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  Rosefiend Publishing.

  ASSASSIN’S BLADE

  Copyright © 2020 by Melinda R. Cordell

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Rosefiend Publishing. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction, just in case there was any question about that. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, dragons, enchantresses, bankers, evil cardinals, assassin grandmas, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Ordering information: For details, contact the publisher at [email protected]

  Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design

  Book Formatting template by Derek Murphy @Creativindie

  ISBN: 166089185X

  ISBN-13: 978-1660891856

  First Edition: 7 May 2020

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  SERIES ORDER:

  Assassin’s Blade

  Dragon’s Inferno

  Guardian’s Race

  Witch’s Plight

  Warrior’s Doom

  Traitor’s Oath

  Contents

  The End of the World

  The Sponsalia

  A Kiss Upon The Lips

  Apologies and regrets

  Shadows in the Mist

  “What Have I Done?”

  An Act of War

  Peace Talks

  Bad News

  True Love

  The Elder of the Mountain

  The Clay Figure

  Poison Pearl

  The Intercessionist

  Den of Theives

  Battle of the Assassins

  Illustrissimo

  An Unwanted Fare

  Inviolate

  A Bad Confession

  EmberFiend

  The Glamour

  Everything That Can Go Wrong

  Tenderness

  Strangers on the Tower

  Fia’s Secret Revealed

  A New Betrayal

  Hellscape

  Sparks Fly Upward

  A Final Sacrifice

  Battle in the Mountains

  The Blackness of Death’s Wings

  Enchantress

  I have set the point of the sword against all their gates, that their heart may faint, and their ruins be multiplied: ah! It is made bright, it is wrapped up for the slaughter.

  Ezekiel 21:15

  1

  The End of the World

  F

  ia’s target was in sight. She crouched behind a potted lemon tree in the piazza, a slip of a girl in an olive-green tunic and hose and boots, clutching her bow. Fia crooked her fingers at Neva to summon her over, her dark eyes never leaving the target.

  Neva joined her, her blonde hair long and swinging loose around her face. Fia’s dark brown hair was bound up, though not in the style of a married woman. Never that.

  Neva rested her chin on Fia’s shoulder, looking toward the target. “You better not do it,” she whispered. “If you shoot him, the retaliation will never end. He will send his sultans and guards after you. They’ll pursue you beyond the sunset to the gates of hell.”

  Fia plucked an arrow from her quiver. “I can outrun them. They can’t kill what they can’t catch.”

  Her target sat with his friends playing dice, a Persian form of the game from the old country, speaking in Syriac to his fellow countrymen and several Fiorenza friends.

  The piazza was bustling with many people under the bright morning sun: some shopping, some visiting on their way to the well. The markets ran along the side of the monastery gardens, where breads, fruits and vegetables, and cheese were being sold, and the fragrance of bread and lemons and wood smoke hung over the piazza. Fia’s target was sharing bread with his friends, still warm from the communal stone oven that had cooked it. He tore off a piece and lifted it in his fingers as he talked to his friends. There it stayed, aloft, as he continued talking.

  Perfect. Fia drew the bow, her face pressed against the string as she took deadly aim.

  “Fia, don’t!” Neva whispered.

  The bowstring sang, and the arrow flew to its mark – straight through the piece of bread, carrying it away.

  “Aiee!” Her grandfather dropped what was left of his bread and he squinted at Fia.

  Then he roared with laughter. “Child! That was my breakfast!”

  The people he’d been speaking with were not amused. “Are you trying to put somebody’s eye out?” one of his astonished friends said.

  “Or get somebody killed?” another added.

  Fia stood up from behind the lemon tree. “They’re blunted arrows.” Fia pulled out an arrow to show them. A little piece of leather was tied to the business end of the arrow. “And my aim is good. I wasn’t going to hit any of you.”

  “Little girls shouldn’t play with bows and arrows,” one of the Fiorenza men said sanctimoniously.

