Assassin’s Fate

Capra’s retreat saved us. As the curve of the corridor hid them, my father tottered sideways. Per left me and went to him, easing him down to the floor. My father was cursing furiously, clutching at the blood that welled between his fingers. I ran to him. Per was tearing his shirt off. It was the wrong kind of fabric. I wriggled my arm out of my sleeve, and held it out to him. ‘Cut this off to use!’ I told him, and after a shocked moment, he did.

‘Bee!’ Lant exclaimed as he came to my father. He looked down at me and I looked up at him. His face was freckled with blood. I didn’t think it was his. He looked as if he felt ill and I thought I knew why.

‘You wanted to kill me, didn’t you? It was Vindeliar’s magic. Not your fault. He could make people believe things. Even me.’

My father spoke in a thick, tired voice. ‘It was like the Skill, but not. Magic used in a way I’ve never experienced.’ I heard him swallow. ‘How could he be that strong?’

‘They gave him a potion made from serpent spit. It made him very strong. I could barely hold my walls against him.’

‘I couldn’t hold my walls. If it hadn’t been for Perseverance …’

‘I felt nothing,’ Per said. ‘I thought you had all gone mad,’ he muttered, almost sulkily. He knelt by my father. ‘We should cut the clothing away from this.’

‘No time,’ Lant said. ‘That fire is spreading.’ He knelt and took my sleeve from Per and wrapped it snugly around my father’s thigh. He knotted it tight and I heard my father groan. The sleeve went red. Then the girl I didn’t know came to us, Beloved limping as he leaned on her shoulder. ‘They’re gone, they ran away,’ she was saying to him. Blood was running from the corner of his mouth and his face was lopsided with bruises, but all he said was ‘Bee! You’re alive!’ He reached for me with claw-like hands, one gloved, and I shrank away.

‘Bee, he won’t hurt you,’ Prilkop said quietly.

I had almost forgotten Prilkop. ‘He would never hurt you,’ he repeated quietly. ‘You are his.’

Beloved turned his gloved hand toward me, palm up. ‘Bee.’ My name was all he said, in a slurred voice.

I drew back from him. ‘I can’t. He makes me see things when I touch him. I don’t want to see things any more,’ and it was true.

‘I understand,’ Beloved said sorrowfully and dropped his hands.

‘Bee. He has a glove on one hand,’ Perseverance said very gently. ‘He has come a long far way to rescue you.’ His voice reminded me of a long-ago day when he had said, ‘Shall I ready her for you?’ and saddled the horse I was afraid to ride. But I was not that little girl any more. I looked aside. I saw my father’s expression.

I was still holding Symphe’s knife. I wiped the blood from it and put it back in the waistband of my trousers. Slowly I reached out my hand and set it on the back of Beloved’s glove. ‘I gave you an apple,’ I said quietly. ‘Do you remember that?’

His mouth shook. ‘I do,’ he said, and tears welled and ran down his face.

‘Oh, Bee, what have they done to you?’ Lant asked me. His eyes were moving over my face. My scars sickened him.

I didn’t want them to speak of that. I didn’t want them to ask me questions about any of it. I looked at the dead guards scattered in the corridor. Blood was pooling around the bodies. The girl was moving among the bodies, looking for something. I saw her take a sword from a dead man’s hand. Coultrie lay on his back, covered in blood and unmoving. I’d helped to kill him, and I didn’t care. I hoped Fellowdy would die, too. And in the far parts of the castle, I still heard screams and crashes. Fire stops for nothing. Was I truly the Destroyer? ‘We need to get away from here.’ I reminded them all. Didn’t they understand that we could not stand here? ‘I set fire to the libraries. It’s spreading.’

‘The libraries?’ Beloved said faintly. He looked devastated as he stared down at me. ‘You burned the libraries of Clerres?’

‘They needed burning. Burn the nest to kill the wasps.’

My speaking my old dream made his eyes go wide.

‘The Destroyer came,’ Prilkop said quietly.

Beloved looked from me to my father, and then back to me. ‘No. Not her.’

‘Yes.’ I pulled my hand back from touching him. He would not want to know me now. ‘Bee,’ he said, but I went to my father. I put my hand on his sleeve.

‘We have to get out of here now. If we can.’

My father was trying to stand up. He gave me a crooked smile. ‘I know; we need to be moving. But first, are there any more like Vindeliar?’

‘He was the only one. I think. They said they did not have much of the serpent potion left, but I think they lied to one another about that.’ Could they make another Vindeliar?

‘Serpent potion?’ Beloved asked. He had drawn closer to us, and Prilkop stood beside him.