Assassin's Gambit: The Hearts and Thrones Series (17 page)

“He’ll need to send only a few to have us vastly outnumbered.”

“I’m going to persuade more battalions to join my cause. We’ll improve the odds. But I still need the Obsidian Circle, and they’re a mystery to me. How can I win them over? You know them better than anyone.”

“I can think of only one way. Free Riorca
now
. Bring your troops to the dead villages, run out the overseers, and release the slaves from their death spells. And free the living villages from the burden of tribute payments.”

He blinked at her as if he hadn’t even considered that possibility. “You realize that freeing Riorca will greatly upset the usurper?”

Vitala smiled. “Isn’t that a side benefit?”

“Yes, but timing matters. I don’t want him coming after me too early. Still, he’s already on the way to decimate the populace. If freeing Riorca is what I need to do to win the support of the Obsidian Circle, let’s stop wasting time and do it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Do you mean it? Free Riorca? Not sometime in the distant future, but now?” She could barely dare to hope he was serious. She’d dedicated her whole life to freeing Riorca and had expected to die someday for the cause. She’d never thought she’d see it happen.

“Yes, I mean it.”

“Right this minute?”

“We could ride out as soon as tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe you actually mean it.”

Lucien hopped to the bedroom door, opened it, and spoke to a guard. “Pass the word to Quincius. Tell him to prepare the battalion. We march tomorrow to free the Riorcan village of Tinst.”

Vitala’s heart surged. Could it be this simple? No, of course it wasn’t. They still had a war to win, a war in which they were ridiculously outnumbered. But this was a first step, a real first step toward what she’d worked for all her life. She felt light on her feet, as if a huge burden had been lifted from her—and suddenly spending the afternoon, or at least an hour or two, with Lucien seemed within the realm of possibility. In fact, given the desire rapidly pooling within her, she was beginning to think it was a necessity.

Lucien closed the door and hopped back, grinning. “There, we’ve made our Caturanga move. Let’s hope it was the right one.
Now
do I get to show you what I wanted to show you?”

“You’re really going to free Riorca?”

“Yes! Did you not hear what I said to the guard? You realize it won’t be all at once. It’ll be one village at a time, starting with Tinst.”

“Get on the bed,” said Vitala.

Lucien straightened in alarm. “Why?”

She circled, placing herself between him and the door. Gods, he was a fine-looking man, the way he filled out that syrtos so perfectly, without a hint of coarseness. The look of surprised innocence on his face added an extra dollop of charm. “Because I’m going to have my way with you.”

“This sounds promising,” he said.

“Get on the bed.”

“I’m not accustomed to being ordered around.”

“That’s exactly why you need it, Emperor,” said Vitala. “If you don’t want to play, I’ll go find something else to do.”

Lucien scrambled onto the bed. “All right, I accept your gambit. Now what?”

“You do exactly what I say and nothing else.” She unbelted his syrtos, and when he reached to do the same for her, she pushed his hand away. “No.”

He gave her a sly look but acquiesced.

When she had him naked except for his riftstone, she ordered him to the back of the bed and sat him upright. “Here are the rules,” she said. “You can’t use your hands. Grip these posts with them to remind yourself to keep them still.” She directed his hands to a couple of upright posts on the headboard. “If you cheat and use your hands, the fun stops. Got it?”

“You’re still dressed,” he pointed out.

She was, but that was part of the point. He might be complaining, but he was excited; he’d gone from half-mast to full arousal. She scooted back so he couldn’t reach her with any part of his body, and unbelted her syrtos. After dropping the belts to the floor, she parted the garment’s fabric, slowly revealing her breasts, and one of Lucien’s hands came away from the posts.

“No,” she scolded, covering herself up.

“This is unfair.” He shifted uncomfortably but returned his hand to the post.

She resumed her tease, watching the muscles bulge in his arms as he fought temptation. This time he didn’t move. She dropped the syrtos entirely and went to him. The moment her mouth was in range, Lucien’s hungry lips met hers. She arched her back, letting her breasts dangle against him. Easing closer, she rubbed his tight muscles with her hands and massaged the knots out of them.

He groaned in pleasure and frustration. “Gods, Vitala. You’re torturing me.”

“I’m going to make you happy. Be patient.”

He growled, and his arm muscles tensed and relaxed, but he remained still.

She moved downward, licking and nipping at his neck, then his chest. Lucien was firmly muscled, with a solid, hard body. Nonetheless, he was certain to have his vulnerable spots. She toyed with him, finding his sensitive places, his ticklish places, the places that made him groan. He was tightly wound, like an overtuned harp string, and she played him gently, driving him to greater heights of frustration and arousal, careful not to send him over the edge.

