I’ve watched the house for hours, cloaked in the shadows of the night. Guards circle the garden but take no notice of me, my hiding place too well chosen for amateurs such as these.
I don’t know why I hesitate, why I feel so torn. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. This is the opportunity I’ve spent years preparing for, so I’d be able to exploit it to the fullest. My target is inside, the lamps lit in his study casting strange shadows across the wall as he wanders from desk to bookcase. At least that’s what I assume he’s doing; I can’t see the man from this angle. But I know it’s him. I feel it in my bones.
Like calls to like, I suppose. One killer to another.
Maybe that’s why I linger outside, because I’m afraid that he might feel me as I feel him. His guards are a different kind; brainless muscle, a threat only through strength of numbers. There is no skill there. Not like him and me…
I’ve studied his work, learned to appreciate it for the art it is. It took me years to reach a similar mastery. And still, I can’t kill a woman without seeing my sister as she looked when he was done with her. It is a weakness I could do without, but it is of little importance. He is no woman, and he will not distract me.
I slip past his guards and through the garden, swiftly scaling the wall.
The desk is positioned to keep his back to the wall, allowing him easy view of both door and window. In spite of this, he doesn’t react as I enter. Rather than alerting him, I take a moment to study him, this man who I’ve hated for more than a decade.
Time has been kind to him; in his fifties, there is still little sign of age on his face and only a hint of gray in his dark hair. The loose shirt makes it difficult to tell, but I doubt he has allowed himself to become weak in the comfort of retirement.
He sighs, putting his quill down and reaching for the official seal. He sees me, finally, and flinches – whether in fear or surprise I don’t know nor care. I throw a ward charm at the door, noting from the corner of my eye that the green glow flares to life. Good.
“I would wish you a good evening,” I say as casually as I can, “but I sincerely hope it won’t be.”
His eyes narrow, but he remains sitting.
“Do I know you?” he asks, voice even.
I have to smile then. Eye color aside, I am nearly the twin of my sister in looks, but the thick scar on my cheek has often made people miss it.
“My sister was once the Lady of Thilden Moor.” I pause, but there is no recognition on his face. “Until fourteen years ago.”
There, the slight twitch by his eye. He remembers now, knows I’m speaking of the woman he tortured to death and not her successor, who he poisoned. He swallows, as if nervous, but I doubt it’s more than show, part of the game, trying to make me overconfident in my advantage.
I’m curious as to why he hasn’t tried to call for help yet. It would take time to break the ward, true, but surely he doesn’t expect to talk me out of this? No, not now that he knows I’m here for personal reasons, not on business.
“I remember her,” he says. “Corinne, wasn’t it? Remarkable woman, handled her husband’s quirks better than most could have, practically ruled in his name. Made too many enemies in the process, though.”
I raise a brow, forcing a smirk. “I hope you’re not trying to goad me into doing something rash. I know my sister; how she lived, how she died, and who hired you to do it.”
That seems to give him pause.
“You’re the one who killed Roland of Sernby?”
This time, my smile is genuine.
“For all that he looked like a boar, he squealed like a newborn piglet.”
Silence again, as we study each other. I have the inane thought that had he not killed my sister, I might have sought him out to be my teacher. Though any reason for me to ever have started down this path of death if she’d been alive eludes me.
It doesn’t matter, either way. My sister is dead, and I can’t bring her back. Even necromancy couldn’t reanimate flesh that mutilated.
“You seem reluctant to do more than talk,” he remarks mildly. “Is your determination fading?”
“Are you in a hurry to die?” I retort in the same tone. “I will savor this as best I can. I know I’m not strong enough to carry you out of here unnoticed. It will be a quicker kill that I had hoped, but I much prefer it over not killing you at all.”
That makes him flinch. It puzzles me. Did he expect me to give up and leave him alive? Could he truly have grown that feeble-minded?
“You won’t get out of here alive,” he tells me, nodding at the door. “No matter what ward you used, it won’t save you.”
“That wasn’t the point. It’s just to keep anyone from saving you.”
“Is that the kind of death your sister would have wished for you?” he says.
I have to chuckle at the idiocy of the statement.
“I doubt it, but I wouldn’t have become a respectable grandmother of fifteen brats anyway. And since she didn’t die the way I wanted her to, I’m allowed to choose, don’t you agree?” I pause, trying to understand him. “Is that why you have not attempted to call for help, or attack me? Because you think you will talk me out of it?”
“I had hoped so, yes,” he admits, with no hint of reluctance or embarrassment.
I stare at him in bafflement – How could any assassin be so simpleminded? – and that’s apparently the distraction he was hoping for. Three small blades are thrown at me even as he rises, the chair falling backwards and slowing his sideways ducking.
I evade the blades, though they come closer than I’m comfortable with, and one of my own sinks into his shoulder. Age has dulled his speed after all, it seems.
