the Leathermines

Back to Chapter 13 - New to this story?  Start with the first chapter of the Slave Warrior

 

Laun held her tongue as she stood along the wall.  She watched the group of people around the deathbed of Lady Engrid and tried to keep her calm mask on.  She was finally dying.

The room was not all that big, but the people who seemed important were there, crowded and posturing around Lady Engrid, most just there to make sure she had really died.  Word had come from her healers that she was fast slipping into the darkness.  Laun had been on Ifahyd’s arm walking towards the yurlodge her people were in, to meet with them for the first time since she had ostensibly run away into the Royal apartments.

Servants had come running, unusual enough in the desert heat.  When the word was given, Laun had turned and whistled, messing up the first attempt, but getting the attention of the man who was at sentry duty. The signal was passed and Yevette had come running out of the lodge past others coming out, her baby in her arms.  She slowed, a cautious look on her face.

Ifhayd had put a hand on Yevette’s shoulder and they had all started for the rooms Lady Engrid and her escort were staying in.  Yevette had stayed on the other side of the King as they had moved, Laun glad of it.  She did not want to talk even yet to her, but as Yevette’s Grand Dam was dying, it was really not appropriate to have any less of a public front than before.

Now, the shallow, dry breath of the old woman was hard to hear over the whispered platitudes she could not hear.  The healers were tipping small vials into her open mouth and making her swallow, knowing that they could not do anything but deaden her pains, but the act of looking like they were trying to help was important to them.  Servants were already moving some of the Lady’s things out of the room, not just to make more floorspace for those attending her death.  Laun wanted to laugh at the scene, the show that the nobles were giving, not for her but each other.  Except for Yevette.  Her Gem had tears running down her face, her baby being held tight against her as if she may be dragged from her arms at any moment.

Laun saw that something was not right.  Yes, Engrid was unresponsive and was about to slip in the darkness.  That was something Laun could never get used to, whether peaceful or violent.  It was something with several of the nobles attending her.  Laun felt naked as she reached for the only blade she had on her at her belt and stepped even further back, watching the deliberate motions of the people at Engrid’s bedside.

One of the healers had just opened a small vial and had dripped a few greenish drops onto Lady Engrid’s lips.  There seemed to be a nod from that healer to one of the others, both stepping back after the stopper was back in the little glass medicine bottle.

Gem’s head snapped up and she tried to step away when she saw something wrong next to her.  Her eye caught Laun’s across the room, panic in her eye that changed.  Too many people were between them for good communications, but Laun saw Gem’s posture and thought she saw...

Laun’s hand was around the throat of the woman before the onyx pommeled knife was completely out of it’s hidden place.  Gem’s body was wedged in and she pushed the man away from the others around them, away from the King.  Ifahyd turned and backed up as the flurry of activity around him was quiet, but concentrated.  Almost all of it had been directed at him until the Peaches stepped in to save him.

There was a death rattle of breath from the prone Lady Engrid as several of her planted assassins were held to the floor, their mission interrupted, their target still alive.

Laun tore at her clothing and bound the woman beneath her with strips of the light tunic as the man Gem had bodily taken out of the group was pinned by Silar, a third assassin having seen that they were not going to be able to complete the task dead at her own hand at the feet of her dead Master’s bed.

There were screams when the nobles at the side of Lady Engrid’s bed realized what had just happened.  It was too late to panic, but the Ladies of Rosemond were hysterical.  Several large guards came in and surrounded Ifahyd, rushing him out of the room.

Laun saw the danger and whistled clearly for the first time in her life.  Daffyd heard, Girl at his knee outside in the courtyard.  He looked around and saw the open window on the next floor, a sliver of shadow pointed towards the ground.  Pointed towards King Ifahyd.

Daffyd shouted in his native tongue, the guards looking up as the arrow released.  Girl, even with the heavy vanbraces on and missing fingers on her left hand, threw a sharp rock from the artfully piled desert rocks and the sound of stone hitting flesh was plain to be heard.

Blood was in the sand of the courtyard.  It was from the shoulder of one of the guards who had put himself into the flight of the arrow.  Healers and more guards were in the courtyard and in the death room to try to sort out what had happened.  The healer tending the guard was concerned that there had been poison on the blade, the large man being dragged away as shock and something else took ahold of him.

The Captain of the Guards was looking out of the window the arrow had come from, a grim look on his face.  He turned at the sound of the baby starting to cry, Yevette having knelt to the floor trying to calm the child.  Laun pushed through and was with her, holding both the child and her friend as the rest of the world’s chaos was flowing around them.