Finally, she dropped her head into his lap and took him in her mouth. It was what he’d been waiting for, and the tension in his legs and body melted as he received the stimulation he craved. He moaned something—her name, it sounded like—and she slowed her pace to draw out his pleasure longer. His hands came down to stroke her hair, her shoulders, her back. He was breaking the rules, but she didn’t care. She’d tortured him enough, and now she would give him what he wanted.

“Faster,” he muttered, and she complied, having sensed his need just before he voiced it. His hand tightened at the back of her neck. She slipped a hand beneath his cods and cupped them gently in her hand. His moment of crisis was near. Sensing both his desire to thrust and his restraint in not doing so, she drove him harder with mouth and tongue. He cried out, and a moment later his climax was upon him.

His seed spent, Lucien sagged glassy-eyed against the headboard. Vitala snuggled up against him while he rested.

“I am never going to forget the day I decided to free Riorca,” he said after a while. “I should have done this sooner.”

“You should have,” she agreed.

He smoothed her hair, working out a tangle. “And now it’s my turn to have my way with you.”

Vitala chuckled, tracing an idle finger on his chest. “I don’t know. I think I wore you out.”

Lucien looked down at her, eyes glinting. “You think so?”

Seeing the challenge in his gaze, Vitala scrambled away from him, laughing, only to be pounced on, flipped over, and pinned by a lover who suddenly seemed more brindlecat than man. His golden riftstone dangled between them on its chain, warm and alive.

“And now,” he said, “what set of rules shall I come up with for you?”

19

T
he next morning, the camp was a flurry of activity. Preparations had begun the moment Lucien had given the order from his bedroom door, and the battalion would depart by midmorning. While Vitala remained with Lucien in the command tent, going over some of the particulars about Riorcan villages, all around her were the sounds of bustle and activity—horses whinnying, squad commanders barking orders, the clatter of furniture being broken down and wagons being loaded.

Lucien gathered up a sheaf of papers from the command center table. “There’s something you didn’t tell me last night. You showed me your riftstone, or at least where it was implanted, but you never said what it was. What sort of mage are you?”

“I’m a wardbreaker.”

“What is that? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s what it sounds like.”

He shot Vitala a look of disbelief. “You can
break wards
?”

“That’s right.”

“But wards are invisible,” said Lucien.

She smiled. “Not to me.”

He set the papers down. “Really? I’m standing here, and you can see my wards? What do they look like?”

“I don’t see them all the time. I have to do something with my mind to see them—relax it, sort of. And they look like splashes of color from the spirit world. You’ve seen the spirit world, haven’t you?” He had to have seen it, since he was a mage; to soulcast into a riftstone, one had to open the Rift and peer inside.

“Yes, I’ve seen it.” His forehead wrinkled. “Ordinary colors?”

She nodded. “Not the strange ones.” In the spirit world, one saw things that made no sense: impossible shapes, impossible colors. It had frightened her during soulcasting, and she had no desire to ever look upon it again.

“So what sort of stone is your riftstone?”

“Obsidian, of course.”

“That’s impossible. Obsidian—” Lucien paused as a guard poked his head inside the command center.

“Sire, the squad wants to know if they can come in and pack up your things,” said the guard.

“Not yet,” said Lucien. “I’ll tell you when.”

The guard nodded and shut the door.

“Obsidian can’t be soulcast into,” Lucien continued. “It’s been tried.”

“The Circle can do it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Lucien rolled his eyes. “Well, tell me about your soulcasting process. You obviously went through it.”

“Tell me about yours,” she said, annoyed at his probing.

“All right.” He shrugged. “It requires other mages. I had six Warders, good ones, who opened the Rift for me and placed my stone inside. Then I had to go in after it—not physically, but spiritually, the way we’re trained to do in our Rift-affinity exercises where we separate mind from body. I had to find the stone and spiritually . . . enter it. I felt like I was lost in the Rift for hours, but they said afterward it was only a few minutes. And now part of my soul is inside the stone, and will remain there until I die.”

“That was essentially how I did it,” said Vitala. “Except it was five Warders who opened the Rift.”

“But why were you able to soulcast into obsidian when no one in Kjall has been able to?”

“I truly don’t know. The Circle’s structure is not like what you have in Kjall. It’s distributed, and information is limited to those with a need to know. This protects our secrets. I have an obsidian riftstone, but I have no idea what was done to the stone to make it possible for me to soulcast into it.”

“How is the Circle structured?”

