The Assassin and the Desert

“How many others did you kill?” Celaena asked, trying to keep Ansel distracted as the Master made the motion again. A kind of slow, strange wriggling . . .

“Only them. And the three on the night watch. I let the soldiers do the rest.”

The Master’s finger twisted and slithered . . . like a snake.

One strike—that was all it would take. Just like the asp.

Ansel was fast. Celaena just had to be faster.

“You know what, Ansel?” Celaena breathed, memorizing the motions she’d have to make in the next few seconds, imagining her muscles moving, praying not to falter, to stay focused.

Ansel pressed the edge of the blade into Celaena’s throat. “What, Celaena?”

“You want to know what the Master taught me during all those lessons?”

She felt Ansel tense, felt the question distract her. It was all the opportunity she needed.

“This.” Celaena twisted, slamming her shoulder into Ansel’s torso. Her bones connected against the armor with a jarring thud, and the sword cut into Celaena’s neck, but Ansel lost her balance and teetered back. Celaena hit Ansel’s fingers so hard they dropped the sword right into Celaena’s waiting hand.

In a flash, like a snake turning in on itself, Celaena pinned Ansel facedown on the ground, her father’s sword now pressed against the back of her neck.

Celaena hadn’t realized how silent the room was until she was kneeling there, one knee pinning Ansel to the ground, the other braced on the floor. Blood seeped from where the sword tip rested against Ansel’s tan neck, redder than her hair. “Don’t do it,” Ansel whispered, in that voice that she’d so often heard—that girlish, carefree voice. But had it always been a performance?

Celaena pushed harder and Ansel sucked in a breath, closing her eyes.

Celaena tightened her grip on the sword, steadying her breathing, willing steel into her veins. Ansel should die; for what she’d done, she deserved to die. And not just for all those assassins lying dead around them, but also for the soldiers who’d spent their lives for her agenda. And for Celaena herself, who, even as she knelt there, felt her heart breaking. Even if she didn’t put the sword through Ansel’s neck, she’d still lose her. She’d already lost her.

But maybe the world had lost Ansel long before today.

Celaena couldn’t stop her lips from trembling as she asked, “Was it ever real?”

Ansel opened an eye, staring at the far wall. “There were some moments when it was. The moment I sent you away, it was real.”

Celaena reined in her sob and took a long, steadying breath. Slowly, she lifted the sword from Ansel’s neck—only a fraction of an inch.

Ansel made to move, but Celaena pressed the steel against her skin again, and she went still. From outside came cries of victory—and concern—in voices that sounded hoarse from disuse. The assassins had won. How long before they got here? If they saw Ansel, saw what she had done . . . they’d kill her.

“You have five minutes to pack your things and leave the fortress,” Celaena said quietly. “Because in twenty minutes, I’m going up to the battlements and I’m going to fire an arrow at you. And you’d better hope that you’re out of range by then, because if you’re not, that arrow is going straight through your neck.”

Celaena lifted the sword. Ansel slowly got to her feet, but didn’t flee. It took Celaena a heartbeat to realize she was waiting for her father’s sword.

Celaena looked at the wolf-shaped hilt and the blood staining the steel. The one tie Ansel had left to her father, her family, and whatever twisted shred of hope burned in her heart.

Celaena turned the blade and handed it hilt-first to Ansel. The girl’s eyes were wide and damp as she took the sword. She opened her mouth, but Celaena cut her off. “Go home, Ansel.”

Ansel’s face went white again. She took the blade from Celaena and sheathed it at her side. She glanced at Celaena only once before she took off at a sprint, leaping over Mikhail’s corpse as if he were nothing more than a bit of debris.

Then she was gone.

Chapter Twelve

Celaena rushed to Ilias, who moaned as she turned him over. The wound in his stomach was still bleeding. She ripped strips from her tunic, which was already soaked with blood, and shouted for help as she bound him tightly.

There was a scrape of cloth over stone, and Celaena looked over her shoulder to see the Master trying to drag himself over the stones to his son. The paralytic must be wearing off.

Five bloodied assassins came rushing up the stairs, eyes wide and faces pale as they beheld Mikhail and Ilias. Celaena left Ilias in their care as she dashed to the Master.

“Don’t move,” she told him, wincing as blood from her face dripped onto his white clothes. “You might hurt yourself.” She scanned the podium for any sign of the poison, and rushed to the fallen bronze goblet. A few sniffs revealed that the wine had been laced with a small amount of gloriella, just enough to paralyze him, not kill him. Ansel must have wanted him completely prone before she killed him—she must have wanted him to know she was the one who had betrayed him. To have him conscious while she severed his head. How had he not noticed it before he drank? Perhaps he wasn’t as humble as he seemed; perhaps he’d been arrogant enough to believe that he was safe here. “It’ll wear off soon,” she told the Master, but she still called for an antidote to speed up the process. One of the assassins took off at a run.

