The Assassin’s Blade: Novella 4 – Chapter 4

Crouched in the shadows of a gargoyle the following afternoon, Celaena shifted her numb legs and groaned softly. She usually opted to wear a mask, but with the rain, it would have limited her vision even further. Going without, though, made her feel somewhat exposed.

The rain also made the stone slick, and she took extra care while adjusting her position. Six hours. Six hours spent on this rooftop, staring across the street at the two-story house Doneval had rented for the duration of his stay. It was just off the most fashionable avenue in the city, and was enormous, as far as city homes went. Made of solid white stone and capped with green clay shingles, it looked just like any other wealthy home in the city, right down to its intricately carved windowsills and doorways. The front lawn was manicured, and even in the rain, servants bustled around the property, bringing in food, flowers, and other supplies.

That was the first thing she noticed—that people came and went all day. And there were guards everywhere. They looked closely at the faces of the servants who entered, scaring the daylights out of some of them.

There was a whisper of boots against the ledge, and Sam nimbly slipped into the shadows of the gargoyle, returning from scouting the other side of the house.

“A guard on every corner,” Celaena murmured as Sam settled down beside her. “Three at the front door, two at the gate. How many did you spot in the back?”

“One on either side of the house, three more by the stables. And they don’t look like cheap hands for hire, either. Will we take them out, or slip past them?”

“I’d prefer not to kill them,” she admitted. “But we’ll see if we can slip past when the time comes. Seems like they’re rotating every two hours. The off-duty guards go into the house.”

“Doneval’s still away?”

She nodded, inching nearer to him. Of course, it was just to absorb his warmth against the freezing rain. She tried not to notice when he pressed closer to her, too. “He hasn’t returned.”

Doneval had left nearly an hour ago, closely flanked by a hulking brute of a man who looked hewn from granite. The bodyguard inspected the carriage, examined the coachman and the footman, held the door until Doneval was ensconced inside, and then slipped in himself. It seemed like Doneval knew very well just how coveted and delicate his list of slave sympathizers was. She’d seldom seen this kind of security.

They’d already surveyed the house and grounds, noting everything from the stones of the building to what sort of latches sealed the windows to the distance between the nearby rooftops and the roof of the house itself. Even with the rain, she could see well enough into the second-story window to make out a long hallway. Some servants came out of rooms bearing sheets and blankets—bedrooms, then. Four of them. There was a supply closet near the stairwell at the center of the hall. From the light that spilled into the hallway, she knew that the main stairwell had to be open and grand, just like the one in the Assassins’ Keep. Not a chance of hiding, unless they found the servants’ passages.

They got lucky, though, when she spied a servant going into one of the second-floor rooms, carrying a pile of the afternoon papers. A few minutes later, a maid lugged in a bucket and tools for sweeping out a fireplace, and then a manservant brought in what looked like a bottle of wine. She hadn’t seen anyone changing the linens in that room, and so they took special notice of the servants who entered and exited.

It had to be the private study that Arobynn had mentioned. Doneval probably maintained a formal study on the first floor, but if he were doing dark dealings, then moving his real business to a more hidden quarter of the house would make sense. But they still needed to figure out what time the meeting would take place. Right now, it could be at any point on the arranged day.

“There he is,” Sam hissed. Doneval’s carriage pulled up, and the hulking bodyguard got out, scouring the street for a moment before he motioned for the businessman to emerge. Celaena had a feeling that Doneval’s rush to get into the house wasn’t just about the downpour.

They ducked back into the shadows again. “Where do you suppose he went?” Sam asked.

She shrugged. His former wife’s Harvest Moon party was tonight; perhaps that had something to do with it, or the street festival that Melisande was hosting in the center of the city today. She and Sam were now crouching so close together that a toasty warmth was spreading up one side of her. “Nowhere good, I’m sure.”

Sam let out a breathy laugh, his eyes still on the house. They were silent for a few minutes. At last, he said, “So, the Mute Master’s son …”

She almost groaned.

“How close were you, exactly?” He focused on the house, though she noticed that he’d fisted his hands.

Just tell him the truth, idiot!

“Nothing happened with Ilias. It was only a bit of flirtation, but … nothing happened,” she said again.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “nothing happened with Lysandra. And nothing is going to. Ever.”

“And why, exactly, do you think I care?” It was her turn to keep her eyes fixed on the house.

