Has anybody read a fic by Death Goddess Assassin? I was skimming over the TP pages and I came across her Fearless fic and I read it and now I'm like…wow. And then there's the Of Pancakes and Syrup. Hee. Anybody who HASN'T should read her. But anyway.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I own nothing. I own nothing. I own nothing. I own nothing. Oh, sorry. Those four extra "I own nothings" are there so I don't have to put them in the next four chapters. M'K. Read.
~*~
It was cold…very cold. And it was bumpy. Extremely bumpy.
Keladry moaned and forced her eyelids to open. She was looking up into a dark, star-speckled sky. She tried to move, but found she was tied down with thick, tight, coarse ropes.
Ow…my head.
That hurt like crazy. It felt like it was swollen ten times its normal size, too, and was a little sticky from…what? Dried blood? Her head gave a nasty throb and she winced, hissing, as it all came back to her. Struggling with more determination, she was able to free her thumb, but that was all she managed when something ice-cold pressed against her cheek.
"I see you've woken up," her captor said. "Good. You're awfully trying asleep."
"Who…who are you?" she asked hoarsely, licking her dry, trembling lips.
There was a small pause, as though he was considering the idea.
"Well, upon the fact you won't live to tell anybody who I am, I suppose I can tell you," he said, and his voice seemed slightly conversational. "I'm Frenn, an assassin. I've been hired to kill you."
Put me down gently, why don't you, Kel thought, bewildered.
"How do you plan on killing me?"
"By taking you across seas to Carthak and killing you there, so no one finds the body."
Oh. Okay.
"Who hired you?" she asked dully.
Before he opened his mouth she knew the answer.
"Some smart-mouth sadistic kid named…what was it? Starts with a J. He's from Stone Mountain. Ah, Joseph, Jorge…Joren! That's it! Lord Burchard's son, Joren of Stone Mountain!"
~*~
Some wench was screaming. Joren cracked open an eye, confused and tired. For a moment he had no clue what the girl was screaming about; then a sharp blast of a decidedly disgusting odor up his nostrils reminded him of what happened last night.
He had come back to his bed, tried to sleep, couldn't because he stank so bad, got up again, took a quiet bath, and then got back to bed. Unfortunately his bed sheets were soiled with whatever the hell it was, but by then he was so sleepy he didn't really care. Now he wished he had washed them.
Not only was he the prime suspect now, thanks to his brilliant subtle hint to Mindelan in the library, but he was also the only one who would think of doing this.
Damn. What'll Daddy dearest say? Not that I care. Only thing he's good for is paying fines and getting me out of trouble. Though I'm rather interested in what dear old knight-master Paxton has to say.
Stupid git.
Joren sighed and sat up in bed. The screams had become wails, and they were accompanied by shouts and slamming doors and a gazillion different pairs of feet. The wailing was probably coming from that wench, Lollypop or whatever her frickin' name was.
Someone banged on his door, and the pain in his head mounted to explode into a throbbing headache. Joy.
"Joren, wake up!" Vinson of Genlith shouted gleefully. "Someone has abducted the Lump!"
Abducted. Ah. A quaint way to put it.
"Oh, my," Joren said dryly, crawling out of his putrid bed. "How awful. Is she dead?"
"We don't know," Vinson replied happily. "There's not a body."
No shit, you dim-witted chicken. She's being taken to Carthak by ship where she will be beaten and possibly
(raped)
killed before she even reaches her destination. The men will do all sorts of cruel things to her, like club her or
(touch her)
stab her in the guts.
Even as Joren thought about the beatings and the clubbing, he still came back to that one thought…He knew it would be inevitable. A cold assassin and thirty-odd rough-and-tough sailors on one ship together, and then here's this young girl who is cute in her own way…yes, it would definitely be inevitable.
