Assassin’s Fate

Beloved? My father’s friend, the beggar from the market? The Fool? I darted to the bars of my cell, seized them and looked out. No one was there. I could see nothing, but I heard the soft jingle of keys. Inside me, Wolf Father hackled to alertness. We stared.

Prilkop spoke in a whisper, his voice shaking with excitement. ‘Wrong keys, old friend. They’ll open the other cells, but not this one, or Bee’s. But she is here, and she has—’

Both doors suddenly clashed open at each end of the corridor. I heard Capra’s voice raised in a shout. ‘Advance shoulder to shoulder! Swing your batons solidly. Go! Do not stop until you stand chest to chest with your fellows. The intruder is here!’

‘But—’ someone objected, and ‘Go!’ she shrieked. ‘Go now, at a run! Strike high, strike low! I know he is there! Trust your batons, not your eyes. Go!’

Someone I could not see made a sound of panic. I heard a scuff. Then, from nowhere, I saw the flash of a disembodied leg. Someone I could not see clearly strove to climb the smooth bars of the cell opposite Prilkop’s. He was a rippling shape of nothing, as when one looks through the rising heat of a fire. He went up swiftly, and I had a glimpse of his bare feet curling as if to grip the bars. An edge of a butterfly cloak flared and rolled for an instant.

‘There!’ a man’s voice shouted harshly, and the guards came at a run down the corridors. I stepped back for I heard the harsh clang of short staffs hitting the bars of the cells as they came. I heard exclamations from the other prisoners and then, as the guards reached my cell, the terrible thud of a stick on flesh and a sharp grunt of pain. Wolf Father snarled frenziedly. My leaping heart felt as if the wolf inside me were trying to batter his way out.

‘He’s here, he’s down!’ a guard shouted. For a moment, I saw a man on the floor outside my cell. Then he coiled his body and flipped up onto his feet. With the heel of his hand, he hit one guard on the jaw, clanging the man’s head against cell bars. Beloved spun, cloak swirling, and I saw only parts of him. An armless hand seized the other guard’s staff, and jammed it sharply up under the man’s jaw and he fell back with a gurgling cry.

If he’d had only two opponents, I think he would have escaped. But the guard behind him swung his short staff savagely. It connected, and Beloved fell. He rolled to his belly, to his knees, the cloak camouflaging him again. But they knew where he was. Swift blows rained down on someone I could not see as Capra shouted, ‘Enough! Enough! Do not kill him. I have questions for him! Many questions.’

I had retreated to the back wall of my cage. I could not get my breath. Capra came pushing through the guards who now stood like confused and excited hounds whipped back from a kill. She looked at the floor, nudged something with her foot. Then she raised her gaze to sweep from me to Prilkop’s cell. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed merrily. ‘What is this I see on the floor? A butterfly’s wing? There’s a dream I’ve read and even dreamed myself. Come, Prilkop. See your dreams fulfilled.’

She called to him but I was the one who flew across my cell to stare down in horror as she stooped and lifted the edge of what looked like a butterfly’s wing. As she peeled it back, it was my dream fulfilled. A pale man lay there. He was barefoot and dressed all in black beneath the cloak. A ring of keys had fallen from his hand. Blood was running from a split on his brow and from his nose. His eyes were half closed. He was motionless. Prilkop groaned deeply in despair. I had no breath to make any sound.

She stooped beside him and then looked up toward Prilkop’s cell. Her old woman’s voice had a musical lilt as she said, ‘I still dream best and truest of all. Here he is. The butterfly-man, the trapper trapped! Oh, come, do not hide how impressed you are!’ She shook her head coquettishly and added with false sadness, ‘Though I am grieved that you still have not learned who to be friends with. This was a bad decision, Prilkop. And I fear you must be taught, yet again, that it is painful to defy me.’

A man has two hands. One of the butterfly-man’s hands was outflung on the floor, the keys just fallen at his fingertips. It was the other hand, the one still covered by the cloak that darted into sight. I thought he had struck her with his clenched fist until he pulled back the bloodied knife and drove it again into her belly. Capra didn’t scream. She made a short sound of disbelief and then her guards moved in, kicking and clubbing until Beloved lay still and bloodied on the floor outside my cage.

I covered my ears, but that did not stop Wolf Father’s long howl from deafening me to all else.