Where could he find a dozen such apprentices? His own cohort of five apprentices had represented the entire valley. Five boys for the entire valley! Valley Mornae whose houses were moving up in rank preferred to be in the crater, earning chits. Few of them knew the details of how to grow in the valley, and more importantly, few had the gift. He needed an army of them.
He rubbed the pale green shoots with his thumb. Nothing happened; not the familiar tug inviting him to lose himself in that ageless sap. “It takes time,” Voldin would say. “They don’t let just anyone in. You need to earn their trust.”
“No time,” he whispered. “It can’t wait.”
He released the shoots and put his glove back on. The stillness of the place overwhelmed him suddenly, and he bounded toward the road, struggling against the grasping, spongy earth.
AUTUMN
There has never been a day we didn’t know the temptation to turn back, to give up our quest. And there has never been a day we didn’t give up.
Yet, here we remain, striving.
FROM MEMORIES BY JEVAN LOR’VAKAYNE, SON OF SAVRA.
5
A gust of wind tore through the flax fields, scattering yellow blossoms across the road like Ren was a lord or something. He smirked and lifted his chin as if acknowledging the respect of invisible supplicants. Behind him, the crater’s jagged peaks blocked the faint sunlight and cast long shadows over the valley. He leapt in and out of the shadowed lines. Cassan would rise soon and cast his pale, milky light over everything and ruin Ren’s fun.
It wasn’t just fun, of course. He had to keep his skills sharp for whenever his master gave him a respectable job.
Thirty paces ahead of him, six hired spearmen rattled down the road in cheap iron armor, spearheads swaying above them as their boots crunched the limestone gravel. Respectable folk, knights and such, couldn’t trouble themselves to do the work that needed doing, so Ilor’Hosmyr deployed enforcers recruited from the poorest of its houses. People called them thugs behind their backs, but they were just poor, and had no other options to pay off their debts. One even came from an illustrious house which had fallen from the heights, cast down by the high matron. The man didn’t even have two wood chits to his name. Not a square foot of land to work. His consort entertained other men at the pleasure house now.
Ren had three vaults full of chits: wood, but also a handful of marbles and pouches of silver. If he was that man, a man with a house name, he wouldn’t be here bound to another’s will. He’d be the lord. Soon enough, he thought. When his master realized Ren’s power, his true abilities, then he could buy himself a name. There was a growing number of poor matrons needing wealth to claw their way back to respectability. Ren would never call himself a thug. He did what he was told without ever asking the why and demanded nothing. That made him something else, but he’d never call himself just a hired hand. He bounced through the last shadows lightly, as his mentor had taught him.
Across a stretch of blood-red apricots, a mile or so off the main road and upon a bump of earth, sat their target, a walled estate. Low stone structures protruded from the outer walls and fanned down from the hilltop to the fields. Beyond the wall, the main house sprawled haphazardly, a sign of prosperity as the house expanded over the decades. One terrace was a long leap from the outer wall.
Ren grinned wolfishly, a giggle bubbling in his throat.
He imagined himself leaping up to that roof, stepping to the next, and alighting right at a window leading into his target’s room. His mentor had taught him to always assess his surroundings, to make plans before receiving the order. Assassins don’t always have the luxury of time, he’d say. Ren had never known his mentor to assassinate anyone, but he’d spoken of it constantly.
Ren suspected that the most he’d done was rob small estates, sometimes just one-room huts. Those were easy. This estate would be a challenge. He wanted nothing more than a chance to prove himself.
He rested his right hand on the pommel of his short steel blade, ever ready, while he dug his left into a pouch packed with lemon candies. They were the good kind, not the fakes sold in outer Halkamas. His contact inside the crater provided them, straight from a shop in the Rilanik. He sniffed them and smiled. He was no slouch. It wasn’t the type of job he really wanted, but he was always proud to serve at his master’s side.
