Page 1 of Veil of Vasara (Fate of the Five #1)

CHAPTER 1- NATHON

I should have brought a thicker rag to gag him with.

His screams were far louder than I had anticipated. They continued to crackle against the cloth, weaving through the forest around us.

I winced. His voice box should have given out by now. I peered at him more closely, wondering about his vocal capacity as I leant against a tree by the lake. The dark of the night coloured the water black, shrouded the man and I in shadow.

I always made sure to conduct my work in those shadows, away from the prying eyes of other people and the sun.

After all, if anyone stumbled across my path, I would be ordered to kill them.

And I preferred to keep the killing by his orders to a minimum.

In truth, I would have preferred to avoid it all together, but I had been afforded little choice when it came to the matter, since I was a child.

Perhaps that was a lie. Perhaps I did have a choice, then and now. Perhaps I had simply become very, very good at telling myself very convincing lies.

The man’s wheezes of exhaustion drew me from my speculations. I pushed myself off the bark, spinning the dagger I’d just used to pull off his seventh fingernail between my thumb and forefinger. I crouched in front of him. Tears were in his eyes, and dark strands of hair clung to his forehead, slick with the sweat pain had drawn from his pores.

He made several noises which sounded like grunts of anger and whimpers of desperation. Still, he made no indication he would talk, no sign that he wished for me to stop.

I wished he would talk. I wished this could stop.

My assignment was to discover the names of all those who had been involved in this getaway and, of course…to end all their lives.

So far, I had discovered nothing from this man.

I sighed, and with a mask of indifference looked directly at him. He was older than I had anticipated, I guessed around forty-three, forty-four. I had become good at estimating ages, at estimating most things.

I started talking, the man’s gaze, clouded by fatigue, found its way to my face. “I must admit that I’m rather thankful to you.”

He looked confused and furrowed his brows.

“Most of the people I have the pleasure of speaking with give up so quickly. It doesn’t afford me much time to practice new techniques. I’ve been dying for an opportunity to experiment on someone with more…stamina, shall we say?”

My speech of falsehoods had worked. He looked terrified, but also…repulsed. He looked at me in a way that told me, without a gag, he would have spat the blood he had accumulated in his mouth at my face.

I can’t say that I would have blamed him.

I sighed, glad my performance was achieving its desired effect. “So, tonight is going to be rather enjoyable. For me, of course, I should add…most certainly not for you.”

I forced a laugh, intending to unnerve him as I put the dagger back inside my belt. I took out another. This one was waved, jagged at the sides, utterly useless during combat but for these purposes, ideal.

Sarlan had given it to me as a gift when I was eleven.

I ran the dagger along the man’s exposed upper chest. He tensed up, his breathing quickened. I dragged the blade down his torso.

The next instant, I was in. The man yelled, yelled with such ferocity that I had to place my other hand over his mouth, causing him to fall backwards from his knees and onto the grass below us. I hovered over him, kneeling by his side. His face had grown significantly paler, from panic and blood loss, I assumed.

I stopped, just before I would have punctured a vital organ. That would have resulted in his immediate death. I still needed some more time.

“Now, as much as I’d like to see how long you’ll last, I am here for a reason. So…I suppose that means I’ll offer you a choice. You can answer my question, or I can indulge my curiosity. Which would you prefer?”

I begged whatever powers may be to loosen this man’s lips.

This was not a curiosity that I wanted indulged. This was no curiosity at all.

But the man did not answer.

I slid the blade upwards. He cried out again and coughed, choking on the gag.

Gods, this gag really was terrible.

I used my free hand to yank the gag out, which had been half protruding from his mouth. As swiftly as I had done so, I positioned my hand back over his face to stop pleas for help escaping from his lips.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” I suggested. “In a moment, I’ll remove my hand. If you scream, I’ll take that as a sign you’re willing to take part in my experiments, if not, then the blade will move no further. Understood?”

The man nodded underneath my hand. I removed it.

He did not scream, but he did say, “There was no one else.”

Relief flooded my chest. He was finally talking.

I placed my blade down, the grass tickling at my knuckles. I gave him an incredulous look. “You mean to tell me you were able to flee without any assistance whatsoever?”

“Yes,” he gasped, rather than said. His body was beginning to fail him.

“You’re not lying to me, are you?” I leant a little closer.

“No. No. I’m not.”

That made two dishonest men, submerged in this grass.

He was so willing to protect the others. They had certainly not shared his sense of loyalty.

“You see, before I found you here,” I addressed him, “I came across several individuals who all told me a rather different story. What were the names? Iavan, yes that was one of them. Remind me, was he the younger or elderly one, I can’t recall?

“I don’t…I don’t know an Iavan,” he said hesitantly.

“He seemed to know rather a lot about you. How would that be possible, without your mutual acquaintance? Unless he was some sort of secret, extremely resourceful admirer of yours…Arton?”

Arton's eyelids flickered with fear at the sound of his name falling from my lips.

“Let’s try that again.” I pressed my hand against his open wound to induce discomfort and stress my impatience. “Who organised your little escapade?”

He let out a wail of pain before answering, “We…. we all did.” His voice was little more than a whisper now.

They all did? This was not a case then, of one man’s gold buying the silence of others, of a man buying his way out.

To find the escapees, to end their lives, that was my assignment.

It was not part of my assignment to ask the next question I found myself putting to him.

