"You can make me regret what I have done. You cannot make me regret what I am."
-Attributed to Aponuless, the inventor of daggermastery.
The boar was framed perfectly in the trees just ahead. It was scraping its hooves, lowering its head for the charge. The tusks gleamed, white under the red of the blood already staining them. Sunlight shimmered on the heavy brown-black flanks, which heaved not so much with exhaustion as with rage. The scrape and shuffle of the hooves came again, and the animal edged forward, as if it would charge the hidden hunter.
Laetha took a deep breath. This was the moment when she felt most alive, her hands grasping the crossbow that shook just slightly even with the strength of her grip, her mind bright and clear as water lit by the sunrise. Everything was poised. She could miss, or she could hit.
What she couldn't do was anything else.
The boar squealed, and lowered its tusks. It really would charge now, and if it hit her, it would trample her flat. Laetha, like most corame, only weighed a little over a hundred pounds.
But that didn't matter.
Laetha squeezed the crossbow's trigger.
The boar charged in the same moment.
The bolt soared through the air, unwavering in its course. Laetha laid the bow beside her and watched calmly as the bolt sank into the boar's shoulder, then began counting under her breath. She did lay a hand on the hilt of her sword. She was unlikely to need it, but it was always best to be prepared.
Two seconds.
The boar would reach her in less than four more.
But not less than three, Laetha thought, rising to her feet and smiling at the charging thing.
The animal's fury increased now that it could see its opponent. The speed seemed to redouble, and Laetha could hear the furious grunting squeals that almost overwhelmed the sheer pounding of its hooves.
Five seconds.
The boar's tusk scraped her pants leg- and then stopped. The boar fell dead, the shoolin poison on the quarrel having taken effect.
Laetha tossed her head back and laughed aloud. Then she stooped and wrenched the boar's head to the side, caressing the tusks as she retrieved her dart. The tusks could be made into fine ornaments. Laetha intended to have them made so, and to wear them, no matter what anyone said about such crude things not being appropriate decorations for someone of her rank and caste.
"My lady!"
Laetha looked up, the momentary joy of the kill redefining itself into the agitation that ruled so much of her life. Quickly, she tucked the bolt back into its pouch, and then scooped up the crossbow and dumped it into her larger pack. No one must know that she hunted with such things. They would think it was dishonorable, and her already scanty hunting privileges would be taken away.
"My lady?"
She sighed, then cursed. There wasn't time to hide, and she wasn't about to leave her kill for someone else to claim. There was, in fact, only one thing she could do.
Laetha worked with swift efficiency, smearing blood from the boar's tusks and the wound it had taken in its shoulder from a spear over the tiny cut on her leg. Then she lay down artistically, fanning herself in front of the boar and curling her leg at an awkward angle. It hurt, but hopefully, it would keep them from realizing what must have really happened.
"Laetha!"
Hands lifted her up, and Laetha slowly let her eyes flutter open, staring helplessly into the face of her rescuer. The older woman made a clucking noise that was meant to be soothing and cradled Laetha close to her chest. Laetha clenched her teeth in envy. Hanni's arms were strong and muscled, the way that Laetha's could have been if she had been allowed to exercise more. But that wasn't Advisable, either. Not for one of her rank and caste- which, she thought with bitterness as thick as the boar's blood, seemed to rule her life.
"Let's get you home."
Laetha had long ago achieved the art of making herself faint, partially because it was useful, and partially because it was a good way to get away from the endless tiny details of her life. She did so now, biting her lip to keep a snarl of disgust from showing through her well-bred demeanor.
She would be free, one day. Or else she would go mad and start killing anything that moved. She wondered, in the last moments before darkness claimed her, how many of the servants she could get before respect for her rank failed and they killed her to save themselves.
At least ten, surely.
_____________________________________________________________________
Laetha lay there without opening her eyes for quite a long time. She knew she was in the place she dreaded most, and didn't see why she should have to look at it.
But a continuing noise at last intrigued her, and she opened her eyes.
The noise, which had sounded like dripping blood, didn't turn out to be that promising. Someone had installed a new, tiny fountain in her room. Laetha stood up and wandered over to it, her fingers dabbling in the water. This one was formed of precisely carved stones and bits of metal, such that when the magically renewed water ran over it, it played a succession of notes. If she listened hard, Laetha thought she could just make out the first notes of the Mahon Cycle.
