dark skin, and the wood floor beneath it sizzled.

“The girl. Cutter, she must—”

“Yes, sire. I understand.” Cutter waved to two of his men, who’d been lingering nearby. “Return the Prince to the inn at once. Search his rooms thoroughly before allowing him to enter. Make sure the windows are secured, then stand guard until I arrive to relieve you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” they said, speaking as one.

Cutter extended a hand to help the Prince up. “Go with them, sire.”

“Thank you, old friend.”

Ellie thought she’d never heard her Prince sound so haggard, so frail. She watched him depart with the two guards, leaning on one for support, holding his injured hand close, taking short, unsteady steps as he went.

Cutter turned to her. His face was grim but resolved.

“Ellie, I need you to do something.”

“Anything for my Prince,” she said. It occurred to her this might be the first time he’d addressed her as anything but “my lady.”

“Yes, of course.” He indicated the pistol, the assassin’s clothing, and his blade. “You are human. The iron will not burn you. I need you to collect these items and aid me in disposing of them.”

“It would be my honor.” Her face was alight with joy at being able to help. At being, according to the bodyguard, the only one who could.

Working with care, afraid of triggering the weapon again, Ellie gathered the pistol and blade into the assassin’s dark uniform. There was no separation between the pants and his shirt. She was able to bind it all together with a pair of simple knots.

“Good, good,” Cutter said. He motioned for her to follow him.

They walked through the Market, and as they had years ago, the assembled guests and vendors parted at their approach. This time it was not from a sense of reverence or honor; it was fear. She heard whispering from the crowd as they passed. Ellie paid them no mind. She was protecting her Prince. What more could she ever do?

“Wait here,” Cutter said, leaving her outside the entrance to their inn. He disappeared inside and was gone for several minutes. Ellie waited with a glad, patient heart. Her arms did not tire, nor did she consider for even an instant lightening her load or setting the bundle of armor and weapons down on the ground.

When Cutter returned, he was not alone.

“This is Rossi,” he said.

“I know. The cook’s son. You’ve traveled with us for some time, haven’t you?”

“Yes, mum,” the boy said, his voice shaking. She knew him to be a shy, wide-eyed boy who constantly snuck her extra rolls or a second glass of wine. She guessed he was a year or two younger than she’d been when the Prince first swept her away for a life of adventure and romance.

“He’s going to accompany you in your errand. He will . . . look after you.”

“Thank you,” Ellie said. Burdened as she was, she still managed a rough bow in the boy’s direction.

“Mum,” he said, cheeks flushed, eyes turned down.

“You understand?” Cutter said.

“Yessir.”

“And the danger?”

“Yessir. Absolutely, sir.”

“Good.” Cutter spared a glance at the fat moon overhead. His eyes, perhaps of their own accord, moved up to the high window of the Prince’s suites and then down to Ellie and the cook’s boy. “Rossi,” he said, as if to remind himself.

“Captain?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Cutter said.

“Very good, sir. We should go then, shouldn’t we? Mum?”

It seemed the lanky man had something he could not articulate.

“You are always so serious,” Ellie said. “Don’t give us another thought. We’ll be back before you know it. This brave boy will be a capable escort. Go and look after my Prince.”

“My lady,” Cutter said. He opened the door to the inn, hesitated as if he had still more to say, and then vanished within.

Together, Ellie and the cook’s boy, Rossi, began walking. They passed through the different layers of the Market, following streets she was pleased to discover she could navigate without the slightest thought.

The Market, of which I dreamed as a girl, is now my home. How many worlds will we see together? I know it as well as I know my own heart.

The first of the three suns was peeking over the distant treetops as they came to the wide stone gate. Ellie paused to shift the wrapped weapons into a more comfortable position. Rossi adjusted the leather pack on his back.

“You her?”

Beyond the gate stood the largest man Ellie had ever seen. His shoulders were broad enough to ride on; if they’d arrived before sunrise, the gleam on his bald head could have been the moon hanging in the sky. As Ellie watched, he began growing larger and larger, towering over her as if he’d been launched up over the wall.

And then she realized,
oh my, he’s not growing. He’s standing up.

Ellie and Rossi bowed.

