Celaena dressed in the nicest tunic she’d brought—which wasn’t really anything to admire, but the midnight blue and gold did bring out the turquoise hues in her eyes. She went so far as to apply some cosmetics to her eyes, but opted to avoid putting anything on the rest of her face. Even though the sun had set, the heat remained. Anything she put on her skin would likely slide right off.
Ansel made good on her promise to retrieve her before dinner and pestered Celaena with questions about her journey during the walk to the dining hall. As they walked, there were some areas where Ansel talked normally, others where she kept her voice at a whisper, and others where she signaled not to speak at all. Celaena couldn’t tell why certain rooms demanded utter silence and others did not—they all seemed the same. Still exhausted despite her nap, and unsure when she could speak, Celaena kept her answers brief. She wouldn’t have minded missing dinner and just sleeping all night.
Staying alert as they entered the hall was an effort of will. Yet even with her exhaustion, she instinctively scanned the room. There were three exits—the giant doors through which they entered, and two servants’ doors on either end. The hall was packed wall-to-wall with long wooden tables and benches full of people. At least seventy of them in total. None of them looked at Celaena as Ansel ambled toward a table near the front of the room. If they knew who she was, they certainly didn’t care. She tried not to scowl.
Ansel slid into place at a table and patted the empty spot on the bench beside her. The nearest assassins looked up from their meal—some had been talking quietly and others were silent—as Celaena stood before them.
Ansel waved a hand in Celaena’s direction. “Celaena, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Celaena. Though I’m sure you gossips know everything about her already.” She spoke softly, and even though some assassins in the hall were talking, they seemed to hear her just fine. Even the clank of their utensils seemed hushed.
Celaena scanned the faces of those around her; they all seemed to be watching her with benign, if not amused, curiosity. Carefully, too aware of each of her movements, Celaena sat on the bench and surveyed the table. Platters of grilled, fragrant meats; bowls full of spherical, spiced grains; fruits and dates; and pitcher after pitcher of water.
Ansel helped herself, her armor glinting in the light of the ornate glass lanterns dangling from the ceiling, and then piled the same food on Celaena’s plate. “Just start eating,” she whispered. “It all tastes good, and none of it is poisoned.” To emphasize her point, Ansel popped a cube of charred lamb into her mouth and chewed. “See?” she said between bites. “Lord Berick might want to kill us, but he knows better than to try to get rid of us through poisons. We’re far too skilled to fall for that sort of thing. Aren’t we?” The assassins around her grinned.
“Lord Berick?” Celaena asked, now staring at her plate and all the food on it.
Ansel made a face, gobbling down some saffron-colored grains. “Our local villain. Or I suppose we’re his local villains, depending on who is telling the story.”
“He’s the villain,” said a curly-haired, dark-eyed man across from Ansel. He was handsome in a way, but had a smile far too much like Captain Rolfe’s for Celaena’s liking. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. “No matter who is telling the story.”
“Well, you are ruining my story, Mikhail,” Ansel said, but grinned at him. He tossed a grape at Ansel, and she caught it in her mouth with ease. Celaena still didn’t touch her food. “Anyway,” Ansel said, dumping more food onto Celaena’s plate, “Lord Berick rules over the city of Xandria, and claims that he rules this part of the desert, too. Of course, we don’t quite agree with that, but … To shorten a long and frightfully dull story, Lord Berick has wanted us all dead for years and years. The King of Adarlan set an embargo on the Red Desert after Lord Berick failed to send troops into Eyllwe to crush some rebellion, and Berick has been dying to get back in the king’s good graces ever since. He somehow got it into his thick skull that killing all of us—and sending the head of the Mute Master to Adarlan on a silver platter—would do the trick.”
Ansel took another bite of meat and went on. “So, every now and then, he tries some tactic or other: sending asps in baskets, sending soldiers posing as our beloved foreign dignitaries”—she pointed to a table at the end of the hall, where the people were dressed in exotic clothing—“sending troops in the dead of night to fire flaming arrows at us … Why, two days ago, we caught some of his soldiers trying to dig a tunnel beneath our walls. Ill-conceived plan from the start.”
