The Assassin and the Empire
Heavy boots stomping across the floor, the guards straightening and saluting …
The King of Adarlan entered the room.
She wouldn’t look at him. Let him do what he wanted to her. If she looked into his eyes, what semblance of calm she had would be shredded. So it was better to feel nothing than to cower before him—the butcher who had destroyed so much of Erilea. Better to go to her grave numb and dazed than begging.
A chair at the center of the table was pulled back. The men around the king didn’t sit until he sat.
Then silence.
The wooden floor of the room was so polished that she could see the reflection of the iron chandelier hanging far above her.
A low chuckle, like bone against rock. Even without looking at him, she could sense his sheer mass—the darkness swirling around him.
“I didn’t believe the rumors until now,” the king said, “but it seems the guards were not lying about your age.”
A faint urge to cover her ears, to shut out that wretched voice, flickered in the back of her mind.
“How old are you?”
She didn’t reply. Sam was gone. Nothing she could do—even if she fought, even if she raged—could change that.
“Did Rourke Farran get his claws on you, or are you just being willful?”
Farran’s face, leering at her, smiling so viciously as she was helpless before him.
“Very well, then,” the king said. Papers being shuffled, the only sound in the deathly silent room. “Do you deny that you are Celaena Sardothien? If you do not speak, then I will take your silence for acquiescence, girl.”
She kept her mouth shut.
“Then read the charges, Councilor Rensel.”
A male throat was cleared. “You, Celaena Sardothien, are charged with the deaths of the following people …” And then he began a long recitation of all those lives she’d taken. The brutal story of a girl who was now gone. Arobynn had always seen to it that the world knew of her handiwork. He always got word out through secret channels when another victim had fallen to Celaena Sardothien. And now, the very thing that had earned her the right to call herself Adarlan’s Assassin would be what sealed her doom. When it was over, the man said, “Do you deny any of the charges?”
Her breathing was so slow.
“Girl,” the councilman said a bit shrilly, “we will take your lack of response to mean you do not deny them. Do you understand that?”
She didn’t bother to nod. It was all over, anyway.
“Then I will decide your sentence,” the king growled.
Then there was murmuring, more rustling papers, and a cough. The light on the floor flickered. The guards in the room remained focused on her, weapons at the ready.
Footsteps suddenly thudded toward her from the table, and she heard the sound of weapons being angled. She recognized the footsteps before the king even reached her chair.
“Look at me.”
She kept her gaze on his boots.
“Look at me.”
It made no difference now, did it? He’d already destroyed so much of Erilea—destroyed parts of her without even knowing it.
“Look at me.”
Celaena raised her head and looked at the King of Adarlan.
The blood drained from her face. Those black eyes were poised to devour the world; the features were harsh and weathered. He wore a sword at his side—the sword whose name everyone knew—and a fine tunic and fur cloak. No crown rested on his head.
She had to get away. Had to get out of this room, get away from him.
Get away.
“Do you have any last requests before I announce your sentence?” he asked, those eyes still searing through every defense she’d ever learned. She could still smell the smoke that had suffocated every inch of Terrasen nine years ago, still smell the sizzling flesh and hear the futile screams as the king and his armies wiped out every last trace of resistance, every last trace of magic. No matter what Arobynn had trained her to do, the memories of those last weeks as Terrasen fell were imprinted upon her blood. So she just stared at him.
When she didn’t reply, he turned on his heel and walked back to the table.
She had to get away. Forever. Brash, foolish fire flared up, and turned her—just for a moment—into that girl again.
“I do,” she said, her voice hoarse from disuse.
The king paused and looked over his shoulder at her.
She smiled, a wicked, wild thing. “Make it quick.”
It was a challenge, not a plea. The king’s council and the guards shifted, some of them murmuring.
The king’s eyes narrowed slightly, and when he smiled at her, it was the most horrific thing she’d ever seen.
“Oh?” he said, turning to face her fully.
That foolish fire went out.
“If it is an easy death you desire, Celaena Sardothien, I will certainly not give it to you. Not until you have adequately suffered.”
The world balanced on the edge of a knife, slipping, slipping, slipping.
“You, Celaena Sardothien, are sentenced to nine lives’ worth of labor in the Salt Mines of Endovier.”
Her blood turned to ice. The councilmen all glanced at each other. Obviously, this option hadn’t been discussed beforehand.
“You will be sent with orders to keep you alive for as long as possible—so you will have the chance to enjoy Endovier’s special kind of agony.”
Endovier.
Then the king turned away.
Endovier.
There was a flurry of motion, and the king barked an order to have her on the first wagon out of the city. Then there were hands on her arms, and crossbows pointed at her as she was half-dragged out of the room.
Endovier.
She was thrown in her dungeon cell for minutes, or hours, or a day. Then more guards came to fetch her, leading her up the stairs, into the still-blinding sun.
Endovier.
New shackles, hammered shut. The dark interior of a prison wagon. The turn of multiple locks, the jostle of horses starting into a walk, and many other horses surrounding the wagon.
