Assassin's Heart (22 page)

LEFEVRE AND THE LAWMEN TOOK EVERY OPPORTUNITY
to parade me through crowds of people as we headed west into the city. There was no real point to the charade. The people didn't know me or what I'd done. All they saw was a limping, dirty girl wearing strange leather clothing. But Lefevre enjoyed the spectacle of it, enjoyed how people looked at him with respect and a touch of fear.

A man like him would never have amounted to anything in Lovero. Someone would've paid to have him clipped years ago. Maybe that was why he'd left.

Every time we approached another crowd of people I scanned their faces, looking for ones I recognized. But each face was a stranger to me, every eye soft, not hardened by Safraella's tenets.

Lefevre marched me to a squat brick building, its window boxes empty of the fragrant flowers that adorned the other buildings in the city. Inside, we paused so he could search
me. He found my stiletto and dropped it into a box beside my mask, sword, and cloak. Another lawman carried the box into a small locked room. I marked its location in my memory.

Lefevre pushed me through a gate and around a corner to an empty row of cells with iron bars. He shoved me into the last one on the right, then slammed the door, locking me in. He motioned for me to turn around, so I did, and he released the bindings on my wrists. I rubbed the sore skin.

“I'd get comfortable while you can, Lea,” he said. “You won't be here for long.” He smirked and tapped the bars with his knuckles before he turned on his heel and walked out of the cell room.

In the evening the guards delivered what they considered “dinner”: a piece of stale bread, cheese that appeared ready to grow mold, and a watered-down cup of wine.

I ate every crumb. Forget crispy duck skin, or flaky fish and cream sauce. Stale bread and moldy cheese were my new favorite foods.

I set down the plate and thought about my situation.

I thought of the way Lefevre had grinned at me, the feel of his hands on me. I couldn't let him win. But I was getting ahead of myself. First, I needed out of this cell and out of the building.

On the wall, directly to the right of my cell, was a small window about eight feet high. Most people would have a hard time getting through it, if they could at all, but I was a
clipper and I wasn't very big. I just needed to unlock my cell without any weapons or tools.

The window creaked. I stilled.

The window, hinged at the top, pushed in and someone slipped through headfirst. He grabbed the sill and flipped over to land on his feet.

Les.

I scurried to the front of the cell, my hands wrapping around the cold bars. “What are you doing here?”

He glanced around the room, then fired me his crooked smile and approached the bars. “What do you think I'm doing here, Clipper Girl? Can't have you rotting away in prison.”

He wrapped his fingers around mine, holding me in place as he stepped closer, until only the bars separated us.

My pulse quickened and my skin flushed. I dropped my gaze. It was too easy for him, too easy to make me feel this way. I would always be the better clipper, but he wielded a different power over me.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

He tapped my fingers with his own, and then released me and took a step away, examining the cell block.

“I went to find you. Thanks for packing my weapons, by the way.” He patted his hip, where he'd strapped his cutter against his thigh. “But you weren't there. And then, of course, everyone in the market was talking about the murderer the lawmen had arrested.”

“You shouldn't be here,” I said. “You should be resting. I
can't believe Marcello let you leave.”

Les rolled his eyes and rapped his skull with his knuckles. “It takes more than a brick wall to crack my thick head open. What's one more lump on this head of mine, right? And I snuck out.”

He took everything so lightly. “You could've died.”

His smile faded at my tone of voice, and he stepped closer to the bars again. “It's not your fault,
kalla
Lea.”

“Don't call me that.” I shook my head, my hair brushing against my cheeks.

“What?
Kalla
?”

“Beautiful.”

He exhaled, a smile brushing his lips. “You figured it out?”

“You told me when you were injured. You shouldn't be so kind to me. I don't deserve it.”

“Lea . . .” He sighed and pushed the hood off his head. “Since that first moment we met, when you held that dagger to my throat and threatened me and reminded me of how little I actually knew about being a clipper, I've been mesmerized by you. Even before I knew your name, I couldn't stop thinking about you. And then, when I did get to know you, the feeling just got worse. I cannot get you out of my mind. You fill me up.”

“Les, I can't love anyone again. The last time I did, I lost everything—”

“No.” He waved a hand at me. “You're not allowed to lessen what I've said by telling me how I've made a mistake,
by coming up with some ridiculous reason why you don't deserve it. You don't get to decide that for me. Gods, Lea!” He threw his hands into the air. “You drive me crazy!”

My blood surged. He had no right to be angry at me. “I drive
you
crazy? What about me? What about how I feel? I come here with a mission, and then you show up and complicate everything! Look at us, we can't even go five minutes without fighting! This is really the last thing I need right now.”

“Then what do you need?” He stared at me. “Because I'll give whatever you want. I would give my life if you asked it of me.”

I stepped away. “No. Don't say that, Les. I have so much blood on my hands, and I don't want yours added to it.”