Across the table, Mikhail chuckled. “Nothing’s worked yet,” he said. Hearing the noise of their conversation, an assassin at a nearby table pivoted to raise a finger to her lips, shushing them. Mikhail gave them an apologetic shrug. The dining hall, Celaena gleaned, must be a silence-is-requested-but-not-required sort of place.
Ansel poured a glass of water for Celaena, then one for herself, and spoke more quietly. “I suppose that’s the problem with attacking an impenetrable fortress full of skilled warriors: you have to be smarter than us. Though … Berick is almost brutal enough to make up for it. The assassins that have fallen into his hands came back in pieces.” She shook her head. “He enjoys being cruel.”
“And Ansel knows that firsthand,” Mikhail chimed in, though his voice was little more than a murmur. “She’s had the pleasure of meeting him.”
Celaena raised a brow, and Ansel made a face. “Only because I’m the most charming of you lot. The Master sometimes sends me to Xandria to meet with Berick—to try to negotiate some sort of accord between us. Thankfully, he still won’t dare violate the terms of parlay, but … one of these days, I’ll pay for my courier duties with my hide.”
Mikhail rolled his eyes at Celaena. “She likes to be dramatic.”
“That I do.”
Celaena gave them both a weak smile. It had been a few minutes, and Ansel certainly wasn’t dead. She bit into a piece of meat, nearly moaned at the array of tangy-smoky spices, and set about eating. Ansel and Mikhail began chattering to each other, and Celaena took the opportunity to glance down the table.
Outside of the markets in Rifthold and the slave ships at Skull’s Bay, she’d never seen such a mix of different kingdoms and continents. And though most of the people here were trained killers, there was an air of peace and contentment—of joy, even. She flicked her eyes to the table of foreign dignitaries that Ansel had pointed out. Men and women, hunched over their food, whispered with one another and occasionally watched the assassins in the room.
“Ah,” Ansel said quietly. “They’re just squabbling over which of us they want to make a bid for.”
“Bid?”
Mikhail leaned forward to see the ambassadors through the crowd. “They come here from foreign courts to offer us positions. They make offers for the assassins that most impress them—sometimes for one mission, other times for a lifelong contract. Any of us are free to go, if we wish. But not all of us want to leave.”
“And you two …?”
“Ach, no,” Ansel said. “My father would wallop me from here to the ends of the earth if I bound myself to a foreign court. He’d say it’s a form of prostitution.”
Mikhail laughed under his breath. “Personally, I like it here. When I want to leave, I’ll let the Master know I’m available. But until then …” He glanced at Ansel, and Celaena could have sworn the girl’s face flushed slightly. “Until then, I’ve got my reasons to stay.”
Celaena asked, “What courts do the dignitaries hail from?”
“None in Adarlan’s grip, if that’s what you’re asking.” Mikhail scratched the day’s worth of stubble on his face. “Our Master knows well enough that everything from Eyllwe to Terrasen is your Master’s territory.”
“It certainly is.” She didn’t know why she said it. Given what Arobynn had done to her, she hardly felt defensive of the assassins in Adarlan’s empire. But … but to see all these assassins gathered here, so much collective power and knowledge, and to know that they wouldn’t dare intrude on Arobynn’s—on her—territory …
Celaena went on eating in silence as Ansel and Mikhail and a few others around them talked quietly. Vows of silence, Ansel had explained earlier, were taken for as long as each person saw fit. Some spent weeks in silence; others, years. Ansel claimed she’d once sworn to be silent for a month, and had only lasted two days before she gave up. She liked talking too much. Celaena didn’t have any trouble believing that.
A few of the people around them were pantomiming. Though it often took them a few tries to discern the vague gestures, it seemed like Ansel and Mikhail could interpret the movements of their hands.
