Mark of the Assassin

26th day of spring 89 N.W.

Dear Aeria,

I received your charm. It is beautiful and I wear it everywhere. No one has suspected that it is anything different than the necklace I lost. They think that I found it and I have told them that I have. I also received the seeds and planted them. I have just planted them, so nothing has happened yet, but I await seeing them bloom.

I also have to tell you that people are getting sick. Pox has been going around and a couple people in the castle caught it. Now Father, Thea, and Beatrix have it. Mother and I are the only ones still healthy. The servants who have pox were terminated. I thought it to be harsh, but mother said it was necessary.

Mother is ready to have her babe any day. I hope the baby comes out alright and does not get sick. It surely would die. I don’t think mother and father could handle another babe dying. They’re already at the end of their wits.

The servants have stopped being so distant. They speak to me once again, but that also means that Beatrix does as well. Beatrix spoke with me the night before today. She had gotten into the wine early and I didn’t know it. She asked me a question and I answered wrong. She struck me and was about to again before a servant came and stopped her. I think she is going to kill me one day.

How are you doing? Is everything different where you are? Is the weather nice, because it is not nice here. It has begun snowing again. I wish to be at the school with you. School must be so much fun. What will you do after you’re done with school?

Mother says that I will probably be a military leader. I will have to begin learning strategies once I’m out of the nursery. She said that I will be expected to lead armies and slaughter the enemy. I don’t want to kill people, but mother says I must.

At breakfast tomorrow there will be a celebration for mothers birthday. Because everyone has pox, it will be postponed. There was supposed to be a party and a dinner. I almost wish there would be anyways so that I don’t have to see Beatrix while I’m at the party. Goddess knows that she will drink too much wine and spill it on the foor once she’s drank it.

I hope you write me back soon. I miss you and I sent more coins. Maybe you can get a nice dress with these.

Love Francis

Peter and I exited the pub. He was unusually cheery. He had been disappearing off to help his uncle for the past week or so after free time. I missed our meetings before bed- or at least that’s what I called them. Normally we just ate the rest of our food from the day and discussed what was happening. That was probably as close to a meeting as I would ever get.

Peter did not seem to mind through. He woke up in the mornings as cheery as ever. I could see that he wasn’t sleeping much because the under parts of his eye were darker than usual. I wondered what his uncle had him doing.

I figured that he was just getting extra lessons from his uncle since his uncle was the head mage of the kingdom. I had met him once a little more than a week ago. He had a forgettable face and a long greasy pony tail. He looked nothing like Peter.

“Let’s go.” Peter said, grabbing my hand and pulling me through the lower city faster than the two of us had ever gone before. My sides burned when we got back to the school. Each time I tried to breath my chest felt like it was resisting. I hated running this quickly and I made sure Peter knew it.

We snuck back into the school and into our rooms. Everything was quiet. It seemed strange tonight, even though nothing was out of the ordinary. There was just something that seemed off. Maybe it was Peters attitude when for the past couple of weeks he had been so down.

“Remember when I asked you if you wanted to be able to speak with animals?” He asked me as we sat down on his bed. He grabbed both of my hands and grinned. Something about this didn’t seem right.

“Yeah? Why do you ask?” I asked. He pulled me closer to him before letting go of my hands. He hurried over to his closet and pulled out a large wooden box. The moment he set it down on the bed I could tell it was heavy too. It was almost a scorched black. I couldn’t tell what color it was underneath the black, but I could see that there were engravings on the box. The engravings were of what looked like a battle scene. I was glad that the scorches on the box obscured the scene because it looked grotesque.

“This is why.” He said, throwing open the box. “We could do that! We could share our magic and be two different types of mages!” He said as he reached into the box. He grabbed a bunch of things out and laid them on the bed.

“Then how come no one else does it?” I asked him, backing away. This didn’t seem right. The energy that the box possessed felt wrong and almost oppressive.

“Because it’s a rare spell.” He told me, pulling out a knife. “Let’s do it!”

“No- I think maybe we should know more.” I said. He frowned and sat the knife down on the bed.

“My uncle knows best.” He told me. “He is the one who gave me this spell. He told me never to share it with anybody else because if it got into the wrong hands it could be dangerous.” He said.

“But why hasn’t your uncle done it?” I asked him.