“Each enclave operates independently,” said Vitala. “There’s no leader, no central authority. The enclaves communicate, share resources, and sometimes join forces on a project, but they don’t always use the same methods. Assassins from other enclaves may operate differently. For example, the assassins who attacked you”—she indicated his missing leg—“were male war mages. I’m a female wardbreaker. Not the same at all.”

“But that means your information on how Obsidian Circle assassins operate isn’t very useful. All you know is how
your
enclave operates, and the assassins may come from elsewhere.”

“That’s correct. But since my rescuing you offended my enclave personally, I think they’ll be the ones to act. If they fail, we may see more attempts, perhaps from other enclaves.”

He nodded. “Are all your enclave’s assassins wardbreakers?”

“Yes, and all women. All solo operators.”

“So they’ll infiltrate through the camp followers. Fine. I’ll set an edict that no new camp followers will be accepted on White Eagle grounds, and if any man sees a strange woman in the camp, he’s to report it immediately.”

“That’s a good start, but I think you’ll find it hard to enforce.”

“This is a military camp; I can enforce anything. Our wards will be useless. Won’t they? The assassin will just break them.” Lucien straightened, his gaze suddenly becoming intense. “Wait. Couldn’t an infiltrating assassin kill you by activating your deathstone?”

“No, the deathstone is attuned to me. No one else can activate it.”

“Isn’t ward-breaking an odd sort of magic for an assassin? I understand it gets you past our wards. But beyond that, it’s hardly lethal. War magic would seem the better choice.”

“Ward-breaking
is
lethal, at least in my hands.” Vitala reached into her pocket and pulled out her eighth Shard, the one she’d used to threaten Bayard but still hadn’t activated. She handed it to Lucien and explained about the death spells embedded in the Shards, which could be released by breaking a ward, and how she could call other Shards into her hand out of thin air.

Lucien fingered the Shard, turning it over and over in his hand. He tugged at his ear. “This is what you used to kill the guard at the bonfire.”

“One just like it, yes.”

His eyes met hers. “But how did you kill Remus? I don’t care how effective these are or how well they’re kept hidden. No war mage is going to let you stab him with one.”

Vitala swallowed. “We have a special technique for war mages.”

“What special technique?”

Vitala took a seat at the table. She’d dreaded explaining this part. “There are two ways to defeat a war mage, aside from sending a war mage of one’s own. The first is to overwhelm him with attackers. The other is to distract him at a critical moment.”

Lucien nodded.

“We use distraction,” said Vitala.

He shrugged. “I don’t find that credible. It’s hard to find a distraction powerful enough to affect a war mage. Say, for example, I’m reading this letter.” Lucien picked up a paper from the top of the sheaf and waved it at her. “No matter how interested I am in its contents, no way is it going to—”

“We use sex,” Vitala blurted.

“What?”

“During sex, there’s a moment . . .” She stammered. “There’s a moment when the man is highly distracted, and that’s when we strike. It’s, you know . . . um . . .”

“When he climaxes? Three gods.” He propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands, looking unhappy. “So that’s how you killed Remus. During the sex act.”

She curled up on her chair, pulling her knees into her chest. “Yes.”

“That’s what you didn’t want to talk about. In the tent after they took me away, he raped you. And then you killed him.”

“Yes.”

He laughed, a brittle sound. “Well. I daresay he deserved it.”

Vitala was silent. He did deserve it, but that wasn’t the point.

“How do you learn this technique? Do you
practice
it?”

“Yes. We practice.” Vitala darted a glance at Lucien. What thoughts hid behind that unreadable expression? He was no dummy. He would be putting two and two together, realizing she had slept with him in order to kill him, that she must have done the same with other men before him. And she had nothing to say in her defense. There could be no apologizing for what she was.

“Well,” said Lucien, avoiding her eyes. “I think I’d better check on the battalion and make sure we’re on schedule. Perhaps you should see to your horse?”

The dismissal pained her, but it also came as a relief. She could hardly bear to be in his presence right now. Vitala unfolded her legs and left the command center.

•   •   •

The following morning, she rode through the village of Tinst beside a silent Lucien. Since their discussion, she felt he’d been avoiding her. Either that or he’d been too busy with the preparations for departure to talk to her. But if it were the latter, why ignore her now, when they were traveling? When it had been just the two of them, fleeing to Riorca, he’d been outright chatty. Now he was taciturn, his expression guarded, and she had no idea whether it was because his feelings toward her had changed or because they were riding in the company of Quincius and the other high-ranking officers and had no privacy. She missed him, and to her surprise she missed Flavia too and wondered how she was coping back at the enclave.