She sat by the Master, one hand clutching her bleeding neck. The assassins at the other end of the room carried Ilias out, stopping to reassure the Master that his son would be fine.

Celaena nearly groaned with relief at that, but straightened as a dry, calloused hand wrapped around hers, squeezing faintly. She looked down into the face of the Master, whose eyes shifted to the open door. He was reminding her of the promise she’d made. Ansel had been given twenty minutes to clear firing range.

It was time.

Ansel was already a dark blur in the distance, Hisli galloping as if demons were at her hooves. She was heading northwest over the dunes, toward the Singing Sands, to the narrow bridge of feral jungle that separated the Deserted Land from the rest of the continent, and then the open expanse of the Western Wastes beyond them. Toward Briarcliff.

Atop the battlements, Celaena drew an arrow from her quiver and nocked it into her bow.

The bowstring moaned as she pulled it back, farther and farther, her arm straining.

Focusing upon the tiny figure atop the dark horse, Celaena took aim.

In the silence of the fortress, the bowstring twanged like a mournful harp.

The arrow soared, turning relentlessly. The red dunes passed beneath in a blur, closing the distance. A sliver of winged darkness edged with steel. A quick, bloody death.

Hisli’s tail flicked to the side as the arrow buried itself in the sand just inches behind her rear hooves.

But Ansel didn’t dare look over her shoulder. She kept riding, and she did not stop.

Celaena lowered her bow and watched until Ansel disappeared beyond the horizon. One arrow, that had been her promise.

But she’d also promised Ansel that she had twenty minutes to get out of range.

Celaena had fired after twenty-one.

The Master called Celaena to his chamber the following morning. It had been a long night, but Ilias was on the mend, the wound having narrowly missed puncturing any organs. All of Lord Berick’s soldiers were dead, and were in the process of being carted back to Xandria as a reminder to Berick to seek the King of Adarlan’s approval elsewhere. Twenty assassins had died, and a heavy, mourning silence filled the fortress.

Celaena sat on an ornately carved wooden chair, watching the Master as he stared out the window at the sky. She nearly fell out of her seat when he began speaking.

“I am glad you did not kill Ansel.” His voice was raw, and his accent thick with the clipped yet rolling sounds of some language she’d never heard before. “I have been wondering when she would decide what to do with her fate.”

“So you knew—”

The Master turned from the window. “I have known for years. Several months after Ansel’s arrival, I sent inquiries to the Flatlands. Her family had not written her any letters, and I was worried that something might have happened.” He took a seat in a chair across from Celaena. “My messenger returned to me some months later, saying that there was no Briarcliff. The lord and his eldest daughter had been murdered by the High King, and the youngest daughter—Ansel—was missing.”

“Why didn’t you ever . . . confront her?” Celaena touched the narrow scab on her left cheek. It wouldn’t scar if she looked after it properly. And if it did scar . . . then maybe she’d hunt down Ansel and return the favor.

“Because I hoped she would eventually trust me enough to tell me. I had to give her that chance, even though it was a risk. I hoped she would learn to face her pain—that she’d learn to endure it.” He smiled sadly at Celaena. “If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it—to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger. But Ansel let her pain become hate, and let it consume her until she became something else entirely—a person I don’t think she ever wished to be.”

Celaena absorbed his words, but set them aside for consideration at a later time. “Are you going to tell everyone about what she did?”

“No. I would spare them that anger. Many believed Ansel was their friend—and part of me, too, believes that at times she was.”

Celaena looked at the floor, wondering what to do with the ache in her chest. Would turning it into rage, as he said, help her endure it?

“For what it is worth, Celaena,” he rasped, “I believe you were the closest thing to a friend Ansel has ever allowed herself to have. And I think she sent you away because she truly cared for you.”

She hated her mouth for wobbling. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

“I didn’t think it would. But I think you will leave a lasting imprint on Ansel’s heart. You spared her life, and returned her father’s sword. She will not soon forget that. And maybe when she makes her next move to reclaim her title, she will remember the assassin from the North and the kindness you showed her, and try to leave fewer bodies in her wake.”

He walked to a latticework hutch, as if he were giving her the time to regain her composure, and pulled out a letter. By the time he returned to her, Celaena’s eyes were clear. “When you give this to your master, hold your head high.”

She took the letter. Her recommendation—what she’d been working for this past month. It seemed inconsequential in the face of everything that had just happened. “How is it that you’re speaking to me now? I thought your vow of silence was eternal.”

He shrugged. “The world seems to think so, but as far as my memory serves me, I’ve never officially sworn to be silent. I choose to be silent most of the time, and I’ve become so used to it that I often forget I have the capacity for speech, but there are some times when words are necessary—when explanations are needed that mere gestures cannot convey.”