The castle was cool inside and dark, especially in the corridors I was traveling. Torches guttered here and there, my passage moved the smoke in lazy circles. I made it to the kitchens before seeing another soul and the rooms were packed full of chefs and helpers, the ovens and cook stoves going full blast even in the dead of night. Surprisingly, I saw the red headed teen that had accompanied the lady on the gray mare. Heard his name called. Marcus. He was told to take a tray of tea and sweet buns to a room called the Rose Salon for an impromptu meeting and here I heard the title of General.
When he exited carrying the enormous silver tray loaded with kettle, tea cups, treats and plates, I followed behind him, a shadow only a witch could see. He led me up backstairs, across hallways not meant for noble feet until we emerged in a section of the palace used by the royal family.
I waited behind a corbeled arch as he knocked on the huge bronze doors. As they opened, I saw a pair of armed men look both ways down the hall and close the doors behind his murmured words. Opted to take the next window I could find and eased it open. The outer wall was inside the battlements and easy access across to the Salon’s balcony. Those doors were closed and curtained but had a gap between wide enough for me to see into the room.
Four men were seated at a round table loaded with food, instruments and sheet music. The room was papered with pale peach paper covered with huge roses the size and shape of cabbages. The upholstery on the chairs and couches matched the roses, the carpet was thick hand-loomed in peach, rose and green. Fresh roses were in vases on the tables, in stands and at the door. A chess set sat to the side with a game in progress. Occasionally, one of the four got up to make a move. I saw Black check mate in four moves.
I heard the strumming of a guitar and saw a tall man with a gray neatly trimmed beard, bushy black eyebrows and electric blue eyes. He looked about fifty and carried himself like the soldier he was. It was the General and even without his uniform, I would know him for what he was.
Of the three men, only one I knew the identity of. Short, stockily built with red hair, goatee and Van Dyke, he had a merry face that looked ready to smile at any instance. His blue eyes had a decided twinkle. It was the King, Random.
I waited until the boy Marcus emptied the tray and walked back out the door. He called a cheery good night and retraced his steps. At the first corner, I tripped him, stuck him with a sedative dart and confiscated the tray. Dragged his unconscious body into the room which turned out to be a maid’s chamber. I didn’t kill him, he was only a boy and not even armed. Besides, he hadn’t seen me and I could not bring myself to kill him.
The guards opened the doors to my knock and I kept the tray in front of my face even though my mask was firmly attached.
“Forget something, Marcus?” the closest one asked and my leaf dagger silenced him efficiently. As he staggered inside, I took the other one pushing his body inside the ante-chamber and locking the doors behind me.
All four men turned round as the guards bodies collapsed inside the Salon. There was no blood, I had made sure their wounds bled inside the body cavity. My sword was out already and I engaged the General, my prime target. He on the other hand, did not have his blade but picked up the steel guitar and swung it at my head. I met his lunge head on and the steel of my sword cut the instrument in half as if made of straw. The sound that came off the strings was eerily demonic. Random lunged for the chair and I stopped him at the point of my steel.
“Don’t move, Random,” I said, my tip at his throat. The other two men made as if to throw themselves between King and my weapons.
“You came unarmed?” I questioned softly. “Bad move.”
Random backed up. “Who are you? An assassin, but from who, what shadow?”
“I am Blackbird,” I replied and swiveled before they could move. I ran the General through the heart and pushed him off my sword as he collapsed. The younger man behind Random went for the dead guard’s weapons and threw one to the King. I backed up towards the balcony doors. “I’m not here to commit regicide,” I told them. “My target was Gracchus.”
“If you think we’ll just let you walk away after murdering the General and his guards,” the younger man burst out, “think again.”
Both of them advanced, blades drawn. I raised my own and parried, an intense fifteen seconds of lunge, thrust, counter thrust. First blood was mine as I severed the younger man’s elbow tendon and his arm ceased to obey his commands. Blood spurted as his brachial artery followed. In seconds, he was pale and fainting as blood loss laid him out. The third man whipped out his belt and created a tourniquet saving the wounded man’s life.
I blocked Random’s thrust to my body and riposted in quarte, just missing his exposed right side. We danced across the room, the sound of our blades whistling as they cut the air. Sweat beaded his brow as he grinned fiercely at me. He was fast, perhaps even faster than me. “Who sent you, Master Blackbird? What is your name so that I know what to put on your tombstone?”
