Courting Darkness (His Fair Assassin 4)
When at last I reach the dungeons, I use my torch to light the others in the sparring room, collect the swords from their hiding place in the storeroom, and head for the oubliette. “Are you awake?” I call down.
“Should I not be?”
I set my torch down and slide the bolt loose. “It is early,” I tell him as I open the grate.
I can almost hear him shrug. “I have no measure of time here.”
“Fair enough.” I toss the rope down, then draw my baselard as I wait for him to climb up. I have chosen swords today as I prefer the distance they put between us.
Maraud’s head emerges from the dark hole, followed by his arms. As he levers himself up onto the floor, I am startled to see that both of his hands are bound in rags. I forgot to make him the salve I promised. “What happened to you?”
He swings his legs up and out of the oubliette, shrugging sheepishly. “I have not held a weapon for over a year. My hands have lost their calluses and grown soft. When I descended the rope yesterday, it scraped the blisters open.”
“Will you be able to hold a sword?”
He sends me a mocking look as he rises to his feet. “So now you are my nursemaid as well as my sparring partner?”
“Hardly. I only want to make sure our session is worth my while. Now, if you are done whining, let’s get to work.”
His lips twitch as I motion for him to proceed me into the room. Once there, I toss the wooden sword at him, watching carefully when he catches it. He winces, but only slightly. “Back to swords?”
“You said you had more tricks to teach me, and I would like to learn some of them today.”
He raises his sword, and I raise mine. “I have in mind to show you how to compensate for both your smaller size and shorter reach. Both will be vulnerabilities in a true fight.” He parries, quickly altering the direction of his sword from left to right to left again. “Your footing is a disadvantage. My lunges and strides are half again as long as yours. You must move faster and quicker, taking two small steps back for every one of mine, or you will soon find my blade against your nose.”
He is right, I think. We could never have trained for this in the smaller room.
Even so, I block his attack easily. “My reach does not seem to be an issue here.”
“No?” He pivots and attacks my blade with a series of diagonal swings. It is all I can do to keep him at bay.
Because I must extend my arm farther, it will tire before he does. I feint to the left, then leap to the right, creating an opening for me to get inside his guard.
But he is prepared for that and blocks my blow hard enough to cause my teeth to clack.
Irritated now, I grab my sword with both hands and use all my force for a downward strike on his blade, close to the hilt.
As I’d hoped, the force of it causes him to drop his blade, although I am certain if his hands were not injured, he would not have done so. With satisfaction, I bring the point of my sword up to rest against his heart. Our eyes meet. “And now what do you think of my reach?”
He grins, almost apologetically, then grabs ahold of the blade. Before I can so much as gasp in surprise, the point of my own weapon is turned toward me and rests upon my heart. His eyes are expressionless.
“Well done,” I concede, although I am loath to admit it. “Now what trick do I use to get out of this position?” For some reason, my voice sounds thin, thready.
“You don’t.” His voice is soft and apologetic. My heart plummets down to my feet, my body somehow understanding what is happening before my mind can absorb it.
His hands were never injured at all. The bandages were to protect them from the sharp edge of my sword.
“Don’t go for your dagger,” he orders. With his free hand, he pulls a knife from some hiding place. It is made of bone—?bone from one of the meals I fed him—?and has been carefully sharpened against the stone of his prison until the end is a wicked—?if rough—?point.
“I need you to drop it onto the floor.” There is true regret in his voice, as if this pains him in some way.
Fury sits in my throat like a hot coal, but I have no choice but to do as he asks. I reach for the stiletto up my left sleeve. While his eyes are focused on my knife, I slip my fingers into the cuff inside that same sleeve to retrieve the needle case hidden there. Moving suddenly, I toss the stiletto onto the floor. As I’d hoped, it draws his eye long enough for me to hide the case in my palm.
“Is this some new trick you are teaching me?” I ask to further distract him. “If so, I do not care for it.”
“No. Not a trick. I am leaving, and you are coming with me.”
My fingers fumbling with the needles grow still. “Coming with you? Am I to be your hostage? I assure you, no one will pay a centime for me.”
His face curls in disgust. “Not my hostage. We will escape together. You yourself said you were a prisoner here.” His voice is low, urgent, and as seductive as when it first rose up out of the oubliette to greet me.
And that voice now holds a sword at my throat. It is such a huge betrayal that fury lashes through me. I lean forward, using the movement to conceal my hand behind my skirts. “If you wanted to escape together, you could at least have included me in your plans.”
“I thought about it,” he admits. “But wasn’t certain you would agree and couldn’t risk showing my hand.”
My fingers unfold the supple leather of the case. “Just how long have you been planning this?”
“A while.”
That spark of fury crackles along my skin. “How long is a while? Ever since I first brought you food and water? Ever since I saved you from starving to death? Or was it after that? When I brought you news of the outer world. Trusted you—?trusted your word.”
He takes a step toward me. “I have been planning my escape for over a year. It is the one thing that kept me alive. Kept me from giving up. I was planning it long before you stumbled upon my prison. You just happened to be the first opportunity that presented itself.”
His words are like the blade of a knife—?I was never anything but an opportunity to him. “So you were planning it before we even came to our sparring agreement?” When we were naught but voices in the dark, easing our loneliness? My fingers count along the tops of the needles until they reach the ones with the knots of thread.
“Yes,” he says softly. “But that does not mean that any of what I have said was not true. It was and is. I still have no wish to harm you or put you in danger.”
“You have an odd way of convincing me.” There! The needle is firmly grasped between my finger and thumb, the point of it a safe distance from my own skin.
“I proved it all the times I did not move against you.”
I shake my head. “That was not honor. That was stringing me along on a line, hoping I would lead you to a bigger fish. And I have! By trusting you enough to agree to this room, I have given you a much greater chance of success. Do not pretend it was anything other than you trying to set up the best opportunity for yourself that you could. At least be honest about it.”
“Until you have been shut in a hole for months on end, with no food, no light, little water, and even less hope, do not lecture me about honesty. The only thing that kept me going was my vow to find vengeance for those wrongly slain before my very eyes. That vow comes before all others I have given.”
His face grows soft again, and he lowers the sword slightly to take half a step toward me. “But now is your chance to be free. You are not happy here. You hope for adventure or you would not be training as you do. We can find it together, once we are away.”
My attack will not require much movement. If he is trying to persuade me to escape with him, he will hopefully not run me through due to a flick of my hand. Even so, it is a risk I must take. “With me doing what, precisely? Being your lightskirt? Your laundress?”
His eyes widen in offended surprise. Now! I whip my hand out, jam the needle into his forearm, then quickly ya
nk my hand back to my side so he will not think I am trying to wrest the sword from him.
“Ouch!” He frowns in both pain and annoyance. “What was that?”
“That, O False One, is a trick of my own.”
He blinks rapidly as his vision begins to blur. The arm holding the sword starts to tremble slightly.
“What kind of trick?”
“The kind I wore up my sleeve in case you turned out to be as false as you are. I wish you sweet dreams.”
“Dreams? What are you talk—” His voice stops abruptly and the sword clatters to the floor. His eyelids flutter and his body loosens, like a puppet cut from his strings.
Realizing I will be in trouble if he hits the ground—?he is far too big for me to carry—?I leap forward and wedge myself under his shoulder just as he goes slack.