Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
T he Arachessen taught that the desire for vengeance existed only in the weak. There was no such thing as justice—not mortal justice, anyways, only that of the gods and the Weaver’s threads of fate. Something far too complex for us to understand. A desire to seek it was not only pitiful, but stupid—one who truly trusted the Weaver knew that a human assessment of right and wrong was flawed and inconsequential.
I knew these teachings well. I recited them to the students I taught. In general, I believed them.
But maybe I did still succumb to those marks on my soul the Arachessen had not been able to wash away, sometimes. Because the thought of killing Tarkan—the thought of killing him with my own hands—was downright intoxicating. I did not acknowledge that perhaps I had some reasons for doing this beyond the desire to avoid bloodshed in Vasai.
Then again, the more I talked, the more I genuinely believed it was the better of the two courses.
Yes, Tarkan had a large army, but it was scattered and poorly trained. The vast majority of his soldiers were only loyal because of their crippling addictions to a steady stream of Pythoraseed—a stream controlled by Tarkan alone. He was a distrustful man. He promoted few, and truly trusted fewer. He had clung ruthlessly to his own power, but as a result, he created a machine with a single, critical weakness: him.
If Tarkan himself were dead, his army would be useless. It didn’t matter how big it was then.
We didn’t have to slaughter his army. We only had to kill him.
Atrius listened as I told him all of this, expression blank.
“And you intend to do that yourself,” he had said, not bothering to hide his skepticism.
“Do you know how many assassinations I carried out as a member of the Arachessen?” I paused at that—I actually wasn’t sure of the number. I settled on, “Many. And most of them were very powerful.”
Though none were Tarkan—even if, every assignment, I hoped they would be. I knew better than to suggest him as a target, even though he was important to the Pythora King’s reign, which made him a perfectly viable one. The Sightmother would have her suspicions about why I wanted him. I wasn’t willing to risk her opinion of me.
“I’d be a fool if I let my only seer run into the enemy’s grip alone,” Atrius said. “Someone else will do it.”
I arched my brows. “Who among your warriors can be an assassin? They aren’t exactly subtle.”
“I’ll do it myself.”
I laughed before I could stop myself, which made Atrius’s scowl deepen.
“I’ve killed things you’ve only dreamed of,” he said.
My laugh faded. I had no doubt that was true.
I’ve slaughtered demigods, he’d snarled at Aaves.
Demigods . I wanted that story sometime.
“I’ve seen you fight,” I said. “You’re good. But you aren’t subtle, either. One glance at you and everyone will know you’re a threat.”
That was a light way of putting it. Atrius outright reeked of “predator.”
“And you?” he said coldly, gesturing to me—gesturing, I knew, to my blindfold. “You’re better at being subtle?”
I smiled. “Perhaps my appearance is unusual. But don’t worry about me. I know how to kill quietly.”
At that, a flicker of a smirk. He leaned closer, and to my shock, his fingertips brushed the soft underside of my chin.
“Hm,” he said. “To think I let such a dangerous creature sleep beside me every night.”
I froze momentarily, caught off-guard. Was he teasing me? Was it a joke? Atrius either had no sense of humor or the strangest one I’d ever seen—which was saying something, coming from the Arachessen.
Or was he flirting with me? That thought seemed even more incomprehensible than the joke.
But, I reminded myself, it was good for my mission if he wanted me. Another avenue to his trust.
If I was a better Arachessen, I would have seized the moment. Instead, I awkwardly pulled away, startled by the strange double beat in my chest but showing him no sign of it.
“Nor should you forget it,” I said, which earned another one of those peculiar almost-smiles.
He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.
“Fine,” he said. “Tell me, formidable assassin, how this plan of yours would work.”
Tarkan was an eccentric individual—a Pythora broker who had managed to climb the ranks of the Pythora King’s regime until he became one of his most trusted and most vicious mentees. He had carefully cultivated an image of himself as a god-chosen oracle. It was, of course, all bullshit—the peculiarities that he claimed were ancient customs were actually grossly twisted or misinterpreted, and most were complete fabrications based on nothing but his power-hungry whims.
One of them was that he liked the faces of his concubines, both men and women, covered as they entered his palace—to feel as if he owned their very visage, to be looked upon by no one but him and those he chose to share them with.
Revolting.
But useful, given my appearance.
Before leaving for Vasai, I veiled myself. My clothing was the weakest part of my act—Atrius had sent back to Alka for more of the clothing from Aaves’s prostitutes, and while those dresses were certainly fine, they were… of a very different style than what Tarkan liked his to wear.
I was not especially crafty, but I was resourceful. I’d managed to assemble something halfway appropriate from one of the long gowns and a series of silk and chiffon scarves that I arranged over it in sweeping drapes—including one over my head and face.
