much to atone. Are you a sinner, girl? Will you lift your arms to us and accept our mercy?”
Shadows danced around her cell, not cast from the single torch flickering on the outside of her bars. Alyssa put her hands atop her head and buried her face into her knees.
“I want to be warm,” she said. “Please, my father, he’s not bad, he isn’t. I just want to be warm.”
While Alyssa peered over her knees, she saw the shadows swarm together, grow volume and mass, and then finally fill with color, becoming a woman shrouded in black with a white cloth covering her face.
“There is warmth in the abyss,” the woman said as she drew a serrated dagger. “Would you like me to send you there? Careful of what you ask, girl. Be clear with your demands, or accept the cruel gifts fools and selfish men may give.”
Alyssa forced herself to stand. She felt skinny and naked before the strange woman, and it took all her willpower to keep her hands at her sides, stop them from shaking.
“I want out of this prison,” she said. “I have done nothing to deserve its cold. Now tell me, who sent you here?”
“Who else would send us?” the woman asked. “Do not ask questions where you already know the answers. Remain quiet. We are few, and some things must be done in silence.”
She wrapped her cloak around her body, its fabric seemingly made of liquid shadow. A sudden jerk and she was gone, her body exploding into dark fragments that splashed across the walls and faded like smoke.
“You have accepted the help of the faceless,” echoed a whisper throughout her cell. “Always remember, the cost you pay is always dearer once it has left your hand.”
Alyssa sat back down, curled her knees to her chin, and began to cry. She wondered what Yoren would say if he saw her like that. He was so beautiful, and she knew she could be too, but not here, not cold and wet and crying like a pathetic street urchin. Her tears did not stop like she hoped. Instead, she cried louder.
Far away, she heard a door open, the sound thick with bolts and metal. Her eyes lifted, and with detached curiosity, she watched and waited.
A hefty man lumbered into view, his thumbs tucked into his belt. His eyes were beady and close together, and his long mustache dripped with grease. Alyssa had never met him before returning home to Veldaren, though she had quickly learned his name. Jorel Tule, master of the cold cells.
“I got dogs howling up a storm,” Jorel said. “Figure I’d make sure you’re nice and cozy.”
“A blanket,” she said. Her teeth chattered, and it was no act.
“Gemcroft says to wait until you can’t stand no more,” the man said, hoisting up his belt. “I think he means to have me wait until you’re close to dead before warming you up.”
A hard edge entered his eye. Alyssa recognized it as perverse joy in seeing one of noble birth sunken down to his level and then put at his mercy. When shadows began coalescing behind his back, she openly smiled.
“I think you can wait a bit longer,” Jorel said.
“A blanket might have saved your life,” Alyssa replied. Jorel gave her a funny look but did not respond. When he turned to leave, a serrated dagger awaited him. It sliced his throat and splattered blood across the floor. The blood slid off the faceless woman’s robes like water.
“He never would have served you,” the woman said. “But there are others that will, and we must spare them if we can. Otherwise, your rule will be disputed and last as long as a sputtering candle in a storm.”
“My rule?”
Alyssa stood, her arms no longer shaking. She waited until the faceless woman opened her cell, then grasped the door with one hand and held it firm.
“Tell me your name,” she said.
“I have no name,” the woman replied.
“You said you are faceless, not nameless, now tell me.”
Alyssa could not see the woman’s eyes through the white cloth, but she had a feeling that behind it hid an amused smile.
“A strong candle,” the woman said. “My name is Eliora.”
“Then listen to me well, Eliora,” Alyssa said. “I will not accept rule of my household over the murdered body of my father. Whatever you were paid or promised, I can match it. All I ask is that Maynard be captured, not killed.”
Eliora let go of the door and stepped back so Alyssa could exit.
“This world is chaos, but I will do what I can. Be warned; your father may already be dead. If that is the case, turn your anger on who hired us. Do not blame the sword for the blood spilled, only the hand that wielded it.”
The faceless woman led them up the winding stairs out of the dungeon. They encountered no guards, dead or living. As they ascended, Alyssa heard the ruckus the dogs were making. Eliora must have noticed the look on her face, for the hounds sounded as if they were ravenous for blood.
“They are frightened and angry,” she explained. “It is a simple spell we cast upon them to draw the guards out of the estate. My sisters are all inside, I assure you.”
Alyssa nodded but said nothing.
The stairs ended in a cramped room with bare walls and a lone door, the outside of which was normally bolted. Eliora gently pushed it open; Jorel must have gone down without alerting anyone, otherwise they would have locked it behind him.
“How many are with you?” Alyssa asked. Eliora shot her a glare.
“We are three,” she said. “Though we may be less if you continue braying louder than a mule.”
With so little time between her arrival and subsequent imprisonment, Alyssa had not taken stock of her father’s defenses. She knew they could not be light. No matter how much she might belittle the thief guilds, she was not an idiot. Without adequate protection, cloaked men with daggers would be lurking under every bed and within every closet.
Of course, those defenses seemed to have meant little to the faceless woman, and that thought gave Alyssa a chill. Surely the Kulls were behind their hiring, but what if it had been Thren Felhorn instead? Suddenly her father’s difficulties dealing with the threat of the guilds didn’t seem quite so pathetic. Clearly the Kulls meant for her to take over the Gemcroft estate. Once in position to rule, she would keep all that in mind when deciding how to deal with her father.
Men shouted in the far distance, their voices muffled through the walls.
“That would be Nava,” Eliora whispered. “She is looping the compound, killing guards foolish enough to leave themselves vulnerable. Hurry now. We go to your father’s room.”
The plush carpet felt wonderful to her bare feet. Even better was the warm burst of air blowing across her skin. She remembered how warm her father kept the mansion, and how she used to stretch out before the large fires roaring in the multitude of hearths throughout its halls. Winter still approached, but already Maynard had begun fighting the chill. Alyssa almost stole away from Eliora for such a fire, desiring nothing more than to huddle close and burn away the deep frost that had settled into her bones. The biting words the faceless woman might say kept her from doing so.
They hurried down a long hall. Over twenty windows stretched along the right, their glass covered by violet curtains. On the left hung paintings of former masters of the Gemcroft estate. A hysterical laugh died in her throat as she wondered if her own painting would hang on the wall. She also wondered if she’d live long enough for someone to paint it.
I come for my crown, she thought. What the bloody abyss has come over me?
She wanted none of this. She had meant to berate her father, show him his cowardice and hesitance and by doing so spur him into harsher dealings with the guilds. Never did she expect to usurp him before the waning of the moon.
They reached the end of the hall. Eliora slipped through the empty doorway, silent as a ghost. A guard stood to the right of it, and he died with a dagger in his throat and a wrapped hand over his mouth. As she watched the blood spill across the floor, Alyssa remembered the questions her father had asked. What did the Kull household plan? Your elimination, she thought. The company of the faceless. Dimly she wondered if her own eyes might be as covered as Eliora’s was with her thin white cloth.
Once certain no more guards were about, Eliora waved Alyssa on through.
“Is there anyone who might help supervise the Gemcroft estate?” the faceless woman asked as they passed