It had to have been hideously expensive. And, of course, given that she had been born who she was, there was no question of her paying for it, or trying to do something in return. Magic that could be used to water fields was spent on toys for her without any question of her giving something back. There was no end to the things that people were willing to do for her, because she had been born to the caste that was supposed to be the fount of good in the nation of Chanticlir.
Laetha wandered over to the window and stared down.
The window overlooked a garden as perfect as art, magic, and all the corame dedication in the kingdom could make it. The walls were softly colored stone, blue and green and gold and white, restful on the eyes. The rocks themselves had been placed in what were supposed to be soothing positions. Laetha had never seen how a boulder placed five feet from a pond was any more restful than a boulder placed four-and-a-half feet from it, and had said so until she learned that such things embarrassed her parents. And while her parents would never lay a hand on her or even raise their voices, they had a more potent weapon: their disappointed eyes.
All they had to do was look at her, and Laetha felt like the world's most ungrateful child.
She turned away from the mass of flowers, as brilliantly colored as rainbows on an oil slick, and walked over to stand in front of the mirror. Large, glass, and expensive, it dominated most of one wall. Carefully Laetha studied herself, looking for any sign that she was becoming like her parents. She had used to dread that. Now, sometimes, she thought that it might help if she could become like them. They found pleasure where she found only ennui. Didn't that mean there was something wrong with her?
But, no. The same face she had ever had stared back. Her skin was smooth and golden and soft, as it had been when she was born; the corame did not show signs of age easily. Her face was high and lovely, cheekbones so sharp they pointed almost to her equally pointed ears flanking a pair of thin lips and a hard chin that was the despair of the servants. No powders or decorations they tried- at least, the ones permitted to Laetha's caste- could soften it. Her slanted eyes were blue-green, her hair long and thick and almost as golden as her skin. That skin shone with vibrant health. Laetha had never known hunger or sickness.
This was not for lack of trying.
She raised an arm to touch her hair, wanting to unbraid it from the thick coil it was currently in, and stopped, cursing sharply. She wore a pale gown that encircled her from neck to feet and restricted her movements. That probably meant her hunting clothes had been burned or tossed somewhere where she would never find them. Laetha scowled hideously at her reflection. How was someone supposed to exist in a gown like this, let alone run or fight?
A knock on the door startled her out of her thoughts. Laetha turned, scowling, then smoothed her face. The servants were going to cower if they saw her looking like that. They never thought badly of her, no matter how much Laetha tried to encourage them to think like that. They always thought they had done something wrong.
She was only twenty years old. She had at least seven centuries of life ahead of her. How was she going to survive?
"Enter."
The door opened, and Hanni and two other servants slipped inside, their feet as silent as a great cat's, their movements delicate as hummingbirds'. Laetha watched them enviously. She had been training herself of late to mimic their movements, but she wouldn't achieve the natural grace that was ingrained in them from birth. The maids wore short dresses that let them move freely, or pants at the most restrictive. They didn't have to practice standing up under the weight of heavily embroidered gowns.
"Yes, what do you want?" Even those words came out soft and gracious. Laetha cursed wearily, inwardly. Someday she would wake up as a copy of her mother and probably not even realize it.
No, of course she wouldn't. The burning boredom within her was not ever going to go away.
"Your pardon, my lady." Hanni bowed to Laetha, her eyes on the marble floor. "But the cabilla requires your attendance."
"Of course she does," muttered Laetha.
"What, my lady?"
Laetha looked into Hanni's guileless eyes and decided she might as well risk it. She had tried to speak to her parents about this in the past, but they didn't even understand what she was talking about. And Laetha had a need as great as her boredom to discuss this with someone. "Do you really believe that my family is touched by the Corametel, Hanni?"
Hanni blinked at her.
Laetha tried again. "Do you really believe that the goddess blesses us, and that our blessings flow from us to the rest of you?"
"Of course, my lady."
Laetha drew in a breath. They were getting somewhere. Of course, where it was was still open to question. "Then let me ask you this. Do you think that we really deserve the honor and attention you give us?"
"Of course, my lady."
"But what if none of it is true?" asked Laetha swiftly. She knew that she was probably pressing too quickly to a point that she should have approached in a roundabout way, but she couldn't help herself. The sight of Hanni's widened eyes had opened the floodgates. "The scrolls don't say that much about the Corametel's touch. Just that she blessed one of my ancestors, and from then on my ancestress could make the crops grow by looking, and the flowers flourish by touching them. But there's no other evidence. Just the scrolls. And the words of those who saw her.
