Chapter 15
Irelliad was a dreary place, clearly made bearable only by the alcohol carried on the breath of everyone to whom Arla and Hark begrudgingly spoke.
Every wall of every building was cracked, and the roofs sloped and sagged in places that suggested snow had weighed them down considerably in the years they had stood here.
The streets ran through the town in a wet, windy route full of sludge and cobbles that were worn smooth.
It seemed the only bit of life was imprisoned in the few taverns peppering the landscape.
It was perfect.
Arla had spent many hours hiding in slums and dirty, overcrowded taverns as part of her job, and this sad little border town would not be any different.
If she wanted amusement, she could cause a brawl.
If she wanted a drink, well, that was obvious.
If she wanted a few moments of distraction and wandering hands, there would be no shortage of men she could choose to tumble with – the gods knew it would keep her mind from wandering into darker places for at least a small portion of her evening.
She’d started a tally of the nobles she had coerced back to her rooms at Castle Grey.
Owain Hendrics – one of the court musicians – had kept her entertained for the longest; he would certainly be welcome back.
Hark, on the other hand, looked appalled.
She stifled a chuckle as they sidled up to a barn that had surely seen better days, the paint so old and peeling she couldn’t decide what colour the wood had been.
But a barn it was, and the smell of sweet hay rolled out from the entrance as a thin, reedy man approached, taking the horses with nothing more than a grunt and a finger pointed to the front door of the tavern opposite.
‘Gods, this place is disgusting,’ Hark grumbled as he pulled the door open, scowling where it hung detached from the bottom hinge.
Arla smirked to herself. ‘Stop moaning. It’s cleaner than the shit-hole that surrounds Kastonia’s palace walls. And don’t pretend you won’t find a nice lady to take back to your bed. Honestly, Stappen, the day you sleep alone is the day those imaginary dragons wake up and fly home.’
He didn’t reply, instead shoving past her and striding up to a broken desk and a shaky old woman.
‘I need two rooms.’
Good gods, this was going to be hard work. He would have them thrown out before the horses were unsaddled.
‘Please, madam, if you don’t mind,’ Arla said quickly, summoning her courtly charm and sliding in front of Hark. The woman looked her up and down, and Arla prayed to whatever gods there were left that she wouldn’t recognise her.
‘Two rooms?’ the woman asked, eyes squinting as her gaze switched between the pair of them.
‘Please. My brother really does snore loud enough to wake the dead and we’ve had a long journey.’
‘Say no more,’ the woman said, waving a hand and pulling two rusty keys out from the inside of her tunic.
Gods, what sort of a place had Hark brought them to?
‘Brother?’ he grumbled in her ear as the woman counted the coins Arla had handed over. Too much for the rooms they needed but it would be enough to buy the woman’s silence. She hoped.
‘Well, you couldn’t possibly be my lover, could you? I don’t have any intention of sharing a room with you,’ she hissed.
‘What about friend?’
‘Hmm, I didn’t think of that.’ She winked, swiping the keys from the table as the woman nodded once at her, clearly satisfied with the overpayment.
Hark sighed, running a hand through his midnight strands before hauling the saddle bags up the stairs behind her. Friend.
Of course she’d thought of it – it had been her first answer, actually. But to piss him off? Yes, loudly snoring brother would do nicely.
The room was … fine. It was missing the silk sheets and the jasmine oils in which she would have liked to bathe, but it would do. If you didn’t look too closely, it was possible to ignore the holey bedding and thick layer of dust on the rough floorboards.
Gods it had been too long since Cyrus had sent her on a job so far afield. She had got so comfortable living the luxurious life of a royal, that she had begun to forget that she wasn’t one.
The sharp rap on the door was unexpected, and her hand was on the blade concealed beneath her cloak before the door handle had started turning. A door that didn’t lock. How convenient.
What appeared on the other side of the door, arms straining under the weight of two steaming bowls, was not a thief or someone sent to kill her, however, but Hark Stappen, freshly washed and bearing hot food.
All thoughts of pissing him off dissolved immediately.
‘Is that—?’
‘Stew. Pheasant, or rabbit or… Actually, I don’t want to know what it is,’ Hark said, shouldering through the doorway and handing one of the bowls to her.
Gods, it smelt delicious. Rabbit, vegetable, lamb, fox – she didn’t care. Only wine could have made it better.
Hark sat at the foot of the bed, watching her as she shuffled so her back was against the headboard and her knees created a cage for the bowl to sit in. The warmth seeped through the leather uniform she wore and for a split second, she imagined she was at home in Castle Grey.
‘Thank you,’ she said in between spoonfuls, slightly surprised he had bothered to fetch her anything, let alone chose to eat with her.
‘I figured being hungry as well as cold would make you entirely unpleasant tomorrow, Reinhart,’ he said, the corner of his mouth tugging upwards slightly.
‘Add that to the loss of my favourite blades and you’d have been in for a difficult morning.’ She grinned back, surprised at how quickly her mood had changed upon the arrival of steaming hot food.
‘Don’t think I didn’t notice how poor those arrows were that you fired today. I nearly lost my head at one point.’
She snorted into her stew. Out of a dozen arrows she had fired, only two had found their mark. Of course he’d noticed. ‘I may not be very accurate with it, but a bow is my favourite.’
