The Blood Curse (7 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
HE ASSASSINS STOPPED
mid-morning. Britta allowed herself to stir to alertness, to blink her eyes open and look around. The arm holding her tightened, and the man—she couldn’t see his face—handed her a waterskin. She drank thirstily.

One of the other riders nudged his horse close. Curly. He held out another waterskin. “Broth,” he said. “Drink.”

Britta obeyed.

The broth was lukewarm, fragrant. Its flavor filled her mouth.

Britta gulped it hungrily.

S
HE DIDN’T FEIGN
sleep again, but watched the countryside, leaning into the assassin’s body heat. It was uncomfortably intimate—his arm warm and strong around her, her cheek resting against his chest—and also oddly protective. Britta felt safe, as if it was Karel who held her, and he would shield her from anything. But this man would protect her only until her usefulness had been served—and then he would kill her.

Kill her, and kill Harkeld, and take Harkeld’s blood and hands back to Osgaard, so that Jaegar could force the other kingdoms to bow to his rule.

Britta shivered.
I have to escape
.

I
N THE AFTERNOON,
they passed through a town. It wasn’t until several hours later, when they halted in a copse not far from the road, that Britta realized the cart and one of the assassins were no longer with them.

The Fithian whose mount she’d shared lowered her from the saddle. Britta leaned against the horse and clung to the stirrup, pretending to be weaker than she was. She glanced up. The man was nondescript: mouse-brown hair cut close to his skull, an unremarkable face. She had no name for him yet.

Curly took her arm, his fingers pinching like a manacle around her elbow, and walked her to the trees. Britta staggered and clutched at him, feigning dizziness. Curly halted. “Sit.”

Britta sat, a half-collapse.

Curly handed her a waterskin. “Broth,” he said. “Drink it.” There was no compassion in his voice, no compassion in his eyes.
I am a thing to him, not a person
.

Britta obeyed, sipping the broth when her stomach demanded that she guzzle it. She watched the Fithians unsaddle the horses, light a fire, set up their camp. Each man worked quietly, efficiently. They rarely spoke, seeming to use gestures as often as words. A secret, silent assassin language?

Leader’s right hand was still bandaged. He favored it as he worked. Britta felt a bubble of glee in her chest. She’d hurt him. And she would hurt him again, if she could. Kill him, if she could... Here, her thoughts faltered. She hadn’t the skill to kill any of these men. They’d laugh at her if she tried.

But she could escape.
Would
escape.

Her gaze skipped over the men. Leader. Curly. She needed names for the others. The nondescript Fithian could be Plain. And the one missing several front teeth, Gap-Tooth. The fifth Fithian was pale and skinny, his muscles ropy, his cheekbones sharp. But Skinny wasn’t a name that suited him; he was almost as frightening as Leader. His ice-blue eyes had an edge of madness to them. Looking at him made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prick upright.

Killer. That was the name that suited him.

Leader had never set Killer to guard her. Was he the least predictable of the men? The most dangerous?

Britta averted her eyes from Killer and scanned the campsite. Pox was gone, along with the cart. Why? She puzzled over this question while she sipped the broth.

The question was answered not long afterwards. Pox rode out of the dusk. Instead of the cart, he had a second horse with him, a small, sturdy piebald mare.

Britta’s heart gave a kick in her chest.
For me?

P
OX DISMOUNTED.
H
E
tossed a sack to Leader. Britta tried to guess what was inside. Food? It didn’t look heavy.

Leader strode to her and dropped the sack at her feet. He unsheathed his heavy throwing knife and crouched, reaching for her head.

Fear squeaked in Britta’s throat. She recoiled instinctively.

Leader snatched her plait and wrapped it around his fist, holding it painfully taut. “Don’t move.” He sawed through her hair, so close to her skull that she almost felt the blade.

The painful pull ceased. Leader rose from his crouch. He kicked the sack towards her. “Clothes. Get changed, or I’ll strip you and do it myself.” He walked away, the plait dangling like a dead snake in his hand.