"But our people still don't get upset when a harvest fails, or the flowers don't bloom one year. They just say that it must be the fault of the Elwens, and get on with the world. Why is that? Why have we created something that excuses everything? Why does everyone still believe in us?"
There was a long, awkward silence. Hanni stared at her. Laetha sneaked a glance at the maids, hoping that her words might have touched a chord with them, and found their eyes firmly on the floor.
"No," said Hanni at last. "My lady, the scrolls are true."
"Why?"
"Because the Corametel declared them true," said Hanni, watching Laetha closely, as if she thought that her lady might be about to jump out of the window. "She declared it again through your ancestor Miana just two generations ago."
"But there's always the possibility that Miana was lying," said Laetha.
Hanni's face shut. She shook her head. "My lady, there is doubtless wisdom in what you say, but I am of an order too low to understand it."
"That doesn't mean that-"
Hanni held up a sleek blue gown that had apparently been draped across her arm. Laetha looked at it blankly. She hadn't even noticed it. Hanni spoke with calm precision. "My lady, the Parade of the Twisted begins in a few hours. The cabilla requires your presence."
Laetha caught her breath, and then abruptly turned her back so that the maids could help her with her dress and hair. She had been waiting for this moment for three years now. It was typical of her parents not to announce it until a few hours before it happened.
The Parade of the Twisted!
________________________________________________________________________
This might, just possibly might, be a chance to work herself free, Laetha thought as she waited for Hanni and the others to clear a path through the crowd for her. Of course, someone who had been touched by the Corametel couldn’t just shoulder past other people. That might give the blessing to others who didn’t need it, and who would be unprepared to receive such a sacred gift…
Laetha let the theology trail away with a shake of her head. She had never really mastered it. There were too many contradictions and pomposities in it. Give me a blade, she thought, or at least thought as clean and straight as a blade.
If any of the things she was going to be required to do as future ruler of Chanticlir made sense, then she wouldn’t be so unhappy.
“Daughter.”
Laetha turned and made the gesture of homage that her mother’s rank required—one hand on her forehead, one hand on her heart. She was pledging mind and heart to the Mother of the Corame, according to the theologians.
Laetha had once read some scrolls that suggested the gesture actually had a different origin. Stabbing someone in the heart would kill her instantly, suggested that scroll. So would stabbing someone through the eye into the brain. Laetha agreed with that; she had used those methods to kill her prey animals often enough. So the gesture indicated trust, by pointing out the vulnerable places to the Mother of the Corame, while simultaneously presenting surety that the Mother would not attack those places.
Laetha had loved those scrolls. She had been very annoyed when her mother had taken them away from her.
“The Parade is about to begin.”
Laetha heard the rebuke in those words, and decided to ignore them. Some things didn’t exist if the higher-ranking corame decided they didn’t. Implications that would only make her miserable were among those things.
“It is mostly Elwens?” she asked, hoping that her mother wouldn’t notice the way her skin was shuddering over her heart. Her mother wasn’t normally that observant, but at other times she picked the most inconvenient moments to notice things.
“Yes.”
Laetha studied her mother surreptitiously as the cabilla moved up beside her, her eyes on the Parade route paved with stone below. It did no good. The woman looked as she always did, without a chink anywhere in her armor to show that she might be open to reason or even discussion. Her face was cold and smooth, her blue eyes the same as well as direct. Her hair was long and worn down to the middle of her back, a pale gold, several shades lighter than Laetha’s. Laetha could remember hoping, as a child, that that was a sign her mother hadn’t really given birth to her. It wasn’t, of course, as Hanni had been quick to explain to her. Such variations were acceptable in the family of the rulers of Chanticlir, where they wouldn’t have been almost anywhere else.
Laetha shook her head at last, trying to put the thought away from her. One irony, though, insisted on making itself heard as she turned to the parade route. Almost all the other children in her acquaintance dreamed of being raised to the heights of their rulers someday. Laetha dreamed about being allowed to run riot in mud and scream and stamp her foot as much as she wanted.
Everyone dreams of what she does not really want, said an annoying voice in the back of her head. It was from the scrolls of the Corametel, of course, the voice of one of her ancestors inspired by the goddess. And woe to us if we get it.
Laetha ground her teeth. She knew what she wanted- freedom. There was just no way to get it. There was no one in Chanticlir who would help her.
