CHAPTER 29

The Promise Keeper

Since the assassination of Queen Heccata, Tanin had made herself indispensable to the cause.

First, she’d suggested Arcadimon Detano’s punishment: a drug that, once taken, would make the body entirely dependent on it for survival. As long as Detano remained loyal to the Guard, the Apprentice Administrator would deliver a dose to Corabel each morning, and he would live another day. If he stepped out of line, however, if he tried to contact his little king, the drug would be withdrawn, and he would die before noon the next day.

Then she became the Master Assassin’s shadow. She followed him everywhere in his search for Detano’s missing king—combing the hillside for clues, locating witnesses, questioning bystanders.

When she wasn’t searching, she was training. She endured sparring sessions that left her hands covered in cuts and her body covered in bruises. She submitted herself to hours of mental torment. At the First’s insistence, she killed all manner of creatures—stray dogs, infant rodents that hadn’t yet opened their eyes, war orphans from the camps ringing the capital—in all manner of ways. And if her face showed a single glimmer of emotion—dismay, pity, even rage—she was beaten.

Mareah had never talked about her training. Now Tanin knew why.

It was torture. But it was effective. Assassins weren’t human, after all. They were living weapons.

Tanin answered to “Assassin” or “Second.” She waited, unnoticed, in the shadows while her Master conferred with Stonegold or the Soldiers. She held her tongue. She bided her time.

Stonegold may have forgotten the humiliation he’d put her through. But Tanin had sworn he’d die by her hand, and she kept her promises.

By the time the First was killed, she’d perfected the art of inconspicuousness as well as the art of patience.

While Stonegold sat on one of the overstuffed sofas, nursing his aching head, she examined the First’s corpse.

Strychnine. As a former Administrator, she would have recognized the signs anywhere. She found the nick on his shin where the poison had entered his system. The cut matched the blade on Mareah’s silver ring.

“This could have been you, Director,” she whispered. “They probably thought that killing you would end the war.”

“Then they’ll try again.” He pointed a thick finger in her direction. “And next time, you’ll stop them.”

Tanin bowed. Her face was impassive now, but if she’d been the same woman she was nearly four months ago, she would have been smiling.

Stonegold called off the search for the missing king. He needed a guard dog, and Tanin—who had become the Master Assassin by default—would do.

Now, clad in black with the old First’s weapons sheathed at her side, she accompanied Stonegold everywhere. She slept on a pallet on the floor of his cabin. She waited outside the door while he emptied his bowels. She listened in on conversations with the other Guardians, who hardly seemed to notice her in the shadows, and waited, silently, for her opportunity.

During the attack on Tsumasai Bay, she followed Stonegold everywhere. She was on deck with him when they broke through the Royal Navy defenses. She was at his side when he sailed to the castle at Kelebrandt, when he entered the throne room with its stone floors and floor-to-ceiling windows. One side of the hall overlooked the capital’s harbor and the amassed navies beyond. The other had views of the courtyard, gardens, walls, and the city sprawled over the forested hills.

She witnessed the young Oxscinian queen’s surrender and, minutes later, the rebellion on the bay, when a slew of redcoats refused to yield and dozens of Delieneans defected from the Alliance.

Detano’s little king must have resurfaced at last.

But Stonegold appeared unfazed. Tanin supposed it was easy to remain collected when your forces so greatly outnumbered the opposition. He ordered the Oxscinian queen to send her reserve ships to intercede between the rebels and the Alliance, and the candidates escorted her out of the throne room so she could obey.

Tanin was left alone with Stonegold.

He stood at the windows, watching the reserve Royal Navy ships leave the harbor. It wouldn’t be long before the Alliance subdued the resisters. She was certain he wanted to see the moment the waters of Tsumasai Bay calmed at last, and he had four of the Five Islands in the palm of his hand.

Tanin stood by the room’s main entrance, a set of double doors that led to an empty antechamber and the guarded corridor beyond. Unlike Stonegold, whose gaze was fixed on the battle, she could see both the action on the bay and the view of the castle grounds. Which meant she was watching when Sefia and Archer appeared on the outermost ramparts.

Even now, Tanin didn’t allow herself the satisfaction of a smile. Smiling was for victors, and she’d had victory snatched from her grasp too many times to believe it would come easily to her now.

But she’d been waiting for this moment. She’d known Sefia and Archer would return to finish their assassination of the Master Politician.

She just had to make sure that this time, they succeeded.

Together, they raced across the castle walls and disappeared into a tower.

“Director,” Tanin whispered, “if I may be excused?”

“Now?”

“The queen has been gone a long time. I think I should check on her.”