He nudged her with his shoulder. “Since we’re friends now, I assumed you’d want to know.”

She was grateful that her hood concealed most of her burning-hot face. “I think I preferred it when you wanted to kill me.”

“Sometimes I think so, too. Certainly made my life more interesting. I wonder, though—if I’m helping you, does it mean I get to be your Second when you run the Assassins’ Guild? Or does it just mean that I can boast that the famed Celaena Sardothien finally finds me worthy?”

She jabbed him with an elbow. “It means you should shut up and pay attention.” They grinned at each other, and then they waited. Around sunset—which felt especially early that day, given the heavy cloud cover—the bodyguard emerged. Doneval was nowhere in sight, and the bodyguard motioned to the guards, speaking quietly to them before he strode down the street. “Off on an errand?” Celaena pondered. Sam inclined his head after the bodyguard, a suggestion that they follow. “Good idea.”

Celaena’s stiff limbs ached in protest as she slowly, carefully inched away from the gargoyle. She kept her eyes on the nearby guards, not once looking away as she grabbed the roof ledge and hauled herself up it, Sam following suit.

She wished she had the boots the master tinkerer was adjusting for her, but they wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. Her black leather boots, while supple and supportive, felt a bit traitorous on the rain-slick gutter of the roof. Still, she and Sam kept low and fast as they dashed along the roof edge, tracking the hulking man in the street below. Luckily, he turned down a back alley, and the next house was close enough that she could nimbly leap onto the adjacent roof. Her boots slid, but her gloved fingers grappled onto the green stone shingles. Sam landed flawlessly beside her, and, to her surprise, she didn’t bite his head off when he grabbed the back of her cloak to help her stand.

The bodyguard continued along the alley, and they trailed on the rooftops, shadows against the growing dark. At last, he came to a broader street where the gaps between houses were too big to jump, and Celaena and Sam shimmied down a drainpipe. Their boots were soft as they hit the ground. They picked up a casual pace behind their quarry, arms linked, just two citizens of the capital on their way to somewhere, eager to get out of the rain.

It was easy to spot him in the crowd, even as they reached the main avenue of the city. People jumped out of his way, actually. Melisande’s street festival in honor of the Harvest Moon was in full swing, and people flocked to it despite the rain. Celaena and Sam followed the bodyguard for a few more blocks, down a few more alleys. The bodyguard turned to look behind him only once, but he found them leaning casually against an alley wall, merely cloaked figures taking shelter from the rain.

With all the waste brought in by the Melisande convoy, and the smaller street festivals that had already occurred, the streets and sewers were nearly overflowing with garbage. As they stalked the bodyguard, Celaena heard people talking about how the city wardens had dammed up parts of the sewers to let them fill with rainwater. Tomorrow night they were going to unleash them, causing a torrent in the sewers wild enough to sweep all the clinging trash into the Avery River. They’d done it before, apparently—if the sewers weren’t flushed out every now and then, the filth would grow stagnant and reek even more. Still, Celaena planned to be high, high above the streets by the time they unleashed those dams. There was sure to be some in-street flooding before it subsided, and she had no desire to walk through any of it.

The bodyguard eventually went into a tavern on the cusp of the crumbling slums, and they waited for him across the street. Through the cracked windows, they could see him sitting at the bar, drinking mug after mug of ale. Celaena began to wish fervently that she could be at the street festival instead.

“Well, if he has a weakness for alcohol, then perhaps that could be our way around him,” Sam observed. She nodded, but didn’t say anything. Sam looked toward the glass castle, its towers wreathed in mist. “I wonder if Bardingale and the others are having any luck convincing the king to fund their road,” he said. “I wonder why she would even want it built, since she seems so eager to make sure the slave trade stays out of Melisande for as long as possible.”

“If anything, it means she has absolute faith that we won’t fail,” Celaena said. When she didn’t say anything else, Sam fell silent. An hour passed, and the bodyguard spoke to no one, paid the entire tab with a piece of silver, and headed back to Doneval’s house. Despite the ale he’d consumed, his steps were steady, and by the time Sam and Celaena reached the house, she was almost bored to tears—not to mention shivering with cold and unsure if her numbed toes had fallen off inside her boots.