Joren paused in button his shirt, then continued. He tumbled lowly chits all the time—weren't squires infamous for it?—but only when they wanted it. He, who hires assassins to kill some innocent page; he, who enjoys pain and destruction with a sadistic kind of pleasure; he, who would tie weights to his friend's cat and watched it sink into its murky fate; he, who would tie matches to dogs' tails and then light then and watch them run, could not bare to even think of spoiling a girl.
Whenever Vinson or Garvey of Runnerspring found some lass in the slums of Corus, and got that look in their eyes, he always scrammed. There was something infinitely wrong about it. And that was what bothered him the most.
…That Mindelan might get…that she would be…
…Raped…
The thought left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He would listen to his friends' tales of deflowering young ladies with a kind of suppressed horror, but always laugh with them.
Who am I to worry? Joren thought uneasily, finishing buttoning. Mindelan is strong, she'll make it.
Are you sure?
DAMN YOU, CONSCIENCE! GO AWAY!
~*~
Something long and skinny was stuck in Kel's mouth when she woke up. Confused, and not entirely awake, she moved her tongue around it and found that the middle of it was hollow.
A straw, she realized dimly. Why is there a straw in my mouth?
"You awake?" the man Frenn asked gruffly.
She grunted a feeble yes.
"Good. I'm going to give you something to drink, okay?"
Her parched throat constricted painfully in anticipation. She grunted another croaky yes, and seconds later a cool, fruity liquid was poured in her mouth through the straw. She closed her eyes, slurping it up blissfully. This was the first drink—wait scratch that, this was the first nourishment she had had in what was it, weeks, months? In reality, six hours, but it felt much longer.
Why do I have to use a straw? she wondered. Why can't I just sit up and drink?
Because he's afraid I'll bolt.
Which she would, first chance she got. Kel had no intention of staying here with this crazy or whatever the heck he was.
If she couldn't escape him within the Tortall boundaries, then perhaps she could escape in the Copper Isles…or was it Carthak? Oh well…it started with a C for sure. There was bound to be a Tortallan-ally sandwiched in there somewhere. Especially if it was Carthak, which was on much more amiable terms with Tortall since Daine Sarrasri the Wildmage visited some years back and since Kaddar took over his uncle's position as Emperor of Carthak.
Hope it is Carthak, she thought. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going.
Oh how she hoped it was. The Copper Isles were not their enemy, not really, but…they weren't exactly Tortall-lovers. If helping a Tortallan would benefit them somehow, that's great, if not, that sucks for Tortallans.
She opened her mouth to ask where they were, why the road was so bumpy, what hey were riding on—though she was pretty sure it was a horse and cart or something of the like—when her head began to feel dizzy and her stomach lurched queasily.
Poison, was her last thought before she sank in some kind of merciful, blank darkness.
~*~
"How many times do I have to tell you, I had nothing to do with the murder?!"
Quiet obviously, Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak did not believe Joren's ardent outburst, no matter how sincere it sounded. He watched the blond squire with his black eyes that were now so deadly calm and furious.
Joren, reminded of the man's giant size and of his rather puny one, gulped.
"I have interrogated several of Keladry's friends," Raoul continued softly, eyes never leaving those icy blue ones that were becoming increasingly though practically unnoticeably twitchy, "and they all claim you came up to them the night of her disappearance with a heart-wrenching tale of how you wanted to look at her in case she died tomorrow."
"That was just a philosophy, a, a paranormal preparation," Joren almost shouted desperately. He was ashamed to find his voice cracked. "I truly had nothing to do with her abduction!"
"Uh-huh," the dark man said doubtfully. "So your bed sheets have nothing to do with it?"
"What sheets?" he asked, attempting to slip on his calm, cool mask, as Mindelan did hers.
"Quite frankly, they stink—and Salma mentioned to me one time that there was a little bewitchment on the lock that would squirt anybody who picked it with urine or some other foul-smelling liquid."
Joren watched him, empty-eyed, sweaty.
Caught.
~*~
I take it nobody really does have ideas for the title after all? If nobody does, then I'll just keep the title. What the hell. Maybe I will be inspired in later chapters.