The Assassin and the Underworld

She nodded. There was more she wanted to say to him, and she didn’t want him to go, but her throat had closed up, too full of all those unspoken words. She made to turn away.

“Celaena.” She looked back at him, her red gown sweeping around her. His eyes shone as he flashed her a crooked grin. “I missed you this summer.”

She met his stare unflinchingly, returning the smile as she said, “I hate to admit it, Sam Cortland, but I missed your sorry ass, too.”

He merely chuckled before he strode toward the party, his hands in his pockets.

Chapter Four

Crouched in the shadows of a gargoyle the following afternoon, Celaena shifted her numb legs and groaned softly. She usually opted to wear a mask, but with the rain, it would have limited her vision even further. Going without, though, made her feel somewhat exposed.

The rain also made the stone slick, and she took extra care while adjusting her position. Six hours. Six hours spent on this rooftop, staring across the street at the two-story house Doneval had rented for the duration of his stay. It was just off the most fashionable avenue in the city, and was enormous, as far as city homes went. Made of solid white stone and capped with green clay shingles, it looked just like any other well-off home in the city, right down to its intricately carved windowsills and doorways. The front lawn was manicured, and even in the rain, servants bustled around the property, bringing in food, flowers, and other supplies.

That was the first thing she noticed—that people came and went all day. And there were guards everywhere. They looked closely at the faces of the servants who entered, scaring the daylights out of some of them.

There was a whisper of boots against the ledge, and Sam nimbly slipped into the shadows of the gargoyle, returning from scouting the other side of the house.

“A guard on every corner,” Celaena murmured as Sam settled down beside her. “Three at the front door, two at the gate. How many did you spot in the back?”

“One on either side of the house, three more by the stables. And they don’t look like cheap hands for hire, either. Will we take them out, or slip past them?”

“I’d prefer not to kill them,” she admitted. “But we’ll see if we can slip past when the time comes. Seems like they’re rotating every two hours. The off-duty guards go into the house.”

“Doneval’s still away?”

She nodded, inching nearer to him. Of course, it was just to absorb his warmth against the freezing rain. She tried not to notice when he pressed closer to her, too. “He hasn’t returned.”

Doneval had left nearly an hour ago, closely flanked by a hulking brute of a man who looked hewn from granite. The bodyguard inspected the carriage, examined the coachman and the footman, held the door until Doneval was ensconced inside, and then slipped in himself. It seemed like Doneval knew very well just how coveted and delicate his list of slave sympathizers was. She’d seldom seen this kind of security.

They’d already surveyed the house and grounds, noting everything from the stones of the building to what sort of latches sealed the windows to the distance between the nearby rooftops and the roof of the house itself. Even with the rain, she could see well enough into the second-story window to make out a long hallway. Some servants came out of rooms bearing sheets and blankets—bedrooms, then. Four of them. There was a supply closet near the stairwell at the center of the hall. From the light that spilled into the hallway, she knew that the main stairwell had to be open and grand, just like the one in the Assassins’ Keep. Not a chance of hiding, unless they found the servants’ passages.

They got lucky, though, when she spied a servant going into the one of the second-floor rooms, carrying a pile of the afternoon papers. A few minutes later, a maid lugged in a bucket and tools for sweeping out a fireplace, and then a manservant brought in what looked like a bottle of wine. She hadn’t seen anyone changing the linens in that room, and so they took special notice of the servants who entered and exited.

It had to be the private study that Arobynn had mentioned. Doneval probably maintained a formal study on the first floor, but if he were doing dark dealings, then moving his real business to a more hidden quarter of the house would make sense. But they still needed to figure out what time the meeting would take place. Right now, it could be at any point on the arranged day.

“There he is,” Sam hissed. Doneval’s carriage pulled up, and the hulking bodyguard got out, scouring the street for a moment before he motioned for the businessman to emerge. Celaena had a feeling that Doneval’s rush to get into the house wasn’t just about the downpour.

They ducked back into the shadows again. “Where do you suppose he went?” Sam asked.

She shrugged. His former wife’s Harvest Moon party was tonight; perhaps that had something to do with it, or the street festival that Melisande was hosting in the center of the city today. She and Sam were now crouching so close together that a toasty warmth was spreading up one side of her. “Nowhere good, I’m sure.”

Sam let out a breathy laugh, his eyes still on the house. They were silent for a few minutes. At last, he said, “So, the Mute Master’s son …”

She almost groaned.

“How close were you, exactly?” He focused on the house, though she noticed that he’d fisted his hands.

Just tell him the truth, idiot!

“Nothing happened with Ilias. It was just a bit of flirtation, but … nothing happened,” she said again.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “nothing happened with Lysandra. And nothing is going to. Ever.”

“And why, exactly, do you think I care?” It was her turn to keep her eyes fixed on the house.

He nudged her with his shoulder. “Since we’re friends now, I assumed you’d want to know.”

She was grateful that her hood concealed most of her burning-hot face. “I think I preferred it when you wanted to kill me.”