If there is sound, I can’t hear it over the sudden pounding of my heart. If there is light, I can’t see it while my eyes drink in the sight of my enemy on his knees, poison spreading fast through his veins. But I can feel the surge of magic like shards of ice along my skin.
Containment wards.
True to his word, my escape routes have been cut off. Linked to him, most likely. If I had backed out, they wouldn’t have activated. I could have left, and probably passed his guards as easily on the way out as I did on the way in.
I smile.
“They’ll come for me soon,” I say conversationally as I slowly walk closer, alert for signs of him fighting off the paralyzing effects of the poison. “They’ll come to help you, and to kill me. I’ll make sure there’s nothing but the kill left for them. I’ll make certain that you can’t be resurrected, that you can’t be brought into undeath, that you won’t ever live again.”
I kneel beside him, stretching his unresisting body out on his back. The door glows brightly; on the other side, someone curses. Green locking wards have a stronger bite than yellow ones.
“They won’t get through,” I assure him as I notice hope light his too wide eyes. I draw two daggers, showing them to him one at a time. “This one is covered with leenay-extract. It will rot even living flesh.” I plunge that one into his previously unwounded shoulder. By the look in his eyes, he would be screaming if he was able. “A shattering spell was woven into the blade as it was forged. It will make sure there isn’t a single intact bone left in your body.” I drive that into his stomach. The blade is too short to do more than brush his spine, but doesn’t need to. His blood will feed the spell and it can’t be stopped.
The noise from the hallway is increasing. They must have a mage, because the ward is pulsating rapidly.
Not much time left now, but I’m almost done.
I draw the last blade; bright metal, strong and beautifully crafted, clearly made for ritual and not fighting. It’s larger than the others, but that’s not what causes the utter panic is my enemy’s eyes. No, it’s the darkness crawling along the edges.
“You know what this is, don’t you?” I ask, pleased that he knows, pleased that there will be no room for him to doubt my word even before the darkness takes him. “Shadow serpent’s venom, willingly given. It will drag your soul far beyond the reach of human magic, and into their mating realms. You will feed a coil of hatchlings, and they’ve promised me that you will feel them tear into you.” I feel my lips curl, but I don’t think I’m smiling. “You will never be reborn.”
I raise the athame above my head and drive it through his heart, the force of the thrust anchoring him to the floor.
“I promised that you would never be brought back.” I spit at the floor next to him; not disturbing the image I’ve made of him, but needing to show my contempt.
As if we’d agreed on it, the mage finally breaks through my ward. I look up at him and the guards crowding behind him with my not-smile still fixed on my face. I don’t even attempt to avoid the ball of crackling energy he throws at me.
Before I open my eyes, I know I’m in chains. My wrists protest the metal biting through skin and holding me up. Blood is seeping sluggishly down my arms, but it’s of little consequence. I was dead the moment I found him, and whatever his servants do to me it can’t touch me. Seeing no point in delaying things, I stand properly, taking the weight off my arms as I open my eyes.
“She’s awake.”
I snort. Only idiots have this need to state the obvious.
A boy rises, guided forward by the mage who knocked me out earlier. He’s tall, but the still slim shoulders and the roundness of his face suggest he’s not far into his teens. While not a mirror image, he bears enough likeness to the man I just killed for me to assume they were father and son.
“Go ahead,” the mage encourages, keeping his gaze on me as if expecting me to break free of the chains. “Her life belongs to you; take it and the gods of vengeance will be satisfied.”
I stifle the urge to snort again. Humans and demons, those I’ve met. Those, I can believe in. Their virtues and their flaws are visible all around us – particularly the latter. Gods… I’ve never had any use of them, if they even exist.
“Is there really no way to bring him back?” the boy asks me, sounding as if he would prefer to do that and remove the need for revenge.
“No,” I tell him honestly. “I gave his soul to the shadow serpents.”
He pales at that, and fresh tears fall down his already wet cheeks. His jaw tightens, and I can’t tell if the tears are from sorrow or anger. He shrugs off the mage’s hand and steps closer.
As I look into the eyes of that boy, I finally realize why people say vengeance is best served cold. Behind the tears, behind the pain, even behind the rage, something has been broken. I know that shattered look, that loss, because I’ve seen it every time I’ve dared to meet my own gaze in the mirror.
I had my revenge, I killed my sister’s murderer. Maybe she knows it, maybe she doesn’t. It seems irrelevant, somehow… Because I know the price was too high, and I should never have paid it.
To fight evil, I became it. In defeating it, I created a new avenger. And by dying, I will wake yet another.
The world will keep turning, and the circle will never break.
A bitter lesson, and one learned too late.
And that is why I can’t hold back the laughter as the boy takes the final steps and lifts the knife, his tearful eyes fixed on my chest…