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Author information: Website: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/books.html Email: kavrik@hotmail.com Twitter: @MichaelOffutt
I previously published "Wraith" on the Nifty Archive: http://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/sf-fantasy/wraith/
I like to draw. Artwork of characters featured in this and other stories of mine can be found at: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/my-artwork.html Yes, there's a black and white pencil drawing of Kian :). You may want to bookmark the page as I update it with drawings from time to time. Of course you are free to use my drawings for non-commercial purposes if you would like (just give me credit please). I would consider this flattering.
I intend to post a new chapter every weekend. "The Assassin's Apprentice" is a complete fantasy novella. This tale is told in first person present tense.
Chapter One
I am seventeen years old, and I feel infinite.
There is a man behind the lightly-colored oaken desk who leans forward into the flickering light of burning candles. We are far from the sunlight, and he wears upon his brown face an expression of faint amusement. It is the first time I really get a good look at him.
His expression is exquisite, unshakeable, and rugged. The lines of his skin tell me immediately that he has seen much hard work in his life. His papery flesh is a timeline of unending hardship. However, his eyes still shine with the reflection of the candlelight. They are tiny spots of blue in an otherwise colorless room, and he wears on his body a pale linen shirt with small wooden buttons.
Blue I suddenly realize is and always shall be my favorite color.
I associate blue with the ocean, that deep and dark place at the bottom of the Sea of Rwn. I am reminded of my lost home and my people who are no more. And I am convinced that Arioch, who rides the three chariots of fire across the sky, painted the heavens this color to remind all those who have seen death, that life is a thing with no boundaries.
Blue has many shades.
The one in which I am most comfortable drapes the bright burning stars in a shawl at last sunset. The witching hour calls to me like a pair of yellow eyes from the darkness, the prowling wolf that I have seen all my life, the hunter in the shadow. He is the one that taught me a man makes his own fate in life.
Reluctantly, I take my eyes off of him.
I am nervous and a little uncomfortable.
His face, unlike mine, is concealed in bristling black whiskers, trimmed short and shiny like a handful of steel wool. I utter no prayer, because I have no god. Yet, I tremble at what he can see in my youthful face which has seen human horrors, yet remains inadequate at hiding a lie.
I muse that I must seem a desperate urchin, sitting there, telling him my tale. I am a street brat, malnourished and covered in dirt and mud, and my lovely locks of yellow hair are smeared with grease and ash.
"That's quite a story," he says. He reaches over his desk, drawing himself closer to me, and grabs my hands. He inspects them, I suspect, for callouses.
I wonder if he believes me.
A ghastly moment of silence follows. I watch him study my face and my eyes. It is the perfect deception, this tenuous silence, meant to dislodge any notion I have for escape. He is my jailor now, I hear, echoing in the silence of my mind. This silence of his is meant to drown me in the subterfuge that I am a lost soul, the ghost of a man that calls out for help in the encroaching darkness.
I shudder, feeling hunger in my stomach, watching him play with a tangle of hair that droops near his ear. But I meet his eyes with mine. I never abandon a man's gaze. And I watch him, those delicate folds of flesh over his eyes, closing repeatedly atop spots of blue.
"Kian," he says, trying out my name. "Kian Lightfoot."
He studies me again. I wonder what it feels like to have such power. I am a youth he could murder, enslave, rape, or punish as he sees fit. Only the candle flames move, throwing their shimmer on the black tile floor like torches on a tide pool.
"I'm called Marcel. I'm the Day Master of the Thieves Guild here in Clothol. I'm a fair man if treated with respect, and I can be vengeful if wronged." He pauses, scraping his nails across the oaken desk. They are long, like a eunuch's nails, and equally well cared for. "Do you know why you were brought here?"
I shrug my shoulders. "Not really." I search the room, straining to hear the mice in the walls.
He cracks his knuckles, popping them one at a time, staring at me in silence. When he speaks again, it is as a man with no strength, a voice hushed to a whisper before a storm. And he withdraws back into the arms of his leather chair accented with gold stitching and red buttons.
"No one 'begs' in Hathaway without permission from the guild. Those that do usually wind up in shallow graves."
"Darn the luck," I reply.
He studies me with his eyes, and I curl my bony toes nervously.
"Would you like to become part of our family, Kian? You have a strong spirit. I admire that. I admire you. I ask this as an opportunist...from one man to another."
I chuckle. Was that a smile I detect breaking at the corner of his mouth? "What is it that they say about opportunity?"
"That it rarely knocks twice. You've been taught to use a sword. I need someone that can kill people quickly and quietly and using a sword is part of that. I can offer you this clandestine sanctuary," he indicates, "a place to live and to toil. It's a petty thing to destroy someone for the sake of destroying. Don't you think?"
I honestly had no other choice. But I waited before I said yes. I wanted him to think that I had options even if I had none.
He whistles then, and I hear the only door to the room open behind me.
