Assassin’s Fate

He tried. I felt him shape his power and thrust it at me. It was like a buffet of wind. I smiled at him. I recalled how my father had pushed me away when I had felt the touch of his magic. I imitated that as I looked at Vindeliar and said, ‘Stop that.’

He dropped limply to the floor. Only whites showed in his slitted eyes and his body trembled twice before it was still.

‘Is he dead?’ I heard myself ask aloud.

‘Guards! Guards! Help! Help!’

I had heard Dwalia roar with fury and shout with anger. This was the first time I’d heard her voice ascend to a crescendo of terror.

It took a moment for me to realize that I was what she feared. I stood outside the reach of her chains and knew a moment of panic. Guards would come and I’d be captured. Beaten or killed. No. ‘Stop shouting,’ I said to her. ‘Be quiet.’

And she was, her mouth hanging open. I listened. The dying flames on the oil puddle and on Symphe’s body whispered softly. I heard no guards running, no doors unlocking, nothing. Oh. Of course Symphe would have arranged for them to be away from their posts. I smiled at the work she had done for me.

In that moment of silence, my body shouted at me. I had cuts on the soles of both feet. The cut on my hand stung. I looked at it. It was like a smiling mouth carved across my palm and it was sending a smooth sheet of blood sliding from my hand. With my other hand, I pushed it closed and held it.

Oh. I could do better than that. I felt the severed edges of flesh touch and recall each other. They belonged together. ‘Be together,’ I suggested to them and my body listened. I could almost see the fine net my body wove, like a spider’s web to knit my flesh back together. I limped away from the puddle of serpent spit and the dying flames on the oily pool. I sat down on the floor and regarded my bloody feet. I plucked a shard of glass from my heel. Blood followed it. One by one, I closed each cut. When I stood, I could feel that my feet were newly healed. They hurt, but the sharp jab of pain was gone.

There is no time for this now. Kill her. Flee.

Sssh.

I hushed Wolf Father. This was no forest, but a dungeon in a stronghold. Would I need Dwalia to escape? I considered her.

‘You were never the Unexpected Son!’ she whispered.

‘So I told you, over and over. And still you ruined my life. Took me from my home, killed my friends.’

‘You are the Destroyer. And we brought you here.’

I was surprised. Her words seemed to shimmer with light and truth. I was the Destroyer? My mind leapt back to the forest and to overheard whispers from Reppin and Alaria. I was that?

‘I am,’ I said. As soon as I acknowledged it, that Path unrolled before me. I knew what I would do. It did not feel like a choice as I took the knife from my sash. It was a thing I did in so many possible futures that not doing it did not seem possible. I took a slow step toward her. ‘I am the Destroyer. You not only brought me here, you created me. I was unlikely, almost impossible. Then you came to my home … oh. No.’ I stared at her and saw the path she had left behind her. It was like a snail’s track on a clean swept floor. ‘No. It began years before then. You began to make me when you tormented Beloved.’

She stared at me, her eyes wide. I stepped forward, my knife ready. She slapped my hand, hard, and the knife fell. It clattered on the floor, exactly as I had known it must, making precisely the sound I had expected. I didn’t need a knife. I smiled at her. I pushed into her mind as if it were soft butter and I a hot blade. I spoke my word softly. ‘Die.’

And she did.

She occupied a space in the world. Then she didn’t. I felt the world close up around where she had been. The part of her that had been a living thing became a prelude to earth. Every future that might have sprung from Dwalia living suddenly shrivelled and vanished from the great tapestry of the future. Other gleaming threads writhed in to take their places. They were the futures made possible by her death at this moment. The moment she stopped living, her body began to collapse into something else. I stared at that sack of flesh, wondering how it had held her, and what exactly Dwalia had been. Not the thing that was left behind.

So. That was death. I considered that as I gathered up the brass ring of keys and then Symphe’s knife.

I looked at Vindeliar. Tremors were now running over him, jiggling his cheeks and making his eyeballs twitch. I thought of ending him quickly and decided I wouldn’t. I was still coming to an awareness of what I had done to Dwalia. And to Symphe? I had not felt her death that way. Was it because I’d had a small tie to Dwalia from attempting to manipulate her? Or was it the taint of serpent spit in my flesh? I feared what I might feel if I killed Vindeliar, for we had had a bond of sorts. I left him to die by himself.