“Sometimes I think so, too. Certainly made my life more interesting. I wonder, though—if I’m helping you, does it mean I get to be your Second when you run the Assassin’s Guild? Or does it just mean that I can boast that the famed Celaena Sardothien finally finds me worthy?”

She jabbed him with an elbow. “It means you should shut up and pay attention.” They grinned at each other, and then they waited. Around sunset—which felt especially early that day, given the heavy cloud cover—the bodyguard emerged. Doneval was nowhere in sight, and the bodyguard motioned to the guards, speaking quietly to them before he strode down the street. “Off on an errand?” Celaena pondered. Sam inclined his head after the bodyguard, a suggestion that they follow. “Good idea.”

Celaena’s stiff limbs ached in protest as she slowly, carefully inched away from the gargoyle. She kept her eyes on the nearby guards, not once looking away as she grabbed the roof ledge and hauled herself up it, Sam following suit.

She wished she had the boots the master tinkerer was adjusting for her, but they wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. Her black leather boots, while supple and supportive, felt a bit traitorous on the rain-slick gutter of the roof. Still, she and Sam kept low and fast as they dashed along the roof edge, tracking the hulking man in the street below. Luckily, he turned down a back alley, and the next house was close enough that she could nimbly leap onto the adjacent roof. Her boots slid, but her gloved fingers grappled onto the green stone shingles. Sam landed flawlessly beside her, and, to her surprise, she didn’t bite his head off when he grabbed the back of her cloak to help her stand.

The bodyguard continued along the alley, and they trailed on the rooftops, shadows against the growing dark. At last, he came to a broader street where the gaps between houses were too big to jump, and Celaena and Sam shimmied down a drainpipe. Their boots were soft as they hit the ground. They picked up a casual pace behind their quarry, arms linked, just two citizens of the capital on their way to somewhere, eager to get out of the rain.

It was easy to spot him in the crowd, even as they reached the main avenue of the city. People jumped out of his way, actually. Melisande’s street festival in honor of the Harvest Moon was in full swing, and people flocked to it despite the rain. Celaena and Sam followed the bodyguard for a few more blocks, down a few more alleys. The bodyguard turned to look behind him only once, but he found them leaning casually against an alley wall, merely two cloaked figures taking shelter from the rain.

With all the waste brought in by the Melisande convoy, and the smaller street festivals that had already occurred, the streets and sewers were nearly overflowing with garbage. As they stalked the bodyguard, Celaena heard people talking about how the city wardens had dammed up parts of the sewers to let them fill with rainwater. Tomorrow night they were going to unleash them, causing a torrent in the sewers wild enough to sweep all the clinging trash into the Avery River. They’d done it before, apparently—if the sewers weren’t flushed out every now and then, the filth would grow stagnant and reek even more. Still, Celaena planned to be high, high above the streets by the time they unleashed those dams. There was sure to be some in-street flooding before it subsided, and she had no desire to walk through any of it.

The bodyguard eventually went into a tavern on the cusp of the crumbling slums, and they waited for him across the street. Through the cracked windows, they could see him sitting at the bar, drinking mug after mug of ale. Celaena began to wish fervently that she could be at the street festival instead.

“Well, if he has a weakness for alcohol, then perhaps that could be our way around him,” Sam observed. She nodded, but didn’t say anything. Sam looked toward the glass castle, its towers wreathed in mist. “I wonder if Bardingale and the others are having any luck convincing the king to fund their road,” he said. “I wonder why she would even want it built, since she seems so eager to make sure the slave trade stays out of Melisande for as long as possible.”

“If anything, it means she has absolute faith that we won’t fail,” Celaena said. When she didn’t say anything else, Sam fell silent. An hour passed, and the bodyguard spoke to no one, paid the entire tab with a piece of silver, and headed back to Doneval’s house. Despite the ale he’d consumed, his steps were steady, and by the time Sam and Celaena reached the house, she was almost bored to tears—not to mention shivering with cold and unsure if her numbed toes had fallen off inside her boots.

They watched from a nearby street corner as the bodyguard went up the front steps. He held a position of respect, then, if he wasn’t made to enter through the back. But even with the bits of information they’d gathered that day, when they made the twenty-minute trek across the city to the Keep, Celaena couldn’t help feeling rather useless and miserable. Even Sam was quiet as they reached their home, and merely told her that he’d see her in a few hours.

The Harvest Moon party was that night—and the deal with Doneval three days away. Considering how little they’d been able to actually glean that day, perhaps she’d have to work a little harder than she’d thought to find a way to take out her quarry. Maybe Arobynn’s “gift” had been more of a curse.

What a waste.

She spent an hour soaking in her bathtub, running the hot water until she was fairly certain there wasn’t any left for anyone else in the Keep. Arobynn himself had commissioned the running water outfit for the Keep, and it had cost as much as the building did, but she was forever grateful for it.

Once the ice had melted away from her bones, she slipped into the black silk dressing robe Arobynn had given her that morning—another of his presents, but still not enough that she’d forgive him anytime soon. She padded into her bedroom. A servant had started a fire, and she was about to begin dressing for the Harvest Moon party when she spotted the pile of papers on her bed.

They were tied with a red string, and her stomach fluttered as she pulled out the note placed on top.