Mark of the Assassin

Dearest Francis,

Father has told me that I cannot stay in our kingdom any longer. My magic was grounds to get me killed and if Beatrix got her way I would be hanged. I’m sorry that this has happened and I’m even sorrier that I have caused you trouble. I hope you will forgive me and write to me because I will miss you very much.

I am being sent to Kedeba- to the school that father threatens to send us if we do not behave. I will tell you about it, once you write me…

I am not yet sure how I will bring letters to you or how you will send them out of the castle without someone noticing, but I am sure it can be done. If you cannot send me a letter within the next year, I will send you one first instead. If I do not think that I can do so without getting you into trouble, then I will not. Just remember, that I will try my hardest.

I am sorry that all of this has happened. Please remember that I love you and I will miss you. No matter what they say, remember the truth- even if the truth is bad (I would prefer the good though).

Love Aeria

P.S. I hope that your head doesn’t scar from where you hit the ground. If you need anything, please send me a letter and I will try and help in any way I can.

The wagon bumped the whole night. I couldn’t get more than a few minutes of sleep between that and my crying. Even though I knew that being sent to Kudeba was my best chance of having a real future, I couldn’t help it.

My whole life had been spent in my kingdom. I had never even left the capital city before. Now, I had been thrust from my home and forced into a new home. I knew that Kudeba was where I was being sent because my father often threatened to send us there to finish schooling if we did not behave. It was a strict school and bad behavior was not tolerated.

As I sat in the wagon riding to the coast, I thought about what I had done. I decided that the crime that had been committed was that father let Beatrix carry on. I knew that Francis was going to get mine and his abuse now. Francis knew where I would be, because I wrote to him in the letter and told him where I would be and that I was sorry. I hoped that he would forgive me for worsening his abuse.

When I got to Claremave, I decided that I would try to get better at my magic. If I was to be ejected from my home for it, I should have been ejected for a reason. Francis told me that he read somewhere that magic was not a crime in other countries. He said that our kingdom had only outlawed magic because our great grandfather was nearly killed and dethroned by his castle mage.

I often wondered if that was true. Asking about such matters was out of the question. Father and mother had never wanted to hear from us unless we were spoken to first. Somehow, I knew part of me would miss the rules I had grown up with.

The rest of me wondered what would greet me in Kudeba. There was nothing at home except being a princess. I would never rule the country, for I was not the eldest. I could not be a military commander, for I was a woman. I could not do anything except for entertain other noble’s and royalty. Part of me was happy that I was granted the chance to escape.

We were on the wagon for less than a week before we reached the shore. The soldiers carried my things onto the boat and waited for me to join them. They, like the servants, would not come near me. I couldn’t tell if they feared me or if they were disgusted.

The boat was worse than the wagon. We never stopped moving and I never knew where the land would be. I was absolutely terrified with every wave that slammed into the boat that we would sink. Walking on a boat was even harder than sleeping. Every step was wobbly. I felt this was how my mother and father felt after drinking too much wine.

Being on the boat for over a week did nothing for what the other people on the boat called ‘sea legs’. They said that until I was used to the sea that I would be wobbly. I hoped to never be used to such a terrible place.

The ocean smelled of salt and I was constantly assaulted with mist from the wave slamming into the side of the boat. I was often below deck, in the sleeping quarters to escape the constant dampness of the sea. There was nothing I could do but sleep or daydream.

The worst part about it was that whenever I closed my eyes, I could feel all the vibrations of everything. It was almost as if by realizing that everything was a vibration that the floodgates had opened, and I would never cease to notice the vibrations.

There was a mage on board the ship- or so I learned after about a week of laying below deck. That’s what the rest of the sailors called her. They said that she could do magic, so I assumed that I was also a mage then. The soldiers steered clear of the woman. She was short of stature and even shorter in conversation. She did not speak to anyone unless she had to.

“What do you want?” She snapped at me once I had finally worked up the courage to try and talk to her. I wanted to learn how to be a real mage.

“You’re a mage?” I asked. She stared at me for a moment before turning away. “You’re a mage?” I repeated.

