The Assassin and the Desert

Ansel saw her and waved her over. If she gave her one look that hinted at her being so slow . . .



But Ansel merely held up a date, offering it to her.



Celaena, trying to control her panting, didn’t bother taking the date as she strode into the cool water until she was completely submerged.



Celaena drank an entire bucket before she was even halfway back to the fortress, and by the time she reached the sandstone complex and its glorious shade, she’d consumed all of the second.



At dinner, Ansel didn’t mention that it’d taken Celaena a long, long while to return. Celaena had had to wait in the shade of the palms until later in the afternoon to leave—and wound up walking the whole way back. She’d reached the fortress near dusk. A whole day spent “running.”



“Don’t look so glum,” Ansel whispered, taking a forkful of those delightful spiced grains. She was wearing her armor again. “You know what happened my first day out there?”



Some of the assassins seated at the long table gave knowing grins.



Ansel swallowed and braced her arms on the table. Even the gauntlets of her armor were delicately engraved with a wolf motif. “My first run, I collapsed. Mile two. Completely unconscious. Ilias found me on his way back and carried me here. In his arms and everything.” Ilias’s eyes met with Celaena’s, and he smiled at her. “If I hadn’t been about to die, I would have been swooning,” Ansel finished and the others grinned, some of them laughing silently.



Celaena blushed, suddenly too aware of Ilias’s attention, and took a sip from her cup of lemon water. As the meal wore on, her blush remained as Ilias continued flicking his eyes toward her.



She tried not to preen too much. But then she remembered how miserably she’d performed today—how she hadn’t even gotten a chance to train—and the swagger died a bit.



She kept an eye on the Master, who dined at the center of the room, safely ensconced within rows of his deadly assassins. He sat at a table of acolytes, whose eyes were so wide that Celaena could only assume his presence at their table was an unexpected surprise.



She waited and waited for him to stand, and when he did, Celaena made her best attempt to look casual as she, too, stood and bid everyone goodnight. As she turned away, she noticed that Mikhail took Ansel’s hand and held it in the shadows beneath the table.



The Master was just leaving the hall when she caught up to him. With everyone still eating, the torch-lit halls were empty. She took a loud step, unsure if he’d appreciate if she tried being mute, and how, exactly, to address him.



The Master paused, his white clothes rustling around him. He offered her a little smile. Up close, she could certainly see his resemblance to his son. There was a pale line around one of his fingers—perhaps where a wedding ring had once been. Who was Ilias’s mother?



Of course, it wasn’t at all the time for questions like that. Ansel had told her to try to impress him—to make him think she wanted to be here. Perhaps silence would work. But how to communicate what needed to be said? She gave him her best smile, even though her heart raced, and began making a series of motions, mostly just her best impression of running with the yoke, and a lot of shaking her head and frowning that she hoped he’d take to mean “I came here to train with you, not with the others.”



The Master nodded, as if he already knew. Celaena swallowed, her mouth still tasting of those spices they used to season their meat. She gestured between the two of them several times, taking a step closer to indicate her wanting to work only with him. She might have been more aggressive with her motions, might have really let her temper and exhaustion get the better of her, but . . . that confounded letter!



The Master shook his head.



Celaena ground her teeth, and tried the gesturing between the two of them again.



He shook his head once more, and bobbed his hands in the air, as if he were telling her to slow down—to wait. To wait for him to train her.



She reflected the gesture, raising an eyebrow as if to say, “Wait for you?” He nodded. How on earth to ask him “until when?” She exposed her palms, beseeching, doing her best to look confused. Still, she couldn’t keep the irritation from her face. She was only here for a month. How long would she have to wait?



The Master understood her well enough. He shrugged, an infuriatingly casual gesture, and Celaena clenched her jaw. So Ansel had been right—she was to wait for him to send for her. The Master gave her that kind smile and turned on his heel, resuming his walk. She took a step toward him, to beg, to shout, to do whatever her body seized up to do, but someone grabbed her arm.



She whirled, already reaching for her daggers, but found herself looking into Ilias’s sea-green eyes.



He shook his head, his gaze darting from the Master to her and back again. She was not to follow him.



So perhaps Ilias hadn’t paid attention to her out of admiration, but because he didn’t trust her. And why should he? Her reputation didn’t exactly lend itself to trust. He must have followed her out of the hall the moment he saw her trailing his father. Had their positions been reversed—had he been visiting Rifthold—she wouldn’t have dared leave him alone with Arobynn.



“I have no plans to hurt him,” she said softly. But Ilias gave her a half smile, his brows rising as if to ask if she could blame him for being protective of his father.



He slowly released her arm. He wore no weapons at his side, but she had a feeling he didn’t need them. He was tall—taller than Sam, even—and broad-shouldered. Powerfully built, yet not bulky. His smile spread a bit more as he extended his hand toward her. A greeting.



“Yes,” she said, fighting her own smile. “I don’t suppose we’ve been properly introduced.”



He nodded, and put his other hand on his heart. Scars peppered his hand—small, slender scars that suggested years of training with blades.



“You’re Ilias, and I’m Celaena.” She put a hand on her own chest. Then she took his extended hand and shook it. “It’s nice to meet you.”