  “Little?” Fia said scornfully, hands on hips. “We’re twelve years old. We’re not little.”

  “And little girls shouldn’t wear their hair in that heathen style, and they shouldn’t be talking back to their elders,” the man added.

  Grandfather tore off another piece of bread. “I am what you would call a heathen,” he said mildly through his pepper-and-salt beard. “And in my home country, we allow women to shoot bows and arrows, and hold public office, and write books, and choose who they want to marry. If Fia were my grandson, you would be praising his aim and saying, ‘Boys will be boys!’”

  Grandfather’s friend grumbled, eyeing Fia darkly. “All the same, this city-state is under the sway of the Pope. The holy Church in her wisdom says no to all those things.”

  “Your faith is cousin to my faith,” Grandfather said. “I prefer my faith, for we treat our women as citizens, not chattel.”

  “And the girls can be assassins,” Fia said to Neva, just loud enough for the other man to hear.

  “I still think you shouldn’t have shot that arrow,” Neva whispered.

  Fia bumped lightly against her side the way she did when she was bored at Mass. “Come on. Let’s go play the Elder of the Mountain and his Many Assassins. We can be just like my grandmother, my teita Anna. I promise I won’t make you shoot anybody.”

  “I want to be the old man of the mountain.” Neva pulled her blonde hair into two sections, then brought them around to the front of her face and held them under her chin. “See? Now I have a white beard. Whitish.”

  “The Elder of the Mountain should have had a dragon army,” Fia said.

  “You’re just saying that because you want to be a dragonrider,” Neva said. She fluttered her beard at Fia, still holding her hair in front of her face. “We’re assassins. We don’t need dragons. You can’t sneak around stabbing people with a dragon that’s fifty cubits tall standing right behind you.”

  Fia rolled her eyes. “I don’t care. I’m going to have a dragon. She will be a stealth dragon.”

  “Oh, so a fifty-cubit dragon is going to sneak around on its tiptoes?”

  BOOM.

  The great, hollow concussion reverberated in the air, a sound that Fia had never heard before. Her breath caught in her throat and she stopped in her tracks.

  Neva dropped her hair. “What was that?”

  All around the marketplace, talk died away. People raised their
heads, looking around them. Even the sparrows in the lemon trees stopped their chirps.

  Now a single-throated roar as of a thousand voices rang out from the direction of the boom.

  Fia stood frozen on her feet. Inside the walls of the market, she could not see what was happening in the distance. Neva clutched her wooden sword. Fia took her best friend’s hand as if to protect her.

  “Fia, Neva,” her grandfather called, leaning on the table for support as he got to his feet. “Both of you, go home. Now.”

  “What’s happening?” Fia asked.

  “We’re in danger. Go.”

  BOOM. A second one, echoing through the houses and walls of the city. Another many-voiced shout.

  “It’s the city gate!” somebody shouted from the top of the market wall. “They’re breaching the gate at the Via Paloma. To arms! To arms!”

  “Who is breaching the gate?” Fia cried, but her voice was drowned in the chaos that broke out. Women screamed for their children. Shopkeepers started to their feet, drawing swords, some throwing their wares quickly back onto their mule carts. Heavy wooden shutters slammed shut over windows.

  Suddenly, at Fia’s back stood Teita Anna, her grandmother, so swiftly that Fia jumped. Teita Anna was barely taller than Fia, wearing her sand-colored scarf over her black hair. But her grandmother’s presence made Fia suddenly feel safe, despite the panic rising around her, despite another BOOM that shuddered the air, followed by screams.

  Teita touched a sash that she always wore as she watched the piazza intently. Fia knew that her knives were under that sash. Even all these years later, Teita kept several knives on her person, even though she hadn’t worked as an assassin for years.

  “What’s happening?” Neva said nervously.

  “The Sienese army is at the gates,” Teita said. “You must go home at once.”

  “The Sienese army?” Neva gasped, her eyes lighting.