When Atrius saw me in this, he outright snorted. Like an amused horse.
“What?” I’d said. “Not appealing to you?”
“Humans are so strange,” he muttered.
I couldn’t bring myself to argue with that.
But I hoped that Tarkan or those of his inner circle wouldn’t laugh, too, when they saw me. It had been years since I’d seen one of Tarkan’s concubines in person. My attempt at recreation might not be accurate—or be easily exposed as a disguise. I knew if I had to, I could slip away and kill my way through the castle—though I’d prefer not to have to.
Once my costume was intact, I took my path into the city. The route was just as I remembered it: a little gap in the walls that led to the dense streets of the inner city, not far from the steps of the Thorn Palace.
Right away, the sounds and smells of Vasai assaulted me. I was grateful I could let my little stumble be a part of my role—the concubines usually could not see more than vague shapes through their shrouds, so they often clung to the arm of a handler as they moved through the city. I was alone, and sagged against a dirty brick wall instead.
A sudden, intense wave of anger pulsed through me—anger at myself and at my past. Fifteen years of training, fifteen years of meticulous study and devotion. I was just as good as my Sisters, just as hardworking, just as committed .
And yet.
One whiff of that salty, sweat-thick air, one moment of those city sounds that had not changed in twenty years, and the past yanked me back to its side as if by a collar around my throat: You thought you escaped, but you will always be mine. Look at all these marks you cannot wash away.
Places had souls. The threads that connected us to locations were just as alive as those that ran through living beings. And the soul of Vasai was rotten. Sick and tangled and festering with the broken dreams of the people who lived here.
It was every bit as bad as it had been all those years ago. For every shouting voice of a marketplace vendor or jovial joke of a drunken gambler, there was a slurred moan from someone slowly dying of Pythoraseed use—or withdrawal. For every scent of a food stall or blacksmith, there was the sour-sweet, nostril-scalding aroma of decaying Pythora burned and re-burned too many times by desperate addicts.
This entire place smelled like death. Like a corpse—a fresh one, one that still held some tragic trace of the life ebbing away.
Those memories did not belong to Sylina, I reminded myself. That rot did not belong to me. I could leave it on the skin of another little girl I left behind a long time ago.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, straightened my back, and continued through the city, stumbling across the congested cobblestones.
The headache set in fast this time—crowded places like this would always do it, but this one got to me quicker than usual. I remained close to the walls, leaning against them like some poor-sighted woman too wrapped in silks to see a thing, mumbling timid apologies to those I tripped over.
It didn’t take long to make it to the Thorn Palace. Tarkan had coined the name when he took over Vasai. Some twenty years ago, it had been called the Mansion of Roses. I was far too young to remember what it must have looked like then, but I could imagine it—probably gleaming and polished. Then Tarkan came and renamed it as a mockery to the regime that came before his—a reference to the many spears, swords, and bolts that jutted from the outer walls as a result of the brutal onslaught that had earned him his throne. He didn’t take the weapons down after the exchange of power. Instead, he added to them, turning a symbol of nauseatingly elegant beauty into a grotesque monument to death. Sometimes, a notable criminal’s execution would entail hanging them on one of the palace’s “thorns” until the birds picked the carcass clean.
Places had souls. The Thorn Palace’s was ugly and covered in death. A place where thousands of threads were severed.
The stairs to the entrance of the palace were poorly maintained marble, littered at the bottom with trash and limp, barely conscious bodies. I staggered up the stairs slowly, step by step. I could sense the awareness of the guards at the top, two men who watched me with vague, amused curiosity and made no move to help.
“Your business?” one of the guards grunted, once I finally reached the top.
I panted behind my veil and smoothed my skirts around me—the act of a disgruntled concubine who was frustrated and trying not to show it.
“Is it not obvious?” I crooned, motioning to myself.
“Where is your handler?”
“He was ill. Had terrible runs.” I twisted my lip in disgust and let them hear it in my voice. “Nothing fit for the presence of his excellency, of course, but he summoned me today and it was important to me to be here as he commanded.”
The guards stared at me for too long. One of them chewed on some Pythora leaves he seemed like he had been working on for quite some time. They were high out of their minds, of course, though they held it far better than the townspeople crumpled at the base of the stairs did.
Tarkan’s men were unskilled and replaceable. The ones I really had to worry about would be further into the castle, guarding Tarkan himself. These would be easy to fool. I doubted either of them had held this post for longer than a few months.
They exchanged a glance.
“Fine,” the chewing one grunted. “I’ll take you in. ”
He extended his arm to me, and I took it as if I was very grateful to finally have someone who could actually see to lead me around.
