41
Valine bided her time, waiting on the edge of the Muravo Mountain Pass, watching the sun slip below the horizon, anticipating the guard rotation changing. She waited for the mages to return to the palace, to relinquish their posts along the last stretch of road before entrance to the palace. As the rotation at dusk commenced, Valine bolted from the pass, materializing her necromancy into a smoky shield and darting behind the shelters that bordered the oasis. A repeated dance of running and hiding before she got to the last one. The mages were facing the yawning expanse of the Twilight Sands, the threat of sand serpents a far cry from the immediacy of the danger that skirted behind them.
Finally, she bolted across the last stretch of sand, her boots shushing against the sand, the small puffs of disturbed air masquerading in the twilight as she wreathed herself in necromantic smoke. She reached the cliff face that Selyndyr was raised upon, and from within her satchel, Valine produced spikes that she added to her boot and a set of pitons. Dusting her hands in the sand, Valine took up her gear and began to climb.
It was arduous and technical, rocks crumbling beneath her feet and fingers. Her hands were aching with the feat of supporting her weight, blood and blisters screaming against her palms. She knew her fingertips were stripped raw by the halfway point, like points of fire. Sweat streamed in her eyes and slipped down the nape of her neck as she continued to haul herself up the cliffside.
Talloh had little in the way of guards aside from the ones posted along the pass. Valine had watched their rotations over the past few days under the guise of enjoying tea on the balconies, learning even more from Hanish’s helpful intel. The risk of a takeover from the mountainside was a ludicrous number, and the possibility was next to none. The ocean was hardly ventured due to the risk of kraken, therefore the need to guard from the sea was only monitored by the most skeleton of crews on the North Point lighthouse. She was sure there were guard posts on the other seaside, but they were not close enough to the north-western seaboard for it to matter.
Valine’s climb had her limbs trembling, her lungs begging to burst, but still she climbed. The cool air was the smallest reprieve, the wind however, was an obstacle Valine could do without. It tossed her hair about her face and strands stuck to her sweaty forehead as she blinked past the burning moisture.
She chanced a look up. Thirty more feet. She could do it.
Hauling herself up by cramping muscles, Valine ascended.
Fifteen feet.
Ten.
Five left.
When Valine pulled herself over the top, she lay upon the sharp shale, lungs heaving, limbs shuddering and spasming. Sweat coated her entire body and her lips were dry, drier still was her throat. Valine stared up at the stars that Amaris communed with, finding the constellation of Nafiza, of Malik’s patroness. She strained for breath, pulling her hands up to the three moons.
Her skin was shredded, the fingertips bloody and torn, dozens of blisters erupting over her hands, filling with fluid. She groaned, but she had expected this. She just trusted that her necromancy would help heal her quickly.
“You look like hell,” Hanish stated dryly.
Valine shot her eyes to the fulgurmancer standing over her, the man holding a flask of water. Valine took it greedily, gulping down the cool liquid and spilling much of it on herself. It was empty before she was ready for it to be finished. Hanish wordlessly handed her a second one. She finished this one, too, and got up on shaky legs.
“I’m going to be honest,” Hanish said, embarrassed, “I didn’t think you were going to survive that climb.”
Valine shrugged. “It was the only way.”
Hanish pulled out a salve from his pocket and helped her cover her hands with it, hissing quietly in pain as he did so. The numbing agents in the cream helped immensely, and Valine dumped a third flask over her head. If her clothing wasn’t stuck to her before, it certainly was now.
“You’ll come back for us?” Hanish asked.
“I swore I would,” Valine told him efficiently as she counted the items in her satchel, donning fingerless leather gloves. “But you need to be here when the body is found. You cannot escape the same night as an assassination.”
Hanish guided Valine to the secret passage at the base of the palace. “This one leads you to the servant’s wing. Take two lefts and then a right, and after that it’s a straight stretch up. I left a candle burning in the storage room. Once you get there, push the second shelf in, and it’ll take you to the Nova Wing. From there, you’ll recognize the Vesper Wing. I’m sure you can find your way from there.”
“Thank you, Hanish. Truly,” Valine told the mage, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Just follow through, all right?”
Valine knew Hanish meant on both her promises, and she nodded, disappearing as Hanish disappeared up a trail, a woven basket slung over his arm.
The passage was dark but surprisingly dry, dust and cobwebs littering every wall and the floor. Insects scuttled along with her steps, and Valine felt her way for the turns. After she’d followed two lefts and a right, she carried on a straight stretch and found the slightest sliver of light—the storage room. Valine blew out the candle and pushed the shelf. Recently oiled hinges allowed no sounds and Valine smiled.