He didn’t bother turning around. “Go, and be quick about it.”

Tanin left through the antechamber, passing the candidates on guard in the hall.

With Stonegold dead, the Directorship would be vacant, and since she’d shadowed his every move since the death of the First and was privy to every scheme, there would be no one more suited to take his place than Tanin.

She’d already had opportunities to kill him, of course, but if the rest of the Guard was to accept her as Director, her innocence had to be out of the question, her alibi inviolate even to the Sight. If there was a single shred of doubt, their Master Soldier, Braca, would seize control of the organization and have her executed for treachery.

No, she’d had to wait. She had to lay the blame elsewhere. She had to retain the loyalty of every division: the Soldiers, the Librarians, the Administrators. As their military leader, Braca would assume command of the Alliance.

She would be the public face of the first union of all Five Kingdoms, and Tanin, the Director of the Guard, would control her from the shadows.

It would be as it should have been before Stonegold usurped Tanin’s place.

Tanin stalked the corridors. She peered into empty chambers. She slunk through the kitchens, the courtyards, the halls.

She heard them before she saw them, whispering in one of the stairwells. She paused on the landing above, listening.

Sefia’s voice drifted up to her: “Where do you think he is?”

He. Stonegold. Tanin had been correct—they were going to try to kill him again.

Except she’d vowed that he would die at her hand.

“Would he be in the council room?” Archer asked.

In the tense silence, Tanin peered around the curve of the stairwell. Wearing an eye patch to cover the injury she’d received when fighting the First, Sefia was staring through the windows at the battle on the bay. The resisters were fleeing south, pursued by the Alliance’s swift scouts.

Archer stood beside her. As before, he had two weapons: a revolver and a sword.

Perfect. The sword was what she needed.

“If I know Stonegold,” she said softly, stepping around the corner, “and I think I do, he’ll be in the throne room, gloating.”

The attack came, predictably: a burst of magic, a knife flung through the air.

With reflexes honed by her training with the First, Tanin ducked, redirecting the knife into the curved wall, where it pinged off the stones and went flying back at Sefia.

Archer went to push her out of the way, exposing the hilt of his sword.

That was all the opening Tanin needed. She teleported, appearing on his other side. Swiftly, she grabbed his blade from its scabbard and darted away.

She led them into the servants’ passages that wound throughout the castle, up and down tight stairwells, until she was certain they were close enough to the throne room to make it on their own.

Then, when they were behind a corner, she waved her arms, reappearing in the empty antechamber.

Amid the sliding paper screens and hand-carved chairs of Oxscinian hardwood, Tanin slipped on a pair of gloves and plucked a tin, no bigger than a case of powder, from her vest. Inside was a sponge soaked in a transparent poison.

She’d gotten the idea from Detano, of all people. To save his little king, he’d needed to conceal a murder, and to do that, he’d needed a poison that would distort a corpse until all its distinguishing marks were unrecognizable, even to Illuminators.

She would do the same to Stonegold.

Tanin ran the sponge along the weapon’s cutting edges and returned the sponge to its case. Then she removed her gloves, turning them inside out to avoid contact with the poison, and clipped the case closed.

Taking Archer’s sword from the chair, she opened the double doors and strode into the throne room.

Stonegold hadn’t moved from his place at the windows. Out on the bay, the resisters had disappeared from sight. The remaining Royal Navy vessels were being boarded, their captains relieved of their command. In the evening light, the smoke-filled sky was a red haze, silhouetting his girth.

King of Everica. Master Politician. Director of the Guard.

But not for much longer.

Quietly, Tanin locked and barred the doors.

At the slight sound, Stonegold turned, his expression pinched with irritation. “Took you long enough. Where is she?”

That lazy voice. That condescending tone.

She’d never have to hear it again.

In an instant, she’d teleported across the room. She was quick, as her Master had taught her. Archer’s sword sank hilt-deep into Stonegold’s broad chest.

At Detano’s swearing-in ceremony, she’d promised herself that this was how Stonegold would die. It gave her no small satisfaction to know she was a woman who kept her promises.

Immediately, she stepped back, checking her clothing for spots of blood.

Stonegold looked down, his eyes widening as he saw the sword.

The old Tanin would have gloated.

But the new Tanin merely watched as Stonegold opened his mouth as if to speak, though no words came out. The poison was fast, eating away at his clothing, his skin, his fat, his muscles and bones.

He screamed and fell back, Archer’s sword protruding from his rapidly deteriorating corpse.

There was a ruckus beyond the antechamber. The candidates had heard Stonegold’s cry.

With a smile, Tanin lifted her arms and teleported away.