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Chapter Two
Hammers. Hammers striking anvils. The pain beating within his head reminded him of the blacksmiths of Galsanu, clanging away near their hot furnaces with mallets against metal. When he opened his eyes, wincing at the glow of torchlight as it eased away the darkness, this throbbing increased.
Where was he? What had happened?
“Oh…” he murmured to himself, feeling the words halt dryly in his throat. He remembered. Mesar had been accompanying a drunken old man before being attacked by one of his kind. She ran. He hit her arm with a dagger. Slowly, Mesar grasped the full details of alleyways and flagstones right up until…the old man thumped him on the back.
Looking around, he saw that he was in an average-sized room, wooden rafters bearing lamps as the stone walls retained iron torch brackets. Then he saw the people. In front of him was a rectangular table, and around it stood four armored men, much like those at the city gate. Four more were posted at each wall, Mesar saw as he lifted his head and turned it slowly. One of them knocked on the door, muttering something to someone outside.
Full realization of where he was and what had happened did not happen, however, until a man walked into the room, clothed in the drab clothes of a simple citizen, but standing nobly tall between broad shoulders.
The old man. The drunk, old man from the tavern, with a short beard of white and gray streaks and similarly trimmed hair. As he entered, the men saluted him, speaking one word in unison. “Sabir!”
Sabir Sehaden.
Mesar mu’Rehan, a prominent Desemmiet had been trying to get inside the palace of Sab’riyat. Now, he would be lucky to escape it alive.
Sabir had never brought anyone back.
Now Lenota waited, the information she had gathered buzzing in her head as she stood in the hall adjacent to the inquiry room. Mostly, she had heard rumor, which spread fast in such a populated castle. She only heeded the words the guards spoke. Most believed that the man the Sabir had brought back was an assassin, thwarted by Sehaden’s great Magick.
Assassins had not come this close to the castle in a very long time. How had this man managed it?
“Lenota!”
She had expected Eravid to find her first, but the voice she recognized was Sev’s. His lean frame ran to her, wheat blonde hair mussed from the effort. “You heard?” she asked.
“Yes!” her brother exclaimed, his face flushed. “Is it true?”
“I do not know,” Lenota replied softly, looking down the hall at the wooden door containing the Sabir and assassin. “I do not know.”
This was why Desemirä had instilled in its warriors the message to never be captured. They never needed to; Mesar had his own fears about it. In his current state, he had virtually no power, no weapon to get him what he wanted.
“So,” the old man said, his voice clear and annunciated perfectly in i’Sabri. Had he spoken this way in the tavern? Why had Mesar not noticed such proper speech only practiced by nobles? “Why are you in Sab’riyat, young man?”
Perhaps he wasn’t as powerless as they thought. The Sabir knew nothing about Mesar, except that he could be of Galsani heritage.
“Employment,” he answered simply, telling half of the truth as his brain began to formulate a reasonable lie.
“As an assassin.” The king actually looked like he was enjoying himself. Why?
“No,” Mesar disputed. “As anything.”
“Oh really? Tell me more.”
The ruler was wise. He revealed nothing of his own observations while trying to deduct the truth. Nevertheless, Desemmiet were taught how to wield one of the most powerful weapons of all. Lies.
“My parents were Galsani, and Desemmiet,” Mesar began, finding it easy since this was near-truth. “They died when I was young, here in Sabiril, and farmers in a northern valley took me in. They raised me, but could barely do so while feeding their other children and tending to the land. So, I’ve come here, a grown man, to help them repay debts made in order to keep me alive and well under their care. As I said…I seek employment.”
It was a well-constructed lie, given his time to consider it.
“How young were you when your parents died?” the Sabir questioned, folding his arms.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They say I looked about ten years old, but my parents had never tracked my age. They were often too busy.” Mesar knew his mistakes as he made them, and there were two. The first he could not help, and that was that his grammar was too perfect – most Sabri citizens spoke casually, blending sentences and words together with fluency, while his was pronounced. The second was simply that his speech was composed too eloquently – too eloquent for a boy raised with poor farmers. They were small flaws, but Sabir Sehaden was clearly an observant man.
