Mortal Heart (His Fair Assassin 3)

That is harder to answer. Especially now when I must work to separate my own desires from those the convent has planted in me. But—no. Actually, it is not hard, for I remember the moment so clearly: it was when Mortain came to me, sat beside me, His gentle presence an inspiration, a comfort, and a source of strength, and I realized that I wanted to be worthy of that presence, to be in that presence as much as possible. “Ever since I was old enough to have desires, that is what I wished to do. Serve Him with all my heart.” And now the abbess has torn everything asunder with her conniving, calculating plots and lies.

“I too have only ever wanted one thing since I was young—to serve my people as their leader. I too have loved my Church, and surely it is my faith that has seen me through these hard years. But more than my love of the Church, my love of Brittany has shaped my life, molded me. I have loved my people, been buoyed by their cheering, found strength in their faith in me, and been comforted by their warm regard. It is what I have been trained for, raised for, to be their leader and to see to their interests. But now—now I fear that their trust has been misplaced. I fear that I will not be worthy of the honor they have done me. Here I sit with war at our doorstep and the conviction that no matter what I do, I will have failed them.”

The despair in her voice pierces my heart, and I kneel beside her. “Your Grace, you have been left with very few choices, and none of them good. I am sure your people understand you are doing the best you can.”

“But will it be good enough?” she whispers.

And as I stare at her, this young girl whose father left her with an unstable kingdom, an empty treasury, and a surfeit of suitors, none of whom cared one fig for her beyond the riches she could bring to their coffers, I become angry. Just as I am angry on Matelaine’s behalf, I am suddenly furious for this girl—for that is all she is, a thirteen-year-old girl—whose guardians have abandoned her in pursuit of their own ambitions. “Your Grace, it is not you who have failed, but your father.” The moment the words are out of my mouth, I regret them, for surely I am taking an egregious liberty.

But then she looks up at me with a faint glimmer of . . . hope? Relief? I do not know her well enough to understand what she is feeling. She stops stitching and closes her eyes for a moment. At first, I think she is struggling not to cry. But when she opens them again, I see that she is angry, furious, in fact, and struggling to rein it in. When she speaks, her voice is so soft I must lean in close to catch the words. “There are times when I am alone in my bed at night and cannot sleep for the fear and worry trying to claw their way out of my belly. On those nights I am so angry with my father.” She whispers, as if even now that he is dead, he might somehow hear her.

And suddenly, she is no longer my duchess or sovereign, but a young wounded thing, like those who arrive at the convent every year, and it is that girl that I try to speak to. “As you should be, Your Grace. We are given no choices in life—we must rely on our fathers or guardians to make them for us. And when they choose poorly or make weak decisions, they risk destroying our entire lives with their folly. How can we not be angry?” By the time I finish talking, I am no longer certain whom I am talking about: the duchess or myself.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

ONCE I HAVE BEEN DISMISSED, I return to my chambers. My conversation with the duchess has stirred up all my simmering anger and frustration, like muck at the bottom of a pond. Alone in the room, my breath comes fast, my fists clenching at my sides. Between Crunard’s insinuations and my own confrontations with the abbess, I am drawing close—so close—to finally understanding what is at the heart of the abbess’s plots and intrigues. Crunard knows more than he is telling. I do not know if this is some strange game being played between him and the abbess or if he knows even more about the convent than she does.

Of course, the simplest answer is the most painful one, that she is lying—has been lying—to me since the beginning.

Frustration bubbles up from deep inside, so hot and urgent I fear I will scream. Instead, I stride over to the clothes chest, lift the lid, and root through my meager belongings there. When my hand closes around the satin-smooth finish of lacquered wood, I pull the black box from the depths of the chest and carry it over to the window. Even in the bright light of the afternoon sun, I can find no seam, no joint, nothing to indicate how it can be opened. Other than by breaking it.

I take the box over to fireplace, place it on the hard stone hearth, and grab an iron poker from where it leans against the wall. I raise it up over my shoulder, then bring it down against the smooth unmarred surface.

It sinks in with a splintering crack. I place my foot on the box to hold it steady, then pull the poker back up and strike again. And again and again, until I am certain the noise will bring someone running. I toss the poker to the floor, then pick up the box and begin yanking the splintered wood away from the hole that I have made.

When there is an opening big enough, I shove my hand inside, ignoring the sting of splinters biting into my flesh. My fingers search, but I feel no parchment or vellum, only a slim rod of some sort. Slowly, I maneuver the thing around until I can extract it from the hole I have made.

It is long and thin, with a piece of chipped stone at one end. An arrow shaft, I realize, with some ancient arrowhead still attached. Not answers, then, but some musty relic. With a growl of frustration, I hurl the arrow onto the bed, then slam the box onto the floor, relishing the cracking sound it makes. It is all I can do to resist grinding the wretched thing under my heel until it is naught but sawdust and ash.

Instead, I take a deep breath and force myself to a state of calm. The abbess refused to see me this afternoon, but she cannot put me off forever. I do not care with whom she is sequestered or what duties she is performing, I will force a meeting with her and find out what rotten core is at the heart of the twisted web she weaves. I am so close to knowing. It is as if I can put my hand out and feel the shape and contours of the lies, but I am unable to discern the whole of it.