The guard escorted me into the palace. It was warm and stuffy inside, the air damp. Someone desperately needed to open some windows. Still, it was far cleaner than Aaves’s pit of depravity—Tarkan, at least, had a more sophisticated idea of power than Aaves’s indiscriminate obsession with furs, silks, and drugs. Tarkan, like the Pythora King himself, controlled his followers with their addictions, but never partook himself. Smart men knew better.
There were a lot of people on the first floor of the palace, mostly the chosen few of Tarkan’s followers who were allowed to enter. Primarily men. A few women. Many were teenagers or younger, hands at crude weapons hung by their hips that they seemed overly eager to use. They’d probably be dead the day they did.
I didn’t make small talk with the guard as he led me up the grand staircase, and he didn’t try. Instead, I stretched out my awareness, feeling the threads around me.
Only clusters of presences down here—blurry, out of focus, their own awareness dulled by the drugs. I reached up, to the floor above. A few more of those types, faceless guards with unsharp minds, but not many.
I stretched further as we reached the top of the stairs. It was far to sense, most auras distant and difficult to read. But Tarkan’s… he was easy. A shard of glass in a pile of feathers.
The guard led me down the hall, the presences of the others growing more distant. Tarkan kept his inner circle small—he’d allow his followers to the ground floor, but few of them any higher. Even the grand staircase wouldn’t lead up directly to his suite. Hence why I was being taken down a deserted hallway, to a smaller stairwell. A set of windows ahead, at the end of the hall, overlooked Vasai’s sparse eastern slums and the rocky plains beyond them, all bathed in the silver light of the moon.
The guard started to turn the corner to lead me up the stairwell.
I made my move.
He was easy to kill. Yes, he was bigger than me, but he wasn’t expecting to fight right now—least of all against a concubine, and least of all in the halls of his own master’s palace. The downside of this ridiculous outfit was that it made it hard to move. The upside was that it provided lots of places to hide a blade.
My dagger was out and across his throat in seconds. My other hand clamped over his mouth before he could let out his gurgling grunt of shock. I positioned myself to break his fall before his body hit the ground.
There was a lot of blood. I’d intentionally chosen red for my dress. By the time anyone noticed, it wouldn’t matter.
I dragged the body—still twitching—into a nearby room and shut the door behind him. Then I went to the window and unlatched it.
A welcome gust of cool air hit my face, drying the sweat on my cheeks and flecks of blood on my veil. I lifted my chin to enjoy it for a moment, while a large figure hoisted himself up to the windowsill.
I grabbed Atrius’s hand and helped him in. He hit the ground with impressive silence. Erekkus was right. He was like a cat.
He’d climbed up hundreds of feet. Clung there for Weaver knew how long, and without being spotted.
I was glad my face couldn’t show it, but I was impressed he’d pulled it off.
He rolled his shoulders and smoothed his hair, which was messy and windswept.
“Do you know how hard it was to follow you?” he muttered.
“You didn’t have to come.”
He let out a grunt that somehow managed to say, I did have to come, and you’re insulting both of our intelligence by saying otherwise.
It was almost impressive how much he could communicate with those things.
I would never admit this aloud—I didn’t even want to admit it to myself—but a small part of me admired the fact that Atrius had insisted on doing this personally. If I was considered too important to risk, I’d told him, what did that make him?
But Atrius was firm. He would go. That was that.
No one could say he didn’t get his hands dirty. I couldn’t imagine Tarkan, even during the height of the wars, clinging to the side of a building by himself for hours on end.
“We don’t have much time,” I whispered, then pointed to the stairwell. Atrius glanced at the pool of blood slowly spreading from behind the door I’d stuffed the guard into and nodded.
The minute I’d killed, the hourglass had turned. Now the real game started.
We crept up the staircase, me leading with Atrius a step behind. I kept my awareness attuned to our immediate surroundings, but also peered ahead, to those on the floor above. Tarkan was easy to spot, but it was more difficult to keep track of the exact locations of the others.
We emerged in a narrow hallway. This was clearly a back path, originally intended for servants and others too unfit to be seen by nobility. But paranoia drives one to inventive measures. Tarkan had decided that this was the only way his followers would be able to reach him.
The first hall was empty. I could sense Tarkan’s general proximity, but it was harder for me to understand the specifics of the castle layout. People and nature were easy, their threads bright and clear. Architecture… that was more difficult.
I paused at the juncture of two hallways, reaching?—
Atrius’s sword was already out, body coiled. Something came over his presence when he was getting ready to kill—a certain determined ruthlessness, a singular focus, like he was preparing to do what he had been born for. “Which way is he?”
“That way, I think.” I motioned, still preoccupied with the threads. “But?—”
The answer was more than enough for Atrius. He started to move.
A moment too late, I felt them.
I grabbed his arm and wrenched him back with all my strength.
