The Assassin and the Empire

  Chapter Seven

  Sam wasn’t at the apartment.

  But the clock atop the mantel read one in the morning.

  Celaena stood before the embers of the fireplace and stared at the clock, wondering if she was somehow reading it wrong.

  But it continued ticking, and when she checked her pocket watch, it also read one. Then two minutes past the hour. Then five minutes …

  She threw more logs on the fire and took off her swords and daggers, but remained in the suit. Just in case.

  She had no idea when she began pacing in front of the fire—and only realized it when the clock chimed two and she found herself still standing before the clock.

  He would come home any minute.

  Any minute.

  Celaena jolted awake at the faint chime of the clock. She’d somehow wound up on the couch—and somehow fallen asleep.

  Four o’clock.

  She would go out again in a minute. Maybe he’d hidden in the Assassin’s Keep for the night. Unlikely, but … it was probably the safest place to hide after you’d killed Rourke Farran.

  Celaena closed her eyes.

  The dawn was blinding, and her eyes felt gritty and sore as she hurried through the slums, then the wealthy neighborhoods, scanning every cobblestone, every shadowed alcove, every rooftop for any sign of him.

  Then she went to the river.

  She didn’t dare breathe as she walked up and down the banks that bordered the slums, searching for anything. Any sign of Farran, or … or …

  Or.

  She didn’t let herself finish that thought, though crippling nausea gripped her as she scanned the banks and docks and sewer depositories.

  He would be waiting for her at home. And then he’d chide her and laugh at her and kiss her. And then she’d dispatch Jayne tonight, and then they’d set sail on this river and then out to the nearby sea, and then be gone.

  He would be waiting at home.

  He’d be home.

  Home.

  Noon.

  It couldn’t be noon, but it was. Her pocket watch was properly wound, and hadn’t once failed her in the years she’d had it.

  Each of her steps up the stairs to her apartment was heavy and light—heavy and light, the sensation shifting with each heartbeat. She’d stop by the apartment only long enough to see if he’d returned.

  A roaring silence hovered around her, a cresting wave that she’d been trying to outrun for hours. She knew that the moment the silence finally hit her, everything would change.

  She found herself atop the landing, staring at the door.

  It had been unlocked and left slightly ajar.

  A strangled sort of noise broke out of her, and she ran the last few feet, barely noticing as she threw open the door and burst into the apartment. She was going to scream at him. And kiss him. And scream at him some more. A lot more. How dare he make her—

  Arobynn Hamel was sitting on her couch.

  Celaena halted.

  The King of the Assassins slowly got to his feet. She saw the expression in his eyes and knew what he was going to say long before he opened his mouth and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  The silence struck.

  Chapter Eight

  Her body started moving, walking straight toward the fireplace before she really knew what she was going to do.

  “They thought he was still living in the Keep,” Arobynn said, his voice still pitched at that horrible whisper. “They left him as a message.”

  She reached the mantel and grabbed the clock from where it rested.

  “Celaena,” Arobynn breathed.

  She hurled the clock across the room so hard it shattered against the wall behind the dining table.

  Its fragments landed atop the buffet table against the wall, breaking the decorative dishes displayed there, scattering the silver tea set she’d bought for herself.

  “Celaena,” Arobynn said again.

  She stared at the ruined clock, the ruined dishes and tea set. There was no end to this silence. There would never be an end, only this beginning.

  “I want to see the body.” The words came from a mouth she wasn’t sure belonged to her anymore.

  “No,” Arobynn said gently.

  She turned her head toward him, baring her teeth. “I want to see the body.”

  Arobynn’s silver eyes were wide, and he shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

  She had to start moving, had to start walking anywhere, because now that she was standing still … Once she sat down …

  She walked out the door. Down the steps.

  The streets were the same, the sky was clear, the briny breeze off the Avery still ruffled her hair. She had to keep walking. Perhaps … perhaps they’d sent the wrong body. Perhaps Arobynn had made a mistake. Perhaps he was lying.

  She knew Arobynn followed her, staying a few feet behind as she strode across the city. She also knew that Wesley joined them at some point, always looking after Arobynn, always vigilant. The silence kept flickering in and out of her ears. Sometimes it’d stop long enough for her to hear the whinny of a passing horse, or the shout of a peddler, or the giggle of children. Sometimes none of the noises in the capital could break through.

  There had been a mistake.

  She didn’t look at the assassins guarding the iron gates to the Keep, or at the housekeeper who opened the giant double doors of the building for her, or at the assassins who milled about the grand entrance and who stared at her with fury and grief mingling in their eyes.

  She slowed long enough for Arobynn—trailed by Wesley—to step in front of her, to lead the rest of the way.

  The silence peeled back, and thoughts tumbled in. It had been a mistake. And when she figured out where they were keeping him—where they were hiding him—she’d stop at nothing to find him. And then she’d slaughter them all.

  Arobynn led her down the stone stairwell at the back of the entrance hall—the stairs that led into the cellars and the dungeons and the secret council rooms below.

  The scrape of boots on stone. Arobynn in front of her, Wesley trailing behind.