She bent her gaze hard on the Parade of the Twisted mostly for that reason. There might—there just might—be an idea somewhere in there, or at least an inspiration that would lessen her boredom. The last Parade had granted her enough dreams that the ennui hadn’t been as crushing for almost six months.
This one didn’t look as promising, though. Each of the marching Elwens in the parade—and they were almost all Elwens, who didn’t have to worry about the Corametel and so on because they weren’t corama—wore a heavy medallion that proclaimed her crimes against order and the way that the world had been meant to be. Laetha recognized the majority of the medallions as those worn by merchants. Merchants earned money and position they hadn’t been born with. That was against the orders of the Corametel, and so they were fit to join the Parade. But that wasn’t exciting. Merchants did nothing but travel and earn money. That was all.
And those weren’t things that Laetha could do even if she wanted to. None of her people would let her pay for anything. And travel was out of the question. If a member of the ruling family left Chanticlir, then the goddess’s blessing would depart as well. So ran the legends, and so ran the scrolls, and both of them had to be true because both of them said they were true.
Laetha dug her nails into her palms, and fought to keep her face calm and smooth. Otherwise, her mother would look at her with disappointed eyes that knew the stillness and stagnation of perfect virtue, and make her feel guilty without saying a word.
Two more merchants. A commoner who had changed castes. He walked with his head bowed, since he was corama, looking uneasy at being in the presence of many who wished him dead. A butcher who had dared to kill cows when he didn’t need to. Laetha yawned. Her mind was shutting down again, going dazed and stupefied under her boredom, under the endless repetition of things that she had seen over and over again and would see for the rest of her life.
It was the only excuse she could offer herself, later, for not realizing at once that the man before her was wearing a different medallion.
When she did realize, she leaned forward, her hands clenching down on the partition of marble that separated her from the Parade. The man was curalli, shadowed Elwen, silver-skinned and arrogant. He walked with his hands chained behind him. Laetha knew what that meant. Some of the criminals in the Parade would be let go when they reached the end of the Parade route. Others, whose crimes were too great, would be executed to rid the world of their changeful and disturbing presence. This man would be among those. And yet he walked as if he didn’t care, even rattling the chains to show them off.
“Mother?”
The cabilla turned her head, looking pleased that Laetha was taking an interest. “Yes, Daughter?”
“That man.” Laetha kept her voice as smooth as possible, even as she nodded to the curalli. She couldn’t be too eager, or her mother would disapprove. “What has he done? I don’t think that I’ve ever seen that medallion before.”
Her mother’s blue eyes filled with unexpected tears. “The most foul thing that anyone can do,” she said tightly, while Laetha stared at her in astonishment. This was more emotion than her mother usually displayed in a whole month. “He has hunted, and he has not repented of the lives he has taken.”
Laetha blinked, her interest dying. After all, she had done that herself. She looked back at the shadowed Elwen, entertaining herself with a fantasy of walking in the Twisted Parade and smiling that defiantly. “He has not celebrated the spirits of the animals as they returned to the earth?” she asked idly. That was the only way that someone could “not repent” of the lives she had taken.
Her mother’s hand clasped hers.
Laetha looked at her. The cabilla was grave, her cheeks flushed.
“I should not tell you this,” said her mother. “But you will be ruler of Chanticlir someday. You must learn that there are evil people in the world- not merely disruptive or changeful, but truly evil. They are the opposite of everything the Corametel means. Can you grasp that?”
Laetha blinked, and nodded.
Her mother stared at the curalli. “He does not hunt animals,” she said. “He hunts people.”
Laetha swallowed. The world seemed to swim around her. Her free hand clenched the partition. That was the only thing that kept her upright. Her mother seemed faint herself, at speaking the words, and would not be much help.
“I know,” whispered the cabilla. “It is a terrible thing to learn. No one should have to learn it. But we who are blessed of the goddess and born to rule our people sometimes have to bear burdens that others do not. He hunts people down for money, that those who have commissioned him to hunt might pay him…” Her voice trailed off, and she turned her head, a sharp expression of revulsion carving her features. “Goddess,” she whispered. “I cannot talk about it without feeling sick.”
Laetha blinked again. The dizzy, swimming feeling had passed. On the contrary, her mind was very clear.
“He is to be executed at the end of the Parade route?” she asked.
Her mother nodded. “Thank the goddess in her wisdom.”
Laetha opened her mouth, then put one hand to her forehead. “Mother,” she whispered. “That was too much. I feel…faint…”
“As you should in the presence of such darkness.”