His eyes were vivid in the torchlight, his hand firm and warm around hers. She let go of his fingers. The son of the Mute Master and the protégée of the King of the Assassins. If there was anyone here that was at all similar to her, she realized, it was Ilias. Rifthold might be her realm, but this was his. And from the easy way he carried himself, from the way she’d seen his companions gazing at him with admiration and respect, she could tell that he was utterly at home here—as if this place had been made for him, and he never needed to question his spot in it. A strange sort of envy wended its way through her heart.



Ilias suddenly began making a series of motions with his long, tan fingers, but Celaena laughed softly. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”



Ilias looked skyward and sighed through his nose. Throwing his hands in the air in mock defeat, he merely patted her on the shoulder before passing by—following his father, who had disappeared down the hall.



Though she walked back toward her room—in the other direction—she didn’t once believe that the son of the Mute Master wasn’t still watching her, making sure she wasn’t going to follow his father.



Not that you have anything to worry about, she wanted to shout over her shoulder. She couldn’t run six measly miles in the desert.



As she walked back to her room, Celaena had a horrible feeling that here, being Adarlan’s Assassin might not count for much.



Later that night, when she and Ansel were both in their beds, Ansel whispered into the darkness: “Tomorrow will be better. It might be only a foot more than today, but it will be a foot longer that you can run.”



That was easy enough for Ansel to say. She didn’t have a reputation to uphold—a reputation that might be crumbling around her. Celaena stared at the ceiling, suddenly homesick, strangely wishing Sam was with her. At least if she were to fail, she’d fail with him.



“So,” Celaena said suddenly, needing to get her mind off of everything—especially Sam. “You and Mikhail . . .”



Ansel groaned. “It’s that obvious? Though I suppose we don’t really make that much of an effort to hide it. Well, I try, but he doesn’t. He was rather irritated when he found out I suddenly had a roommate.”



“How long have you been seeing him?”



Ansel was silent for a long moment before answering. “Since I was fifteen.”



Fifteen! Mikhail was in his mid-twenties, so even if this had started almost three years ago, he still would have been far older than Ansel. It made her a little queasy.



“Girls in the Flatlands are married as early as fourteen,” Ansel said.



Celaena choked. The idea of being anyone’s wife at fourteen, let alone a mother soon after . . . “Oh,” was all she managed to get out.



When Celaena didn’t say anything else, Ansel drifted into sleep. With nothing else to distract her, Celaena eventually returned to thinking about Sam. Even weeks later, she had no idea how she’d somehow gotten attached to him, what he’d been shouting when Arobynn beat her, and why Arobynn had thought he’d need three seasoned assassins to restrain him that day.



Chapter Four



Though Celaena didn’t want to admit it, Ansel was right. She did run farther the next day. And the day after that, and the one following that. But it still took her so long to get back that she didn’t have time to seek out the Master. Not that she could. He’d send for her. Like a lackey!



She did manage to find some time late in the afternoon to attend drills with Ansel. The only guidance she received there was from a few older-looking assassins who positioned her hands and feet, tapped her stomach, and slapped her spine into the correct posture. Occasionally, Ilias would train alongside her, never too close, but close enough for her to know his presence was more than coincidental.



Like the assassins in Adarlan, the Silent Assassins weren’t known for any skill in particular—save the uncannily quiet way they moved. Their weapons were mostly the same, though their bows and blades were slightly different in length and shape. But just watching them—it seemed that there was a good deal less . . . viciousness here.



Arobynn encouraged cutthroat behavior. Even when they were children, he’d set her and Sam against each other, use their victories and failures against them. He’d made her see everyone but Arobynn and Ben as a potential enemy. As allies, yes, but also as foes to be closely watched. Weakness was never to be shown at any cost. Brutality was rewarded. And education and culture were equally important—words could be just as deadly as steel.



But the Silent Assassins . . . Though they, too, might be killers, they looked to each other for learning. Embraced collective wisdom. Older warriors smiled as they taught the acolytes; seasoned assassins swapped techniques. And while they were all competitors, it appeared that an invisible link bound them together. Something had brought them to this place at the ends of the earth. More than a few, she discovered, were actually mute from birth. But all of them seemed full of secrets. As if the fortress and what it offered somehow held the answers they sought. As if they could find whatever they were looking for in the silence.



Still, even as they corrected her posture and showed her new ways to control her breathing, she tried her best not to snarl at them. She knew plenty—she wasn’t Adarlan’s Assassin for nothing. But she needed that letter of good behavior as proof of her training. These people might all be called upon by the Mute Master to give an opinion of her. Perhaps if she demonstrated that she was good enough in these practices, the Master might take notice of her.



She’d get that letter. Even if she had to hold a dagger to his throat while he wrote it.



The attack by Lord Berick happened on her fifth night. There was no moon, and Celaena had no idea how the Silent Assassins spotted the thirty or so soldiers creeping across the dark dunes. Mikhail had burst into their room and whispered to come to the fortress battlements. Hopefully, this would turn out to be another opportunity to prove herself to the Master. With just over three weeks left, she was running out of options. But the Master wasn’t at the battlements. And neither were many of the assassins. She heard a woman question another, asking how Berick’s men had known that a good number of the assassins would be away that night, busy escorting some foreign dignitaries back to the nearest port. It was too convenient to be coincidental.