Baron Progae's chin beard and scant mustache accented a long face of narrow features but prominent cheekbones. A shelf of thin eyebrows overhung his hazel eyes. He wore a white shirt beneath a plain brown vestment trimmed in black. His wife was austere in her cream dress with an overlaid vest of golden fabric, yet there was warmth and pride in her eyes. She had one arm around the eldest daughter seated beside her.
The daughter looked about fifteen, or at least a bit younger than Leesil himself. A mass of black curly hair fell past her shoulders. Her skin was pale, her nose and mouth small and delicate, making her eyes seem deep and dark. She had her father's nobility mixed with her mother's allure. Leesil had rarely been exposed to young women face-to-face, and this girl in the painting was quite pretty.
He flushed beneath his cowl and scarf at being so foolishly startled. He slowed his breaths and moved on.
Rounding the stairwell landing on the third floor, Leesil faced an empty corridor. The guards were all outside and the servants asleep. He spotted the third bedchamber door on the right. It wasn't likely to be locked, but he already had a pair of wire picks in his mouth.
Leesil crept down the corridor, quick and quiet, and found the door was unlocked. Progae had no idea his betrayal had been uncovered. Leesil took his time turning the latch, inching it down slowly to be certain of silence, then slipped in and closed the door. He took the picks from his mouth and locked it from the inside.
The room held a four-poster bed. It was so immense that at first he wasn't sure anyone slept there. From the dresser and chest to the window seat and side tables, all the room's fixtures seemed large in the dark. Leesil crouched, listening, and heard the long and low breaths of slumber. He crawled along the floor to the bedside.
Progae slept on his back, lips barely parted. A thick down quilt was pulled up high about his throat. Leesil hesitated. His mind went blank, and he couldn't move-until he heard his father's voice in his thoughts.
This is why we still live… our lives depend on each other… do what is necessary.
Leesil watched Progae take two more breaths.
He removed one silvery stiletto from his wrist sheath and settled next to the bedside so his left hand could reach Progae's face. In his right hand he held the stiletto poised above the bed's edge. One of his mother's lessons came to him.
A sleeper will roll away from a touch, even before waking.
Leesil reached out and brushed Progae's cheek with his left palm. The man started in his sleep and turned away, exposing the back of his neck. Leesil followed the movement and wrapped his left hand across the man's mouth. The rest took less than a blink.
He rose up, full weight behind his grip. The man's head sank sideways into the yielding pillow, pinned by Leesil's forearm. He drove the stiletto upward, and it pierced the soft skin at the top of the neck. The tip scraped over the first vertebrae and into the skull. The blade stopped when the narrow hilt guard met skin.
Progae clenched and went limp.
A splotch of blood welled around the stiletto's hilt. It looked black in the dark room.
Leesil remained there, pressing his victim's head into the pillow. He didn't know how long, only that the muscles in his left arm suddenly cramped, goading him back to awareness. He jerked the stiletto out and rolled the body onto its back again. He forgot to wipe his blade before sheathing it.
Progae's hazel eyes stared up at the ceiling over a gaping mouth. Leesil closed the mouth and eyes and straightened the quilt. When he left, he locked the chamber door from the outside with his picks before stepping softly down the hallway to the stairs.
In the years that followed, he never remembered leaving the grounds, nor whether he'd been cautious or run the whole way home.
He arrived before dawn, breath ragged in his throat and chest, to find his parents waiting. Nein'a was watching out the kitchen window when he stepped in the back door. He passed her without a word, but Gavril stood in the carved archway to the front room. Leesil had no choice but to stop.
He gave his report without looking at his parents' faces. When he fell silent, and it was clear he had nothing more to say, his mother quietly dismissed him. He sat alone on the floor of his room, the door closed, and barely heard Chap scratching from the outside.
Come dawn, Gavril took him to the keep. He was led to an alcove by guards to make his report in secrecy. Lord Darmouth nodded in approval.
"No one will even know he's dead until my troops seize his fief. You've done well, boy. Progae's treachery ended before he made his first move."
Leesil told himself again and again that he had assassinated a traitor. The relief of justification stayed with him for almost a whole moon.
His mother was called to the keep for a celebration, and so his father decided to take Leesil out for the evening. Along the way, they passed a few nobles in their finery on horseback headed down Favor's Row to the keep bridge.
Leesil sat alone at a table in an out-of-the-way inn, nibbling on roasted mutton with herbs, while Gavril chatted at the bar with a man named Byrd. He couldn't hear much of what they said over the noise of other patrons. What he did hear was a name uttered by someone nearby behind him.
"Shameful," one said. "About Progae."
Leesil lowered his fork.
He knew better than to get involved. Even in this inn, his father told him to keep his cowl up. His hair was too different from that of other people. Leesil kept his back to the speaker at the table behind him and toyed mechanically with his food.
"About Prograe?" asked a second. "I heard he was a traitor."
"I meant his family," answered the first.
"What of them?" asked a third, deeper voice.
"The wife and two youngest girls starved to death in the streets."
Leesil stopped poking at his mutton.
"What?" asked the second. "No one helped them?"
"They were outcasts," the first said. "Blood of a traitor and all, and they served no use anymore, I suppose. Not even their relatives would take them in, probably on their guard to see who was next. Only the eldest girl survived. Darmouth gave her to one of his loyal 'nobles' as a mistress if I heard right."
"Damn shame," said the third. "I saw them once, coming in for last winter's harvest celebration. Lady Progae was an eyeful, and that eldest daughter had the look of her. Hedi, I think. Why cast out women and children? It was Progae's academy, not theirs."
"Watch your mouth!" whispered the second. "Just be thankful you and yours aren't blood kin to a traitor. I for one can't wait for spring. At least then I can take my goods and caravan away from this place for a while."
Leesil stood slowly, dropping the fork before he realized it. He didn't look back to see the men's faces and said nothing to his father as he pushed out the inn's front door.
He walked quickly through the night streets. By the time he entered Favor's Row, he was running for the house. He slipped in through the kitchen door and stared out the window at the keep upon the lake.
"Leshil?" a soft voice called from behind him. "What is it?'
Leesil spun about. His mother stood in the kitchen doorway with Chap beside her.
Only Nein'a called him by that name. His more common one was simpler, less memorable to any who overheard it. Her speech was tainted by her own native tongue and made anything she said both lyrical and guttural. Leesil wondered if this was just her or if all her people sounded this way.
And he wondered why she'd returned so early from her duties at the keep.
She wore a deep tan gown that matched her skin, its vine-and-leaf pattern wrapping about her tall form. A midnight-green cloak with ermine trim hung over her shoulders, its hood down.