Hark barked a laugh. ‘Favourite what? Way of getting yourself killed with your own arrows?’
She grinned again, nudging him with her foot. ‘I’ve practised a lot—’
‘Not enough, by the looks of it,’ Hark interrupted.
‘Hey, you should have seen me the first time I held one. Nearly sent Perry to the infirmary with an arrow through his shoulder.’
‘If you’re so bad,’ Hark chuckled, ‘why on earth would you continue to use one?’
‘Because I get better every time I shoot. And I look good with a bow.’
‘You are the vainest woman I’ve ever met,’ Hark said, laughing softly and dragging a hand through his hair. ‘It’s a wonder you passed the King’s Guard tests at all.’
‘I passed because I don’t need a bow. There’s a difference.
’ Hark arched a brow. ‘I haven’t missed a target with my blades in all the years I’ve been in royal service,’ she said proudly.
It was a testament to her skill and perseverance that she had transformed, from the gangly child the king had plucked as his ward, to the woman she was today.
‘You haven’t missed a single shot?’
‘Not one.’
‘I don’t believe you. There’s no way you can throw blades half as far as an arrow would fly and still hit your mark,’ Hark stated, placing his now empty bowl on the floor and pulling his legs onto the bed.
‘I didn’t say I could throw as far as an arrow, but I’m not far off. I stand by my first answer; I have never missed a mark.’
‘How?’
‘Because I never take a shot I can’t make.’
‘Oh,’ was all he said, drinking deeply from the canteen he had brought with him.
They settled into an easy silence as she finished her food.
She thought he would leave her now, go back to whatever it was Hark Stappen did in his spare time – likely something involving the pretty housemaid they’d passed on the way in – he spoke again.
‘Why did you do it?’ he asked softly.
‘Do what?’
‘Almost kill yourself to become King’s Assassin?’
Gods, it wasn’t an answer she could easily give.
She didn’t know herself, really. Just that she had been so broken, and so beyond fixing, that the only way she could find to collect those shattered pieces of her heart was to vow never to let it happen again.
She would bleed onto the stones of Hadalyn before she let her people be mindlessly slaughtered again.
‘Because I won’t be weak again. I won’t let Ettie and Neb lose their mother the way I lost mine.’
He didn’t speak for a moment, and she wondered if she had laid too much of herself open in that one short sentence.
She hated this … vulnerability. She found it difficult to get the words in the right order and force them to leave her tongue.
But she was tired, and the warmth of the room was toying with the icy walls she had built around herself.
‘I watched you train every day when you were going through King’s Guard, you know.’
No, she hadn’t known.
‘Not on purpose. You were just always where I happened to be.’
That had been intentional. Curse her heart if she would let a wolf into the den without knowing everything there was to know about it.
Hark had arrived at Hadalyn the very same week Cyrus had finally given her permission to test for the King’s Guard – to move from soldier to the elite team tasked with protecting the king.
‘I thought you couldn’t possibly be serious, even after you went through “the six days”.
’ Gods, that had almost broken her. The six days – one of the most brutal parts of training to be in the King’s Guard, the trial that separated soldier from guard.
Six days of torture. Those who broke maintained their rank as soldier; those who passed were King’s Guard.
There was a reason there were rarely more than a dozen at a time.
‘But then I watched you drive that knife through the palm of your hand over dinner after your first three months in the Guard.’ He winced across the bed from her, and she couldn’t help but do the same at the painful memory of it.
Hark had been at Castle Grey for nine months at that point and she had spent most of those months arguing with him over dinner.
Gods, that had been more than a year ago now…
No one had believed that she was good enough to lead the Guard. They said she wouldn’t sacrifice enough.
That single act of self-inflicted violence had prompted Cyrus to create the position of King’s Assassin for the one person who was loyal enough to kill herself for him if he asked it of her.
‘Cyrus was furious with me,’ she scoffed, glad now that she could see the amusement in an act that had left her unable to wield a sword for weeks.
‘You bled over the tablecloth at a formal dinner. He’d have hanged you, had your loyalty not impressed him so much.’
‘Yeah, well, I said I would bleed for the people and I meant it.’
‘It won’t happen again,’ he said softly, almost to himself rather than to her. As if he had any sort of say in it.
It kept her awake at night – the worrying. Kastonia was more desperate now than ever before, and the old beliefs clearly raged so prominently amongst the people that she couldn’t help but expect another raid on her kingdom.
‘Do you ever feel bad? For what your kingdom did to mine?’
‘I hate how it affected yo— Your kingdom. The survivors. I hate how it affects them…’ he said solemnly, a faraway look in his eyes, as if he could see back nine years ago to that fateful day. ‘Go to sleep, Reinhart. Tomorrow will be a long day.’
He took the empty bowls, then, and slipped out of her room with a fluidity she would have been glad to master herself.
She fell asleep wondering how the two of them had ended up here.
He’d watched her train and go from guard to assassin and she had spent the entirety of it hating him.
But tonight he had been kind. He had brought her food when he didn’t have to.
She supposed she could respect him for that.
Besides, he wasn’t bad to look at, and he appreciated her violence and quick temper.
It was more than anyone else had ever done.
A small corner of her heart wondered what could have been, if he hadn’t come from that wretched kingdom.
She squashed the thought immediately.