“And why did they have you with them in the first place?”
Mesar knew what he meant. Fully employed Desemmiet did not take children on their missions. Thankfully, he knew just the answer for that.
“It was the year that the Bas’rani came,” the assassin said. “The Dark Year. Galsanu felt the impact of it as well, and my parents could not find anyone stable enough to care for me. Their mission was to be an extended one, anyway, to settle in as immigrants before killing their target.”
“Were they successful?”
He found it easy to see why Sabir Sehaden had maintained a stable rule over his kingdom for so long.
“No.”
Mesar faced him evenly, letting his face show a small bit of anger appropriate for the role he was trying to assume. An orphan, taken into the hands of foreign captors after the death of his parents.
And the questions kept coming. He answered them with little pause, feeling like a storyteller as he did so.
At long last, when even the armored guardsmen looked bored, Sabir Sehaden nodded silently, unfolding his arms as he stepped around the table. Mesar felt his awareness prickle at the dangerous proximity his target chose, sinking down with his face near his.
A strong hand clamped onto his shoulder. He shivered. This should have been Mesar, the Desemmiet, standing with intimidating power over the Sabir. The shiver passed when he realized nothing had happened.
“Whether I believe you or not,” Sehaden said. His hand squeezed and the assassin felt the force multiplied unrealistically, like a hammer of wind blowing against his muscles, straining them in searing pain. “You are welcome in this palace.” Then it was over. Mesar gasped as the pain faded from his shoulder, leaving behind a sore ache. Magick. How he hated it.
“Why?” he found himself asking, his voice low.
As the Sabir stood and walked toward the door, he looked back at him with a grin. “Because it’s about time we had a little bit of darkness on our side. It might do us some good to finally employ bodyguards of the men who are always out to kill us.”
Mesar gaped. It was hard not to do.
Bodyguard?
Then she remembered what this man was. An assassin. Galsani.
“Lenota,” Sehaden said to her, drawing her eyes off of the other man.
“Sabir!” she addressed, looking between her king and the supposed mercenary. “What has happened?” Lenota knew that things were not often as they appeared, and she wanted to hear the truth from Sehaden, not petty court nobles or obedient guards.
“Oh, you know,” he answered. “I was…out like normal…and then was attacked! This poor fellow was kind enough to chase off the culprit. Although his aim could use some work, I think he will be a good hand to have around here. I have appointed him as your bodyguard.”
Lenota gaped openly, dumbstruck. Was the Sabir mad? Did he want her to die? Why did she even need a bodyguard? The Galsani looked just as terrified with the assignment, with a touch more anger than she felt. “Sehaden, would you please explain to me why you made this decision.”
“Yes, please do.” Lenota bowed her head, looking at the floor tiles with calm resilience. Eravid came to her side, placing his hand on her shoulder and looking at all the people present curiously. This was not going well at all. “I know that Lenota possesses no Magick, but I think that mine compensates enough for it. I can and will protect my love.”
“I have no doubt about that, young prince,” Sabir said, standing straight with dignity. “But I have noticed that you have been more and more at my side and less and less at hers in order to better serve your position. I understand this. But that means that your betrothed becomes a target to be used against you. I have made this decision through much consideration.”
Lenota caught on quickly as the ruler glanced just once in her direction. The look said it all. Sehaden was never as foolish as he let on. He did not trust Eravid. He especially did not seem to trust him with Lenota, and she breathed a sigh of relief, somewhat tempered by the passing thought that perhaps Sehaden knew she had Magick. This would mean the need to keep her secret from Eravid was even more important.
Eravid looked about to protest despite the finality in his king’s words. “Thank you,” she said honestly to Sehaden. His old eyes met hers with a nod before he walked off, five guards in somewhat confused tow.
As she turned to her husband-to-be, Lenota smiled to see the quelled anger in his eyes.