Celaena felt someone’s attention on her, and tried not to blink when she noticed a dark-haired, handsome young man watching her from a few seats down. Stealing glances at her was more like it, since his sea-green eyes kept darting to her face, then back to his companions. He didn’t open his mouth once, but pantomimed to his friends. Another silent one.
Their eyes met, and his tan face spread into a smile, revealing dazzlingly white teeth. Well, he was certainly desirable—as desirable as Sam, maybe.
Sam—when had she ever thought of him as desirable? He’d laugh until he died if he ever knew she thought of him like that.
The young man inclined his head slightly in greeting, then turned back to his friends.
“That’s Ilias,” Ansel whispered, leaning closer than Celaena would like. Didn’t she have any sense of personal space? “The Master’s son.”
That explained the sea-green eyes. Though the Master had an air of holiness, he must not be celibate.
“I’m surprised you caught Ilias’s eye,” Ansel teased, keeping her voice low enough for only Celaena and Mikhail to hear. “He’s usually too focused on his training and meditating to notice anyone—even pretty girls.”
Celaena raised her brows, biting back a reply that she didn’t want to know any of this.
“I’ve known him for years, and he’s never been anything but aloof with me,” Ansel continued. “But maybe he has a thing for blondes.” Mikhail snorted.
“I’m not here for anything like that,” Celaena said.
“And I bet you have a flock of suitors back home, anyway.”
“I certainly do not.”
Ansel’s mouth popped open. “You’re lying.”
Celaena took a long, long sip of water. It was flavored with slices of lemon—and was unbelievably delicious. “No, I’m not.”
Ansel gave her a quizzical look, then fell back into conversation with Mikhail. Celaena pushed around the food on her plate. It wasn’t that she wasn’t romantic. She’d been infatuated with a few men before—from Archer, the young male courtesan who’d trained with them for a few months when she was thirteen, to Ben, Arobynn’s now-deceased Second, back when she was too young to really understand the impossibility of such a thing.
She dared another look at Ilias, who was laughing silently at something one of his companions had said. It was flattering that he even considered her worthy of second thought; she’d avoided looking in the mirror in the month since that night with Arobynn, only checking to ensure nothing was broken or out of place.
“So,” Mikhail said, shattering her thoughts as he pointed a fork at her, “when your master beat the living daylights out of you, did you actually deserve it?”
Ansel shot him a dark look, and Celaena straightened. Even Ilias was now listening, his lovely eyes fixed on her face. But Celaena stared right at Mikhail. “I suppose it depends on who is telling the story.”
Ansel chuckled.
“If Arobynn Hamel is telling the story, then yes, I suppose I did deserve it. I cost him a good deal of money—a kingdom’s worth of riches, probably. I was disobedient and disrespectful, and completely remorseless about what I did.”
She didn’t break her stare, and Mikhail’s smile faltered.
“But if the two hundred slaves that I freed are telling the story, then no, I suppose I didn’t deserve it.”
None of them were smiling anymore. “Holy gods,” Ansel whispered. True silence fell over their table for a few heartbeats.
Celaena resumed eating. She didn’t feel like talking to them after that.
Under the shade of the date trees that separated the oasis from the sand, Celaena stared out at the expanse of desert stretching before them. “Say that again,” she said flatly to Ansel. After the hushed dinner last night and the utterly silent fortress walkways that had brought them here, speaking normally grated on her ears.
But Ansel, who was wearing a white tunic and pants, and boots wrapped in camel pelts, just grinned and fastened her white scarf around her red hair. “It’s a three-mile run to the next oasis.” Ansel handed Celaena the two wooden buckets she’d brought with her. “These are for you.”
Celaena raised her brows. “I thought I was going to be training with the Master.”
“Oh, no. Not today,” Ansel said, picking up two buckets of her own. “When he said ‘training’ he meant this. You might be able to wallop four of our men, but you still smell like the northern wind. Once you start reeking like the Red Desert, then he’ll bother to train you.”
“That’s ridiculous. Where is he?” She looked toward the fortress towering behind them.