He reached through the bars and captured my fingers, though I tried to pull free. “They look clean to me. You take too much on yourself. Your Family's death is not your fault. My injury is not your fault. The way I live my life is not your responsibility. Killing the Da Vias, you don't have to be responsible for that either. You can let it all go, Lea.”

“Let it go? After all I've been through?”

“
Because
of all you've been through! Don't you think you've suffered enough? Whatever debt you feel you owe, it's been repaid. Leave the rest for the gods to sort out.”

“But that's just it,” I said quietly. “I am Safraella's mortal hands in this world. If I don't do this, no one else will.”

He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the bars, pulling my hands to his lips. He kissed them, and everything
in my body coiled and curled until I felt dizzy, until I felt like I'd never find my breath again.

“Then I will come with you,” he said. “And you can't stop me. I will follow you no matter where you go.”

Maybe it really was that easy. Maybe it simply came down to accepting his help,
truly
accepting it and not just deciding to use him for my own ends. Accepting him. If he could allow me to make my own decisions regarding my life, to take on the Da Vias even if it led to my death, then I had to let him do with his as he wished. I had no right to stop him, just as he had no right to stop me.

I nodded and leaned my head on the bars below his, clutching his hands tightly. “All right.”

All my worry and stress melted out of me. Whatever happened, happened. I didn't have to keep Les safe. I simply had to deal with the Da Vias. Everything else was out of my hands. And it would be nice to have someone firmly on my side again. With Les, the loneliness that had plagued me since my Family's murder drifted away, set free on the night air.

From down the hall the gate unlocked, a familiar whistle echoing through the stone cells.

“It's Lefevre,” I whispered. “You have to go!”

“I won't leave you here.”

“Then don't. Just hide outside until he's gone. I don't plan on staying, but there's no sense in you fighting him.”

He looked about to argue.

“Les,” I hissed, jerking my hands away. “If you're going
to help me with the Da Vias, then you have to defer to my expertise. Starting with this.”

He frowned, but nodded. He jumped and grabbed onto the windowsill and pulled himself through the window, closing it behind him as the gate opened.

I ran to my bed and lay down.

Lefevre stopped outside my cell and knocked on the bars. “Lea. It seems you have yourself a visitor.”

A visitor. Who would visit me? I sat up and peered out of my cell.

A shiver ran up my spine, and I couldn't help the gasp that escaped my lips.

Val.

HE WORE HIS FAVORITE GRAY LEATHER VEST AND
matching boots. His shirt and pants were navy blue with gold trim. His smile, when he saw me, rivaled the diamonds that sparkled in his ears.

“Lea,” he breathed. His voice made me tremble. “I knew it.”

I'd forgotten how beautiful Val was. I'd forgotten the richness of his cologne and the thrill that ran through me when his eyes reached mine.

But I hadn't forgotten my Family. And I hadn't forgotten Rafeo, dead in the tunnel.

I turned my back on him and sat on my bed. My hands shook. I clasped them together. Why was he here? And why did my traitorous heart skip when I remembered his low, throaty chuckle and the feel of his lips on mine? There couldn't be room left in my heart for Val. There just couldn't. Not after everything.

Val gestured for Lefevre to open my cell and let him in.
Lefevre complied, locking it again before he left us alone.

“You cut your hair.” Val examined my face. “It looks nice.”

“It wasn't meant to look nice,” I snapped to hide the quaver in my voice. “It was meant to remind me I would never be the same.” Tears welled in my eyes. I rubbed my face, trying to hide them from Val. I didn't want him to see me like this. I didn't want him to think he had any effect on me, even though I could almost taste him on the air, feel his hands on my skin again. “Why are you here?”

“I came looking for you. Well, Rafeo, actually. Me and some others. But then I found that flower in the monastery, the one I'd left for you to find later, and I . . . I hoped it meant it was you who had survived. That the Addamos had gotten it wrong. Did you get my letter? I sent you a letter. You probably didn't get it.”

I'd never heard him babble like this before. He took a breath and composed himself. “And then I heard about the Loveran girl who'd been arrested for murder, and I knew I was right. That it was you we were tracking.”

“So, what, you thought you'd come here and we'd talk or kiss or make up or something?” I looked at my legs, my feet, my hands. Anywhere except him.
Please, please just go away. . . .

He leaned against the bars. His shoulders sagged. “What do you want from me, Lea?”

Want from him? I already had the key to the Da Vias' home. I knew the two places the entrance could be. I had a firebomb.

I had Les.

Val had nothing I needed. “I never want to see you again.”

“After everything we've been through?”

I cast my eyes to his. This time I was able to hold his gaze without looking away. “Your Family killed my Family. Tried to kill me!”

He held his hands before him, palms up. “Lea—”

“You took my key,” I interrupted. “Is that what you used to get into our house? The key you stole from me in the guise of our game?”