Atrius realized what I had a split-second later. Perhaps he smelled them—perhaps his superior vampire hearing helped. One moment I was grabbing him, and the next, I was pressed between the wall and him as he flattened his body over mine into a shallow enclave.
Seconds later, the voices drifted down the hallway.
One of Atrius’s hands pressed to the wall above my shoulder. The other held his sword, while I gripped his wrist—both of us battling for that arm. Every muscle of Atrius’s body was tight, ready to strike. All that taut energy surrounded me, raw power contained only by my grasp.
His breath rustled the silk fabric of my veil.
I shook my head slowly. I felt his eyes burrowing through that silk like hands pulling back layers.
The guards around the corner, oblivious, wandered closer.
“—doesn’t have a chance against him,” one of them was saying. “Have you seen him fight? Dunno why he’s trying.”
The other one let out a slurred scoff. “It’s not just about strength, idiot. He’s scrappy . You’ve never seen ‘im in action.”
“I’ve seen enough not to throw my money away. You just wish it was you in front of all those people.”
Tournaments. Sporting events. Mindless small talk.
I decided not to remember that I knew someone who used to talk about sports that way once.
Atrius’s eyes slipped to me. Then to the hallways, where the voices grew closer. To me again.
We couldn’t speak. But I knew what he was saying.
My fingers tightened around his wrist. I shook my head.
No. Wait.
A slight narrowing of his eyes.
Another shake of my head, harder this time.
No.
The boys wandered closer. They were high, or drunk, or both. One of them kept laughing at his own jokes.
This close, I could feel all Atrius’s strength, the warmth of his body enveloping me. It was distracting—especially because I kept thinking about what that body was capable of doing to those boys around the corner. His muscles still trembled, straining against my hold, but he didn’t pull away.
His chin dipped. The tips of our noses touched through the veil, and despite the fabric, I still felt the urge to twitch back at the touch. Not that there was anywhere to go.
He mouthed, Why?
No sound. But I saw the word on his lips. Weaver, I felt it on my own.
I just shook my head again.
What I hoped he’d understand: If you go out there and kill those boys now, then it starts the battle early. You’d better be ready to fight through the rest of them with me.
We’d have to do that later, of course—and I didn’t know what to make of my oddly strong certainty that however many there were, he and I alone could take them. But I hoped to put it off as long as I could.
In the hallway, the voices stalled. The boys had moved on to discussing who they were betting on for the next horse race.
Atrius stared at me, brows low over his silver-and-gold eyes. Then his fingertip rose and flicked the edge of the veil, making the silken fabric ripple.
And he mouthed, I hate this thing.
Beneath the silk, my lips thinned. Then, despite myself, curled into a smile.
I could’ve sworn that maybe the twitch of Atrius’s lips was almost a smile, too.
“What time is it?” one of the boys asked.
A pause, then the other muttered, “Shit. We’re late.”
The footsteps, quicker this time, moved back down the hall. Away from us.
I cocked my head in a way that I hoped said to Atrius, See? I was right.
He narrowed his eyes in a way that said, This time.
I finally released his wrist. My grip had been so tight that my knuckles were sore. He glanced down at his arm as the voices finally disappeared around the far corner, raising his brows at the red marks.
I shrugged and motioned down the hall—a wide open passage for us now, bringing us that much closer to Tarkan. We moved unobstructed through one hall, and then another. At last, I peered around the next corner to find a set of majestic double doors, two guards standing before them.
I quickly ducked back behind the corner and nodded to Atrius .
He leaned close, so close I could hear him while he was barely speaking.
“How many?” he murmured, lips brushing my ear.
I couldn’t count. Not exactly. “Many.”
His mouth curled. “Too many?”
Ah. This was our game now.
Despite myself, I found myself returning the smirk. I shook my head.
“No,” I whispered.
This, once again, was the answer Atrius was looking for.
He raised his hood, covering his horns and his hair, casting a harsh shadow over his face. I took his arm, donned once again my best teetering stumble, and the two of us emerged around the corner.
We stopped before the double doors and the guards. I inclined my head. Atrius kept his tipped down, hiding his face beneath the hood.
“I am here at his behest,” I said.
There was no need to use names or titles. There was only one “him.”
Hidden beneath my scarves, my hand crept to my dagger.
The guards glanced at each other. Then at each of us—skeptical when they looked at me, and even more so at Atrius.
“We had no word of anyone coming today,” the guard said. “Let alone at this time of night.”
I had been able to fool the guards at the front door. Those were expendable. These, though, were Tarkan’s personal guards. Carefully chosen. Well-trained.
“Are you sure?” I said, letting my uncertain pout slip into my voice. “I—I’m very late, but I don’t want to disappoint him. He wanted me here tonight .”
The guards exchanged another glance?—
And then blood painted the space between us.