Chapter 45: Chapter Forty Five: More Damage than a Heart Can Take

The captain of Marseir’s assassins was balanced most precariously a hundred feet up in shadow of the castle’s highest turret, thinking dryly that he was getting far too old for this work. Erin was pushing fifty this year, the same age as his master, Duke Marseir. His once black hair was pure slate gray now from scalp to close trimmed beard, and his knee had popped out during his scramble along the palace turrets, nearly sending him tumbling to his death in the courtyards below. “At least it’s not my back seizing up again,” he muttered, massaging at the joint.

He had trained a host of successors to take over the most physically taxing parts of this job such as onsite surveillance and break-in assassinations. Aya had been the most promising of his students, until she had proven herself a sentimental failure with her first real field mission. Cal and Gregor had been his most seasoned operatives, with a host of kills already beneath their belts, but now they were both dead, killed by Carnen Gristhm during his escape from their manor. His best undercover assassin, Maria, had died just this past day, shot in the head by Queen Clara of all people. Now Erin found himself completely out of assets and seeing to this difficult, hands on work completely by himself. “Getting Charlotte out is the priority,” he muttered, “and the part that makes all of this so damn difficult.”

Yuri Gristhm had left with his army to attack the Arakesh, so there was no chance Erin might kill him this day. Carnen Gristhm had been successfully poisoned by Maria, but now he and Clara and Charlotte were all holed up together in the highly secured and highly guarded royal bedchambers. That should have made things easier for Erin, that they were all in there together. He could finish off Carnen and cut Clara’s traitorous throat, then carry off Charlotte, all done in a matter of seconds.

Queen Clara was no fool though. She had banned all servants from entering that wing of the palace this day, and she had banned all her guards from donning their visors. Every entrant’s face was being most carefully inspected, and Captain Erin would be recognized the second he tried to slip in there, no matter if he was done up in a stolen black armor set or a messenger’s disguise.

There was however, a single window in the royal bedrooms through which an assassin might make his incursion. That window was bolted shut at the moment, and there were guards on patrol on the grounds beneath said small opening, guards stood in sight of the men patrolling the wall, so if they were to drop dead suddenly, the alarm would instantly be sounded.

The one place with zero watchman was the sloped surface of the castle turrets, which meant that Erin’s only path to his targets was the completely maddened stunt of scrambling across slanted shingles in broad daylight without being spotted. Then he would need to hang off that roof and drop from the eavestrough a dozen feet before catching himself on the narrowest scrap of a windowsill and breaking open the shutters.

He was balanced right on the edge of the roof just over that entry-point now, praying most seriously that his grip did not fail him and that he did not dislocate his shoulder catching himself after this insanely long drop.

He missed his days in the circus, playing simple acrobat for the adoration of a crowd rather than working from the shadows. Erin’s nostalgia about that time in his early life was foolish of course, because he was simply choosing not to focus on all the bad memories. The ring master at that circus had been horribly abusive, whipping and branding animals and performers alike. Etienne Marseir, a sickly child at the time, had seen Erin’s act of blind knife throwing and trapeze work and been impressed enough to offer him employment. The boy was a conniving little genius. He faked the acrobat’s death in a performance, then had Erin plant a purse on the ring master: Etienne’s own property. The ring master was executed for daring to steal from a member of the royal family, and Erin stayed working for Marseir, from the age of twelve until present day. He trained under the military captains in the royal family’s employ. He learned all about guerrilla tactics and poisons, and he pretended to be a simple bodyguard of his frail master, a distant relative of the family given employment in the household.

He owed Etienne a debt that could never be repaid. The man had given him a true purpose and an education, so Erin would never give up on this mission to free the duke’s daughter and clear his path to a throne that in truth should have always been Etienne’s. His elder brothers, Frances in particular, had all been idiots. They had neither the strength nor the cunning to keep safe this country, as shown by the ease with which Yuri Gristhm had grabbed it out from under them. By week’s end though, Etienne Marseir would be coronated the true ruler of this nation and usher in another hundred years of peace for them, blackmailed and most cleverly insured peace.

Erin would be working from the shadows to keep that peace until the day he died, a part of him knew. He would never be allowed to fully retire, but it did not matter. So long as Etienne was pleased and his little Charlotte was kept safe, that’s all Erin had to live for anyway.

That’s all Aya had to live for too, and she should never have forgotten it.

