“Now wait,” he says as we settle onto a heavy beam.
“For anything in particular?” I ask.
“I have word that a messenger is coming from Balekin’s estate, disguised in the High King’s livery,” he says. “We’re to kill it before it enters the royal quarters.”
The Ghost says this without particular emotion. I wonder how long he has worked for Dain. I wonder if Dain ever asked him to drive a knife through his palm, if he tested them all that way, or if that was a special test, just for mortals.
“Is the messenger going to assassinate Prince Dain?” I ask.
“Let’s not find out,” he says.
Below me, spun-sugar creations are being finished off with high crystalline spires. Apples painted with nevermore are piled on the banquet tables in such quantity as to send half the Court dreaming.
I think of Cardan’s mouth, flaked with gold. “Are you sure they’re coming this way?”
“I am,” he says, and no more than that.
So we wait, and I try not to fidget as minutes slide into hours, moving just enough to keep my muscles from stiffening. This is part of my training—probably the aspect the Ghost thinks is most essential, after slyfooting. He has told me again and again that most of being a killer and a thief is waiting. The hardest thing, according to him, is not letting your mind drift to other things. He seems to be right. Up here, watching the ebb and flow of the servants, my thoughts turn to the coronation, to the drowned girl, to Cardan riding up on his horse as I fled Hollow Hall, to Valerian’s frozen, dying smile.
I wrench my thoughts back to the present. Beneath me, a creature with a long, hairless tail that drags in the dirt scuttles across the ground. For a moment, I think it is part of the kitchen staff. But the bag it carries is too filthy, and there is something subtly wrong with its livery. It isn’t dressed like one of Balekin’s servants, and neither is its uniform the same as the other palace staff.
I glance over at the Ghost.
“Good,” he says. “Now shoot.”
My hands feel sweaty as I draw out the miniature crossbow, seeking to steady it against my arm. I have grown up in a house of butchery. I have trained for this. My principal childhood memory is of bloodshed. I have killed already tonight. And yet, for a moment, I am not sure I can do it.
You’re no killer.
I take a breath and loose the bolt. My arm spasms from the recoil. The creature topples over, a flailing arm sending a pyramid of golden apples spilling to the dirt. I press myself down against a thick cluster of roots, camouflaging myself as I’ve been taught. Servants scream, looking around for the shooter.
Next to me, the Ghost has a smile on the corner of his mouth. “Was that your first?” he asks me. And then when I look at him blankly, he clarifies. “Have you ever killed anyone before?”
May death be your only companion.
I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak the lie out loud convincingly.
“Sometimes mortals throw up. Or cry,” he says, clearly pleased I am doing neither of those things. “It shouldn’t shame you.”
“I feel fine,” I say, taking a deep breath and fitting a new bolt into the bow.
What I feel is a kind of nervous adrenaline-soaked readiness. I seem to have passed some kind of threshold. Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.
He raises both brows. “You’re good at this. Nice marksmanship and a stomach for violence.”
I am surprised. The Ghost is not given to compliments.
I have vowed to become worse than my rivals. Two murders completed in a single night mark a descent I should be proud of. Madoc could not have been more wrong about me.