“My uncle said he is too powerful and no one else should be able to hold that kind of power.” He said. I looked at the box for a moment. This didn’t seem right. Even if it was a rare spell, someone would know about it aside from his uncle.

“Maybe we should ask the guild?” I suggested.

“No.” Came the immediate response. “Uncle says that we can never tell anyone once we’ve done it.”

I watched him for a moment. The offer sounded wonderful, but it seemed too good to be true. If everyone could join with another mage, why wouldn’t they? They could be twice as powerful. Something about the box and the offer didn’t seem right.

“Uncle promised it would be ok.” He said, grabbing my hands again and squeezing them. “We could do so many things! You could talk to animals and I could do energy magic!”

I paused for a moment. He had been really upset because he didn’t think he would be able to be a mage with his magic. He said he had felt like he was struggling to keep up with me, even though he wasn’t, and doing the spells right.

“You can do magic on your own.” I told him, “You’re doing just as good as me- Carac said so!”

“This is not what it is about! We could be the greatest mages that this country has ever seen!” He said. He looked excited about that. I didn’t. I didn’t like the idea of striving for the most power. I just wanted to learn to control my gift and make it something I could live off of once I was done with school.

“There’s more to life than trying to become the most powerful.” I told him, “What about just enjoying your magic?”

He paused and sighed. He lit the fire from where we were sitting and settled into the bed. There was something wrong, not just that he felt like he was struggling at his magic.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, settling in beside him.

“I don’t feel like I can protect you or myself with my magic.” He said. “When we first met and that guy attacked us- I’ve never been so scared.”

“I didn’t protect us. It just happened that I had spelled my tunic.” I told him, “If Rose hadn’t showed me how to do that, then we would have died. I can’t protect us either.”

He stared at me before closing his eyes. “It just feels like someone is trying to hurt me.” He said after a while.

“You never mentioned that? What happened?” I asked. If someone was trying to hurt Peter, then I would kill them. I would rip them to shreds for even thinking it. Peter was my best friend and I would never let anyone lay a finger on him.

“Before you came someone poisoned me and my sister. It was the guild who figured it out. I tried to find them originally because I was getting sicker and sicker and I heard that they were the best in the country, but they were more of a legend.” He said.

“Has someone tried to hurt you again?” I asked.

“Last week when we were returning with D’aknu, I spotted someone on the roof trying to shoot me with an arrow. I recognized the insignia on his hat- he was one of the assassins that can be hired in the rogue court.” He sunk lower into his bed. “I couldn’t do anything but hurry us home.”

“Has he been on you since you saw him that night?” I asked.

“No. I went to uncle because I wanted to know if there was some sort of scrying he could do to see who was doing it. I’m scared.” He said.

“And did your uncle find out?” I asked.

“No. He gave me this instead. He said that he might not be able to scry out who was trying to hurt our family, but he could give me something that would make me stronger. He said the spell was for one or two people, but it worked better on two people. I didn’t tell him you were a mage.”

“Just- just let me think about it until tomorrow night.” I said. I still didn’t feel right about the box. “What is the spell? And what exactly does it do?” I asked after a moment. Before I even wanted to consider being able to join our magic, I wanted to know what exactly it was doing.

“We have to cut our palms and join our hands. Then we do a spell and when we’re done we can both do each other’s powers and our own.” He said.

After sitting together for a while and staring at the box, I decided that if Peter’s uncle gave it to him and he trusted his uncle, then it was probably fine. The wooden box still gave me an uneasy feeling, but that was probably a very old box. Maybe there was just a lot of spell residual on it and that’s what I was feeling. If Peter felt this scared and trusted his uncle this much to give him something that would keep him safe, then I would help keep him safe.

“Do you trust him?” I asked after a while.

“What?” He asked.

“Do you trust your uncle.” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s do it.” I said. He clapped his hands together and jumped out of bed. He began setting everything up on the floor. I still felt uneasy, but if Peter trusted his uncle then so did I. “Let me go get my night gown on.” I told him.

I quickly changed into my night gown. Hopefully we would get done with the spell soon, because I wasn’t keen on staying up all night for this. Half the reason I was doing this was purely because Peter trusted his uncle and this was the best course of action for him to stay safe.

Before I left my room, I decided to grab my knife. I wasn’t going to slice the palm of my hand with a foreign knife, especially since I didn’t know where it had been. Peter agreed with me when I brought it into the room. We put the knife back into the chest and left my knife in the center of the circle that Peter had drawn.