He didn't answer, but I could read the truth in his eyes, in the lines of his frown. I groaned. He had used me. I had loved him and he had destroyed me.

“How long had your Family known about us? From the beginning? Was it ever even a secret?”

“Of course it was! But they found out. A week or so before . . . before. It was do what they said, Lea, or die. Prove myself a Da Via once and for all. So I did what they told me.”

I stopped shaking. I would be a statue. I would not let him affect me anymore. “Were you there that night? Did you fight my father or brothers in the dark smoke?”

“No! I wasn't there!”

I would never trust him again.

“I only learned about the full plan a few hours before,” he said. “And when that happened . . .” He scratched the top of his scalp, mussing his carefully groomed hair.

“I asked you not to go home, Lea.” He rested his head against the bars as he studied the ceiling. “I asked you to
come with me, but you refused. I wanted to save you. To keep you safe.”

My blood turned to cold silver in my veins. “You could have told me,” I whispered. “I could have warned them, saved us all. . . .”

He shook his head. “I couldn't betray my Family. It was a test for me. If I had told you the truth, they would've had my heart. Estella does not suffer traitors in the Da Via Family.”

“There were other options, Val,” I scoffed. “There could have been other plans. But you chose to save yourself instead of saving me and my Family. And now you come here and expect me to be happy to see you? I don't ever want to see you again.”

“Don't say that.” His voice emerged quiet and small.

“I wish you were dead and gone from my life.”

“It doesn't have to be this way. I've come here to bail you out. To take you home with me.”

Back to Lovero, where lanterns lit the night and the sea air tasted of salt and brine.

But home was for family, and Ravenna was the place where my Family had died. It wasn't only angry ghosts that haunted the night.

“Your Family doesn't want to accept me,” I said.

“They thought you were Rafeo.”

Ah. They'd let me in not because I was somehow worth more than Rafeo, because my life had more value. No. They thought I'd be easier to control than Rafeo. They thought they could manipulate me with Val, like they had before
with the key. They were wrong.

“Rafeo's dead. He bled out in my arms, and I have you and your Family to blame for that. I'm not going with you, Val. Ever. I'm going to kill your Family, and if you value your own life, you'll flee now while you can.”

He glared at me. “You watch! Yvain will hang you from a noose as if you're nothing more than a common cutthroat! Is that what you want?”

I shrugged. “I couldn't stand to look at you for the rest of my life and remember how warm Rafeo's blood felt as it washed over my hands.”

And I realized it was true. Yes, Val was beautiful, and once upon a time I'd thought I loved him, but now anything I felt was just an echo of that old Lea, the one who had died with her Family in the fire. Val didn't make me feel safe. Val didn't make me feel warm. And he only ever helped himself.

He banged on the bars with his fists. The frustration rolled off him like a cloud of black flies. “Why did you even come here, Lea? You wouldn't be in this mess if you'd stayed in Lovero!”

“And what was there for me?” I shouted. “Your Family, hunting me like a rat? The Addamos, trying for a piece of the prize? In Lovero, I felt like an orphan!”

He stared at me, his anger turning his hazel eyes black. Then his anger vanished.

“What?” I asked. “What are you looking at?”

He turned and banged on the cell door. “Lawman!”

“What is it?” I stood and grabbed his shoulder. Something
had changed. Two seconds ago he was practically begging me to forgive him, to go with him to Lovero, and now he was in a rush to leave. “Val!”

Lefevre walked down the hall, keys in hand. Val faced me again, taking my hands in his own. A war of emotions played over his face.

“I can't help you Lea, not unless you want me to. I wish you'd believe me when I say I love you and miss you and wish more than anything things hadn't happened the way they did and you'd come home with me. But I can't change the past, and I can't ask for your forgiveness, because I'm not sure I forgive myself.”

Lefevre unlocked the cell, and Val slipped out. “Good-bye, Lea. I'll come if you need me.”

He strode down the hall, his boots clicking sharply on the stone floor.

Lefevre faced me and grinned. “Lovers' quarrel?”

“No.” I sat on the bed. There was no love left between us.

Once Val left, I mulled over everything he'd said. My Family was dead. His Family killed them. There was no reconciliation possible. There never could be.

Lefevre chuckled from outside my cell. I ignored him. But Val had been right. Two more lawmen soon arrived to help Lefevre escort me to wherever we were going.

“Ever seen a gallows before, girl?” Lefevre sneered as he locked my wrists behind me in a pair of shackles. He shoved me away from my cell.

“No,” I replied. “In Lovero we trust steel or poison to do our death work. Rope is for sailors and the sea.”

One of the lawmen laughed. We continued to march.

Outside, the sun brushed the horizon. It would set soon and then the ghosts would rise to search for bodies they could steal.

