Dark Triumph (His Fair Assassin #2)(56)
Author: Robin LaFevers

I wipe my blade on Gallmau’s cloak, then return it to its sheath and stand up. “Are you all right?” I recognize the thin, dark-haired man as Lazare, the angriest of the charbonnerie. I doubt that this incident has improved his temper any.

“I should have been the one to kill the pigs,” he spits out.

“You can be the one to kill them next time,” I assure him, and then I ask the woman if she is all right. She shakily nods her head. I turn back to Lazare. “Go, wash the blood off in the river before anyone sees. If you come across any other soldiers or the night watch, simply tell them you had too much wine and fell in.”

He stares at me a long moment. Unspoken things move in his eyes. Rage at being preyed on, discomfort at being saved by a mere woman, frustration that he was not the one to avenge their honor. But there is gratitude as well, even if it is begrudging. He gives me a terse nod and does as I instruct. While he is cleaning himself, I ask the woman, “What happened?”

“We were returning from one last delivery, as Erwan wanted to leave at first light, when these two attacked us. They took our money and were going to . . . going to . . . and when Lazare tried to stop them, they beat him. Thank you, my lady. Thank you for arriving just when you did. The Dark Mother was looking out for us.”

“Or Mortain,” I say. “For that is the god I serve, and it was He who led me here to these two.”

The excitement of the hunt has begun to leave and I realize I am tired. So very, very tired. Even so, I take the time to kneel beside the bodies, search for whatever coin they have on them, and give what I find to the woman. “Now go. Collect Lazare and get yourselves back to the others.”

Once I see them on their way, I begin the long walk back to the palace, empty and hollow, nothing but a burned-out ember now that my rage has passed.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

WHEN I REACH MY CHAMBER door, I can feel someone waiting inside. A spurt of panic shoots through me. Is it Beast wanting to confront me? Furious that I even care, I draw a blade from my wrist and open the door.

It is only Ismae, slumped in a chair by the dying fire, and I cannot tell if it is relief or disappointment I feel. At the faint snick of the door closing behind me, she stirs, then blinks awake. “Sybella!” She comes to her feet and takes two steps toward me. “Where have you been?”

I cannot tell her I have been moping over a broken heart when I have worked so hard to convince her I do not have a heart at all, so instead I c**k an eyebrow at her. “Are you going to rail at me for not having told you sooner?”

“No! I’m not surprised the abbess bade you to hold your tongue.” The love and compassion I see on Ismae’s face nearly undoes me.

“It was not the abbess,” I say. The truth begins bubbling out of me like vile humors from a wound. “She never forbade me to tell you. I just . . . could not bring myself to do so. Especially once you’d met d’Albret in Guérande.”

Ismae crosses the distance between us and takes one of my hands in each of her own and gives them a squeeze. I cannot tell if it is meant to show reassurance or exasperation. Mayhap both. “We all have our secrets. And our scars. Annith told me that my first morning at the convent. I have not told you everything about my past either.”

“You haven’t?”

Ismae shakes her head, and I study her to see if this is but a ploy to comfort me.

“I know you were married, and that your father beat you.”

She winces slightly. “Both of those are true, but there is more to my story. I never told you of the poison my mother sought from the herbwitch in order to expel me from her womb. Nor of the long, ugly scar along my back where it burned my flesh. I never spoke of my sister, who feared me, or the village boys who taunted me and called me cruel names. Like you, I was so glad to have escaped, I had no wish to speak of them and taint my new life at the convent with those memories.”

And just like that, she has granted me absolution, declared my crimes against our friendship no crimes at all. I have no words that will let her know how much this means to me. Instead, I smile. “What sort of taunts did they hurl at you?”

Ismae wrinkles her nose and lets go of my hands. “None that I care to repeat.”

“So, then,” I say, changing the subject, “why are you here waiting for me?”

“I was afraid for you.”

“Afraid? What did you fear?”

She shrugs, embarrassed. “That the abbess had sent you somewhere again. That you had run away. The possibilities seemed endless as I sat here all night.”

Something in my heart softens. “You’ve waited for me all night?”

“Once I was here, it seemed pointless to leave until I knew what had become of you.” She turns and grabs a poker to stir up the embers in the hearth. “Where have you been?”

“I needed to get out of the palace, away from the abbess and all her manipulations.”

“It does not help that you are exhausted. Here. Come to bed. You need to sleep. Knowing you, you have not slept more than six hours in the last six days.”

That she has guessed so accurately makes me smile. “Even so, I will not be able to sleep. Not here, not now.”

“Yes, you will. That is another reason I came to your room. To bring you a sleeping draft.”

I feel tears prick at my eyes—merde, but I am becoming some soft, weepy thing! So she will not see, I turn my back and motion for her to help unlace me. “But what of the duchess? Do you not need to attend her?”

“Not for a few hours yet.”

Some of the tension leaves me and I allow Ismae to help me undress, as if I am a small child, after which she puts me into the bed and draws up the covers. I wait while she pours the sleeping draft into a goblet, then drain it. Our eyes meet. I do not even know how to begin to thank her. And because it is Ismae, she simply smiles and says, “You’re welcome.”

I smile back, then study her while she finishes putting away my things. Once we begin going on assignments for the convent, we are forbidden to talk about them with others. But Ismae is no longer as beholden to the convent as she was, and I am half starved to hear about her experiences so I can see if she has the same doubts and questions I do. I begin plucking at a loose thread on the bedcovers. “Tell me,” I say casually, “do you know if the Tears of Mortain wear off?”

She stops smoothing the gown she is holding. “I do not know. Mine haven’t.”