“Can you cut my hand?” He asked me, “Because I don’t know if I can do it myself.” He said.

“If you cut mine.” I said. He nodded.

He poured a few herbs into the metal bowl that he put in the center of the circle. He began to chant what was written on the paper that he was holding. He set it in front of the bowl once he was finished with the first verse so that I could join him for the next one. More herbs were put into the bowl.

Peter picked up the knife and handed it to me. I sliced his palm and handed back the knife. He sliced my palm. It stung as the knife went across my skin. The sheer amount of blood that fell from my hand wasn’t too comforting either. Peter grabbed ahold of my hand with his hand immediately. We brought our hands over the metal bowl and let our blood drip in.

We began to chant together again. The cut on my hand began to burn more and more as we chanted. I clutched Peter’s hand as hard as I could to keep myself from screaming from the pain. I couldn’t help as the tears slipped from my eyes. Neither could Peter. Both of us looked at each other, tears streaming down our faces, and continuing to chant.

We continued chanting as the sides of my vision faded. I could feel my body slumping into the floor. Both of us continued chanting, even though I could see that both of us were slumping closer to the ground.

Both of us blacked out.

Faint ringing in my ear jolted me out of darkness. As I woke up, light flooded my vision. I couldn’t see anything accept for the light.

“Otokov help me,” I heard Peter mutter from somewhere beside me.

“We have to get up,” I managed to say, “The bell just rang.”

It took a moment for me to orientate myself enough to try to even try to move. My body felt wrong. Nothing moved when I wanted it to and by the time I could actually see I realized that the two of us still laid limp inside the circle.

“We have to get up.” I repeated, trying once again to move my limbs. We would miss breakfast if we did not get up. Peter just grunted. I looked over at him and saw that he seemed to be struggling just as hard. His face was scrunched up as he tried to get off the floor.

“I thought we died.” Peter whispered as we finally managed to move our bodies. It took until the second bell to fully get up. Breakfast had already started. Our best hope now was to hurry up so that we could be on time to class.

“My body feels stiff.” I said as we pulled ourselves onto his bed. My hand stung as I grabbed onto his covers. I saw his bedcover stained with blood when I moved my hand. “Shit.” I muttered.

Peter laughed. He had done it too. There were now two large blood smears on his cover, almost identical. He got all the way onto the bed and pulled me the rest of the way up. We sat on the bed for a moment, catching our breath.

“Let’s get dressed.” Peter said after a bit.

“Let’s clean up the mess before free time.” I said. He nodded.

We split up and got dressed before meeting again in the hall. His hair looked messy and tangled. I wondered if my hair looked the same. Neither of us had showered or brushed our hair since the day before yesterday. I was sure that I probably smelled rather ripe about now.

Every step that I took felt stiff. My joints seemed to protest every move I made, since my body threatened to collapse every time I moved. The spell last night certainly had not done it’s function, since I felt like I had died and come back. There must have been something wrong with the spell his uncle gave us.

Breakfast was nearly done when Peter and I walked into the room. The breakfast bell rang, signaling the end of breakfast. D’aknu saw us and hurried over. She gave both of us a fruit before demanding where we had been for the past thirty minutes.

“Don’t worry about it.” Peter told her as he peeled the fruit.

“You guys have never missed breakfast.” D’aknu pointed out. She handed us a bag of fruit. “At least you’ve got the fruits though. I figured the two of you would want the fruits so you could bring them to the lower city.”

“Thanks.” Peter said. He took the bag of fruits and headed back towards the room.

“Is something wrong? The two of you are standing funny.” She said.

“We’re fine.” I told her. I peeled my fruit and shoved nearly the whole thing into my mouth. I must have been starving. I grabbed another one as we passed a table and shoved it in my pocket for later.

“Good because today we start physical training. The instructor finally got here from ELEPHANT!” She said. She looked excited to start physical training; I on the other hand nearly collapsed when I heard the news. There was no way I could physically do anything aside from walk to class.

“I don’t feel so well.” I mumbled as we walked down the hall way. “I don’t want to do physical training-“

“You just said that you were fine.” D’aknu told me. “What’s actually wrong.”

“We ran so fast through the lower city last night. I don’t think that my legs can take it anymore. This was the third night in a row.” I lied. Or, at least, it was only a half lie. Peter and I often times quickly ran through the city to get back home. I had been getting better at running the distances, but my sides still burned.