  Down and down, then along the narrow, dark passageway. To the door across from the dungeon entrance. She knew that door. Knew the room behind it. The mortuary where they kept their members until— No, it had been a mistake.

  Arobynn took out a ring of keys and unlocked the door, but paused before opening it. “Please, Celaena. It’s better if you don’t.”

  She elbowed past him and into the room.

  The square room was small and lit with two torches. Bright enough to illuminate …

  Illuminate …

  Each step brought her closer to the body on the table. She didn’t know where to look first.

  At the fingers that went the wrong way, at the burns and careful, deep slices in his flesh, at the face, the face she still knew, even when so many things had been done to destroy it beyond recognition.

  The world swayed beneath her feet, but she kept upright as she finished the walk to the table and looked down at the naked, mutilated body she had—

  She had—

  Farran had taken his time. And though that face was in ruins, it betrayed none of the pain he must have felt, none of the despair.

  This was some dream, or she had gone to hell after all, because she couldn’t exist in the world where this had been done to him, where she’d paced like an idiot all night while he suffered, while Farran tortured him, while he ripped out his eyes and—

  Celaena vomited on the floor.

  Footsteps, then Arobynn’s hands were on her shoulder, on her waist, pulling her away.

  He was dead.

  Sam was dead.

  She wouldn’t leave him like this, in this cold, dark room.

  She yanked out of Arobynn’s grasp. Wordlessly, she unfastened her cloak and spread it over Sam, covering the damage that had been so carefully inflicted. She climbed onto the wooden table and lay out beside him, stretching an arm across his
middle, holding him close.

  The body still smelled faintly like Sam. And like the cheap soap she’d made him use, because she was so selfish that she couldn’t let him have her lavender soap.

  Celaena buried her face in his cold, stiff shoulder. There was a strange, musky scent all over him—a smell that was so distinctly not Sam that she almost vomited again. It clung to his golden-brown hair, to his torn, bluish lips.

  She wouldn’t leave him.

  Footsteps heading toward the door—then the snick of it closing as Arobynn left.

  Celaena closed her eyes. She wouldn’t leave him.

  She wouldn’t leave him.

  Chapter Nine

  Celaena awoke in a bed that had once been hers, but somehow no longer felt that way. There was something missing in the world, something vital. She arose from the depths of slumber, and it took her a long moment to sort out what had changed.

  She might have thought that she was awakening in her bed in the Keep, still Arobynn’s protégée, still Sam’s rival, still content to be Adarlan’s Assassin forever and ever. She might have believed it if she hadn’t noticed that so many of her beloved belongings were missing from this familiar bedroom—belongings that were now in her apartment across the city.

  Sam was gone.

  Reality opened wide and swallowed her whole.

  She didn’t move from the bed.

  She knew the day was drifting along because of the shifting light on the wall of the bedroom. She knew the world still passed by, unaffected by the death of a young man, unaware that he’d ever existed and breathed and loved her. She hated the world for continuing on. If she never left this bed, this room, maybe she’d never have to continue on with it.

  The memory of his face was already blurring. Had his eyes been more golden brown, or soil brown? She couldn’t remember. And she’d never get the chance to find out.

  Never to see that half smile. Never to hear his laugh, never to hear him say her name like it meant something special, something more than being Adarlan’s Assassin could ever mean.

  She didn’t want to go out into a world where he didn’t exist. So she watched the light shift and change, and let the world pass by without her.

  Someone was speaking outside her door. Three men with low voices. The rumble of them shook her from sleep to find the room was dark, the city lights glowing beyond the windows.

  “Jayne and Farran will be expecting retaliation,” a man said. Harding, one of Arobynn’s more talented assassins, and a fierce competitor of hers.

  “Their guards will be on alert,” said another—Tern, an older assassin.

  “Then we’ll take out the guards, and while they’re distracted, some of us will go for Jayne and Farran.” Arobynn. She had a foggy memory of being carried—hours or years or a lifetime ago—up from that dark room that smelled of death and into her bed.

  Muffled replies from Tern and Harding, then—

  “We strike tonight,” Arobynn growled. “Farran lives at the house, and if we time it right, we’ll kill them both while they’re in their beds.”

  “Getting to the second floor isn’t as simple as walking up the stairs,” Harding challenged. “Even the exteriors are guarded. If we can’t get through the front, then there’s a small second-story window that we can leap through using the roof of the house next door.”

  “A leap like that could be fatal,” Tern countered.

  “Enough,” Arobynn cut in. “I’ll decide how to break in when we arrive. Have the others ready to go in three hours. I want us on our way at midnight. And tell them to keep their mouths shut. Someone must have tipped off Farran if he knew to set a trap for Sam. Don’t even tell your servants where you’re going.”

  Grunted acquiescence, then footsteps as Tern and Harding walked away.

  Celaena kept her eyes closed and her breathing steady as the lock turned in her bedroom door. She recognized the even, confident gait of the King of the Assassins striding toward her bed. Smelled him as he stood over her, watching. Felt his long fingers as they stroked through her hair, then along her cheek.