“Oh, you won’t find him. Not until you prove yourself. Show that you’re willing to leave behind all that you know and all that you were. Make him think you’re worth his time. Then he’ll train you. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.” Ansel’s mahogany eyes gleamed with amusement. “Do you know how many of us have begged and groveled to just have one lesson with him? He picks and chooses as he sees fit. One morning, he might approach an acolyte. The next, it might be someone like Mikhail. I’m still waiting for my turn. I don’t think even Ilias knows the method behind his father’s decisions.”
This wasn’t at all what Celaena had planned. “But I need him to write me a letter of approval. I need him to train me. I’m here so he can train me—”
Ansel shrugged. “So are we all. If I were you, though, I’d suggest training with me until he decides that you’re worth it. If anything, I can get you into the rhythm of things. Make it seem more like you care about us, and less like you’re here just for that letter of approval. Not that we all don’t have our own secret agenda.” Ansel winked, and Celaena frowned. Panicking now wouldn’t do her any good. She needed time to come up with a logical plan of action. She’d try to speak to the Master later. Perhaps he hadn’t understood her yesterday. But for now … she’d tag along after Ansel for the day. The Master had been at dinner the night before; if she needed to, she could corner him in the dining hall tonight.
When Celaena didn’t object further, Ansel held up a bucket. “So this bucket is for your journey back from the oasis—you’ll need it. And this one”—she held up the other—“is just to make the trip hell.”
“Why?”
Ansel hooked the buckets into the yoke across her shoulders. “Because if you can run three miles across the dunes of the Red Desert, then three miles back, you can do almost anything.”
“Run?” Celaena’s throat dried up at the thought of it. All around them, assassins—mostly the children, plus a few others a bit older than her—began running for the dunes, their buckets clacking along.
“Don’t tell me the infamous Celaena Sardothien can’t run three miles!”
“If you’ve been here for so many years, doesn’t the three miles seem like nothing now?”
Ansel rolled her neck like a cat stretching out in the sun. “Of course it does. But the running keeps me in shape. You think I was just born with these legs?” Celaena ground her teeth as Ansel gave her a fiendish grin. She’d never met anyone who smiled and winked so much.
Ansel began jogging, leaving the shade of the date trees overhead, kicking up a wave of red sand behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. “If you walk, it’ll take all day! And then you’ll certainly never impress anyone!” Ansel pulled her scarf over her nose and mouth and took off at a gallop.
Taking a deep breath, cursing Arobynn to Hell, Celaena hooked the buckets onto the yoke and ran.
If it had been three flat miles, even three miles up grassy knolls, she might have made it. But the dunes were enormous and unwieldy, and Celaena made it one measly mile before she had to slow to a walk, her lungs near to combusting. It was easy enough to find the way—the dozens of footprints from the people racing ahead showed her where she needed to go.
She ran when she could and walked when she couldn’t, but the sun rose higher and higher, toward that dangerous noontime peak. Up one hill, down the other. One foot in front of the next. Bright flashes flitted across her vision, and her head pounded.
The red sand shimmered, and she draped her arms over the yoke. Her lips became filmy, cracking in places, and her tongue turned leaden in her mouth.
Each step made her head throb, and the sun rose higher and higher …
One more dune. Just one more dune.
But many more dunes later, she was still trudging along, following the smattering of footprints in the sand. Had she somehow tracked the wrong group?
Even as she thought it, assassins appeared atop the dune before her, already running back to the fortress, their buckets heavy with water.
She kept her head high as they passed and didn’t look any of them in the face. Most of them didn’t bother looking at her, though a few spared her a mortifyingly pitying glance. Their clothes were sodden.
She crested a dune so steep she had to use one hand to brace herself, and just when she was about to sink to her knees atop it, she heard splashing.
A small oasis, mostly a ring of trees and a giant pool fed by a shimmering stream, was barely an eighth of a mile away.
She was Adarlan’s Assassin—at least she’d made it here.
