I felt no desire for mercy, either. His kind had killed Helda. His kind has destroyed Ilerium with a year of war and terror.
“Die!” I said.
I squeezed his throat shut. His eyes began to bulge; he made a desperate gurgle. Still I tightened my grip, pouring a year’s worth of hate and anger toward the hell-creatures against this assassin sent to murder me in my own room.
Then he began to struggle desperately, trying to buck me off, but with a broken wrist he could do nothing to stop me. Finally, with a sudden wrenching motion, I broke his neck.
His body seemed to sag, like a wineskin whose contents had suddenly run out. His skin changed, turning a mottled yellow-gray. In a few heartbeats, he was a man no more, but something else… something hideous and distorted, with solid black eyes that continued to sink deep into sharp, bony cheeks. Talons had replaced those age-spotted fingers, and two rows of narrow, slivered teeth suddenly lined a tiny round mouth at the end of a pointed jaw.
Magic.
Whatever he was, this thing who had looked so much like a man, he had been cleverly disguised. And he had known enough about life in Juniper Castle to get to my rooms and nearly kill me.
Of course, I was a stranger here, but nothing he had said in all that old-man prattle had put me on my guard. If it hadn’t been for the looking glass, I felt certain, I would now be dead. I swallowed and touched my throat.
Still his transformation continued, as whatever sorcery had disguised him unraveled. His prominent nose dwindled to mere nostril slits. His skin shimmered with faint iridescent scales. And then his transformation seemed to be complete.
I beheld a monster like none I had ever seen before. Clearly this wasn’t one of the hell-creatures I had fought in Ilerium… so what was it? And why would it want me dead enough to risk murdering me in my own rooms?
My battle-rage had begun to fade, and I took a deep cleansing breath, muscles suddenly weak. I felt like I’d lost control of my life, and I didn’t like the sensation.
So, yet another mystery faced me. What had this creature been doing here, inside Dworkin’s castle? How had he slipped past all those guards—past an entire army on the lookout? And most of all, how had he known to come to me posing as a barber?
I frowned. Clearly he must have had help. Someone had sent him—and set me up to be killed. Much as I hated the thought, I knew what it meant: Dworkin had a spy in his castle, someone in a fairly high position who knew our family’s comings and goings. Someone who could smuggle a hell-creature into the castle, get him the clothes and tools of a barber, and give him enough information to get him safely into my rooms and make me lower my guard.
Rising, I paced for a second, trying to work through the problem, trying to decide what to do next. Should I call Dworkin’s guards? No, I wouldn’t know whether to trust them. Any of them might be another hell-creature in disguise, and I didn’t want to reveal how much I knew yet. Freda, maybe? She seemed to have her own plots. Aber the prankster? I wasn’t sure what help he could be; I needed solid advice, not Trumps.
That left only Dworkin, and I certainly couldn’t go running to him at the first sign of trouble. It would make me look weak, helpless, unable to protect myself… in short, a perfect target.
Another problem worried me more. If assassins roamed Juniper’s halls disguised as servants, I reasoned, they might just as easily pose as family members. Since I didn’t know anyone in Juniper well enough to tell real from fake, except perhaps Dworkin, I knew how easily I could be fooled by another assassin. Ivinius had come close to succeeding; I didn’t want to give his masters a second chance.
Taking a deep breath, I rose. When in doubt, do nothing you know is wrong. That was one of the lessons Dworkin had always stressed throughout my childhood. I wouldn’t report this attempt on my life just yet, I decided. Perhaps whoever had set me up would reveal himself if I simply showed up alive and well, like nothing had happened.
Surely someone would be curious as to what had happened. I’d have to be doubly watchful.
One problem remained: how to proceed?
Clean up, I decided. I’d have to hide the body somewhere and get rid of it after dark. Perhaps it could be dumped into the moat, or smuggled out into the forest. Though exactly how I might do so, when I knew none of Juniper’s passageways—let alone the safest, least guarded path to the forest—escaped me at the moment.
Details could come later, I decided. For now, it was enough to have a plan.
I dragged the corpse into the little sitting room and positioned it behind a heavy tapestry where it couldn’t be seen from the main room. Hopefully, servants wouldn’t stumble across it before I was ready, and hopefully it wouldn’t begin to stink too much. Then I began tidying up, setting the chair I’d knocked over back where it belonged, picking up Ivinius’s razor and returning it to the tray with the towels, straightening the table with the basin, retrieving the desk and restoring its papers and blotter to their proper order—generally putting everything back the way it had been before the fight. To my surprise, the hardest part came last: mopping up the spilled ink. I cleaned it up as best I could with one of the towels, then covered the spot on the carpet with a smaller rug.
Not a bad job, I finally decided, standing back and studying my work critically. The room looked more or less normal. You couldn’t tell there had been a fight or that I’d hidden a corpse in the next room.
Then I spotted my reflection in the mirror that had saved my life, and I sighed. I still had the residue of a full lather on my face and neck, and it had begun to dry and flake off. Well, I needed to get cleaned up for dinner anyway—no sense in wasting a sharp razor, even if it had been meant to slit my throat.
I returned to the basin and the block of soap, lathered up again with the brush, pulled the mirror over to the window’s light while my beard softened, and began to shave myself with one of the smaller razors, which had a blade about as long as my hand. It gave me something to do while I continued to think things through.
A plan… that’s what I needed right now. Some way to sort friend from foe, hell-creature from servant or relative…
Behind me, a floorboard suddenly squeaked. I whirled, razor up. I should have buckled on my swordbelt, I realized. More assassins, come to finish the job—?
No, it was only Aber, grinning at me like a happy pup who’d found its master. I forced myself to relax. He held what looked like one of Freda’s Trumps in his left hand, I noticed, and he carried a small carved wooden box in his right.
“A present for you, brother,” he said, holding out the box. “Your first set of family Trumps!”
I took them. “For me? I thought Freda was the expert.”
“Oh, everyone needs a set. Besides, she already has all the Trumps she wants.”
“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said, glancing pointedly at the door. The hinges most definitely had not given their telltale squeak. “How did you get in here? Is there another way—a secret passage?”
“You’ve been listening to too many fairy tales,” he said with a little laugh. “Secret passages? I only know of one in the whole castle, and it’s used all the time by servants as a shortcut between floors. Not much of a secret, if you ask me.”
“Then how did you get in here?”
Silently he raised the Trump in his hand, turning it so I could see the picture: my bedroom. He had drawn it perfectly, right down to the tapestries on the wall and the zigzag quilt on the bed.
Suddenly I remembered how the trump with Aber’s picture on it had seemed to move, almost to come alive, when Freda and I were in the carriage. Her cryptic comment about not wanting Aber to join us came back to me, and now it made sense. He had to be a wizard. One who used Trumps to move from place to place. That’s how he had gotten in here without opening my door.