There were legs, the person protecting Laun and Yevette from those who were hysterical in the death room.  It was not Daffyd, who was helping to move the bed Lady Engrid had been in out of the room.  It was not Verat, who was off to one side talking to one of the shaken nobles, a calming tone coming over the yelling.  It was Girl.  She had found two knives and was defending.  It made Laun smile.

Yevette looked up from the screaming child.  “Mistr-”

Laun shook her head.  “Yevette, my Gem, I free you from being the gift you were.  I should have done-”

Yevette moved and was kissing Laun fiercely.  The child was between them, arms and legs supporting her as the frustration and sadness between the two women was settled simply through the touch.  The child calmed, but was still calling out, hungry more than frightened.

Girl used her ringed vambrace to clink twice getting their attention.  The Captain of the Royal Guards was coming towards them, a foul look on his face.  Laun put a gentle hand on Girl’s ass moving her slightly and standing.  Girl crouched, still defending and scanning those who were still in the room.

“Domina, setti rash- Damnit.  Lady, how did you know-” he motioned behind him indicating the assassination attempts, “this to happen?”

Laun looked at where the bed had been.  “A last gasp of a bitter woman.”  She looked at him and held out her arm, taking his in a warriors grip.  “Thank you for having your men here.  They would have taken us all without you.”

He gripped her arm and felt the strength in her hand.  He had seen her take down the one woman, the front of her tunic shredded from where she had used her own clothing to bind the assassin.  If she did not have the skirting on, she would have been indecent.  As it was, her stomach showed, pink and silver scars crossing her skin above the pale yellow silk.  He had seen her people work as a unit, keeping the King from harm, even as they protected each other.

“Domina, the archer.  How?”

Laun looked down at Girl and Yevette.  She saw a small sign and nodded.  She looked at the Captain and put her hand on him where an assassin’s mark could be, saying, “That is what I would have done to make sure of the kill.”

He physically jerked away.  He looked at her, at her neck without the mark, his hand going to where she had touched him through his armor at his neck.  He had things he wanted to say, curses on her and her household for bringing uncertainty into the ranks of the Royal Estate.  For being the one to escort the old Lady there, and bringing more attempts on the Kings life in the last week than he had seen in six months.

Laun saw the hate.  She did not know what it was from, but she was more than willing to step into it right then.  “If your training did not tell you that, your Master rushed your training.”  Laun saw that his eye flicked to the side, but not towards where Lady Engrid had been or had been taken.  It was towards the Marquis, Silver Master.  Laun smiled and caught the Captain’s eye again.

“Highness, you should go back to your lodge.  We are making a sweep of the grounds and it would be safest for you there.”  He stepped back again, regaining his composure.

Laun spread her hands to the sides, palm up and bowed her head slightly, saying quietly, “As you wish, Brother.”

That unnerved him more.  Without any known signal or sign, all of her people were gone, leaving her looking at him, a seemingly gentle woman, disheveled and vulnerable.  He looked at the Master who had trained him before he became Captain of the Royal Estate Guards and turned back, finding she had already moved past him without him knowing it.  Not even a jingle from her jewelry had warned him.

Silver watched Laun leave, and had seen her people work in that moment of focus.  He motioned with his chin to the Captain, one he had trained a few years before to help the man attain the rank he wanted.  The Captain moved to the courtyard, looking at the other windows and doors into the courtyard as his once-Master came up to him.

“I had heard nothing of this.”

“Nor I, Marquis.  I think it was purely Blue Master.”

The Marquis moved his head towards the sound of some of the small stones slipping to the sand, his long silver hair moving over his shoulder and hiding his own scars.  “Our Sister was quick.  She saw and knew before anyone else.  She may have protected the Monarch, but now it is just going to be more dangerous.”

“I sh-”  The Captain lowered his voice.  “I should have seen it.  You warned me and I thought what had already happened was what was going to happen.”  He turned so that he was facing but looking over the shoulder of Silver Master.  “The training her people have had...  It was seamless.”

The Marquis smiled and put his hand on the soldier’s shoulder before lowly saying, “It is a hard earned fruit of their labor, Jost.  She is the blossom that their fruit grows from.”

The Captain of the Royal Guards was confused, but nodded, pointing at one of his own and starting to yell orders as he moved away.  Marquis Justin Blaque, Silver Master of the Assassin’s Council and once apprentice to Blue Master, stood and thought about the last hour’s events.  The life of the grey was always in chaos, but this was going to produce a power struggle.  He was going to just sit back and try not to get splattered with the blood.

 

Onto Chapter 15, where the skills of the Peaches and their Mistress protect King Ifahyd