Britta touched her hair. It was short, ragged, the longest strands finger-length. She should be horrified, feel violated, but instead there was a strange sense of... liberation? No one could bind a crown to her head now.
I’m no longer an Osgaardan princess
.

B
RITTA OPENED THE
sack. Inside it were trews, a shirt, a sheepskin vest, a cloak. Thick woolen socks and leather boots.
I’m to be a man
.

She stripped out of her stained, stinking gown and chemise, trying not to feel self-conscious. The Fithians didn’t see her as a woman, there was nothing sexual in the way they looked at her, but even so, she tried to hide her nudity beneath the cloak as she struggled into the shirt and trews. With sleeves and trouser legs rolled up, the clothes fitted. The fabric was a sturdy cotton. Britta pulled on the socks and shrugged into the sheepskin vest. The hide faced outward, cured but undyed, and the wool curled warmly against her shirt. Peasants’ garb, practical and warm and hard-wearing—and more comfortable than the heavy silks and stiff gold-embroidered robes she’d worn as a princess. She buttoned the vest, snuggling into its warmth, and looked at the piebald mare.

Tomorrow I escape.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

H
ARKELD RODE HUNCHED
beneath his cloak. Moisture trickled down the back of his neck. His hair was wet beneath the hood, his clothes were soaked. The woolen cloak hung from his shoulders, saturated and heavy. His breeches clung to his thighs, his boots were filled with water, rain dripped off his nose. The mare’s hooves made sucking sounds as she slogged across a muddy field and through a copse of sodden trees. Harkeld clenched his teeth and stared at his horse’s ears, and endured.
One more month
, he told himself. One more month and he could go wherever he wanted. No mages, no curse, no Fithian assassins. And no rain. He imagined a crisp Osgaardan winter, with blue skies and white snow. Fur-lined boots. Roaring fires. Hot, spiced wine.

But he couldn’t go back to Osgaard or Lundegaard, not now he was known to have witch blood. Even once the healers stripped his magic from him, as they’d promised they would, he’d still be thought of as a witch. He’d have to sail north to the Allied Kingdoms, where mages weren’t hunted and killed.

The mare halted.

Harkeld raised his head. Ahead, the riders had come to a standstill in the middle of a bare field. Through the encroaching dusk he saw a naked shapeshifter standing in the mud, gesturing as he talked. Petrus, his white-blond hair plastered to his skull.

The mages conferred. Harkeld didn’t try to get closer and listen.

Petrus shifted into a hawk again. His feathers were saturated, bedraggled. He flapped slowly up into the darkening sky.

H
ARKELD HAD EXPECTED
they’d pitch wet tents in the mud, but Petrus led them to a cart track, and then a wretched, dripping hamlet. A barrel-chested black dog barked once at them, then trotted alongside the horses, its tail held high. Magic shimmered over its muddy flanks. It was the big, black-bearded shapeshifter, Serril.

The hamlet boasted a tavern, a ramshackle wooden building with a stableyard of filthy, churned mud. A peasants’ tavern, little better than a hovel. Harkeld thought of the marble and gold palace he’d grown up in and gave a silent, sour grunt of laughter.

Rand nudged his horse alongside Harkeld’s. “Serril and Petrus have searched the village. There’s no sign of assassins. Petrus says the inn is half-empty. Two families fleeing Sault, and that’s all.”

Harkeld nodded.

The black dog was gone, but three crows perched on the wooden shingle roof, staring down at them, magic glinting on their wet feathers.

Harkeld dismounted. His waterlogged boots squelched in ankle-deep mud. Cursed rain. They’d had enough of it in Ankeny. Why couldn’t it snow? Clean, crisp snow, like they had in Osgaard.