Laetha shook her head, fighting to keep her eyes open. “This is worse, Mother. I do not know if I can stand on my feet much longer…”
Then she fell to the ground.
_______________________________________________________
She woke in her room, with one of the maids standing near the wall with the mirror on it. The woman looked terrified, and was actually chewing on the end of her hair when she caught Laetha looking at her. At once, she stopped, and hastened to the side of the bed.
“Are you well, my lady?”
Laetha looked at the maid’s uniform. Yes, a tunic and short skirt. Not ideal, but far less confining than the dress she wore now.
She moved her lips, without truly speaking the words. The maid leaned closer, her ear angled towards Laetha’s mouth and her face furrowed with concern. “My lady, you-“
Laetha struck.
Her hand, clenched into a fist, hit the woman hard behind the ear. The maid staggered, not unconscious but dropping to a knee. That brought her head within even easier range, and Laetha hit her, again and then again, until at last the other woman slumped forward and lay still.
Laetha sat up, breathing harshly, and stripped off her dress so quickly that seams tore. She didn’t care. This was the last time she would ever wear the gown. She was sure of it.
Naked, she stooped over the maid and carefully unlaced her tunic. The maid stirred again. Laetha hit her once more, so hard that her head bounced off the floor.
That should do it.
Slipping the unconscious servant out of her tunic was awkward, but Laetha managed. She then slipped the tunic over her head, shifting carefully until she was sure that it wasn’t really more confining than the similar clothes she wore for hunting. Then came the skirt. Laetha hesitated over the undergarments, then shook her head briskly and left it. She didn’t have much time.
Hastily, she unwound her hair in front of the mirror. Only the high-ranking corame wore it braided. Laetha shook her head, and long golden waves cascaded almost to her waist. She sneered at it and snatched the knife she kept hidden on a shelf just under the mirror. She never dared to have it out often, or Hanni would be sure to find it. The most she had ever dared to do was gaze at the silvered blade and dream.
No longer.
Laetha hacked hard but expertly at her hair. This was something she had dreamed of for a long time. Plans and dreams had been her constant companions. It was knowing that she wouldn’t get to the border before someone caught her that had always kept her still.
But if she had help…
The knife was sharp. Laetha kept it so on purpose. When she slid it into a boar, the beast would barely notice it had been cut sometimes. Curls of hair fell to the floor, then entire tresses. Laetha picked up the whole mess and threw it out the window, into one of the thicker rosebushes in the garden.
She looked back at herself in the mirror. Her eyes stared back at her, still blue-green as they had always been but shining with passion, fervor, fire, that she hadn’t felt in years. Her hair was shorter than her shoulders now. It looked like a maid’s cut. With any luck, those about her would see her as a maid, and not look further than the costume and the subservient gestures.
Laetha started to turn around, just in time to see the door open in the mirror.
Hanni stepped inside
For a long moment, they looked at each other. Hanni’s face was so shocked that Laetha actually thought she might slip by for a moment. Hanni might convince herself that this could not possibly be happening, in the same way that the servant hadn’t really resisted Laetha’s blows because she hadn’t thought that one of the royal family could be hitting her, and close her eyes tightly to avoid seeing the awful sight. Laetha could slip by, and go to rescue the curalli, and no one would be the wiser.
But Hanni didn’t look away. Her face firmed instead, and she shut the door quietly. “I thought so,” she said into the silence.
Laetha blinked. “Thought so?”
“Thought that I recognized the symptoms of the taint in you.” Hanni shook her head in disgust. “Sometimes, even the blessing of the goddess won’t keep it away. You delight in blood and killing, don’t you? And while your hunting expeditions had to be forgiven because it was unthinkable that someone of your caste would do that, I couldn’t forget the look in your eyes. You love hunting.”
Laetha shrugged.
“And I suppose you think you’re going to run away now?”
Laetha smiled. “No, not really. I was going to rescue the assassin,” how she could savor that word, “that was walking in the Parade of the Twisted.”
Hanni’s face paled all in a rush. She looked as if she would vomit. “How dare you?” she whispered. “It is bad enough to hunt animals with poison. You would hunt creatures that think and feel and fear death in the same way you do?”
“Yes.” Laetha smiled faintly, feeling that clarity of mind return again. “It is what I was meant to do. I know it. It is the only thing that could provide enough challenges to keep me occupied for the rest of my life, while at the same time fulfilling what you so aptly called my delight for blood and killing.”
“You are mad,” said Hanni. “A good thing it is that your mother should be able to talk some sense into you.” She turned to the door.
