Rebellion (Chronicles of Charanthe #1)

  Chapter 13

  She dragged the rowing boat into the sea as soon as the tide was favourable. As she waded out, she thought back to her conversation with the boat's owner and wondered if he'd been joking when he'd suggested she might be back the next day. Surely, living in a spot like that on Flying Rock Island, he must often lend his boat to the Association's postulants – especially boys from Venncastle itself. She struggled to believe that anyone could have started and finished at the code tower in only one day, unless they already knew what they were looking for. Perhaps he simply hadn't realised that was why she was going; perhaps, like Raf at the beginning, he'd discounted her for being female. That idea still rankled; it was hard to believe there were people in the Empire who still thought in such old-fashioned ways.

  She rowed back across to Flying Rock Island, beached the boat, and went to tell the landlord that she'd returned it. He made no comment on the length of time she'd been away, but agreed that she could sleep for the same rate in the attic cot until the supplies boat made its next rounds from Dashfort.

  The traders on the supplies boat recognised her, of course, and she had to fend off awkward questions about how she'd spent her time since they'd dropped her off. The sailors assumed she'd spent the whole period in the school, and though part of her yearned to correct them she knew she was better off keeping her mouth shut – even when their implications, joking or not, made her feel sick.

  When they finally made it back to Dashfort it was raining hard, and night was beginning to fall as they moored. Eleanor bought herself half a dozen fried sausages from the one stall which was still open, and sheltered by the city wall to eat. Once the sailors from the supplies boat had gone to their homes, the harbour was left deserted. On a day like this there was no chance of finding a cart bound for the right direction; anyone with any sense would wait for calmer weather, and she'd have to wait for them if she didn't want to walk through the storm.

  She was about to start munching her way through the final sausage when a broad-shouldered, hooded figure stepped out of the darkness towards her. A dagger glinted in his hand.

  "Did you miss the day at Assassin School when they taught you not to be seen?" asked a sullen voice from beneath the hood. "You draw far too much attention to yourself."

  She stared at him. That Port accent sparked her memory as though their encounter had been only yesterday. She recognised the voice, but surely it couldn't be him. How could he have known where to find her... or when?

  "I'm amazed you dared to show your face in the Empire again, after what you did to our ship."

  "What I did to your ship," she said carefully, "was to leave it safely anchored so you could sail back home the next morning. You should think yourselves lucky for that."

  "Oh?"

  "The others would've killed the lot of you as you slept."

  He snorted. "So now you're claiming to be an assassin with morals?"

  "I'm not claiming to be any kind of assassin," she said, resisting the urge to reach for her own knives. If she had to fight her way out of this one she'd never escape the stories he'd tell. "What do you want with me?"

  "I'm getting bored of your games."

  "I'm getting bored of you showing up," Eleanor retorted. "This is quite a grudge to bear for one failed attempt to pick your pocket."

  "You're no common thief, girl. A woman with reflexes like that... carrying that knife?"

  She'd been right, then: he'd recognised it from somewhere. She wondered what it meant. If she was ever going to find out, this was probably the time. "Beautiful blade, wasn't it? The man I stole it from was–"

  "Bullshit!" The word exploded from him and he stepped closer to her, his knife held awkwardly across her chest now. "That was Laban's knife, and he'd never let no half-wit thief get a hand on it."

  "Lah-ban?" She tried to pronounce the name as if she'd never heard it before.

  "Laban." He turned and spat as though the word had a bad taste to it. "Didn't he tell you his name? Well, Laban always was better than anyone, even at school. Even when the Assessors gave him a Level Three – oh no, not for him. He was much too special to take up his assignment. Off to become a bloody assassin."

  "You're obsessed with assassins. They're not even real, are they?"

  "Don't play stupid, girl. Your kind are just a particularly nasty kind of rebel, if you ask me. So where is he?"

  He pushed her back towards the wall with the flat of his knife and she allowed herself to be moved, not threatened by the dagger; she'd seen enough now to be confident that she could overpower him if she had to. He was clumsy even when he wasn't moving.

  "I'm sick of chasing bloody shadows," he continued. "I'm not playing your bloody games any more. Tell me where he is."

  "Or else what?" She met his gaze defiantly. "I don't even know anyone called Laban."

  "You know the man who gave you that knife," the harbour master said. "Where've you hidden it? Why aren't you trying to kill me?"

  "Why would I want to kill you? You're the one who's been following me!"

  With his spare hand he reached towards her, presumably to search for her knife but she wasn't going to wait to find out. She deflected his arm and then pushed him hard, causing him to lose his balance and fall, sprawling hard on the wet cobblestones.

  "Don't touch me," she warned as he got to his feet again. She wondered if she should run while she had the chance, but he'd proved his tenacity – he'd dedicated himself to tracking her down, and she'd no reason to think he wouldn't do it again. Somehow, she needed to persuade him that she wasn't worth the effort.

  "I'll haul you all the way to jail if I have to," he said. "I know this city's police quite well. So if you want me to forget that little incident at sea, you'd better tell me where I can find your assassin friends."

