David Coe - Bonds of Vengeance

The assassin merely grinned and hacked at her again and then a third time. She blocked his sword with her own each time, but she fell to her knees after the third attack and had to drop her dagger in order to hold her blade with both hands.

He backed off for just an instant, lowered his hands and brought back his sword to deliver what would be the killing stroke. Desperate, she did the only thing she could. With all the strength in her frame, she swung both arms around, throwing her sword at the man. It hit him in the chest, hilt first, and clattered to the floor. But it stopped him for just an instant, long enough for Diani to retrieve her dagger and dive past him into the middle of the chamber. He came after her, lunging for her once with his sword and missing, then closing the distance between himself and the door so that she couldn’t escape.

She started toward the window, thinking to open the shutters and call for help, but he advanced on her, and she didn’t dare turn her back on him. Then she thought to reclaim her sword, but he cut her off from that as well.

In the end she could only back away from him, trying to keep her writing table between them. She started to cry for help, but was cut off when he leaped at her again, his blade just barely missing her breast.

“You must stop doing that, my lady,” he said, throwing the table aside as he spoke.

He had her trapped again, in the back corner of her room. She held her dagger before her, but she knew it would not be enough to stop him.

“Diani?” Her father’s voice, from out in the corridor.

“Father!” she yelled.

The door burst open revealing the duke and several of his men, all with swords drawn.

The assassin froze, looking frightened for the first time since entering Diani’s chamber. His pale eyes flicked about the room, as if searching for some path to freedom. He still held his sword before him and as his gaze fell upon the duchess he appeared to consider killing her, even though it would have meant his death.

Sertio seemed to see this as well, for he quickly placed himself between Diani and the killer. His soldiers followed him into the chamber, surrounding the yellow-haired man.

“I don’t want him killed!” Diani said, her voice unsteady as she lowered her dagger. Her pulse raced and her hands were shaking so violently she could barely maintain her grip on the hilt of her blade.

“Drop your weapon,” Sertio said, his dark eyes never leaving the man’s face.

The assassin did nothing, but he continued to glance around the chamber, perhaps trying to decide who among his captors would be easiest to kill.

“Drop your sword and you won’t be hurt,” the duke said again, his voice harder this time.

Still the man did not move, though a slight smile touched his lips. “You’re lying,” he said softly. “You’ll torture me until I tell you whose gold paid for my blade.”

Her father opened his mouth, perhaps to deny it, though everyone in the chamber knew it to be the truth. He never got the chance. The assassin raised his sword as to cleave the duke in two, roaring like a cornered beast.

Sertio, stepped to the side to avoid the strike, aiming a thrust of his own at the man’s shoulder, to spare his life, but disarm him. Had it been just the two of them fighting it might have worked. But the other men, seeing their duke threatened, closed on the assassin as well, pounding at him with their blades. In a matter of seconds the man lay on the floor of Diani’s chamber, blood flowing from several deep wounds.

Diani took a step forward. “Call for a healer! I want him alive!”

“The Qirsi who healed you would never get here in time,” her father said, staring down at the man, his voice low.

“One of the castle’s healers, then!”

Sertio glanced at her, his face as grim as it had been the day her mother finally died. “They’re all in the prison tower.”

She swallowed. “We could free one of them, just for this.”

But a guard who had bent to feel the man’s pulse shook his head. “He dies as we speak, my lady. The tower is too far.”

Diani dropped to her knees beside the man. “Who paid you? Was it the Qirsi? The Brugaosans? Who?”

But he merely lay there, the same inscrutable smile on his lips, his eyes open but utterly lifeless.

Dantrielle, Aneira, Elhir’s Moon waxing

Most years, the beginning of Elhir’s turn brought warm days and clear nights to the southern Forelands. Usually the snows maintained their icy grip on the northern kingdoms through at least the waxing of the god’s turn, but in the south, frigid winds gave way to temperate breezes and the hard blizzards of the cold turns were replaced by gentle rains that presaged the coming of the planting.

Not this year. There had been a pleasant day or two at the end of Eilidh’s turn, but with the first days of the new waxing, the snows returned like a vengeful army, battering at the castle gates and shuttered windows with howling winds, and burying the wards and surrounding city under mounds of drifting snow. Neither the tapestries that hung on Evanthya’s walls nor the bright blaze in her hearth that the servants fed constantly could keep the chill from her chamber. She had never paid much heed to the passing of the seasons. Living in Dantrielle, where the turns of the snows were mild and even the hottest days of the growing turns were cooled by the soft breezes that drifted among the shadows of Aneira’s Great Forest, she never had cause. This year, however, the snows had seemed interminable, the wait for a true thaw excruciating.

Perhaps it had been too long since she last held Fetnalla. Perhaps she just longed to leave Dantrielle for a time, to escape the suspicions of her duke and the pall that had settled over the castle since the death of King Carden the Third and the selection of Numar of Renbrere as regent for the late king’s daughter. Or maybe, now that she had purchased the death of the traitorous minister from Kentigern, thus striking a blow at the Qirsi conspiracy, she so thirsted for more blood that she could not wait for the warmth of the growing.

Beginning the very day she received the assassin’s cryptic message telling her that the traitor in Mertesse had been killed, Evanthya had been of two minds about what she and Fetnalla had done. From the moment she paid the assassin at the Red Boar Inn in Dantrielle city, the minister had wondered if they had been justified in killing the man, if indeed such an act could ever be forgiven, no matter the justness of their cause. She knew the dead man’s name now. Shurik jal Marcine. She had learned it soon after the arrival of the assassin’s note, as word spread southward of the man’s mysterious death, and it served only to deepen her doubts.

But even as she wrestled with her guilt, Evanthya also found herself wanting desperately to continue her private war with the conspiracy, to open a new front somewhere in the Forelands. Like a battle-crazed warrior, she was suddenly avid for more violence. A part of her, deep in the dark recesses of her mind, wondered if she might even take up a weapon herself. According to what she had heard whispered in the marketplace among traveling merchants, the traitor died at the hands of a drunken lutenist who also was killed in their struggle. Evanthya knew better of course, but though she shuddered just to think about it, she could not help being curious as to how the singer had made it appear so. How did one kill two men and escape blame for both murders? What kind of person devoted his life to mastering such a dark art?

Upon hearing from the assassin, Evanthya sent a missive to Fetnalla in Orvinti, informing her of their success. Her love’s gold had paid for the assassination and Shurik’s murder had been as much Fetnalla’s idea as her own. Truth be told, Fetnalla had been more eager than she for the man’s death. But would she be satisfied at having purchased Shurik’s death, or would she, like Evanthya, see this as but an opening salvo in a far longer struggle? Evanthya had yet to receive any response, and with each day that passed she grew more impatient. In the last day or two, she had come to a startling decision: no matter what Fetnalla wrote in her reply, Evanthya intended to proceed with her war on the conspiracy. She didn’t know where she would find the gold to pay another assassin, or how she would choose her next target, but she could not sit by idly and allow the conspiracy to destroy the Forelands, not after having tasted success.