He helped with the horses, brushed them down with handfuls of straw, fed and watered them, then followed Rand and the gray-haired water mage, Malle, inside. The sleeping quarters were cramped and primitive, a dark room lined with hard wooden bunks. The room smelled of mold and sweat and urine.
A bedchamber fit for a prince
, Harkeld thought, then snorted under his breath. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t a prince. He hadn’t been one since his father placed the bounty on his head. He was an outcast. A mixed-blood fugitive. He didn’t even have his own name any more. Too risky, with every Fithian assassin in the Seven Kingdoms hunting him. The mages called him Flin. Flin, a safe, peasant-like name no assassin would recognize. And this was a safe, malodorous bunkroom in a safe, filthy hovel no assassin would expect to find him in.

E
VERY ITEM IN
Harkeld’s packsaddle was wet. He stripped off his sodden clothes, dressed in damp ones from his packsaddle, and headed for the taproom. A fire burned in the grate. Woodsmoke stained the low ceiling black. Dirty straw lay on the floor. A party of men, women, and children ate around a long wooden table. Their clothing was travel-stained, but the decorative embroidery at cuffs and hems was expensive. They ate silently, their faces weary beneath the curse shadows.

Harkeld sat at the only other table in the taproom. Two of the new fire mages, both women, were already there. Signy and Gretel. He sat as far from them as he could. They hadn’t lied to him yet, but that was only because he hadn’t given them the chance. Mages were all liars. He’d learned
that
.

The table filled up. Rand. The other two fire mages, Bode and Davin. The healers Nellis and Thayer. The water mage, Malle, and her journeyman, Adel. Harkeld ignored them all.

Serril joined them. He was built like a draft horse, tall, broad in the shoulder, broad in the chest, with a black beard trimmed close to his jaw. He shared leadership with Rand, although he was only in his thirties. Harkeld ignored him, too.

An unkempt serving woman brought tankards of ale and bowls of thick, steaming soup.

Harkeld stared at the soup. Chunks of meat and turnips floated in it. His stomach was hollow with hunger, but he didn’t pick up his spoon. Soup was made with water, wasn’t it? And so was ale? His skin was already gray with the shadow of Ivek’s curse. If he ate the soup, drank the ale, his curse shadow would become dark.

Someone sat opposite him at the table.

Harkeld glanced up. Petrus and Justen. The real Justen. The person the shapeshifters had pretended to be for three months.

Justen grinned at him. “Ach, it’s good to be out of the rain, isn’t it?”

Harkeld looked back down at his soup. Justen—this Justen—had only joined them two weeks ago. He’d had nothing to do with the deception. But it was his face the shapeshifters had used, his accent, and seeing him, hearing him say “Ach” brought Harkeld’s humiliation flooding back.

They played me for a fool.

Harkeld picked up his spoon and stabbed the steaming soup. He still had half a waterskin from the ship. He could skip dinner, keep his curse shadow faint for one more night.

The smell of meat and vegetables drifted up. His stomach knotted, telling him he was hungry.

Harkeld put the spoon down and glanced at the refugees. The curse shadows shrouding them were thick and dark. Several of the mages had dark shadows, too; they’d drunk the water here. Others, like Petrus, glowering at him, and Justen, who’d lost his grin, still had gray curse shadows; they’d only drunk water from the ship.

Innis entered the taproom. The curse shadow covering her was thin and gray.

Harkeld looked back down at his soup. Innis had been Justen most of the time. She’d ridden alongside him, slept in his tent, pretended to be his friend.

The humiliation turned over in his belly. He’d said things to Justen that he would
never
have said to a woman, done things he would
never
have done. He'd bathed in front of her, pissed in front of her.

And—even more humiliating—he’d dreamed of her.

In his dreams, they’d been lovers. He’d become closer to Innis than he had to any woman. In her company, he’d felt happy.

Happy?
What a fool I was
.

Harkeld shoved his soup bowl away and pushed to his feet, elbowing his way past Innis. Humiliation fermented sourly in his chest as he stepped outside, into the stableyard. A lantern hung on a hook beside the door, casting faint light. Rain streamed down.

“Whoreson.” Petrus pushed through the door behind him, and slammed it. “Think you’re better than us, do you? Think you can treat us like we’re dogshit?”