  "I don't know the bloke I got the knife from," she insisted. "I've no more idea than you of where to find him... probably less, since you're clearly so good at following people."

  "Why should I believe you?"

  He held the point of his dagger near her waist now. She wondered where he'd even obtained a weapon he was so ill-qualified to use.

  "Is there somewhere we can go to talk?" she asked, as another burst of heavy rain swept across them. She was already soaked to the skin, and this was shaping up to be a lengthy stand-off.

  He shook his head. "There's nothing to talk about. Tell me where I can find Laban, or you can dry out in jail."

  She took a deep breath. The truth – that she didn't know – was apparently not enough to put him off. After her experiences in Taraska of being tortured for information she didn't possess, she was in no mood for putting up with his threats.

  "If you're looking for an assassin, I think you need to go to Almont," she said, thinking back to what she'd read in Stories of the Assassins. If it was good enough for the book's author, it would do for this infuriating harbour master – and hopefully if she could suggest something else for him to chase, he'd leave her alone. "There's a huge marble fountain, that's apparently some kind of secret gateway."

  "You think I haven't tried that?" he asked, leaning in until his face was a finger's breadth from hers. "I don't want regurgitated legends from you. I want you to tell me, right now, exactly where he is."

  "I don't know." She tried to sound calm and reasonable. "Listen, I doubt I'd know that even if I was an assassin. Would you let a group of assassins know where all their colleagues were, all the time?"

  "Laban wouldn't give his knife to just anyone. If you don't know where he is now, you know when you're next going to see him."

  Eleanor could only wish that was true. If she'd had any idea how to find Laban again, she'd have felt a little bit more secure – as it happened, she knew only some meaningless numbers and that she next had to find a maze in a forest. Assuming, of course, that she could get out of this without going to jail as a smuggler.

  "So?" the harbour master prompted when she failed to respond.

  "No
plans," she said. "I'm afraid I just can't help you."

  The harbour master grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away from the wall. "We'll go over to the night watch tower, then," he said. "I've some crimes to report."

  His fingers dug into her injured muscle, but he still held his dagger in an awkward fashion and she knew this was the moment where her choices ran out – now, she simply had to escape.

  She turned sharply, pulling herself free of his grip and moving his knife arm safely aside, then throwing a swift kick back so that her heel planted itself in his abdomen.

  He reacted more quickly than she'd anticipated, grabbing her ankle so that she crashed to the ground as she tried to run, and he swung his dagger down towards her. She pulled out a knife of her own just in time to block him, metal screeching on metal as the blades ran along each other, and as he moved to pin her more firmly against the ground his movement gave her chance to ram the knife into his stomach.

  She acted on pure instinct, and then went cold with terror as she realised what she'd done. Killing strangers in Taraska was one thing – now she was in the heart of the Empire with blood on her hands and a body to dispose of. Who would believe her when she said she was only defending herself?

  She pushed the body away from her, got to her feet, and glanced around to check no-one was watching; she couldn't see anybody through the rain, anyway, and that ought to mean they couldn't see her. She rinsed her knife in a puddle then sheathed it, wondering what Laban would say if he could see her now. The murder of minor Imperial officials probably wasn't what he'd had in mind when he'd trained her.

  It was the first time she'd had to worry about disposing of a body – not the sort of thing they covered in the school curriculum, even for would-be military students such as she had been. The only thing she could think of was to dump him into the sea. She grasped his arms and started to drag him down towards the water, struggling as his clothes seemed to catch on every other cobblestone till she reached the steeper descent into the harbour.

  She waded a few feet out into the water, and stopped short. He was floating beside her. Floating. That wasn't going to do any good at all.

  Cursing to herself, she pulled him back to the shallows and started loading rocks into his pockets and inside his clothes until he eventually began to sink below the surface. Once she'd weighed him down sufficiently she swam a little way out to sea, towing the now-leaden body behind her, and made her way round to a small cove out of sight of the harbour. It wouldn't do for anyone to see him staring up at them from beneath the waves as they took their boats out to fish.

  Satisfied that she'd gone far enough, she allowed him to sink. She could only hope the rocks would be enough to keep his body below the water until he decayed beyond recognition.

  She swam back to the harbour and, with no way to dry herself, huddled shivering beneath an upturned rowing boat for the night.

  She slept fitfully and woke, startled, at the first sounds of life the next morning. The events of the previous night came back to her in a sudden, terrifying flash which made her feel sick to her stomach. At first she wondered if she'd simply had an awful dream, but she could remember every movement, every sound, every horrible instant in far more detail than any dream she'd ever had – and her clothes were still uncomfortably damp.

  She made her way nervously across to where it had happened, staring at the ground, searching for any trace of blood on the cobbles. To her relief she saw nothing out of the ordinary; the heavy rain had been her ally for once. Still, it would be best to make her way out of the city as soon as she could. She was glad it was still raining, though the downpour had slowed to a drizzle – at least her bedraggled appearance didn't look too much out of place.