  Fia quickly nocked a blunted arrow on her bow as the panic grew around them. If the Sienese army was here – another BOOM at the city gates chilled her blood – then that meant...

  “That means the exiles have returned,” Fia whispered. A large group of former citizens that had been exiled from the city had taken refuge in Siena, and the city had stood alone against Fiorenza for years.

  And now they had arrived, all together, to bring war to Fiorenza.

  “Yes,” said Teita. “The exiles are trying to force their way back into the city.”

  Neva clutched her hands together. “My grandfather is with them.” Enough people knew Neva’s family – some barely tolerated them, knowing their connection with the exiles – that Fia was sure Neva would be in danger.

  Teita clutched Neva’s hand. “Don’t show your joy,” she said urgently, gazing into Neva’s eyes. “If you want to get home safely, look afraid. Pretend to be frightened. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, madame,” Neva said, lowering her eyes. “But my grandpapa is probably in that army. He’s come back.” And Neva’s eyes lit again with such hope that Fia nudged her urgently until she looked serious again.

  Grandfather came hobbling up. “My leg will not let me run,” he said. “Hurry home. I’ll catch up.”

  Teita’s eyes gentled with worry. “Take my dagger.” She pulled her jeweled dagger. Even now, Fia marveled at the gleam of the ruby in its hilt, the keenness of its delicate silver blade.

  Grandfather shook his head, very serious. “Keep it. Use it if necessary. I want the children safe at home. God go with you.”

  Just then a mother next to them screamed.

  “Jacopo!” She gathered her other two toddling babies to her. The bundles she was trying to carry fell to the ground, but she didn’t notice – her face was a mask of terror as she looked wildly around. “He’s wandered away! Jacopo! Somebody find my baby!”

  Teita went concerned. “I’ll find him,” she said, vanishing like the breeze.

  Fia seized Neva’s hand. “Let’s run,” she said. “Grandfather, can you keep—”

  “A Sienese bitch!”

  The shout cut through the chaos of the market.

  Fia turned with a great gasp.

  A man with a sword came running toward them. “Whelp! You will die for the sins of the exiles!” The man lunged, sword raised, toward Neva, who stood wide-eyed and afraid, trembling to the ends of her blonde hair.

  It happened too fast for Fia to understand what she was seeing—

  Her grandfather leapt suddenly between the attacker’s sword and Neva, arms open.

  The man came on too fast. The sword pierced Grandfather’s chest.

  Blood. So much blood.

  Her grandfather crumpled to the stones of the piazza, choking out his life, a sword through his belly – but he was holding onto the sword’s hilt as the attacker tried to pull it out, his dark, baleful eyes fixed on the man who would have killed Neva.

  A cry wobbled from Fia’s lips.

  The next instant, a shriek like that of a bird of prey.

  It was Teita, screaming with a sound that Fia would never forget.

  Teita came flying across the marketplace like a hawk in its swift flight. A flash of silver and ruby as her jeweled dagger went flying – and a gout of blood flew from the man who had killed her grandfather.

  The man flung his arms out, eyes wide, and slammed into the stones of the piazza.

  Harsh shouts. Two more men ran across the plaza at Neva, swords drawn, murder in their eyes. “You killed Lapo!” they screamed.

  Now Teita stood before both her dying husband and Neva. She reached under her sash, too quickly to see, pulled out something that glittered, and then swung her hand down hard. The first man cartwheeled in midrun like a rabbit that had been shot. He crashed to the stones of the piazza, twitching, a knife sticking out of his neck.

  The second man was nearly upon Teita. He spat at Teita and thrust his sword. Ducking his blade, she lunged into the man, using his running momentum to stab him deeply through the ribs. The next moment she shoved him back, stepping away as she pulled out her jeweled knife. The man’s body fell, and a great gout of blood leapt from his wound with every beat of his heart. He lay sprawled on the pavement, the fountain of blood from his heart growing less and less.

  Teita didn’t have a drop of blood on her.