He pulled back his hood, wiped the valley dampness from his face with a rag, combed his silver-gray hair with his fingers, and imagined himself a lordling’s right hand. His was a Mornae face in the making; not overly attractive to draw attention, but not hideous enough to keep unwanted eyes on him. He’d bathed, trimmed his sideburns and chin hairs, and dressed in his best clothes. A charcoal felt vest with the Hosmyr fox embroidered across the front was the finishing touch. He looked more like Maunyn’s man servant than a thief. That suited Ren fine.
He checked his pockets again for his knives, needles, picks, and other tools of his trade. All in place. Ready to serve his master. He glanced about, making sure no one was looking, and summoned a tiny ball of shadow, rolling it about in his palm. His fingers closed in a fist around the shadow, and it sunk into him, shading his skin pitch black for a moment. Someday he’d be doing more than bribing children with candies and plucking their hairs for the high matron’s use. Someday he’d get a real order, and he’d unsheathe his blades for more than bullying.
His left hand clenched and unclenched. He needed to relax. Maunyn hadn’t given him a new order. There was no point overthinking things. He muttered the reminder over and over, though quietly, blending the words with his breath as his mentor had taught him.
He turned at the sound of hooves. Up the road, two riders approached on proper steeds, long necked and graceful. He knew his master’s form even at this distance. Nervous and anxious and eager all at once, his gut hardened to a knot.
Barely Mornae by most accounts, he’d grown up in the poverty of a south valley border town and run wild. A practiced pickpocket at fifteen, the village militia had captured and shackled him to an old silverpine, a meal for the wolves. Mornae didn’t know mercy. Not for wretches like himself. They spared him only because one of Maunyn’s men, Ren’s mentor, had paid the village three silver and claimed him.
Maunyn had provided for his education—a real one, a practical one. His teacher had been a former diviner taken to hard living, no doubt another outcast whose house had failed to thrive. This teacher taught him to reach the Dark. How he’d known Ren could, he never asked. What mattered was that he could do it. Then he learned the use of small blades and moving quietly, and other tricks. Potions and powders came later. He made his own concoctions these days and prided himself on his knowledge of plants. Since then, Ren had known his purpose and place. He wanted for nothing, but what he earned piled up in the vaults, a mountain of chits stored up for a future day when he might be a consort in his own right.
His master alighted from the dark gray stallion, a rare mount and one used only for carrying him farther into the valley. His companion, a squire by the look of him, long silver hair bound back, richly dressed, took the reins. Maunyn barely acknowledged the thug spearmen and handed his kithaun spear to his squire.
Ren bowed his head as Maunyn passed. He would have bowed even if the man had not been a great lord. Maunyn was seven feet tall, muscular and lean, and his long hair was the color of glossy gray-blue slate. It flowed down his back, goddess-light flickering at the tips; his silver eyes looked on all with haughty disdain. He bore two black blades—real kithaun, not stained black like Ren’s—and others throughout his person. In the crater he might dress the lord, but out here he dressed like a killer.
Ren knew the look. As a boy he’d thought the Mornae’s height a disadvantage until he’d faced a Dark. He didn’t face the assassin himself, but he’d been there, hiding in the shadows, a scrawny twelve-year-old. The Dark had been like Maunyn in every way and moved with extraordinary speed and grace. It was like he was not even there, merely a shadow or a wind. The Dark’s longer reach and deadly weapons took out all of Ren’s companions. They’d trespassed where they shouldn’t have. Ren should’ve said something, but he was just a boy trying to prove himself to the older ruffians. Their bodies were strewn about in pieces. As a knife cuts through tender meat, the Dark had cut through them. After that, Ren worked alone; until they caught him not long after, and he became his lord’s henchman.
They followed Maunyn the rest of the way toward the estate. He walked alone ahead of them, the squire and Ren close behind. The spearmen walked further back, unworthy to be in so great a lord’s immediate presence.