In the shallows of the pool, many disciples splashed or bathed or sat, cooling themselves. No one spoke—and hardly anyone gestured. Another of the absolutely silent places, then. She spotted Ansel with her feet in the water, tossing dates into her mouth. None of the others paid Celaena any heed. And for once, she was glad. Perhaps she should have found a way to defy Arobynn’s order and come here under an alias.
Ansel waved her over. If she gave her one look that hinted at her being so slow …
But Ansel merely held up a date, offering it to her.
Celaena, trying to control her panting, didn’t bother taking the date as she strode into the cool water until she was completely submerged.
Celaena drank an entire bucket before she was even halfway back to the fortress, and by the time she reached the sandstone complex and its glorious shade, she’d consumed all of the second.
At dinner, Ansel didn’t mention that it’d taken Celaena a long, long while to return. Celaena had had to wait in the shade of the palms until later in the afternoon to leave—and wound up walking the whole way back. She’d reached the fortress near dusk. A whole day spent “running.”
“Don’t look so glum,” Ansel whispered, taking a forkful of those delightful spiced grains. She was wearing her armor again. “You know what happened my first day out there?”
Some of the assassins seated at the long table gave knowing grins.
Ansel swallowed and braced her arms on the table. Even the gauntlets of her armor were delicately engraved with a wolf motif. “My first run, I collapsed. Mile two. Completely unconscious. Ilias found me on his way back and carried me here. In his arms and everything.” Ilias’s eyes met with Celaena’s, and he smiled at her. “If I hadn’t been about to die, I would have been swooning,” Ansel finished and the others grinned, some of them laughing silently.
Celaena blushed, suddenly too aware of Ilias’s attention, and took a sip from her cup of lemon water. As the meal wore on, her blush remained as Ilias continued flicking his eyes toward her.
She tried not to preen too much. But then she remembered how miserably she’d performed today—how she hadn’t even gotten a chance to train—and the swagger died a bit.
She kept an eye on the Master, who dined at the center of the room, safely ensconced within rows of his deadly assassins. He sat at a table of acolytes, whose eyes were so wide that Celaena could only assume his presence at their table was an unexpected surprise.
She waited and waited for him to stand, and when he did, Celaena made her best attempt to look casual as she, too, stood and bid everyone good night. As she turned away, she noticed that Mikhail took Ansel’s hand and held it in the shadows beneath the table.
The Master was just leaving the hall when she caught up to him. With everyone still eating, the torch-lit halls were empty. She took a loud step, unsure if he’d appreciate if she tried being mute, and how, exactly, to address him.
The Master paused, his white clothes rustling around him. He offered her a little smile. Up close, she could certainly see his resemblance to his son. There was a pale line around one of his fingers—perhaps where a wedding ring had once been. Who was Ilias’s mother?
Of course, it wasn’t at all the time for questions like that. Ansel had told her to try to impress him—to make him think she wanted to be here. Perhaps silence would work. But how to communicate what needed to be said? She gave him her best smile, even though her heart raced, and began making a series of motions, mostly just her best impression of running with the yoke, and a lot of shaking her head and frowning that she hoped he’d take to mean “I came here to train with you, not with the others.”
The Master nodded, as if he already knew. Celaena swallowed, her mouth still tasting of those spices they used to season their meat. She gestured between the two of them several times, taking a step closer to indicate her wanting to work only with him. She might have been more aggressive with her motions, might have really let her temper and exhaustion get the better of her, but … that confounded letter!
The Master shook his head.
Celaena ground her teeth, and tried the gesturing between the two of them again.
He shook his head once more, and bobbed his hands in the air, as if he were telling her to slow down—to wait. To wait for him to train her.
She reflected the gesture, raising an eyebrow as if to say, “Wait for you?” He nodded. How on earth to ask him “Until when?” She exposed her palms, beseeching, doing her best to look confused. Still, she couldn’t keep the irritation from her face. She was only here for a month. How long would she have to wait?
The Master understood her well enough. He shrugged, an infuriatingly casual gesture, and Celaena clenched her jaw. So Ansel had been right—she was to wait for him to send for her. The Master gave her that kind smile and turned on his heel, resuming his walk. She took a step toward him, to beg, to shout, to do whatever her body seized up to do, but someone grabbed her arm.
