As I said to Athelas when she gave it to me, I'm very happy to have received this prompt, since I can now use it as an excuse to write a bit of backstory for Aleta, an assassin from my Berstru Tales series. (Not that I don't have a lot of her backstory already figured out . . . just none of it's on paper before now and I don't know how much of it will be.) Admittedly, the actual story turned out a little differently than I expected (more sad; less action), but I'm still relatively happy with it."But even professional assassins have hearts and mothers."
Anyway. I hope you all enjoy!
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In most
cases, that would have been unsurprising. Nobles had a tendency to use funereal
colors when contacting assassins- as if inviting them not to attend a funeral,
but to cause one. By now, after five years’ intense training and another three
years on her own, Aleta was used to receiving such correspondence.
What
worried her about this particular
letter was where she’d found it: her private box, used only for personal
correspondence. No offers of contracts- either through the Guild or directly
from nobles- should have been there. And the handwriting on the letter . . .
she knew it too well. But she had never thought to see it on black.
Bells from
outside caught her attention. She listened, counting. Eight chimes. Half an
hour remaining before she needed to slip out of her hiding spot- one of several
around the city maintained by the Assassins’ Guild- and carry out her current
contract.
Returning
her attention to more immediate matters, Aleta slit the top of the envelope and
tapped out the letter with routine caution. Her teacher had explained
thoroughly the numerous ways that death could be delivered in the guise of a
letter. Yet despite her care, she knew already that it would contain none of
those potential poisons.
She read
the letter- stark white bordered in black- with as much care as she would a
potential contract. The words- things like “regret to inform you that-”
“recently deceased after-” “funeral will be held on-” seemed oddly distant.
Unreal. As if they were part of a dream.
Then she
reached the final paragraph and all the distance was sucked away. Phrases like
“claims it was an accident, but I wonder-” and “always seemed to be bruised
these last months-” and “maybe murder, but I can’t prove it.” And then,
finally, “I considered hiring you or one of your associates, ‘Leta, to avenge
her anyway, but he is Father.”
Aleta set
the letter down and walked across the room to the small window. It looked down
on a busy Elgea street, allowing her to see without being seen. But today,
though she watched, she did not notice the people going by. Again and again she
turned the words of the letter over in her mind, and she reached towards her
knives almost without realizing.
She was an
assassin. She could kill him. He deserved it, the-
No. She was an assassin. She did not
kill wantonly. And she did not kill for personal reasons. For a contract, or-
on occasion- to protect. Nothing more. And perhaps this would be justice, would
be protecting people. But it would be vengeance first.
No. She
would not kill him. And she could not attend the funeral openly; she would not
be welcome there. But she would go, pay her respects all the same.
Silently,
she retrieved the letter and slid it into her pocket. Then she clambered out
the window into the evening shadows and let herself disappear.
~~~
The funeral
was well-attended. Whether it was so out of respect for the deceased or
curiosity over the death, none could say. The priest, the deceased’s husband,
and the other friends and family members made the requisite speeches and
produced the expected tears- or, in some cases, lack thereof. If anyone noticed
that the second son of the deceased regarded his father with veiled hostility,
they did not comment on it. Nor did any seem to notice the figure outside, clad
in assassins’ black, who watched and listened with her head bowed and defiant
tears in her eyes. They did not notice her shadow them to the graveyard; did
not see her as she lingered in the nearby trees ‘til the coffin was buried and
all others were gone.
But the
next morning, the second son returned to the gravesite to find a rosebush
growing atop it, blood-red buds already appearing on the stems. And he knew
what it meant, while all his family wondered how it had come there.
For even
assassins have mothers. And even an assassin’s heart can be broken.
------
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)