Quietly, she crept, blending into shadows. During her stay, she’d learned so many hiding place. She’d traversed these halls day and night, constantly watching. Valine counted breaths and footsteps, darting away or around when needed. Finally, Valine recognized the artwork of the Vesper Wing, the elaborately painted floors of stars and mandalas running like a scroll across the expanse.
Valine had left her chest of weapons in the secret alcove hidden behind a long tapestry and fainting couch. She slipped into it, opening the chest by feel alone, grabbing everything she needed to frame the people for the perfect crime. She had the earrings, the poison, the tonic, and the list.
Armed with her instruments of falsity, Valine descended to the healer’s lab. She tentatively stretched out her necromancy, feeling for life. She found the slow heartbeat of the healer sleeping. Quietly, Valine entered the lab, dropped the earrings into a box, and tucked the fleur de mort into the indigo drawers the healer kept the contraceptive tonics in. Valine smiled when her suspicions were rewarded, seeing a vial with Jacira’s name on it. She ensured that it was clearly in sight before she slipped the forged document about debt ownership into a thin drawer and swept from the room.
From the Vesper Wing it was a short trip to the Heaven Wing. Valine traipsed through the halls before she paused in an alcove before the king’s door. Four guards were stationed outside of his room, with no possibility of entry without sight. But that was just fine, Valine did not need to enter.
No man had been able to recreate the effects of fleur de mort, but Valine was no man. As a necromancer, she held within her the ability to kill in any manner. She could mimic asphyxiation. She could copy blunt force trauma. What she couldn’t recreate was some of the evidence. She could not put feathers in lungs from a pillow suffocation. She could not leave splinters from a spear. This was why she favored poison. So little of poison left residue.
Valine’s bloodied and blistered hand reached out. She let her magic unfurl and watched that intangible smoke seep from her fingertips. She watched as it slid across the floor, sinuous like a snake, past the unwitting guards and under the door.
The magic was a part of her, therefore she felt with it. There were two people present in the king’s chambers, and Valine probed gently. One was certainly a man, the other a woman. She continued searching and discovered the woman to be Pandora. As she pulled away from Pandora, Valine searched against the man more firmly. She recognized the predatory form of King Jericho.
Still pressed against a shadowy alcove, Valine curled her fingers into claws, letting her necromancy take root. His Robursium Medallion stood no chance. She let it spill down Jericho’s throat, roiling the acid in his belly until it burned through the lining, put pressure inside his blood vessels until they burst, seized his muscles, boiled his brain. Valine closed his airway and lanced his eyes, letting blood pour down his cheeks like crimson tears. She turned his lips blue and she felt him suffer. Jericho’s death was agony, Valine knew. She’d studied fleur de mort. She knew it was one of the most painful poisons and its rarity made it obvious when it was used. Its signature was unique.
During the final step of the king’s death, Valine drew it out, slipping into the king’s consciousness. She could see his suffering through his soul, it was anguish and Valine delighted. She smiled a daemon’s grin and she let Jericho see it. He raged beneath the pain of his death and she let her magic speak.
“I wanted you to know it was me that brought your kingdom to the ground,” she whispered in his head. “And that I was happy doing it.”
Jericho struggled and gurgled. She let the death hover for a moment, and then she razed through his skin, and pulled his heart through his chest. It sat there, its last feeble pumps suffering, before it stopped and the last trails of blood leaked out of Jericho’s mouth.
King Jericho Mayar of Talloh was dead.
Valine wound the magic back into her, the guards none the wiser, a sleeping Pandora due for a violent surprise. She smiled as she exited the halls, weaving her way back to the storage room and through a new tunnel.
The new tunnel led her down past the empty dungeons, under the heart of the castle and through ancient pathways used by builders and mistresses. Valine wove her way through, counting the steps until she reached four-hundred-and-four. At four-hundred-and-five Valine pushed against the wall until it clicked. When it did, she found herself in a room, dusty and draped in white cloth. It was living quarters, long abandoned. Valine speculated it was a mistress’s space, as it faced the ocean and had a wonderful view of the coast.
Throwing open the plate glass doors, Valine felt the icy whip of ocean air throw her hair from her face, tangling the dark strands about her like fingers of seaweed. Another thing about this room was that it faced directly off of a cliffside. She gazed down at the shore, watching the surf crash against dusky sand. She swallowed.