“I’m not hard of hearing, child.” She said. She had a heavy Kudeban accent. Her accent was heavy, but still easy to understand.

“You never answered my question.” I said. She was the first person I had spoken to since I had so quickly made my exodus.

“I am a mage. Will you leave me alone now?” She asked. She clearly did not want anything to do with me. Unfortunately for her, I wanted something to do with her.

“I would like to learn how to be a mage.” I said. She just laughed at me and started to walk away. I followed her.

“You either have the gift or you don’t.” She said.

“The gift?” I asked.

“Magic.” She said. “If you don’t know what it means, you don’t have it.”

“It was not called a gift in my country.” I said. She stared at me and sighed. “Please, can you teach me?”

“No.” She said.

“Please?” I asked again. She just walked away from me. I sighed. Maybe I should just forget the tricks I could do. I clearly wasn’t going to get far if all mages behaved as such. Then again, I had been kicked out of my homeland for this, so I might as well learn to control my magic.

“Stop following me! Children are to follow the directions of their elders.” She said, turning and staring at me. Her eyes were reminded me of a tree trunk. There were specs of green throughout her eyes that reminded me of the moss covering the trees back at home.

“I want to learn.” I said.

After a while she gave in. She did not believe that I had the gift, as she called it, so she just gave in to make me go away. She and I sat down below the deck with a sailor that had been injured somehow. He had a fairly bad wound on his right arm.

“Look at the wound.” She said. I stared at it. His arm was puffy and bloody. I had never seen an injury this bad before. It made me a little bit sick to look at it, so I looked back at the woman.

“You sure that you want me to be her first?” He asked, his accent almost impossible to understand. He wasn’t from Kudeba. I didn’t know what people from any of the other countries sounded like, so I wasn’t sure.

The mage ignored him.

“Focus on his wound.” She said. “And then focus on thoughts of healing him.” She said.

I stared at his arm. It still made me sick, so I closed my eyes. I could see all the vibrations around me. The longer I concentrated, the more I could make out the outlines of things within the vibrations. The mage had her own vibrations, as did the sailor. All the vibrations within him were in sync, except for the ones on his right arm.

“Get right,” I told the vibrations. They did not say anything. I concentrated on them, trying to force them to go back in sync with the rest of the man’s body. They did not listen to me. They stayed in their disorganized bundle.

“Get in order, right this instant.” I told them, much sterner this time. A few of them moved back in sync. The man made grunting noises as the vibrations returned to their order. It took a little while for the rest of them to follow, but soon all the vibrations of the man were in order like they had been before. The man screamed as the rest of the vibrations fixed themselves.

When I opened my eyes the sailor was still sitting in front of me, except now his arm was completely healed. The mage looked surprised and maybe even a little bit impressed with me. She did not speak until the sailor disappeared above deck.

“I did not think you had magic.” She told me. “Nor did I think that you could heal him.”

“Why?” I said.

“You are but a child. Children cannot heal, if anything they can light a candle with their magic and that is it.” She said. She looked at me for a moment. “But, have you learned elsewhere?”

“I can light a fire or smother it.” I said, “But I have not tried anything else or even thought of what I could do.” I added.

“Then how did you fix him?” She asked.

“Like you told me to-“

“I told you how to fix him just about as well as you could teach a person to swim while on land.” She said. She drummed her fingers on her thigh and pursed her lips together. She didn’t know what to do with me. Apparently, nobody did.

Even though I knew we were no longer in my home country, none of the soldiers spoke with me. From the pieces of conversation that I heard of them, they were just going to leave me once we got to the capital. I didn’t mind because it reminded me that I was expelled from my home.

The mage was not fond of me. I had been with her for several days watching her work. I was not sure if she was just not fond of children or people in general. Many people did not want to speak with me because I was a child. Or maybe I was just a particularly unappealing child to talk to.

“When we get to the capital, I will drop you off with some people I know. They are more tolerable with children.” The mage told me one night. It was the first thing she said to me since I sat down to watch her work on her pendants. For someone who did not like children, she was quite nice to me once she was finished being so gruff.