I will meet with the abbess tomorrow, and this time, I will not be put off.

I am not able to get in to see her until the afternoon. It is late, and most people have retired to make ready for dinner, but not the abbess. She is still at work in her office. I rap once on the door. “Come in,” she calls out. Her invitation to enter surprises me—I had expected some resistance—but I step into her office, then shut the door firmly behind me.

At the loud click, she looks up, scowling when she sees it is me. “I did not send for you.”

“You also told me to kill Crunard, and I did not, so clearly my desire to follow your every order has waned somewhat.”

“You are making a grave mistake. Do you think I favor you so much that I will not punish you?”

“Do you honestly think that I care any longer? My need for answers—for the truth—has grown far greater than my need to please you. Now tell me,” I demand, “what lies between Crunard and yourself. Tell me why you have not sent me out until now. Tell me why you ordered him killed when he bears no marque at all.”

“You can see marques?” She studies me closely and I consider demanding to know what she put in the Tears that caused me to go blind. Except I am not certain enough that she is behind it to risk sharing that information with her. It would be too easy for her to use it against me.

“No. I cannot. But Ismae can, and once Crunard was here in Rennes, I had her look for me. What happened to Matelaine? Why was she gone so long if she was only to kill Crunard?”

Her mouth pinches in annoyance, but she answers me all the same. “It was a complex assignment. Everyone in Guérande was on edge, and the man was in prison. It took her a while to get into position to make her move.”

“You never saw a vision for her to kill Crunard, did you? She hes­itated because she couldn’t see a marque on him either, and yet you ordered her to remain there.”

The abbess’s nostrils flare. At first I think it is in irritation, but then I see how wi

de her pupils are, how rapidly the pulse in her neck is beating, and I realize it is fear. I take a step toward her. “Why are you so afraid of him?”

She turns and carefully folds the letter she’s been reading. “I am not afraid of him; he has just become a liability to the convent. He has betrayed his country and shamed us by association. I truly believed him to be marqued.”

“Believed? You told me Sister Vereda had Seen it, but if so, Ismae would have seen a marque.”

She whips her gaze up from the letter and narrows her eyes. “And I told you that Vereda was too old, too enfeebled, to be relied on for such things any longer. Do not throw her vision in my face when you are the one who has defied my order to replace her.”

“How can you take His will into your own hands like that? What gives you the right to break the rules that lies at the heart of our service to Him?”

She does not answer, and as she sits there, saying nothing, my frustration continues to simmer until it boils over. “Tell me precisely what is going on and why I should not report it to the others. Then, once you have told me that, you will explain why you sent Matelaine out instead of me.”

“You have been chosen to be the next seer—”

“No! You have chosen me to be the next seeress—not Mortain, not Vereda, you. And for no reason that anyone could determine. There are plenty of other virgin novitiates or nuns beyond childbearing years who could easily, perhaps even happily, step into that role. Sister Claude would welcome an opportunity to come in from the rookery.”

The abbess gives a snort of derision. “You would put such weighty decisions in the hands of a tired old woman who reeks of bird droppings?”

“No,” I say quietly. “I would put them in the hands of Mortain, where they belong.” But it is too late. I understand now why she so desperately wants me to fill this role. “You want me to be seeress because you think you can control me. You think you will only have to make a suggestion here or nudge me a bit there to have me ‘Seeing’ precisely what you want me to.” After all, not only have I had exceptional training in the assassin’s arts, but in blind obedience and biddability as well. The thought of how much of my own will I have handed over to her and the Dragonette throughout the years causes a hot, painful wave of mortification to course through me.

“How can you threaten me?” The abbess rises to her feet, fists clenched. “I, who have spent my entire life at the convent protecting you, shielding you, saving you from that wretched woman?”

“The Dragonette?” I snort. “You did not shield me, or even save me—you were simply there once in a while to offer me comfort.”

She stands as still as any statue as my words echo in the silence between us. Then she turns, as if she cannot bear to look upon me a second longer, but not before I see the pain that twists her mouth. “You do not wish to know the answers to your questions, not really.”

“Oh, but I do. That is why I have left the convent and ridden one hundred and twenty leagues across the country. I have come in search of answers as well as my destiny.”

“Your destiny? You think to find your destiny here? You will find nothing, nothing but heartache and things you do not want to know.” She turns around then, her hands clasped before her and anguish in her eyes. “Annith, I beg you, leave off these questions. Return to the convent and assume the duties of seeress, and you will have a destiny to be proud of, one that few can claim as their own.”

“What you do not seem able to grasp is that I will not return to the convent—not if I am forced to be seeress.”

She draws herself up, and, to my surprise, her lips curl in a half smile. “You will change your mind when you hear the truth, for any sin that falls upon my head will also fall upon yours.”

“Why? I was never a party to your scheming. I had no knowledge of your plans.”