“We wanted to deal with you as soon as possible,” Lefevre said. “You are more of a threat to the good people of Yvain than the ghosts.”

My lip curled. “I only kill people who deserve it.”

They marched me around a corner, and there, in the center of an empty square, stood a large wooden platform raised on stilts. Above it towered a beam with a dangling noose.

My heart beat faster. Val was right about one thing: this wasn't the death for me. I was a disciple of Safraella! About to dangle from my neck.

Lefevre shoved me forward. He and his men laughed when I stumbled, but I kept my feet.

We reached the stairs, and I stopped. My legs wouldn't move, my body wouldn't respond. I couldn't walk up those stairs.

The two lawmen grabbed me under the arms and carried me to the platform. I must have seemed a child to them, easy to manage. If I died here, then no one would avenge my Family.

I needed to do something. I needed to save myself!

I jerked my arms forward, trying to break free of the lawmen, but they squeezed their fingers deeper into my flesh. They dragged me to the noose as I struggled and kicked and
tried to bite myself free of them. I would not go quietly!

We reached the noose, and Lefevre jerked it over my head. I swung my foot at him, trying to snare his ankle. He danced away.

Another lawman slipped a hood over my head. The musty burlap pressed against my face.

“It'll go quick,” the lawman mumbled, tightening my noose. “A quick snap and it will be over.”

Every breath pulled the burlap across my lips, but I couldn't slow my breathing, couldn't calm the racing of my heart. This was it. The end of it all.

A rushing reached my ears, the sound of my blood roaring through me. Then a man's shout from behind. A grunt and a loud thump. Yells and the smell of smoke erupted around me, heavy, even through the burlap covering my head.

Someone slammed into me. I staggered. The noose pulled taut against my neck, choking me. Below, something creaked, then banged.

I dropped through the floor.

I didn't fall straight down. Instead, my ribs slammed into the edge of the trapdoor, interrupting my fall and saving me from a broken neck. Pain erupted across my already bruised chest and vanished again as the noose around my neck tightened.

My throat closed up, the rope clenching my neck like a snake crushing a rat. My eyes bulged as I swung back and forth.

I kicked my feet viciously, trying to find anything to rest upon, to stop the choking, to free me.

Something above snapped. I dropped, crashing to the ground in a painful heap. My bad ankle twisted beneath me, and the burlap sack flew off my head to land in the dust at my feet.

I took a deep breath, coughing at the air that rushed into my wounded throat. Tears poured down my face, the salt reaching my lips. Dank smoke filled the air, an acrid smell that could come from only one source: a smoke bomb. I climbed to my feet. My ribs and ankle screamed at the movement. Above me, the lawman who'd showed me a touch of kindness lay dead, his body draped over the trapdoor, his throat dripping blood. Shouted commands from Lefevre bounced around me, but I couldn't see him through the thick smoke.

The noose rested against my chest, its end frayed from a cut. Someone had saved me.

Les.

I stumbled from the gallows, coughing with every step, my vision hazy. I needed to get out of here before more lawmen arrived. They'd already tried to hang me once.

“Lea Saldana!” Lefevre called from the smoke. He must have been searching for me. “I'll find you!”

I slipped down a narrow side street, the smoke abating the farther I got from the square. The little street was almost as dark as full night against the setting sun. The ghosts would be out soon, and injured and bound as I was would make me easy prey. I tripped, crashed against a wall with my shoulder.
I cried out at the pain from my ribs. At least one had to be broken.

Before me stretched a canal, its waters dark and still. I stifled a sob. I couldn't go back. The canal could keep me safe from ghosts, but I couldn't swim with my arms bound behind me. I leaned over the water, looking for a way across. To the left a bridge spanned the canal. The building beside me had a small ledge that traveled above the canal along the building's length, leading beneath the bridge.

I slipped onto the stone ledge, pressed close to the wall of the building. My tied hands unbalanced me, and I wavered on each step. If I fell into the canal, I'd drown.

Finally, I reached the bridge and slipped underneath to a shadowed, hidden area. I sat on the cobblestones and calmed my breath.

I'd never come so close to death before. I didn't care to repeat the experience. Ever.

I inched my arms beneath my legs until they were bound in front of me. Metal shackles encircled my wrists. I couldn't remove them without help, but at least now I could slip into the water and hang on to the ledge if I needed to.

I tugged the noose off my neck and tossed it into the canal. It sank slowly into the dark water. I leaned against the curved base of the bridge and closed my eyes. I needed to rest a moment, then figure out what to do.

Footsteps on the bridge. I stiffened. It was too late for a commoner. It could have been a prostitute, but more likely it was a lawman, searching for the prisoner who'd killed his
brothers and escaped.

The footsteps reached the bottom of the bridge and paused. I could picture Lefevre searching the dark streets for me. The footsteps headed around the side of the bridge. I scrambled to my knees, watching, waiting.