I reached the General’s body and leapt over it, angling closer to the balcony doors. Switched hands and came at him with my left hand but in doing so, left my side open and he took advantage of it to skewer me just above the hip. I gasped and shoved him off with a punch, catching him with a shallow slice on the thigh and he cut me again, this time high on the breast. Blood dripped onto the carpeting. I stumbled backwards and hit the balcony doors, flinging them open as he pressed me on. His strikes were supersonic, his swordplay the fastest I had ever seen. A master swordsman. Wounded, it was all I could do to keep him back long enough for me to catch my line and vault over to slide down to the ground floor. He shouted for guards and came after me, climbing down the wall.
I turned and ran for the second line I’d left on the cliff face and literally flew down the face of the slope as I rappelled, getting weaker as I went. Halfway down, I threw my cloak over me and let its magic shield my body from his sight. I fell the last twenty feet, my arms incapable of holding on any longer.
I felt...unwell. Cold waves fled up my body. Blood stained my clothes and from the corner of my mouth making breathing both painful and difficult. He had given me a lung wound.
I heard him shouting above me and it brought others from the staging area towards my position. Rolling, I hid in what little underbrush was there until I could both rise and escape.
Berating myself, I stumbled along the trail careful to leave no sign of my passage. It took me nearly three times as long to reach my room at the inn where I vomited up my meal and blood before collapsing on the bed in a stupor. I didn’t even try to treat my wounds.
It seemed almost like minutes later when a heavy pounding occurred at my door. I heard a rough voice ordering me to open up in the name of the King. Slowly and painfully, I arose, my clothes stiff with blood, my weapons in their sheaths ready for action. I opened the door partway and saw the Kings Guard, a whole unit of them, Captain, Sergeant and foot soldiers. His eyes studied me, the blanket wrapped around my shoulders, my pale, sleepy face.
“Your parents are inside, too?” the Captain asked, pushing the door wide and me aside. I let him in, my strength gone.
“They’re in Lameara on business,” I said naming the next district town over. “What’s this about?”
“King’s business. How old are you?” He scoured the room but since I hadn’t treated my wounds, there wasn’t any sign of blood or bandages in the room, nor smell of disinfectant or healing magic. He opened the privy and recoiled from the smell of vomit. I had puked on arriving back from my trip to the castle.
“What is your name? Are you sick? Who’s taking care of you?”
“My parents. I puked up dinner, I ate something, too many somethings that were bad at the Fest. I’ve been here since yesterday, I came in with the Tissarette caravan. Master Tatterselle will vouch for me. My name is Corby Eidolon.” I could feel sweat breaking out on my forehead. “I hope I’m not contagious, I heard Black-lung Fever is going around from the outskirts of Blenheim.”
All of them backpedaled when I mentioned the fever, a notorious disease that swelled up a man’s nether parts and turned them black before killing them. Only affected men past puberty and who were sexually active.
“Can you prove where you’ve been all night?” the Captain asked. I shrugged.
“The Innkeeper saw me come in and lock the door. The exit is the door next to the bar, only way in or out. If I had left, someone would have seen me, the bar was filled with drunks. Kept me awake all night.”
I heard someone approaching from behind the soldiers and a tall man with dark hair and intelligent eyes pushed his way forward. He was handsome, dressed in black and gray with a silver rose at his cape closure and wore an elegant blade at his waist. I looked at it and then up to his face. We were nearly eye-level. “Corwin,” I said.
“Do I know you?” the Prince asked. His eyes dropped to the floor and we watched ruby drops of blood splatter from my bare feet onto the floor boards. His hand gripped the pommel as he drew the blade, Grayswandir.
I shouted a spell and leaped forward into the captain, tucking my foot behind the backs of his knees, hooking and sweeping them out from under and knocked him into his sergeant who dominoed into the enlisted men. I did it with the help of the power spell that gave me strength the equal to a cave bear. Threw myself over the massive pile, my blade in my hand to meet Corwin’s. He slashed and the power behind his thrust made my shoulder scream with pain. I whipped the blanket forward tangling it over his head and arm as I slid past him down the hallway to the next room, also reserved for me by the Master and under a different name. The door smashed open as I activated the spell that prevented anyone but me entry and stumbled for the window, diving through just as Corwin broke free. Landed on the cobblestones in a roll that should have been easy but with two holes in me and blood loss, I hit the ground stunned. Struggled past the vertigo and tried to rise, two knees smashed me on the back and someone rode me to the ground. I screamed, reached for my leaf daggers, my fingers clawing at the stones to push him off enough so I could reach my chest and his blade hit me in the back, low and on the right side. It felt like ice had pierced me, and stolen my breath. I gasped, felt my lungs shift in some irrevocable way, their function changed. As he pulled his blade free, I could not breathe. Blood filled my mouth.
“Master!” I cried. “I have failed you!” The Prince flipped me over as the squad rejoined him. Raised me up to watch the light fade from my eyes.