“Why?”

Arton’s eyelids fluttered closed. I compressed his wound. It would be better if he didn’t bleed out before our conversation was over. Sensing the pressure, he craned his neck down, then back up at me.

“Answer me.”

“Why? I’m…I’m dead anyway.”

“Yes, Arton, you are,” I nodded. “But your child is not.”

Arton did not know, of course, that I would never take the life of a child. That was the one thing I had refused to do, and I had suffered for it.

But my reputation preceded me. There were whispers of all kinds, that I had murdered babies in their cribs, and slaughtered flocks of toddlers. That I had danced on the bones of infants and cackled at their cries.

I only needed Arton to believe I would kill his child, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he did. That, and his surprise.

Arton had made great efforts to hide the existence of his son, even when he had lived among us, but his attempts at discretion were easily overturned by the same currencies I'd found usually worked on everyone…money, threats, and bribes.

“You really don’t know? You…of all people.” Arton sounded genuinely surprised.

“Evidently,” I bit.

Arton took in a few more heaving breaths, looking up at the night sky with resignation.

“The things they’re doing there…it’s…they…” he drifted off again.

“They what?”

Arton’s eyes closed over. I shook him. He jolted back to a barely perceptible level of consciousness.

“Arton. If you do not finish your sentence before you draw your last breath, I will send your son into the afterlife to meet you. You know I will,” I insisted, pushing down the personal revulsion at my own sentence.

Much to my astonishment, Arton lifted his right hand and grabbed my forearm.

“They are lying. They are…dying.”

I was starting to think Arton had become delirious from the loss of his blood volume, until he whispered. “Mar…”

But the remnants of his promised words dissolved into the darkness.

His arm fell to the ground with a thud.

Arton was dead.

I looked at Arton for a moment. He had passed sooner than I expected. But there were times I knew, when a man’s spirit waned long before his body did, making that slip into death far faster, far sweeter.

A twinge of remorse suddenly played at my gut over his son. It wasn’t the first time I had taken someone’s father from them, someone’s husband, friend, mother, daughter. It was only that I never usually had the time or the information to think too deeply on it. I didn’t allow myself to either. I knew the alternative, for her and for me.

I was a liar, yes, and I was selfish as well.

It was a cruel truth of the world, that men like Arton died, while men like me lived.

There was movement in the trees behind me.

I didn’t move. I waited. I pretended to be unaware.

“Get anything out of this one then?” A smug voice emerged from the darkness.

Silus.

I let out the tension I’d been holding in my core, preparing for an attack.

Occasionally, Sarlan would send others to check on my progress, my results, ever since I’d refused to complete the task he had set for me, all those years ago.

Far behind Silus, watching in the shade cast by the branches, was Ruban.

He’d sent two of them. I had to suppress a laugh.

“Nothing,” I lied to Silus. “The same as all the others.”

I debated the probability of my lie being discovered. Knowing Silus, it was relatively high. I knew when I was suffering the consequences of this lie, I may regret my decision, but that was a problem for days away. Weeks, if I was fortunate.

Silus peered over my shoulder to examine the body. His long dark hair swept over his face. He whistled in admiration after examining Arton’s wounds. “You gave it your best. He’ll be pleased about that.”

As Silus laughed, I grabbed Arton by the ankles. “Take his shoulders,” I instructed.

Silus did as I asked. The soil squelched beneath our boots as we moved towards the lake. Ruban watched us from a distance, eating something.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Silus mused. “Nobody runs for nothing. People don’t risk their lives, fleeing in the middle of the night for no reason.”

“No,” I agreed. “They don’t.”

“What do you think happened?” Silus raised a brow.

I couldn’t trust Silus with any information. Silus worshipped the man who gave us orders as if he were one of the Nine Gods themselves.

The Nine. If they were real, and as benevolent as many claimed, then it would have been my dead body being dragged across this plane.

“I think their death has mitigated the need for that question,” I lied. Again. If anything, their death only made its answering more urgent.

But I preferred to work alone, and not with the tendrils of Silus’s breath creeping down my neck. Or Ruban’s, who I trusted even less.

“Always the pessimist, Prince,” Silus grinned.

“Do you have any theories?” I asked, ignoring his attempt at camaraderie.

Silus shrugged and the shoulders of Arton’s body moved up and down. “He did something which made someone angry. He tried to flee. He didn’t get far.”

I suppose I was foolish to expect a deeper insight from him.

Arton’s escape plan had been terrible. He had been a terrible planner and a poor strategist who had trusted the wrong people.

But he had also been brave.

Anyone who would attempt to run from them, from me, possessed a certain level of bravery. A na?ve, ignorant, desperate sort of bravery.

I couldn’t decide whether I admired it or found it utterly ridiculous.

It was clear that Arton had carried secrets, secrets they were desperate to conceal.

How fortunate then, that extracting secrets was my speciality.

Arton’s body sank into the water, enveloping his limbs one by one. The chill night air slapped against my face as I turned away from the sight.

“Leaving so soon?” Silus called out.

I looked over my shoulder. “Would you like to hold hands perhaps? Say a prayer to Noxos for his soul together?”

Silus tutted, tilting his head to the side.

I had no time for him, or to pay my respects.

No ability to dwell on his death for too long.

I had somewhere to be.

It was time to return to Audra.

It was time to pay Marco a visit.