She whirled, already reaching for her daggers, but found herself looking into Ilias’s sea-green eyes.
He shook his head, his gaze darting from the Master to her and back again. She was not to follow him.
So perhaps Ilias hadn’t paid attention to her out of admiration, but because he didn’t trust her. And why should he? Her reputation didn’t exactly lend itself to trust. He must have followed her out of the hall the moment he saw her trailing his father. Had their positions been reversed—had he been visiting Rifthold—she wouldn’t have dared leave him alone with Arobynn.
“I have no plans to hurt him,” she said softly. But Ilias gave her a half smile, his brows rising as if to ask if she could blame him for being protective of his father.
He slowly released her arm. He wore no weapons at his side, but she had a feeling he didn’t need them. He was tall—taller than Sam, even—and broad-shouldered. Powerfully built, yet not bulky. His smile spread a bit more as he extended his hand toward her. A greeting.
“Yes,” she said, fighting her own smile. “I don’t suppose we’ve been properly introduced.”
He nodded, and put his other hand on his heart. Scars peppered his hand—small, slender scars that suggested years of training with blades.
“You’re Ilias, and I’m Celaena.” She put a hand on her own chest. Then she took his extended hand and shook it. “It’s nice to meet you.”
His eyes were vivid in the torchlight, his hand firm and warm around hers. She let go of his fingers. The son of the Mute Master and the protégée of the King of the Assassins. If there was anyone here who was at all similar to her, she realized, it was Ilias. Rifthold might be her realm, but this was his. And from the easy way he carried himself, from the way she’d seen his companions gazing at him with admiration and respect, she could tell that he was utterly at home here—as if this place had been made for him, and he never needed to question his spot in it. A strange sort of envy wended its way through her heart.
Ilias suddenly began making a series of motions with his long, tan fingers, but Celaena laughed softly. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
Ilias looked skyward and sighed through his nose. Throwing his hands in the air in mock defeat, he merely patted her on the shoulder before passing by—following his father, who had disappeared down the hall.
Though she walked back toward her room—in the other direction—she didn’t once believe that the son of the Mute Master wasn’t still watching her, making sure she wasn’t going to follow his father.
Not that you have anything to worry about, she wanted to shout over her shoulder. She couldn’t run six measly miles in the desert.
As she walked back to her room, Celaena had a horrible feeling that here, being Adarlan’s Assassin might not count for much.
Later that night, when she and Ansel were both in their beds, Ansel whispered into the darkness: “Tomorrow will be better. It might be only a foot more than today, but it will be a foot longer that you can run.”
That was easy enough for Ansel to say. She didn’t have a reputation to uphold—a reputation that might be crumbling around her. Celaena stared at the ceiling, suddenly homesick, strangely wishing Sam was with her. At least if she were to fail, she’d fail with him.
“So,” Celaena said suddenly, needing to get her mind off everything—especially Sam. “You and Mikhail …”
Ansel groaned. “It’s that obvious? Though I suppose we don’t really make that much of an effort to hide it. Well, I try, but he doesn’t. He was rather irritated when he found out I suddenly had a roommate.”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
Ansel was silent for a long moment before answering. “Since I was fifteen.”
Fifteen! Mikhail was in his midtwenties, so even if this had started almost three years ago, he still would have been far older than Ansel. It made her a little queasy.
“Girls in the Flatlands are married as early as fourteen,” Ansel said.
Celaena choked. The idea of being anyone’s wife at fourteen, let alone a mother soon after … “Oh,” was all she managed to get out.
When Celaena didn’t say anything else, Ansel drifted into sleep. With nothing else to distract her, Celaena eventually returned to thinking about Sam. Even weeks later, she had no idea how she’d somehow gotten attached to him, what he’d been shouting when Arobynn beat her, and why Arobynn had thought he’d need three seasoned assassins to restrain him that day.