I turn and a girl walks into the office, the color rose in her face. She has short-cropped brilliantly colored red hair and a small mouth. The girl's eyes shine like eastern jade. She inadvertently entices me with legs wrapped in tight leather pants and a bosom hidden by a modest suede tunic. I notice instantly that she has the bearing of a woman much older, and I can feel myself respond, my body growing hard between my legs.
Marcel gestures at me. "This is Kian."
I don't say anything. She probably thinks that I am queer, mute, or dumb.
"I'm Ambrell," she says.
I smile, and she regards me with those pretty green eyes right before wrinkling her nose.
"He's a smelly one, isn't he?" she asks.
I swallow my spit.
"Clean him up," Marcel orders. "Get him a room and introduce him to Swift. Oh, and feed him. I want him ready for training in the morning. Constantine may want to see him. Kian's exactly what he's been begging for."
I wonder who Constantine is.
"Anything else?" she asks, gently placing a hand on my shoulder. She gives me a reassuring squeeze with her fingers and winks at me. I like her instantly.
"Nothing else," Marcel replies.
Without hesitation, she grabs me by my soiled smock. I can smell the perfume she is wearing, and it reminds me of the drifting plumes of incense that haunted my dreams in opium parlors across the city. Distilled from the poppy, I relied on opium for nearly a decade to kill the pain of anal sex before tortuous orgies that called for a pretty boy hole.
I am now free of the flower, but the allure still calls to my soul.
Those first weeks in prison were hell. I'd have never made it without Cutter. The knight showed me mercy and taught me what I knew of swords. He also gave me my surname, because the brand on my foot made me limp in a way that amused the guards.
I gaze at Ambrell over the bridge of my perfect nose. She fascinates me. She's a glorious vixen who promises the biggest change of my life. "Let's go," she says, taking my hand in hers. "The air is beginning to turn a bit ripe."
"Do I smell that bad?" I ask. I know that I do, but I want to hear her speak.
"If you really want me to answer that...yes."
Ambrell ushers me into a torch-filled corridor, and I follow her down a flight of barren little steps made from planks of ash. We arrive in a sun-filled eating room where several lads sit stuffing their faces with gruel and bread from the myriad plates in front of them.
However, I realize that for the first time in my wandering, I am in a safe refuge.
And the thought of no more running...well...it removes any thoughts I have of food, at least for a while. She opens a door for me and there is another stairwell going down. The walls in this one are made from closely fit granite blocks, chisel marks still clearly imprinted upon their surface like the fossils of a much older time. The stairs, like all others in this place, are made from the planks of closely fitted ash. This particular set is worn down in the middle where the deep brown varnish fades to a pale yellow.
"Did you take a dip in the sewer?"
"Yes. But, I had no choice," I say, trying to justify my answer. "I-I just recently escaped from prison."
She pauses at the bottom of the stair and regards me by torchlight. She purses her lips. "A fugitive, eh? We'll have to cut your hair then. I'll get you some clothes too...while you bathe."
"Thank you," I manage to say. My hair falls to the middle of my back. I wonder how I will look when she cuts it.
She does not say you're welcome. But her body language tells me that she appreciates my candor. We walk across the corridor to a portal framed in oak beams and into a brightly illuminated salon where a large iron tub lined with linen sheets squats on the floor directly opposite a pot of boiling water. The cauldron rests on a hook above a small fire. Other than these two objects, the only other pieces of furniture in the room are a table holding a pair of gloves and a chair made from pine.
"Here, help me with this." She gestures at the pot.
I don the gloves and together, we heft the pot over to the iron tub where I tilt it and empty its contents completely into the basin.
"There's a room at the end of this hall," she says. "In that room there's a well. You can draw as much cold water from it as you'd like." Ambrell takes out a bit of string from a small bag of black satin dangling from her belt. Then she measures my waistline and the length of my leg and my arms. "All right," she says. "Wash and I'll come back in an hour. Oh and there's towels in the cabinet there. And here's some soap."
When I don't say anything, she responds, "You're not stupid are you? You understand what I've told you?"
"Yes," I say. "Sorry, I didn't think you were through talking. That's all."
Ambrell lets out a sigh. Then she shakes her head. "It's okay, you know. We're equals here. You can interrupt me whenever you like. If I don't like it, or what you say, I'll tell you."
I grin. "All right. That seems reasonable enough."
She moves my hair from in front of my eyes. "I wonder what you look like under all this. You're probably quite handsome." She pauses as if considering something. "I think we'll get along just fine, Kian."
Before Ambrell leaves, she looks up into my eyes. I realize now that I'm maybe a couple inches taller than her.
"I'll be back in a few with some shears. I think off the collar should be fine." Then Ambrell exits, walking in the predictable manner of girls wanting a man to notice.
I grab the bucket sitting next to the iron tub and regard the steamy water with my tired eyes. "Equals," I say to myself. "I'm going to like this concept."
I will post Chapter Two next weekend