Lucien had spent half of yesterday afternoon plotting a route through Riorca that would lead them through the maximum number of Riorcan villages in the shortest amount of time, and give them access to the other Riorcan-stationed battalions. The first stop was Tinst, the village so close it could be seen from White Eagle’s signal tower.

She’d never been in a dead village before. She’d expected poverty and demoralization, but she hadn’t realized the village would also be depopulated. Fully a third of the houses were abandoned. The streets were empty too, and if she didn’t know any better, she might think the village deserted. The only Riorcan she saw was a man patching a hole in a pit-house roof, who, when he saw the battalion, climbed down hastily and disappeared into his home.

She knew the real reason the streets were empty. It was because the villagers spent the daylight hours at work in the forest where they cultivated spinefruit, collected mushrooms, and harvested lumber. They would surely be less than eager to return home with the battalion present, but they had no choice. Like all residents of dead villages, they were enslaved by death spells that had to be put into remission every evening by a Kjallan Healer. Without the attention of the Healer, they would die a slow, painful death.

At the center of the village, Vitala and the others came upon six large houses built in the Kjallan style, aboveground with central courtyards. They were quite unsuitable for the climate. Central courtyards were supposed to be for growing a garden, but no Kjallan plants could be grown here. Old habits died hard, she supposed. Smoke curled from the chimneys, and the homes were decorated, manicured, and in perfect repair. Surely these were the homes of the Kjallan overseers. Her guess was confirmed when one of the doors opened and a Kjallan man stepped out, shivering in his syrtos, to salute the passing battalion. Soon others joined him.

“Grab them,” ordered Lucien.

A squad of men ran at each house. Some seized the unresisting Kjallans standing on the doorsteps, while others barged indoors to look for more.

Within minutes, the soldiers had the Kjallan overseers and their families assembled on the road before the battalion.

“Prefect Quincius!” one of the overseers cried. “Have we done something wrong?”

“My rank is now tribune,” Quincius corrected mildly from where he rode on Lucien’s left side. With a flick of his chin, he indicated Lucien. “Kneel before your emperor, Mercurius.”

The Kjallans turned to Lucien. Their eyes went wide as they took in his wooden leg, and they dropped to their knees. Mercurius’s jaw moved, as if he itched to say something, but he held his tongue.

“Speak,” said Lucien.

“Your Imperial Majesty, we thought you were dead.”

“I’m not dead, only betrayed by the usurper Cassian.” He raised his voice so that the entire battalion, now forming in columns behind him, could hear. “By my order, the village of Tinst is no longer under your leadership. This evening, when the villagers have returned from their duties, I shall address them. As for you . . .” He looked down at the prisoners. “You have committed no crimes, so you may either stay in our custody temporarily, until it’s safe for us to allow you to return to Kjall, or to stay and take up new roles with White Eagle. Mercurius, you are a Healer, are you not?”

“Yes, sire.”

“We would value your services in White Eagle. But if you choose to return to Kjall, you will do it without your riftstone. I cannot have you providing succor to the soldiers of my enemy. All of you will make your decisions by morning.” His eyes flicked to Quincius. “Tribune, the battalion is yours.”

Quincius swung his horse around and gave orders to his prefects and squad commanders. The battalion erupted into activity, setting up camp in the village streets and establishing one of the Kjallan houses as a holding area for the overseers.

The encampment formed rapidly. Once it was established, the afternoon passed slowly for Vitala, while the soldiers of the battalion played dice games and gnawed on strips of dried spinefruit. She was impressed at how orderly the camp was; each century seemed to know where to position itself relative to the others, and the end result was a tight grid with Lucien’s command tent in the center. The camp followers had set up their tents a slight distance from the battalion. Vitala had discussed with Lucien not allowing them to come at all, to eliminate the possibility of infiltration, but after some argument they’d agreed it wasn’t feasible. The men would balk at being denied such comforts, and morale was important. Besides, with no source of income, the women might starve.

As the afternoon wore into evening, the Tinst villagers began to filter in from the woods. No doubt many of them had hesitated on the edge of the forest upon seeing the battalion encamped in their village. The battalion offered the possibility of decimation—surely rumors of that prospect had reached them by now—but hiding away and succumbing to the death spell was no palatable alternative, so they turned up in groups of two and three.

The soldiers directed each frightened-looking group into an open space in the center of the village the soldiers had cleared for the purpose. Engineers had pulled apart an abandoned house and used the lumber to construct a podium, from which Lucien would address the village. The Riorcans huddled together, darting occasional glances at the encamped battalion and at the podium, speaking to one another in low whispers.