“Tell him to stop then.” She said, “Also, I wanted to show you guys something some time next week.”

“Next week?” I asked.

“Tomorrow is free day.” She told me, “You didn’t forget, did you?”

“Shit!” I muttered. Tomorrow was the day that Peter and I are supposed to attend a small party with his mother and sister. A few important people were supposed to be there and I had been invited.

“Goddess! What happened to your hand!” D’aknu said, grabbing my wrist. “It’s still fresh! How did this happen!”

“I fell down while running last night and landed on a sharp rock. Both of us fell actually. He cut his hand pretty badly too.” I lied. She just shook her head and took me by the wrist down the hall. She was bringing me to the mages room.

We saw Peter along the way and she grabbed him too. She made sure both of us went to the mages chamber. She practically had to push us into the chamber. The mage wasn’t good anything but healing kids, but that’s the only reason they needed her anyways. Peter said that the only reason she got a job was through a personal favor. It didn’t surprise me.

It took a long time before the mage even got around to us. There was another kid in there that had broken an arm. She didn’t do much aside from making it hurt less. I closed my eyes and as the kid left, I coaxed his arm into healing.

“Aeria! Are you listening?” She said, grabbing me by my arm and dragging me into the next room. “I have said your name at least four times.”

“Sorry.” I said.

“What do you need fixed.” She asked. I held up the palm of my hand and let her examine it.

“I don’t need it healed. I just need salves for it.” I told her. I didn’t want her to touch my wound. I didn’t trust her abilities not to leave a scar. She had hardly even helped the kid that just walked out, so I didn’t want her to lay a finger on me.

“For me too.” Peter said, walking into the room.

“You don’t want to be healed?” She asked.

“I’m trying to work on healing myself. I need to practice.” Peter said. She mage nodded and gave us some salves. It took her a second, but Peter talked her into giving us one for sore muscles too. He gave her the same story that I did about our hand.

We walked out with our hands full of salves and headed back to our rooms. First class had already started, but we had obtained a pass from the mage so we could go back to our rooms and heal our hands. It was also an opportunity to see if the spell Peter’s uncle gave us had worked.

All the salves were dumped onto the bed. We could use the ones for sore muscles later, but for now we had to fix our hands. The dried blood was cracking every time I moved my arm. It didn’t hurt more than the rest of my body, but I could definitely feel it.

“Close your eyes.” I told him.

He nodded and sat between the bloodstains on the covers of his bed, “What next.” He asked.

“Can you see the energy?” I asked him. He made a noise after a few moments. “Focus on the energy-“

“I don’t see it.” He said.

“That’s fine.” I told him. I hadn’t expected him to be able to see it right away. He had to figure it out on his own, or at least that’s how I did it. “I’m going to fix us now so we aren’t too late to class.”

Peter just sighed as I proceeded to heal the both of us. The healing stung. I had never healed myself before, so I didn’t quite know if that was supposed to happen. When I looked down at my hand I saw that it was scarred. Nothing I had ever healed had scarred before. I frowned and examined the scar. It was still tender, so I chose to leave it be and just head to class.

Peter noticed that his hand was scarred too, “You don’t normally-“

“I know.” I said. I hadn’t done anything wrong with healing, so I wasn’t sure why there was a scar. “We’re going to start the knight training today.”

Peter groaned, “I wish to go to sleep.” He said.

“I don’t think we can get out of it.” I said. He just groaned again.

Unfortunately, I was correct. There was no way to get out of training. Right before free time those of us who were going to stay at the school to become a night had to report to the pastures behind the school. There weren’t many of us, but the people who were there were all older than me. Those reporting included people who had been training for years or were nearly knights. Aside from D’aknu, I was the smallest person there.

“Not all of you will become knights. Some of you will be killed in your first year. Some of you will give up and quit. Some of you will not be physically able to keep up,” The man, who I assumed to be the instructor, was pacing back and fourth down the line of us, “Not everyone is meant to be a knight. But, those of you who finish these long years will become a knight. From now on, your last hour before free time will be in training instead of whatever class you have last. You will have to do those in the extra years you will be here. You will study hard and train hard.”

The man went on for a bit more, but I stopped listening so carefully. Instead I ran my fingers along the scar on my hand. Peter stood next to me, doing the same thing. Maybe the entire spell had gone wrong and we were left with nothing but these scars.