The Sons of Hosmyr were busy at the tournaments, dressed in finery, drinking brandy and wine, flirting with unconsorted priestesses. Maunyn, however, was the prime consort of the third high house, headmaster of Isilmyr, all about the business of his house. And his consort, the grand old matron of Ilor’Hosmyr, was the third most important person in all Vaidolin.
Ren shook his head to think of those two together, but if anyone was bound to his consort, it was Maunyn. No one was as dedicated. The relentless drive of the binding directed his master as surely as his hands guided those deadly daggers.
A servant opened the heavy double doors and showed them into a small courtyard. The people of the estate, workers, fieldhands, servants, and guards, a host of folk, stood around as the high lord passed unperturbed by these lesser beings. At the foot of the steps to the main house, the matron of Lor’Sarstin, her consort, her daughter, and her two sons waited. The gap between them and Maunyn was clear, but they were a step or two higher than most valley lordlings. They had a proud stance; their house was old for the valley, and they did what they could to improve themselves. That much was clear, but the children were a mix of stellar and awful. The girl had the face of a sheep, long and chinless, though her eyes were nice enough.
Ren knew enough by now to see why they’d come to this place. The eldest boy must be Maunyn’s. He’d bet all his chits on it. Everyone knew his master’s reputation. There was a rumor he’d sired a hundred children in the valley. Must be the eldest, because the youngest, a boy just off his ass, was a flat-faced, beady-eyed little thing. The boy stood still. Attentive, but lacking all grace. He squeezed his little mouth tight, as if already angry at the world.
Maunyn paused in front of them, chin up, eyes closed to slits.
“Matron Lor’Sarstin,” he said. “I am grateful for your invitation. Goddess favor you and your house.”
It was the formal way, and Maunyn said it so gracefully, regally, that the matron softened and melted from one moment to the next, gushing so much that she forgot to introduce her household. The simple fact was that Maunyn was entering a house ruled by this woman. It was like entering a foreign city. Unlike other so-called houses, Lor-whatever-they-wanted, this was a true Mornae house, and had been a Hosmyr vassal through at least four or five matrons. Their knights and priestesses counted. His teacher had made sure Ren knew all the formalities, at least in passing, and that he made a study of the houses and their customs. Like any true Mornae house, its matron ruled supreme within its walls. She must be tactful, of course. A house was only as strong as the strength it had to beat off rivals. Ren looked at the poorly clad guards. They were just field hands called upon to dress up as soldiers. This matron didn’t strike Ren as particularly strong.
Inside, the matron grasped Maunyn’s arm, cooing and shrill; her praises for the high lord filled the cramped foyer. Ren passed by the boys and with deft practice, offered them a sweet, tousled their silver-white hair, plucking a strand from each and storing them in another pocket. The girl was already an acolyte, so he passed. No one said a thing to him, touching the boys. He was Maunyn’s servant.
“Nalik?” Maunyn called from within the foyer, using Ren’s fake name. His master’s voice echoed and beat a path toward him.
“Yes, milord,” Ren replied, running in toward him.
“Note the fine appointments of this favored house,” Maunyn said, oozing whatever made these matrons swoon.
Ren waited, expecting Maunyn to dismiss him and spend time with her in private. Matrons might have the power of binding, but Maunyn had a power as well. After the encounter, when he’d pleasured her, he would explain the true reason for his visit, whatever that might be. More taxes, a forgotten debt or a manufactured one, more levies to man the defenses of Halkamas. Whatever the target couldn’t afford. The matron would be so obsequious that she would struggle to resist. And then he would suggest putting one of her boys in the care of Ilor’Hosmyr, to be raised as a beloved son. These houses couldn’t afford to send their sons to the academies in Vaidolin. Their only hope was the support of a more important house. It sounded like that was what they were getting, but in truth they would never see their sons again, having disappeared them into the layers of a society valley Mornae would never interact with. They could never consort them off to another house.