“That will not matter, for our close ties will speak far louder than any words you can say.” She takes a step toward me, then another, until we are close enough that I can see the faint lines that have begun to appear at the corners of her eyes. Abruptly, she turns away. “Would you like to hear the story of your birth? I know it has plagued you for years, not knowing how you came into this world.”

I blink in surprise and everything inside me grows still. “What do you mean?” My voice does not sound like my own. “No one knows anything about my birth.” I am not at all certain I wish to hear, for I am suddenly terrified of this story I have hungered for my entire life.

Unaware of my inner turmoil, the abbess begins to speak, her voice soft, as if she is peering down the corridor of time. “It was raining that night. They had traveled far, and the lady had only an old castoff maid from her father’s household, for he declared her dead to him once he learned of her plight. She was exhausted, and well beyond the point where she should have been traveling, but it was as if her shame and her heartache were some location on a map and she had to get as far away from them as she could.

“And then the pains began, leagues from a city of any size, and the lady and her maid both panicked. They stopped at the next house they passed and asked for the nearest midwife. There was none. The closest thing was the herbwife who lived at the edge of the mill road. It would have to do.

“It took them forever to reach it, with the rain and the mud, and the lady having to stop every few minutes and wait for the pain to pass. It was like someone had wrapped iron bands around her stomach and was squeezing. She dropped to her knees in the mud twice due to the pain.

“But she refused to have her baby—even a bastard babe—in the mud, so she pressed on, using her poor, near hysterical maid as a crutch.

“The herbwife—” Here the abbess pauses, a faint smile playing on her lips. “She seemed to be expecting them and opened her door as they drew near. The fire had already been built up, and clean sheets put on the single narrow bed in the one-room cottage. Drying herbs hung from the ceiling, so low the lady had to duck in places.

“The pains were coming much more quickly then, so quick she could scarce catch her breath. Before she could even lie down, there was a great gushing and water ran down her leg. She thought she would die from embarrassment, but that feeling quickly dissolved in the next squeeze that gripped her belly.

“The herbwife and the maid helped the lady onto the bed, and the next hours narrowed into an endless blur of pain and sweat. She could not help but scream, as she feared the pains would rend her in two—punishment, no doubt, for the sins she had committed.

“You arrived in the world after one last anguished push.” She smiles again and glances up at me with such fondness, such tenderness, that I am struck dumb. “As the herbwife wrapped you tightly in swaddling, the lady’s maid cleaned up her mistress as best she could, and then you were placed in her arms. You were perfect even then.”

“How can you know all this?” I whisper.

She lifts her gaze to meet mine. “Have you not yet guessed, Annith? You are my own flesh and blood, born of my body. Every sin I have committed, every rule I have broken, every girl you feel I have betrayed in some way—it has all been done out of my love for you, for you are my own daughter.”

The sheer audacity of her claim presses down on my chest, making it hard to draw breath. My mind scrambles to fit this new revelation into all that I know of the world. If I am sired by Mortain, can the abbess also be sired by Him? Surely He would not lie with His own daughter? “So you lied to the convent? You are not sired by Mortain?” The enormity of this is such that I can scarce wrap my mind around it.

The abbess stares at me, her eyes more human than I have ever seen them, and there is genuine sympathy there. It is all I can do not to place my hands over my ears, and something cold and slippery slithers in my belly.

“No, Annith. I am not.” She takes a step closer, and although I long to back away from her, the wall is already behind me and I have nowhere to go. “And neither are you.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

MY WORLD SH

ATTERS into a thousand pieces, each one of them as sharp as glass. Each one of them slicing me from the mooring that has anchored me my entire life.

I am not one of Mortain’s own, not His daughter, not His handmaiden. I am nothing to Him. Nothing. My chest grows tighter and tighter, as if the god Himself is wringing the very air from my lungs until I can scarcely breathe. “You are lying,” I say, but my voice is weak, my words a feeble attempt to fend off an opponent’s mortal blow. “You are simply saying that to taint me with your sins, in the hope that I will fear whatever punishment heaped on you will also fall upon me. You, not me, have deceived everyone into believing you were sired by Mortain.” A hot bitterness fills my belly and I fear I will be sick.

She ignores my outburst and continues with her story. “All my anger and outrage at my circumstances disappeared in that moment, for whatever else I had endured, it had brought me you. My feeling of euphoria lasted but an hour before worries of what we would do, how we would survive in this world on our own with no family to support us and no friends willing to take us in. I even asked if I could apprentice to the herbwife in exchange for my keep—and yours—but she laughed and said she could scarce scratch out a living on her own.

“So all that long night, as I held you and you dozed and suckled at my breast, I tried to think of a way we could be together and have some life that did not involve begging or selling ourselves to the highest bidder. Since you were a bastard—a mistake—I could have taken you to one of Saint Salonius’s orphanages, but they would not have allowed me to stay, so I would never have seen you again. Or I could have found work at a brothel or tavern, but who would hire a woman with a babe for such work?

“And then I remembered my youngest sister, who had been sent away to a convent when she was thirteen, a convent that took in young girls and trained them for service. So in the morning, when some sleep had returned my wits, the herbwife asked me who the father was, and I told her Mortain, and began to lay the foundation for my great lie.”