“Are they mages too?” I asked. I wanted to learn more. Whenever I used ‘the gift’, as they called it, I could momentarily forget that I was headed to a completely new place. Although the prospect of being able to actually start a real life was exciting, the pure fact that I knew nothing about the area and nobody in the area scared me.

“Yes. Now quiet down so I can finish my work.” She said. She continued sewing symbols into leather necklaces that I had seen the sailors wear. Several of the necklaces had broken because they were so worn through, which the sailors fussed about.

It was odd to me that they relied on a leather strap around their neck to protect themselves, instead of trying to be safer to begin with. It seemed like these people tried to solve all their problems with magic. They healed themselves once they got hurt and used the magic as a means to keep from getting hurt.

She spent a lot of time on the patterns of the leather necklaces she was doing. It took her until dark to finish one necklace. She had to light a candle to do more. I wondered how many she had done today. I had only been with her since lunch. I had only seen her do two necklaces since I had eaten earlier in the day. It must have been a lot of work to make a necklace for every sailor on the boat.

“Would you like to do one?” She asked after a while.

“Yes.” I said.

“I’ll show you how, but maybe try to sew patterns into your clothing first.” She said, looking down at my dress. The dresses I had managed to grab before leaving were rather ornate to practice sewing on. The dresses were very pretty and I did not fancy ruining my dresses to practice sewing things.

“Do you have anything else?” I asked.

“I might have some clothes small enough for you,” She set her sewing things down on the table and slowly got up. I heard her back pop as she straightened her back and headed towards the sailors quarters. “There was a sailor nearly as small as you that never collected her things once she quit.”

It took her a while to find the clothes, but she gave them to me triumphantly once she did. The mage was right. The woman had been about my size, but the clothes were still too big and they were pants. I had never worn pants before- or a separate shirt and pants.

“You can practicing your sewing spells on that.” She told me.

We sat back down at the table. I threaded my needle and began to embroider. I wasn’t great at embroidering, but I could manage. If only I was as good as Thea at embroidering. Before I could help myself tears ran down my face. I wiped my eyes and looked at the mage.

“Now envision what you are doing your spell for. Do you want to protect yourself?” She asked, not acknowledging my tears. Either she did not see them or she was choosing to ignore them.

“Yes.” I said, wiping my last tear from my eyes.

“Then repeat that to yourself- like you did with healing, except to the fabric so it can prevent that- as you sew.” She said. She went back to fixing up the leather necklaces.

On the breast of my new shirt I began to embroider flowers. It was the only thing that I was good at. I couldn’t close my eyes and embroider at the same time, so I concentrated on the threads instead- hoping that I would notice the vibrations without closing my eyes.

I must have stared at the threads for ages, because the mage blew out the candle and sent me to bed. She said that I had to be up early to help out in the morning. She was going to sew more of the necklaces and she wanted me to distribute the ones that she had finished already.

The candle in my cabin was still on, as the sailors were still working, so I kept embroidering my shirt. After a while I decided I should put on my nightgown, so I did not fall asleep in my only clean dress left. There were few articles of clothing that I had left that were still clean. I hoped that we were getting closer to the capital.

I had never owned anything this drab and I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked it. Once I finished the flower on the breast of the shirt I put the sewing needle and thread down. I closed my eyes and held the new shirt close to me. It smelt of the ocean.

When I concentrated I could feel the vibrations of everything around me again. I could see the whole room around me, but I focused on the shirt that I was holding. The vibrations looked just like the rest of the ones in the room.

“Protection,” I said to it, loosening my grip on the fabrics.

Nothing happened.

“Protect me.” I said.

There was a slight change this time. There was not too much of a difference, not enough that I would be protected, but there was a difference.

“Please. Protect me when I wear this clothing.” I told it.

I could feel the change in the fabric. It became warmer against my chest. The vibrations quickened, taking a different pattern than everything else in the room. It was almost more powerful than everything else in the room. There was an energy buzzing through the clothes I held in my hands.

I fell asleep like that, my new shirt clutched in my hands. It felt warm against my skin, even when I woke up hours after spelling my clothes. Maybe it had worked after all.