DAVID COE - Seeds of Betrayal

His name was Corbin, a Caerissan singer with a reputation as a skilled though expensive assassin. He stood at the back of the tavern with a younger man, and it appeared that they were preparing to leave.

Evanthya glanced around awkwardly as she walked toward them, conscious once more of being the only Qirsi in the room.

“Are you Corbin?” she asked, stopping in front of the Caerissan.

He stared at her with unconcealed hostility. “Did the barman just tell you I was?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have cause to doubt him?”

She bit back a retort, forcing a smile instead. “Perhaps we can sit,” she said, gesturing toward the table the man and his friend had just left.

Corbin hesitated, looking briefly at his companion. After a moment he nodded, and they walked back to the table.

The younger man carried a lute, and Evanthya wondered if he was merely a musician or an assassin as well. She suddenly felt far beyond her depth.

“This is Dagon,” the assassin said, indicating the younger man with an open hand.

Dagon smiled, glancing at his companion. It occurred to Evanthya that this wasn’t his real name, that in fact Corbin’s name was probably an alias as well. Which probably meant that the younger man was also a killer. She found this hard to believe. He looked terribly young, with a clean-shaven face and warm brown eyes. He could easily have been a new probationer in the duke’s guard or even a court noble. Indeed, Corbin had the look of nobility as well. Perhaps this explained his success as an assassin.

“And your name?” Corbin asked after a brief pause.

“My name isn’t important,” she said, unable to think of an alias of her own.

“Fine,” the Caerissan said, the look in his pale eyes turning cold. “Then what is it you want?”

“I had hoped to hire you.”

“Don’t you people understand that every time I do a job for you, it makes the next one that much more dangerous?” He glanced beyond her briefly, and when he began again it was in a near whisper. “There are risks to every kill, and if one follows too closely after the last, it increases the chances that I’ll fail, or that one of you will be discovered.”

The minister shook her head. “I don’t understand. Has someone else from the castle spoken with you?”

He frowned. “The castle?”

The realization came to her so swiftly, with such power, that she almost began to laugh. There was really only one explanation for what he had said, though she could scarcely believe that it was true. And as she moved beyond the humor of the situation, she began to tremble, fearing for her life.

“You’ve been hired by Qirsi before, haven’t you?”

He nodded, his eyes wide, as if he understood what had happened as well.

Evanthya swallowed, then stood. “I think I’d better go.”

“No, don’t.”

She stopped, unsure at first if he was urging or ordering her to stay. If she needed, she could summon a mist to aid her escape, but her other powers-gleaning and language of beasts-were of little use to her here.

“I was wrong to come here,” she said, not looking at him. “I just want to leave.”

“You came to hire an assassin.”

Evanthya nodded.

“And you’re not with… You’re not part of a movement.”

She looked back at the man, meeting his gaze. “No, I’m not,” she said, as if daring him to hurt her for her loyalty to the duke.

“Neither am I,” he said.

The minister narrowed her eyes. “But you said-”

“I said I had worked for them. That doesn’t make me party to their cause.”

“Meaning what?”

‘Meaning that if you want to hire me, you can.“

“It’s not that simple,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t just want to hire you, I want to hire you to kill a Qirsi we suspect is part of the conspiracy.”

“ ‘We’?”

Her face colored. “I.”

A small smile flitted across the man’s face. “Please, won’t you sit again?”

“Why? I’d just be wasting your time, and my own.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You’d actually consider doing this?” she asked.

He gestured at the empty chair. “Please sit.”

She returned to the table and slowly lowered herself onto the chair, her eyes never straying from the two assassins.

“Who is this person you want killed?” Corbin asked, his gaze steady.

In a far corner of her mind, Evanthya wondered that she could be discussing such things so calmly with a hired killer. She wanted only to serve her duke and her kingdom, like any other Aneiran. Yes, she had yellow eyes and possessed magics that the Eandi feared, but in other ways she was just like any of her duke’s subjects. She had never wanted to be more than she was, and certainly she had never thought to plot the murder of another. But in these times it seemed that loyalty to Tebeo and the kingdom demanded more than simple ministerial duties.

“How is it that you can do this?” she asked the man. “How can you kill for the Qirsi movement, and then turn around and take my gold to kill one of them?”

“Their gold buys my blade, not my allegiance,” he said. “Just as your gold does. I may kill for you today, only to turn my blade against you tomorrow. That’s the nature of my profession.”

The assassin’s eyes bored into her own as he spoke, as if by saying the words to the minister he could reach every Qirsi in the land. There was more at work here than just avarice, though she couldn’t be certain what it was.

“This person you want killed,” he went on a moment later. “Can you give me a name?”

“No. I wish I could. I know that he once served a duke in Eibithar, Kentigern I believe. He recently sought asylum in Mertesse.”

Corbin’s face paled at the mention of Kentigern. “Why this man?” he whispered.

“You know him?”

“I know of him. Tell me why.”

Because it’s all we can do , she wanted to say. Because we know so little of the conspiracy that just suspecting he might be involved makes him a threat . Word of the man’s escape from Eibithar had spread quickly through Aneira, as did descriptions of the siege that nearly captured Kentigern Castle. Most in the kingdom greeted these tidings predictably, mourning the death of Rouel of Mertesse, cheering the blow dealt to Kentigern and the Eibitharians, and marveling at how close the Mertesse army had come to taking the great castle atop Kentigern Tor.

But with word of the battle and the defection came whisperings among some of a darker purpose behind the minister’s actions. He betrayed his duke not to help Mertesse, these stories implied, but rather to further the conspiracy, whose leaders hoped to draw the two kingdoms into a fullblown war. The stories went on to say that he had a hand in the death of Kentigern’s daughter, whose murder nearly precipitated a civil war between Kentigern and Curgh, two of Eibithar’s leading houses. Most dismissed these last rumors, but not Fetnalla and Evanthya. These tidings fit too well with all the other strange events darkening the Forelands. A turn later, Fetnalla dreamed of the man, and though she had told Evanthya little of the vision, offering only vague answers to her repeated questions, she did make clear that it had convinced her of what they already suspected: the traitor from Kentigern had acted on behalf of the conspiracy. The murder of Chago of Bistari only served to deepen their certainty that the time had come to strike back at the conspiracy. In light of Fetnalla’s vision, and all they had heard since the siege of Kentigern, the renegade minister seemed the logical choice as their first target. Evanthya still grew queasy at the notion of killing a man on the basis of rumor, suspicion, and a single dream, but Fetnalla argued that their only alternative was to wait for another murder or siege that might finally bring war and chaos to the land. The king’s death only strengthened her point.