Unwinding a length of rope from a corner of the room, she pocketed the pistol she’d hidden with it, and went back to the rail. Valine wrapped the rope over the wrought iron railing as an anchor, and grasped it in her hand, praying it held. She tied the other end around her waist, taking a deep breath as she lowered herself over the side of the balcony, she braced her legs and began to descend. It was slow and arduous, her salve, sweat, and blood covered hands slick inside her gloves. She couldn’t use gloves while climbing because it severely impacted her ability to grip, but sliding down a rope was essential.
She was dropping slowly when she heard the first groan. Her eyes shot skyward toward the fence that held her. The metal was leaning precariously, bending against her weight. She swore, sliding as fast as she could without snapping her spine or wrenching her shoulders on the stopping impact. The iron groaned again, and she sped up.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she muttered, careening down the cliff face, the chill night air biting her cheeks, her hair following her descent like a cyclone above her head. She counted the remaining feet. One hundred. Ninety. Seventy-five.
The balcony began to screech in earnest and nervous sweat beaded up on her forehead, panic swallowing her in its hold. The beach was fast approaching. Fifty feet. The ocean lapped greedily. Thirty-five. She was so close. Twenty-five.
At fifteen, the balcony gave, and Valine plummeted. She swallowed a scream in her throat, preparing to tuck and roll, being mindful of the rope. She crashed against the ground, hitting her shoulder on the sand and rolling, letting momentum carry her into the ocean. It hurt—fuck, it hurt. But she was alive. The balcony rail slammed into the ground where she’d made impact, landing with a solid thud and a puff of sand.
Valine laid on the shore, ocean water crashing against her like a cool caress. Her hair was soaked, she was sore, but she’d done it. She pulled herself to her feet, finding a tender ankle and dragged the evidence of the broken balcony further into the ocean, calculating the distance of low tide, and depositing it into the darkness of the sea. Because two of Talloh’s moons were stationary like two orbs hung in the sky, they had little more effect on the tides aside from a near constant high tide and the “low tide” being not all that low. After, ankle barking, she limped her way to the harbor.
The harbor stank of fish and more salt-tanged air. The men were grizzled and burly, missing limbs and eyes, but they did not question the woman dressed in black when she asked for a cloak while holding out gold coin. They also did not question when she asked to depart for the border of Valencya and Luneth immediately.
Within fifteen minutes she was boarding a ship, sitting next to barrels of silver-scaled fish, drinking deeply from a flask of whiskey, a flagon of water beside her.
The ship was called The Elegance, a Valencyan vessel that transported basic cargo and illegal imports, everything from drugs to girls. Valine kept this in mind for a later assassination. The captain was a lecherous man twice Valine’s age with a frosty gray beard and salt spray hair. A scar bisected his face, cutting across the bridge of his bulbous nose. His name was Wallace Yarl, but the men on the ship just called to him as Captain.
The assassin must have cut a dangerous figure, because not even Captain Yarl dared to come close to her as they sailed from the harbor. She began cleaning her dirty nails with one of her many blades, sighing at their cracked and broken state.
The screaming began before she was finished.
Valine smiled as bells rang and shouts went up.
“The king is dead!” She heard from land, and the captain’s gaze lurched to her, paling so that his scar stood out stark white. His mouth dropped open, his gray eyes flaring with genuine fear. Valine kept cleaning her nails, a smile on her lips that curled from her teeth. He knew what she’d done. He didn’t know how, but he knew. Valine did not deny it. It didn’t matter what he knew. He was going to die soon.
He stepped toward her.
She pulled out her gun and aimed it at him. She didn’t even bother looking at the captain as she examined her nails.
“Don’t return to port,” she said flatly, the toll of bells punctuating her words. “Turn around, and I’ll kill you too.”
The captain just nodded and commanded the men to sail. It could have been her imagination, but she thought that they put on an additional burst of speed.
When she asked for quarters at daybreak, she was given the captain’s with a key. She found a beautiful gold pistol, emblazoned with the sun and a crescent moon, filigree dancing across the barrel. She took it as well—for security. For extra reassurance, she bound the captain to her with a tether in case anyone tried to murder her in her sleep. They didn’t, and she slept soundly. The ship followed the coast as closely as possible, avoiding kraken in the deeper waters and reefs closer to shore. Any captain worth his salt knew the safest routes to take around the horseshoe-shaped waters within Enneive.
Valine monitored their progress, and when they were in the deepest stretch of the ocean, a day from reaching the port of Valencya, she killed the entire crew and sank the ship. She’d heard enough to know they regularly stole girls and sold them, trafficked them into prostitution and other flesh trade. They didn’t have any qualms about ruining those girls’ lives, so she had no hesitations taking theirs. She sarcastically apologized to the captain for the necessary evil and escaped in a dinghy with pockets full of gems and coin.
She kept the gun.