  Her face crumpled with grief as she fell to her knees beside Fia’s grandpa, her husband. Their eyes met.

  Blood trickled from Grandfather’s mouth as he whispered, “You are my wild bird, the love of my life.”

  “You have always held my heart within yours,” Teita whispered, her tears flowing as she caressed his face.

  “God give you peace,” Grandfather said. Then a sigh flowed from his lips as if all the air went out of his lungs. His face went slack and his eyes drifted away from hers. He slipped from her arms and crumpled on the stones.

  Fia pressed her fist to her mouth and screamed. She and Neva clutched each other.

  Teita pulled the sword free from her husband’s body, and with a moan of terrible grief she flung it aside. She turned her stricken eyes to Fia. “Go home now!” she screamed. “Protect your friend and take her home now! He gave his life to save hers!”

  Fia was crying too hard to see, but Teita’s voice galvanized her. The girls fled together, and Fia heard Neva’s sobs through her own. Neva stumbled, half-fainting, and Fia threw her arm around her waist. “Keep going. Keep going,” Fia sobbed, with no thought but the image of her grandfather crumpled over that sword. He was holding on to the hilt, she thought, so the man couldn’t pull it out and stab Neva ....

  “The tower,” Fia gasped. “We’ll go to my house ... we’ll hide in the tower ...”

  Neva and her family lived across the courtyard from Fia’s house, the courtyard where children play, where a few storefronts opened into the street to sell meat and produce and a blacksmith kept his forge. All their lives, she and Neva had played tag or prisoner’s base or dueling knights with the other children there.


  Neva and Fia ran into her house and up the staircase that spiraled into the darkness, lit only by the narrow windows that had served as arrow windows in older times.

  Moments later Fia and Neva stood upon the great tower of her parents’ home. Awash in misery, Fia crouched upon the stones, her head in her hands. She couldn’t stop sobbing. Neva sat next to her and gathered her in.

  “Mother hen,” Fia sobbed.

  Usually Neva would cluck like a hen when Fia called her this. This time she just held her friend tighter, and Fia felt her tears upon her scalp.

  “Your grandfather saved my life.” Neva was shaking.

  “I know.”

  “He was always so good to me,” Neva said. “Those conversations we had when he was sitting outside at the end of the day ... it was like he was my grandfather too.”

  “I know.” Fia had always loved those easy conversations between the three of them as the sun went down.

  Just then, a hissing in the sky.

  “Look,” Neva said, pointing, her voice wobbling.

  Fia looked up. Over the parapets, Fia could see the dragons of the armies in the skies – more dragons aloft than she’d ever seen before.

  The dragons of the Fiorenza army were rising into the air, their wings and scales flashing like jewels in the morning sun, and waves of billowing fire rolled out from them as they flew to meet the Sienese attackers in the air. The dragons that defended Fiorenza had asbestos banners with the picture of the lily upon them tied to their lower necks so the fighters and the armies on the ground could identify which side the dragons fought upon.

  Their riders on dragonback shot at each other with crossbows as dragons lunged through the air. And through this came another BOOM from the gates.

  Neva clutched Fia’s hand in a grip that hurt, her face going pale. “My grandpa,” she whispered. “He’s in the Sienese army. He’s come back.”

  Fia thought, My grandfather will never come back. But she wouldn’t grudge Neva her excitement and hope. Neva had missed her own grandfather since he was driven from Fiorenza into exile when she was a little girl.

  Fia looked into the skies as a phalanx of dragons from the Fiorenza army went roaring directly overhead: topaz and garnet war dragons, their wingspans wider than the roof of the tower that she and Neva cowered on. Sparks blew back from their breaths, and the sun made their scales gleam as if each were a brilliantly cut gem. The sun shone through the dragons’ wings like the stained-glass windows at a cathedral, and the heat from their bodies as they passed overhead hit her like a blow. She’d always loved dragons and wanted desperately to be a dragonrider – but only men were allowed to fly dragons.