“I’s Dhaleb,” the huge man said. He himself bowed—the swoosh of air nearly knocked them off their feet—then extended a hand to Rossi in greeting.

“Sir,” Rossi said. He looked in danger of being swallowed whole within the giant’s hand.

“Good man. I heard what you done. Good man, you.”

“Thank you. I—d’you have horses for us?”

“Course,” Dhaleb said. “Tha’s the job, innit?”

He moved to lead them away to, Ellie supposed, where their mounts were waiting. He stopped in mid-stride and looked down at himself. It gave Ellie vertigo just watching.

“Lords!” he said. “How’d I—lords, you won’t tell, will you?”

“Sir?”

“M’glamour. Lords, I can’t let the townfolk see me this way. Did any, d’you think? You didn’t see anyone, did you?”

Rossi turned his head back and forth and assured the giant they were alone out on the road. “It is still very early, sir. I do not believe anyone saw you.”

As if on cue, Ellie heard voices approaching. A couple by the sound of it, a local couple. She moved to warn the giant but he was gone before she could even move. A second later a man and a woman, walking together but not touching, lost in private conversation, appeared from around the bend. They walked past her and Rossi without a second glance.

“Lords, that was a close one,” Dhaleb said. “Y’won’t tell, will you? I’s usually so good, y’know, but then your captain had me fetching horses for you—‘strongest you can spare, Dhaleb’ he told me—an’ I dozed off waiting. But no one saw, did they? You said no one did, din’t you?”

“I did,” Rossi said.

“You are quite safe, sir. And your indiscretion will remain between just the three of us.” Ellie was hoping to reassure him, and by the way his shoulders rounded and the tension went from his face, she felt she had succeeded.

Dhaleb led them a short way down the road to where a pair of fine roan horses were tied off.

“Figured the white one for the lass and the gray for you, sir. Saddles should be right, I think.”

Rossi examined the horses and nodded his satisfaction.

“D’you need help, lass?”

“I believe I can manage,” Ellie said. She looked to Rossi for confirmation—the Prince and Cutter had assigned him the role of accompanying her, and in her mind that made him into a surrogate for both her husband and the bodyguard.

“Do you have a good saddlebag we can use?” the cook’s son asked.

“Yessir. Just give me half a moment.” He raced off, moving with such speed Ellie decided she must have imagined his large size before remembering one of the first things she’d learned about glamours; they did more than slip past your eyes and your ears, they slipped past your memories.

Dhaleb returned with a weathered saddlebag in no time at all. Ellie let him fix it into place on the rear of the white horse and then, working under Rossi’s watchful eye, unwrapped the assassin’s uniform, freeing the strange pistol and the bone-handled blade from within.

“Gods,” the giant said, his voice hushed for so large a man.

She tucked the pistol and the blade into one side of the bag and folded the armor, face mask, and goggles up into the other. Under Rossi’s direction she did not allow Dhaleb to help or even to touch anything until both pouches of the saddlebag were closed and secured. Then and only then would she step aside so he could satisfy himself they were done up properly.

“What do we owe you?” Ellie said.

“I couldn’t,” he said. “Not after y’done right by me. S’a gift. A gift for your journey. An’ good luck to you, as well.”

“And to you,” Rossi said, mounting his horse. He waited until Ellie was steady in her saddle and then, with a final thanks to the stable master, the pair of them began following the road away from the Market.

Ellie traveled with a song in her heart. She decided, wherever they stopped to dispose of the weapons, she would buy a small gift for Dhaleb. He’d seemed so worried about them, and so concerned with wishing them good luck.

It was almost as if he thought we were leaving the Market for good. What an odd thing! The Market is my home now—both of our homes. We will run our brief errand and be back by nightfall, if not sooner. My love is going to show me the stars.

She rode, wondering what sort of thing a man like Dhaleb would enjoy as a gift. Perhaps a hat to protect his great head from the beating sun. She spent some time lost in thought, being led by Rossi, imagining different hats and how they might look on the giant’s head. Many people passed them as they rode, all heading in the opposite direction, toward the Market instead of away from it. Ellie spoke to many of them, smiling and confirming that yes, they were going the right way, and no, it wasn’t far, not far at all.