Laetha took a deep breath. The clarity throbbed in her mind. She threw the knife.
Hanni staggered as the blade cut into her back. It didn’t stick in the cut, but fell to the ground. Then Hanni followed it, crumpling slowly from the pain of the wound, but still alive.
Most definitely still alive.
Laetha stalked closer, picking up the blade. Her whole body shook. But not, say, as badly as it shook when she was holding the crossbow on a boar. She knew that Hanni couldn’t hurt her in the way that a charging boar could.
But she had done worse.
She had been one of those who thought that Laetha should spend the rest of her life in a position she hated, in a place where only her duty was there to relieve her crushing ennui, where her mind could bang itself against theology for the rest of her life and never understand it.
Hanni wanted her enslaved.
Laetha turned Hanni slowly over. Hanni coughed, then stretched up a hand.
“My wound isn’t fatal.”
Laetha shook her head slowly. “No, it isn’t.” The sound of her own voice stunned her. It was light, playful, almost joyous, though she herself didn’t feel that way. Or did she, and she just hadn’t realized it?
Would she know what joy meant if it possessed her?
She bent down and drew the knife across Hanni’s throat without hesitating.
Hanni’s eyes flickered once. Then she tried to say something. The blood choked her. Laetha sat back, watching her bleed to death. The cries, the screams, the exclamations she might have tried to make died into the blood.
Laetha waited a little longer, dangerous though it was. She had read a tale of an assassin or two in the scrolls she liked before her mother had taken them away from her. She was supposed to feel something when she killed her first intelligent being. The urge to vomit, perhaps.
But all she felt was mild curiosity as to how she could improve her technique, so that it didn’t take her next victim so long to die.
And a wild exultation.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
The guards about the curalli’s cage fell silently, with shoolin-tipped darts buried in their shoulders. Five seconds, and they simply slumped in place.
Laetha snorted as she walked past them. Her pack thumped on her shoulders as she put the crossbow back into it. In truth, she thought, she hadn’t needed it. The guards were purely for show. No one in all of Chanticlir would help such a prisoner to escape. It was impossible to imagine, and so the guards hadn’t taken even elementary precautions.
The curalli inside the cage turned his head to her. The glare of his dark eyes was fierce. His face was proud, even haughty. It was possible that he was one of the starborn, those Elwens who had been alive since the creation of the world.
Laetha found she didn’t care.
She came straight to him, and stared into those diamond-shaped eyes, and said, “I killed my first woman this afternoon. No hesitation. That was all it was. I’ve always been a hunter, but I never knew what I was meant to hunt until now. I will free you, and escort you to the border of Chanticlir. I can show you ways to reach them where they won’t dare to trail you. They will think that you killed Hanni and these guards, and me. They would come after me in force, but not a dangerous assassin.”
The shadowed Elwen stared at her. Then he said, “And what do you expect me to do in return?”
“Train me as an assassin.”
The curalli studied her a little longer. Then he said, “I don’t think that it can be done. I saw you kill these guards, but that was with a crossbow. Quite often an assassin has to get in close, and use a knife. You’re a corama. You’ve been sheltered all your life. What makes you think that you can bear to handle steel at all, much less get in close as an assassin has to?"
Laetha stooped without speaking, and undid the straps that held her pack to her shoulders. The curalli watched in interest as she opened the pack, and took out the burden that she had known she would need.
Holding up Hanni’s severed head by the hair, smiling at the blood dripping from the neck, Laetha asked, “Is this sufficient proof?”
The curalli said nothing. Laetha looked up at last, when she tired of waiting, and saw an appraising look in the dark eyes.
“It is sufficient to start,” said the shadowed Elwen at last. “I’m not promising anything, mind you.”
Laetha nodded. “But you will train me if I get you out of Chanticlir?”
“Yes.”
Laetha nodded, and stooped to look for the cage’s keys on the guards’ bodies.
“One thing.”
“Yes?” Laetha looked up again.
“How did you feel when you killed her?” The curalli’s voice was soft and intimate, almost as though he were asking a lover how it had felt to make love.
“Complete,” said Laetha, as softly. “For the first time. Delight and joy were so strong in me that I realized I had never known the meaning of those words until today.” She stood up, the keys dangling from her fingers. “Do you want me to free you, or not?”
The assassin smiled at her, the smile of someone recognizing a kindred spirit. “Do it.”
Laetha smiled, and twisted the key in the lock.