“Now, each of you will choose a horse. These will be your horses until one of you dies.” The man shouted. All of us hurried towards the stables.

I picked the blackest horse I could find. I had always thought that the black horses were majestic, but I wasn’t allowed to ride them. This was my chance to finally ride a horse. As the man had said, this was my horse now.

Each child stood in front of their stall. I did no different. The man looked at my horse and snorted.

“A little wild for a small one like you.” He told me. The horse reared as the man tried to pat it on the nose. “You sure you don’t want a different horse.”

“No. I want this horse.” I said. The horse kicked up dust as it landed on the ground.

“Well, you can have a different one if you can’t handle that one by the day after next.” He said, moving on to the next child. It seemed that my horse was particularly difficult. Hopefully the spell last night had worked then.

“What’s your name,” I whispered to the horse once I had gotten close enough to pat him on the nose. He backed away from me. I remembered that I had a fruit in my pocket and began to peel it. He didn’t move back anymore. “It’s alright, I’ll give you a fruit if you tell me your name.” I told him.

“No one has ever given me one.” He said quietly. He slowly came forward and gently ate the fruit out of my hands.

“Do you want to have a name?” I asked, rubbing his neck.

“Yes. I think that I would like to be named after something fierce and dark.” He said. “Will you be riding me?”

“Yes. I’ll bring you fruits tomorrow and brush you if you’d like.” I told him. He seemed to nod in response, “The night is fierce and dark depending where you go.”

“No. Something really fierce.” He said.

“I’ll have to think about it.” I decided. He nodded. The two of us stood in the stall for a little bit thinking about his name before we were called out of the stalls without our horses. My horse followed me to the empty area we had just been in.

“Now, you will get up every day and feed your horses. You will brush them. You will exercise them. If any of you have had pets, this will be another and you will treat them as such.” He shouted to us, shaking his hands occasionally, “And before we finish up a little early today- which will never happen again- you will be showing me your abilities to mount a horse.”

There were a few groans from the other kids in my grade. The kids that had grown up in the lower city would never have had a reason to ride a horse, so they couldn’t ride one. Even a few of the older kids didn’t look happy about having to ride the horses. It seemed that some of them didn’t like riding.

Our horses were brought to the field and saddles that had been fitted for each horse were brought as well. They were placed next to each horse. The saddles were huge. I doubted that I could even pick it up. The other kids struggled picking up the saddles.

When it was my turn, I did the same. I couldn’t even pick up the saddle. The man training us had to set the saddle on the horse. I did the rest. I had watched the stable boy saddle up the horses many times before riding. It was easy enough to emulate.

Once all of our horses were saddled up the man watched as many of the kids tried to mount their horses. I followed in suit, the only difference being I was the first in my year to get on the horse. Peter and D’aknu did the same a moment after me. The rest of the kids in our year took a moment to figure out how to get onto the horse.

Once all of us were on horseback we were told to ride around for a few minutes to get comfortable. A few of the horses looked like they were about to buck their riders off. Peter calmed them down without saying a word. I knew he was talking to them, but I couldn’t figure out how he did it without speaking out loud.

My body felt like it might give out at any moment by the time we finished riding horses. My horse had decided he wanted to be named after something poisonous. Now he was named Fox Glove. He thought that the name sounded wonderful. Peter brought his horse over and introduced her. She was named Moonlight. His horse was a beautiful yellow.

We were about to leave when the man who was training us ambled over. I hadn’t quite caught his name, so I would have to ask for it later. He looked at the two of us and crossed his arms.

“You were tired today. I expect to receive your full attention the next time we meet.” He said, staring both of us down, “Goddess, both of you have matching eyes!”

“What?” Peter said, grabbing me to look at me eyes, “You’ve got my eye!”

I looked at his eyes. He now only had one blue one and the other was grey, like mine. That’s when I noticed that he had a chunk of white hair instead of his normal brown. He seemed to notice the same thing on me.

“Sard!” Peter said, grabbing my hand, “Sorry, Eirken! We have to go, but we will remember what you’ve said.” He told the man as he dragged me away.

We had gotten past the gates to the school when we came to an abrupt stop due to running into someone. I pulled myself off the floor and looked up at who we had run into. We had run into Peter’s uncle. He had a sour look on his face and watched as Peter got up.

“I’ve got something to speak with you about.” He told Peter, staring at me.