They watched from a nearby street corner as the bodyguard went up the front steps. He held a position of respect, then, if he wasn’t made to enter through the back. But even with the bits of information they’d gathered that day, when they made the twenty-minute trek across the city to the Keep, Celaena couldn’t help feeling rather useless and miserable. Even Sam was quiet as they reached their home, and merely told her that he’d see her in a few hours.

The Harvest Moon party was that night—and the deal with Doneval three days away. Considering how little they’d been able to actually glean that day, perhaps she’d have to work harder than she’d thought to find a way to take out her quarry. Maybe Arobynn’s “gift” had been more of a curse.

What a waste.

She spent an hour soaking in her bathtub, running the hot water until she was fairly certain there wasn’t any left for anyone else in the Keep. Arobynn himself had commissioned the running water outfit for the Keep, and it had cost as much as the building did, but she was forever grateful for it.

Once the ice had melted away from her bones, she slipped into the black silk dressing robe Arobynn had given her that morning—another of his presents, but still not enough that she’d forgive him anytime soon. She padded into her bedroom. A servant had started a fire, and she was about to begin dressing for the Harvest Moon party when she spotted the pile of papers on her bed.

They were tied with a red string, and her stomach fluttered as she pulled out the note placed on top.

Try not to stain them with your tears when you play. It took a lot of bribes to get these.

She might have rolled her eyes had she not seen what lay before her.

Sheet music. For the performance she’d seen last night. For the notes she couldn’t get out of her mind, even a day later. She glanced again at the note. It wasn’t Arobynn’s elegant script, but Sam’s hurried scrawl. When in hell had he found the time today to get these? He must have gone out right after they’d returned.

She sank onto the bed, flipping through the pages. The show had only debuted a few weeks ago; sheet music for it wasn’t even in circulation yet. Nor would it be, until it proved itself to be a success. That could be months, even years, from now.

She couldn’t help her smile.

Despite the ongoing rain that night, the Harvest Moon party at Leighfer Bardingale’s riverfront house was so packed that Celaena hardly had room to show off her exquisite gold-and-blue dress, or the fish-fin combs she’d had positioned along the sides of her upswept hair. Everyone who was anyone in Rifthold was here. That is, everyone without royal blood, though she could have sworn she saw a few members of the nobility mingling with the bejeweled crowd.

The ballroom was enormous, its towering ceiling strung with paper lanterns of all colors and shapes and sizes. Garlands had been woven around the pillars lining one side of the room, and on the many tables, cornucopias overflowed with food and flowers. Young women in nothing more than corsets and lacy lingerie dangled from swings attached to the filigreed ceiling, and bare-chested young men with ornate ivory collars handed out wine.

Celaena had attended dozens of extravagant parties while growing up in Rifthold; she’d infiltrated functions hosted by foreign dignitaries and local nobility; she’d seen everything and anything until she thought nothing could surprise her anymore. But this party blew them all away.

There was a small orchestra accompanied by two identical-twin singers—both young women, both dark-haired, and both equipped with utterly ethereal voices. They had people swaying where they stood, their voices tugging everyone toward the packed dance floor.

With Sam flanking her, Celaena stepped from the stairs at the top of the ballroom. Arobynn kept on her left, his silver eyes scanning the crowd. They crinkled with pleasure when their hostess greeted them at the bottom of the steps. In his pewter tunic, Arobynn cut a dashing figure as he bowed over Bardingale’s hand and pressed a kiss to it.

The woman watched him with dark, cunning eyes, a gracious smile on her red lips. “Leighfer,” Arobynn crooned, half-turning to beckon to Celaena. “Allow me to introduce my niece, Dianna, and my ward, Sam.”

His niece. That was always the story, always the ruse whenever they attended events together. Sam bowed, and Celaena curtsied. The glimmer in Bardingale’s gaze said that she knew very well that Celaena was not Arobynn’s niece. Celaena tried not to frown. She’d never liked meeting clients face-to-face; it was better if they went through Arobynn.

“Charmed,” Bardingale said to her, then curtsied to Sam. “Both of them are delightful, Arobynn.” A pretty, nonsense statement, said by someone used to wielding pretty, nonsense words to get what she wanted. “Walk with me?” she asked the King of the Assassins, and Arobynn extended an elbow.

Just before they slipped into the crowd, Arobynn glanced over his shoulder and gave Celaena a rakish smile. “Try not to get into too much trouble.” Then Arobynn and the lady were swallowed up by the throng of people, leaving Sam and Celaena at the foot of the stairs.

