Assassin’s Fate

‘Per is helping find the others. I don’t know Amber.’

Spark stared blankly at me. ‘Amber is the Fool. But only your father called him that. Or Beloved.’

‘Beloved,’ I said quietly. I added, ‘I have not seen him since we jumped from the ship.’

There seemed nothing else to say. We sat there. No one came to attack us. The Servants’ boats had scattered. Some few had fled to the castle, harried all the way by the blue and the green dragons. The dragons were circling the stronghold now, screeching their anger. The archers on the walls were wasting all their arrows with shots that fell short or bounced off the scaly hide. In the town, people watched from their rooftops and the windows of the upper storeys of their homes. We saw no one moving in the streets, and no one seemed to want to attack us. Perhaps the townsfolk did not even know if or why we were the enemy. The sun grew stronger in a bright blue sky, warming us and drying our clothing. I sat on the edge of the dock, swinging my bare feet over the water below, waiting. Waiting to find out who was still alive. Waiting for the townsfolk to attack us. Waiting for anything to happen at all.

‘I’m hungry and thirsty,’ I said to Spark. ‘And I wish I had shoes. That seems so wrong to me. So heartless that I can think of these things.’ I shook my head. ‘My father is dead, and I am wishing I had shoes.’

She put an arm around me. I found I didn’t mind that. ‘I wish I could brush my hair and tie it back from my face,’ Spark admitted. ‘I wish that even as I wonder if Lant is dead, and strange to say, I feel angry with him.’

‘That’s because if you felt sad and wept, you would be making him dead in your mind.’

She gave me a strange look. ‘Yes. But how do you know these things?’

I shrugged and said, ‘I’m very angry at my father. I don’t want to weep for him any more. I know I will, but I don’t want to.’ I rolled one shoulder. ‘And I am very angry at Beloved. Amber.’ I spoke the name with disdain.

‘Why?’ Spark was aghast.

‘I simply am.’ I didn’t want to explain. He was alive while my father was dead. He was the one who had brought it all down on us. Beloved. The one who led the Servants to the doors of Withywoods. The one who started it by making my father his Catalyst.

I looked at her. I asked a terrible question. ‘Do you know about Shun?’

‘Lant’s sister? Shine? She escaped. Your father found her. That’s how he knew you’d gone through the stone.’

‘His sister?’ I asked in confusion.

Her smile wavered. ‘He was as surprised as you are now.’ She hugged me closer. ‘And he told me that at first, you two did not get along at all. He told me a lot about you.’ Her voice trailed away. She shook her head suddenly. ‘I’m hungry. Thirsty. And angry at Lant. And ashamed of feeling those things at all.’ She gave me a sad smile. ‘When things are so immensely wrong, it seems cruel that I long for a cup of tea. And some bread.’

‘Ginger-cakes. My mother used to make them for my father.’ I covered my mouth. ‘My mother would be so furious with him right now.’ And the hated tears welled again.

A short time later I saw one of our boats coming back to the docks. Per was pulling one of the oars. We both stood up. There was a body in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in a piece of sail. ‘Oh, no,’ Spark moaned. Beloved was sitting beside the wrapped corpse.

They came alongside the dock and Spark’s first cry was, ‘Is it Lant? Is Lant dead?’

‘It’s Kennitsson,’ Per said in a dead voice as he looked up at us. ‘The flames took him.’

‘Oh!’ Spark covered her mouth. I wondered if she hid her face, so no one would know how relieved she was that Kennitsson was dead instead of Lant.

Per climbed up onto the dock. He came to me and opened his arms. We hugged one another tightly. He looked over my head and cried out, ‘Not Boy-O, too!’

‘He’s alive,’ Ant said from where she sat beside him. ‘But not doing well.’ Boy-O lifted his head and then let it drop again. ‘Kennitsson,’ he said dully. ‘He saved the ship.’

It was hard work to get the wrapped corpse up the ladder and onto the dock, taking the efforts of three of them. Beloved did his share, but it seemed to me that several of his crewmates regarded him oddly. He opened the canvas and stooped over the shrouded body to compose it.

Beloved shook his head wearily and looked over at me. A smile slowly curved his mouth, but his eyes were sad. ‘There you are. Once I saw Per, I knew you were safe.’ He took two steps toward me and opened his arms. I stood still. He let his arms fall to his sides, his embrace unclaimed. He stood looking down at me. ‘Oh, Bee. I will wait. I am a stranger to you. But I feel I know you very well.’ I do not think he could have said a more irritating thing. My thoughts flickered to my journal and book of dreams, now at the bottom of the harbour. No. No one could be so low as to read another’s journal … though of course, I had read my father’s papers. I looked past him and said nothing.