The teachings of Desemirä reminded him that this too could benefit him. It would bring him closer to the target in one way or another. Sheathing the long-knife that the guards had given back to him, he eyed the two nobles and the young boy warily.
“So,” the blonde man began. His dark blue eyes held much more emotion than his voice, and though his mouth smiled, rage radiated from him. “What is your name, guard?”
Condescension dripped from those words, and the Desemmiet hated it. So this man was to wed the woman Mesar was meant to guard? He smiled dangerously. “Mesar mu’Rehan.” Then he turned to the woman, her hair a less striking blonde and eyes a paler blue than the man’s. “And yours?” he asked her. Lenota, he remembered the Sabir address her as, but this was a game the ‘prince’ had started. The woman was lacking in this country’s standards of beauty, a slender frame of curves rather than a busty one. Regardless of her beauty, though, Mesar was not interested in her.
Her gaze was cool. “Lenota,” she said, and then gestured to the man beside her, whose grip on her shoulder had tightened. “This is Eravid, my betrothed.” She didn’t even seem to like the man. Politics were pathetic.
“And Sev-Beolani, her brother.” The boy looked irate, his heated face of freckles and wheat-blonde hair turned in annoyance at his sister.
“Well, I’m sure that you’ll do a wonderful job of protecting Lenota, Mesar,” the prince said, ignoring Sev-Beolani with his blonde hair swinging as he leaned in to kiss the woman. The calm that she had possessed moments before looked gone for a fleeting instant, settling back into stone as her partner’s lips fled from hers. “After all, you endured Desemmiet training, didn’t you?”
Mesar stopped smiling. This prince was most certainly not all that he appeared to be if he knew what a Desemmiet was.
Eravid left them, then, walking with purpose down the corridor.
Lenota, however, did not look pleased. “Desemmiet?” she whispered, backing and turning away. Mesar matched a look with her younger brother, whose gaze was suspicious as he turned as well. With no other choice, Mesar followed them.
Eravid stared furiously at the Bas-rani. The hazy spirits never looked like anything in particular, took no definite shape or form, but always gave off a miserable energy of dark, ravenous hunger. He always found it hard to remain long in the room with them, though most humans would have ran screaming at the sensation of the wraiths’ presence. They were, after all, the creatures born of battlefield blood, approaching to cleanse the area violently of bodies both living and dead.
“And you, human?” No form meant no lips, no tongue, no way to formulate words. They were, however, capable of sounds – never particularly pleasant ones. “You still have not given…what is best.” Clearly, their grasp of communication, though only through thought, was still primitive.
“I do not trust you, but I fear you. That should satisfy your trust that I will give you what you want…once I get what I want.” It was hard enough to contain his anger around other humans, especially now that Sehaden was no longer taking his counsel on something as obviously unwise as letting a Desemmiet guard Lenota. In addition to this, it seemed Sabir did not trust him, either. Controlling his rage around these creatures was out of the question.
“No,” the shapes told him, moving restlessly. “You have something you love. Give it, then we will act.”
“What?” Eravid asked quietly. They couldn’t know…they didn’t mean… No.
“Female. Give. Then…satisfied.”
Memories whirled in his head, back to the first time he had seen Lenota, dressed like a queen at her eighteenth birthday. Her beauty, though not the norm of the nation, would have been satisfactory enough for him. Her intelligence, however, and flawless devotion to Sabiril and the possibility of peace… had won his heart. He remembered speaking with her countless times before he had proposed a marriage arrangement to her father. Slowly, she had revealed how much she loved her kingdom, and it was her loyalty to it that had fueled his passions, for her and for power alike. Eravid so wanted to give her peace.
But he wanted the power…the perfect country at his fingertips.
“I will think about it.”
They didn’t care. They were sure he would give in for his ambitions and left his presence immediately, as effervescent as the smoke of the battlefields from which they were born.
Lenota. They wanted Lenota. Eravid tried not to imagine the things they would do to her… But how could he prevent it?
The Desemmiet. Momentarily smirking at his quick thinking, Eravid left the room through the door, unlike the Bas’rani, plans webbing like spider thread in his mind.