“What now?” Sam murmured, staring after Bardingale. His dark green tunic brought up the faint flecks of emerald in his brown eyes. “Did you spot Doneval?”

They’d come here to see with whom Doneval associated, how many guards were waiting outside, and if he looked nervous. The exchange would happen three nights from now, in his upstairs study. But at what time? That was what she needed to find out more than anything. And tonight was the only chance she’d have to get close enough to him to do it.

“He’s by the third pillar,” she said, keeping her gaze on the crowd. In the shadows of the pillars lining one half of the room, little seating areas had been erected on raised platforms. They were separated by black velvet curtains—private lounges for Bardingale’s most distinguished guests. It was to one of these alcoves that she spotted Doneval making his way, his hulking bodyguard close behind. As soon as Doneval plopped into the plush cushions, four of the corset-clad girls slid into place beside him, smiles plastered on their faces.

“Doesn’t he look cozy,” Sam mused. “I wonder how much Clarisse stands to make off this party.” That explained where the girls came from. Celaena just hoped Lysandra wasn’t here.

One of the beautiful serving boys offered Doneval and the courtesans glasses of sparkling wine. The bodyguard, who stood by the curtains, sipped first before nodding to Doneval to take it. Doneval, one hand already wrapped around the bare shoulders of the girl beside him, didn’t thank either his bodyguard or the serving boy. Celaena felt her lip curl as Doneval pressed his lips to the neck of the courtesan. The girl couldn’t have been older than twenty. It didn’t surprise her at all that this man found the growing slave trade appealing—and that he was willing to destroy his opponents to make his business arrangement a success.

“I have a feeling he’s not going to get up for a while,” Celaena said, and when she turned to Sam, he was frowning. He’d always had a mixture of sorrow and sympathy for the courtesans—and such hatred for their clients. His mother’s end hadn’t been a happy one. Perhaps that was why he tolerated the insufferable Lysandra and her insipid companions.

Someone almost knocked into Celaena from behind, but she sensed the staggering man and easily sidestepped out of his path. “This is a madhouse,” she muttered, her gaze rising to the girls on the swings as they floated through the room. They arched their backs so far that it was a miracle their breasts stayed in their corsets.

“I can’t even imagine how much Bardingale spent on this party.” Sam was so close his breath caressed her cheek. Celaena was actually more curious about how much the hostess was spending on keeping Doneval distracted; clearly, no cost was too great, if she’d hired Celaena to help destroy Doneval’s trade agreement and get those documents into safe hands. But perhaps there was more to this assignment than just the slave-trade agreement and blackmailing list. Perhaps Bardingale was tired of supporting her former husband’s decadent lifestyle. Celaena couldn’t bring herself to blame her.

Even though Doneval’s cushioned alcove was meant to be private, he certainly wanted to be seen. And from the bottles of sparkling wine that had been set on the low table before him, she could tell he had no intention of getting up. A man who wanted to be approached by others—who wanted to feel powerful. He liked to be worshipped. And at a party hosted by his former wife, he had some nerve associating with those courtesans. It was petty—and cruel, if she thought about it. But what good did knowing that do her?

He rarely spoke to other men, it seemed. But who said his business partner had to be a man? Maybe it was a woman. Or a courtesan.

Doneval was now slobbering over the neck of the girl on his other side, his hand roaming along her bare thigh. But if Doneval were in league with a courtesan, why would he wait until three days from now before making the document exchange? It couldn’t be one of Clarisse’s girls. Or Clarisse herself.

“Do you think he’s going to meet with his conspirator tonight?” Sam asked.

Celaena turned to him. “No. I have a feeling that he’s not foolish enough to actually do any dealings here. At least, not with anyone except Clarisse.” Sam’s face darkened.

If Doneval enjoyed female company, well, that certainly worked in favor of her plan to get close to him, didn’t it? She began winding her way through the crowd.

“What are you doing?” Sam said, managing to keep up with her.

She shot him a look over her shoulder, nudging people out of the way as she made for the alcove. “Don’t follow me,” she said—but not harshly. “I’m going to try something. Just stay here. I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

He stared at her for a heartbeat, then nodded.

Celaena took a long breath through her nose as she mounted the steps and walked into the raised alcove where Doneval sat.