  Then the steps leaving, the door shutting—and locking. She opened her eyes, the glow of the city offering enough light for her to see that the lock on the door had been altered since she’d left—it now locked only from the outside.

  He had locked her in.

  To keep her from going with them? To keep her from helping to pay back Farran for every inch of flesh he’d tortured, every bit of pain Sam had felt?

  Farran was a master of torture, and he’d kept Sam all night.

  Celaena sat up, her head spinning. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Food could wait. Everything could wait.

  Because in three hours, Arobynn and his assassins would venture out to exact vengeance. They’d rob her of her claim to revenge—the satisfaction of slaughtering Farran and Jayne and anyone who stood in her way. And she had no intention of letting them do it.

  She stalked to the door and confirmed that it was locked. Arobynn knew her too well. Knew that when the blanket of grief had been ripped away …

  Even if she could spring the lock, she had no doubt that there was at least one assassin watching the hall outside her bedroom. Which left the window.

  The window itself was unlocked—but the two-story drop was formidable. While she’d been sleeping, someone had taken off her suit and given her a nightgown. She ripped apart the armoire for any sign of the suit—its boots were designed for climbing—but all she found were two black tunics, matching pants, and ordinary black boots. That would do. She hadn’t become Adarlan’s Assassin for nothing.

  There were no weapons in sight, and she hadn’t brought any in with her. But years of living in this room had its advantages. She kept her motions quiet as she pulled up the loose floorboards where she’d long ago hidden a set of four daggers. She sheathed two at her waist and tucked the other two into her boots. Then she found the twin swords she’d kept disguised as part of the bed frame since she was fourteen. Neither the daggers nor the sword had been good enough to bring with her when she moved. Today they would do.

  When she’d finished strapping the blades across her back, she rebraided her hair and fitted on her cloak, throwing the hood over her head.

  She’d kill Jayne first. And then she’d drag Farran to a place where she could properly repay him and take however long she wanted. Days, even. When that debt was paid, when Farran had no more agony or blood to offer, she’d place Sam in the embrace of the earth and send him to the afterlife knowing he’d been avenged.

  She eased open the window, scanning the front courtyard. The dew-slick stones gleamed in the lamplight, and the sentries at the iron gate seemed focused on the street beyond.

  Good.

  This was her kill, her revenge to take. No one else’s.

  A black fire rippled in her gut, spreading through her veins as she hopped onto the windowsill and eased outside.

  Her fingers found purchase in the large white stones, and, with one eye on the guards at the distant gate, she climbed down the side of the house. No one noticed her, no one looked her way. The Keep was silent, the calm before the storm that would break when Arobynn and his assassins began their hunt.

  Her landing was soft, no more than a whisper of boots against slick cobblestones. The guards were so focused on the street that they wouldn’t notice when she jumped the fence near the stables around the back.

  Creeping around the exterior of the house was as simple as getting out of her room, and she was well within the shadows of the stables when a hand reached out and grabbed her.

  She was hurled into the side of the wooden building, and had a dagger drawn by the time the thump finished echoing.

  Wesley’s face, set with rage, seethed at her in the dark.

  “Where in hell do you think you’re going?” he breathed, not loosening his grip on her shoulders even as she pressed her dagger to the side of his throat.

  “Get out of m
y way,” she growled, hardly recognizing her own voice. “Arobynn can’t keep me locked up.”

  “I’m not talking about Arobynn. Use your head and think, Celaena!” A flicker of her—a part of her that had somehow vanished since she’d shattered that clock—realized that this might be the first time he’d ever addressed her by her name.

  “Get out of my way,” she repeated, pushing the edge of the blade harder against his exposed throat.

  “I know you want revenge,” he panted. “I do, too—for what he did to Sam. I know you—”

  She flicked the blade, angling it just enough that he reared back to avoid her slicing a deep line across his throat.

  “Don’t you understand?” he pleaded, his eyes gleaming in the dark. “It’s all just a—”

  But the fire rose up in Celaena and she whirled, using a move the Mute Master had taught her that summer, and Wesley’s eyes lost focus as she slammed the pommel of her dagger into the side of his head. He dropped like a stone.

  Before he’d even finished collapsing, Celaena was sprinting for the fence. A moment later, she jumped it and vanished into the city streets.

  She was fire, she was darkness, she was dust and blood and shadow.

  She hurtled through the streets, each step faster than the last as that dark fire burned through thought and feeling until all that remained was her rage and her prey.

  She took alleys and leapt over walls.

  She’d slaughter them all.

  Faster and faster, sprinting for that beautiful house on its quiet street, for the two men who had taken her world apart piece by piece, bone by shattered bone.

  All she had to do was get to Jayne and Farran—everyone else was collateral. Arobynn had said they’d both be in their beds. That meant she had to get past all those guards at the front gate, the front door, and on the first floor … not to mention the guards that were sure to be outside the bedrooms.

  But there was an easier way to get past all them. A way in that didn’t involve possibly alerting Farran and Jayne if the guards at the front door raised the alarm. Harding had mentioned something about a window on the second floor that he could leap through … Harding was a good tumbler, but she was better.