Through the small window high in the door wall, she could see the capital, the streets she knew so well, the people milling about and glancing at the prison wagon and the mounted guards, but not thinking about who might be inside. The golden dome of the Royal Theater in the distance, the briny scent of a breeze off the Avery, the emerald-tiled roofs and white stones of every building.
All passing by, all so quickly.
They passed the Assassin’s Keep where she had trained and bled and lost so much, the place where Sam’s body lay, waiting for her to bury him.
The game had been played, and she had lost.
Now they came to the looming alabaster walls of the city, their gates thrown wide to accommodate their large party.
As Celaena Sardothien was led out of the capital, she sank into a corner of the wagon and did not get up.
Standing atop one of the many emerald roofs of Rifthold, Rourke Farran and Arobynn Hamel watched as the prison wagon was escorted out of the city. A chill breeze swept off the Avery, ruffling their hair.
“Endovier, then,” Farran mused, his dark eyes still upon the wagon. “A surprising twist of events. I thought you had planned a grand rescue from the butchering block.”
The King of the Assassins said nothing.
“So you’re not going after the wagon?”
“Obviously not,” Arobynn said, glancing at the new Crime Lord of Rifthold. It had been on this very rooftop that Farran and the King of the Assassins had first run into each other. Farran had been going to spy on one of Jayne’s mistresses, and Arobynn … well, Farran had never learned why Arobynn had been meandering across the roofs of Rifthold in the middle of the night.
“You and your men could free her in a matter of moments,” Rourke went on. “Attacking a prison wagon is far safer than what you had originally planned. Though, I’ll admit—sending her to Endovier is far more interesting to me.”
“If I wanted your opinion, Farran, I would have asked for it.”
Farran gave him a slow smile. “You might want to consider how you speak to me now.”
“And you might want to consider who gave you your crown.”
Farran chuckled, and silence fell for a long moment. “If you wanted her to suffer, you should have left her in my care. I could have had her begging for you to save her in a matter of minutes. It would have been exquisite.”
Arobynn just shook his head. “Whatever gutter you grew up in, Farran, it must have been an unparalleled sort of hell.”
Farran studied his new ally, his gaze glittering. “You have no idea.” After another moment of quiet, he asked, “Why did you do it?”
Arobynn’s attention drifted back to the wagon, already a small dot in the rolling foothills above Rifthold. “Because I don’t like sharing my belongings,” was his only response.
After
She had been in the wagon for two days now, watching the light shift and dance on the walls. She only moved from the corner long enough to relieve herself or to pick at the food they threw in for her.
She had believed she could love Sam and not pay the price. Everything has a price, she’d once been told by a Spidersilk merchant in the Red Desert. How right he was.
Sunlight shone through the wagon again, filling it with weak light. The trek to the Salt Mines of Endovier took two weeks, and each mile led them farther and farther north—and into colder weather.
When she dozed, falling in and out of dreams and reality and sometimes not knowing the difference, she was often awoken by the shivers that racked her body. The guards offered her no protection against the chill.
Two weeks in this dark, reeking wagon, with only the shadows and light on the wall for company, and the silence hovering around her. Two weeks, and then Endovier.
She lifted her head from the wall.
The growing fear set the silence flickering.
No one survived Endovier. Most prisoners didn’t survive a month. It was a death camp.
A tremor went down her numb fingers. She drew her legs in tighter to her chest, resting her head against them.
The shadows and the light continued to play on the wall.
Excited whispers, the crunch of rushing feet on dried grass, moonlight shining through the window.
She didn’t know how she got upright, or how she made it to the tiny barred window, her legs stiff and aching and wobbly from disuse.
The guards were all gathered near the edge of the clearing they’d camped in for the night, staring out into the tangle of trees. They’d entered Oakwald Forest sometime on the first day, and now it would be nothing but trees-trees-trees for the two weeks that they would travel north.
The moon illuminated the mist swirling along the leaf-strewn ground, and made the trees cast long shadows like lurking wraiths.
And there—standing in a copse of thorns—was a white stag.
Celaena’s breath hitched.
She clenched the bars of the small window as the creature looked at them. His towering antlers seemed to glow in the moonlight, crowning him in wreaths of ivory.
“Gods above,” one of the guards whispered.
The stag’s enormous head turned slightly—toward the wagon, toward the small window.
The Lord of the North.
So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home, she’d once told Ansel as they lay under a blanket of stars and traced the constellation of the stag. So they can look up at the sky, no matter where they are, and know Terrasen is forever with them.
Tendrils of hot air puffed from the stag’s snout, curling in the chill night.
Celaena bowed her head, though she kept her eyes upon him. The constellation had watched over her for so many years.
So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home …
A crack in the silence—spreading wider and wider as the stag’s fathomless eyes stayed steady on her.
A glimmer of a world long since destroyed—a kingdom in ruins. The stag shouldn’t be here—not so deep into Adarlan or so far from home. How had he survived the hunters who had been set loose nine years ago, when the king had ordered all the sacred white stags of Terrasen butchered?