Chapter 14
Hark’s warning stopped her in the middle of the sentence. He had all but growled it at her, and Eros tossed his head against the pressure Hark maintained on the reins, knuckles almost white with the tension.
‘Not nice, is it? To hear that—’
‘You know you’re not the only one who’s suffered, Reinhart.
’ He halted the stallion abruptly, spinning in the saddle to face her.
Had she not faced down nastier, more dangerous men, she might have shuddered under the thunder that rolled in those stormy eyes.
‘You think it’s easy, trying to support a kingdom that doesn’t want to help itself?
You think it’s easy watching your people suffer and starve to death and knowing there’s not one damn thing you can do about it? ’
He was furious with her; she’d hit a nerve and it was stinging over and over as he tried to defend a kingdom that was inexcusable. Something in her – something cruel and wicked – delighted in it, and now she had him between her teeth, she wanted to make him bleed.
‘Oh, there’s quite a lot you could have done for them. But now they’re too far gone so you may as well let them die and live in luxury alongside the king and queen in that magnificent castle of theirs.’
Gods, she needed to learn when to stop.
‘You moan about how terrible your life has been.’ His voice had melted into something deadly soft – a warning, if ever she had heeded one.
‘But what’s even sadder than the sorry excuse for an assassin that you are, is that no one will ever love you.
Or like you. Or want you. You are nasty, and wicked, and you can sit atop that mare and lecture me on my kingdom, but is yours any better, Reinhart?
I don’t see it blooming with wealth and vitality, either. ’
He left her there, Vetta pawing the ground as Arla’s mind went blank. She deserved it, really. She was wicked, and nasty, and cruel, and he was right: no one would ever love her.
So why did her heart ache as she urged Vetta into a trot to catch up with him?
‘I don’t pretend to help my people,’ she said softly, trying against her own instincts to patch a bridge between them.
She didn’t know why, really, because she was planning to kill him before they returned anyway – if she could figure out a way to do so without Cyrus killing her – but it would be a long journey if they weren’t speaking.
And besides, she needed him to at least cooperate with her if they were going to dispose of the raiders that had been following them for the past hour.
She wondered if he had noticed them, too.
‘Then how can you lecture me on mine?’ he replied, somewhat less sharp than he had been before.
‘Because it’s easy. I see Cyrus trying every day to solve trading issues and famine, to build relationships with other kingdoms and improve the land.
I see myself out slitting the throats of thieves and Hadalyn’s enemies, but when I look at Kastonia…
Well, I see a kingdom that doesn’t want to help itself.
I see the meadows and acres and acres of rich farmland that no one tends.
And why? You have far more land than Hadalyn ever had.
I guess I find it difficult to understand why no one has the motivation to grow their own food rather than relying on handouts from other kingdoms.’ Gods, this was the most vulnerable she had been in years, and she hated that it was in front of Hark Stappen, of all people.
She’d have to do something extra violent to make up for the sliver of softness in her heart.
‘I won’t pretend that the king and queen are good people, but don’t blame the rest of Kastonia for a decision that two people made.
And that land…’ Hark was silent for a long minute, his eyes hazy as he relaxed the reins slightly.
‘That land may look rich and fertile, but nothing will take there. It hasn’t since the dragons went to sleep.
They’ve tried for years to grow their own food; it’s not their fault the land is tainted. ’
It was an incredible excuse. She didn’t believe in dragons or magic or that the land was cursed.
But perhaps there was something wrong with the soil.
She had heard of diseases that spread through the earth, and, honestly, the way Hark’s brows pinched together and hearing the raw emotion in his voice persuaded her to his cause.
Perhaps Kastonia really was struggling to grow crops and there wasn’t anything to be done about it.
‘Well, let’s hope Prince Reuben uses his charm and skill to rule the kingdom a hell of a lot better than his parents,’ she said, trying to steer the conversation back onto safe ground.
‘If you don’t watch yourself, Reinhart, people will start thinking you’re infatuated with him.’
‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous.’ She laughed, the action foreign to her in present company. It was out of place, really, considering that the shadows in the trees were inching towards their horses despite the brisk pace they kept up.
She reached behind her slowly to feel the reassuring smoothness of the wooden bow at her back.
‘Really? You haven’t shut up about him since—’
‘I’m going to need you to duck,’ she interrupted, twisting in her saddle.
‘What?’
Too late. The arrow flew with the twang of a bowstring and arced over the top of his head before finding its mark between the eyes of a raider in dirty, ragged clothes. It was perhaps the truest arrow she had ever fired.