He did feel a twist of pity for her being married off to old Razier and carried far from her homeland, all her potential and years of training turned to waste. Still, it was not Erin’s place to question. Aya must act as Charlotte, because that would keep their precious girl forever safe, forever free of this game of political alliances. Everything would end up how it should be, so long as Erin succeeded in freeing Charlotte this day before Carnen Gristhm could put his filthy hands on her and corrupt her, just as he had Aya.

He made the stomach-churning drop into open air and caught himself on the window sill of the royal bedrooms. It caused an awful wrenching at his shoulders and wrists, even as he kept his elbows carefully bent to adsorb most of the shock. His fingernails punched into the wood in rigid hold and kept him from sliding free into open air, and he pulled his chin level with the base of the window, holding himself up there one handed with toes anchored tentatively against the castle wall as he fished out his hook tool and jimmied free the bolt on these sealed shutters.

A gunshot near blew out his eardrums the second he’d lifted the latch, punching a hole through the dense barrier of wood just a foot above his eye. The guards on the ground below looked up at him in shock, raising crossbows, but Erin shouldered open the portal without a second’s hesitation and rolled right into the room with all stealth and secrecy abandoned.

Clara was the one who had fired at him, but it was a simple powder pistol of only one shot at a time, not a high-tech revolver like what Duke Marseir had developed just this year. Erin charged her before she could load another shot, dagger whipping up toward her throat.

“Stop!” Charlotte screamed, pulling away from the bed where Carnen Gristhm was laid out unconscious.

She would not get in between Erin and Clara in time. Still, Erin was not going to murder the queen, not yet. The doors of these rooms were already banging open with a dozen northmen charging in, and he needed a hostage.

He knocked the pistol from Clara’s hands, then twisted her around in front of him with blade held point down right over her stomach. “You will stop, right there, or the first one to die is your king’s new heir,” he threatened.

“You wouldn’t,” Charlotte gasped, staring at him in horrified bewilderment. “He’s innocent! And Clara is our family, Erin! Father would never want you to harm her, and you would certainly never be ordered to kill a child!”

“Shh. Charlotte, just calm down,” he soothed, holding out his hand in gentle supplication. “I need you to come over here. Then her majesty will tell her men to stand down and escort us out the gates, alright? She is going to cooperate fully, and no one is going to die.”

“I told you they were monsters, now didn’t I, Charlotte?” Clara whispered with shoulders shaking and tearing eyes fixed on the knife at her womb. “He will kill me and my son, as soon as we walk out those gates.”

“He wouldn’t…” Charlotte looked to him with those wide eyes of heartbroken plea. Oh bless her heart, she was such an innocent child. Erin had to protect that innocence. He couldn’t kill Clara right in front of her. He would take her safely out of sight somewhere first, weave a story once Charlotte was asleep of how Clara had run off and escaped. Her aunt was not dead in a ditch. She was safe back at the castle, and Charlotte need never receive any outside news again to deflate that fiction.

“I am not going to hurt her, my lady,” he lied, “but her men will kill me unless I use her as leverage to get you out of this prison.”

“To get me back to prison, you mean,” she murmured, and Erin’s brow furrowed.

“Whatever are you…? Charlotte, these men murdered your uncles,” he reminded her sternly, and she cringed. “They burned your home, and they are going to murder your father. Now get over here, right now, and take my hand.”

Charlotte looked back at Carnen, sprawled out helpless on the bed. Erin had a fresh poisoned needle in his sleeve, a double dose to finish off the prince, but he would not allow Charlotte to see him plant it. He would make sure her back was most carefully turned and cast the needle into Carnen’s vein on his way out of the room. “Charlotte,” he pleaded.

She turned her back to her sleeping captor and drifted over to Erin’s side, lacing her fingers tightly through his own. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, tearing up all the more.

He sighed, giving her hand a tender squeeze. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Just listen more quickly next time and…” He felt the prick of something in his wrist, and he flinched, eyes drifting downward. “What…?” His knees buckled, and Clara ripped the knife from his hands, backing away from him with blade raised and eyes flaming.

“It’s the needle Maria used on my prince,” Charlotte explained, kneeling there with him on the floor as the poison spread out from its injection site.

“Your prince?” he murmured, and she nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, pulling him into tight embrace. “But I can’t go back. You must understand.”

Erin did not understand, and he really was too old for this job. One prick of that needle, and his heart gave out.