‘Fucking gods!’ Hark exhaled, twisting in his own saddle to face the growing group of outlaws slinking out from the trees behind them.
‘I said duck.’ Gods did he ever listen? The blade she had sheathed at her waist flew past him, narrowly missing a high, sculpted cheekbone as it hit the target with a thump followed by a thud as the body fell from the ash tree and hit the earth.
‘A little warning would have been nice,’ Hark called as his own blades began flying at the encroaching raiders.
Gods they must have been out here for months – if not years.
Their skin was thick with dirt, though they were not hard to spot even from the distance she maintained with carefully aimed flicks of her now dwindling stash of blades.
‘I’ll argue with you later, Stappen. I’m a little preoccupied!
’ Gods he was a pain in her arse, and it was a constant effort to get a clear aim on their attackers with his horse panicking and turning tight circles.
Not Vetta though, never sweet Vetta who had been put through rigorous training to ensure she would stand still as an ox when she was asked to. Eros seemed as unsure as his mount.
Or not.
Hark was hurling blade after blade after blade into the mob, each one hitting its mark in a heart or an eye, even with his stallion spinning as wildly as a beast that had come unbroken from the mountains.
Arla cursed her own stupidity for not strapping an armoury’s worth of weapons to her. She was an assassin, and she was currently being assisted by the ambassador of the neighbouring kingdom. Gods, he’d never let her live this down.
She unsheathed an arrow and fired it at the raiders.
She loved her bow. It held a certain elegance that had attracted her the very first time she had felt the strings against her fingers, though her first attempts at firing one, at the age of fourteen, had been laughable – her arrows often hit their targets but never quite where she had meant them to.
Still, she was glad she had brought it when her next shot resulted in a raider falling from a tree with an arrow in the gap between his nose and eye socket.
‘I’m not one to run from a fight, Reinhart, but as we have horses and they don’t, d’you think—’
‘I do think, yes.’
It was all that was needed for Hark’s heels to dig harshly into Eros’s side and send the horse launching into a gallop, Vetta quick on his heels as the raiders hollered and threw their own knives back at them.
She had lost two lovely blades today; Cyrus had better pay her extra for the inconvenience.
There had been so many of them. Not that she had been shocked to know they were following her, exactly.
Raiders had been living in the wilderness, away from civilisation, for as long as the kingdoms had begun falling.
She encountered them almost every time she needed to cross the border into Kastonia, and they had been relatively easily dealt with. But never so many…
Had attacking strangers in the woods become a better life than living in a kingdom protected by walls and kings?
There were a few towns between the centre of Kastonia and its northern border, but she had never spent any time in them.
They were small and unwelcoming, and were often comprised of local citizens who stared whenever someone new entered their secluded piece of the world.
It was surprising that Kastonia still held any claim over the towns, really.
They had managed to negotiate their own trade deals from across the sea, and they were loath to share with the rest of the country.
The townsmen were rulers in their own right, and she wondered if Elrod only allowed the towns to continue their existence because the taxes they paid offered much-needed coin to the Crown and its grossly wealthy palace.
‘At what point were you going to tell me that they were following us?’ Hark asked her as they pulled the horses up beside a stream.
She laughed, swinging her leg over the saddle and stretching her muscles in the few minutes they allowed themselves.
‘I did. I told you to duck.’
‘When they were already on top of us!’ he scolded, dropping down from Eros and splashing his hands in the water.
‘Well maybe you should be a little more aware of your surroundings.’
He said nothing, and when she looked up at him, she caught the fleeting smirk he tried to hide. ‘Come on, we’re only an hour from Irelliad.’
‘Irelliad?’
‘The town we’re staying in.’ He hauled himself back onto his stallion and checked the leather straps on his saddlebags, which were slightly lighter now that they had been relieved of some of their provisions.
It was strange, having another person with her on a job, and she didn’t know if that made her more complacent than she had already started becoming.
If she’d been on her own, she would have planned where she was staying and known the entire time.
This time she had left it to Hark to dictate to her when and where they would be resting.
It was comical, really, that she didn’t plan or plot anymore.
She was content to go with the motions, reacting to what she faced rather than preparing extensively for it as she had done in her first couple of months as assassin to the King of Hadalyn.
Had she become so good that planning wasn’t needed?
Or was it that she no longer cared whether she landed herself in danger; that killing and slaughtering her way out of situations didn’t have the same effect on her as it used to?