The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Celaena choked. The idea of being anyone’s wife at fourteen, let alone a mother soon after … “Oh,” was all she managed to get out.

When Celaena didn’t say anything else, Ansel drifted into sleep. With nothing else to distract her, Celaena eventually returned to thinking about Sam. Even weeks later, she had no idea how she’d somehow gotten attached to him, what he’d been shouting when Arobynn beat her, and why Arobynn had thought he’d need three seasoned assassins to restrain him that day.





CHAPTER

4




Though Celaena didn’t want to admit it, Ansel was right. She did run farther the next day. And the day after that, and the one following that. But it still took her so long to get back that she didn’t have time to seek out the Master. Not that she could. He’d send for her. Like a lackey.

She did manage to find some time late in the afternoon to attend drills with Ansel. The only guidance she received there was from a few older-looking assassins who positioned her hands and feet, tapped her stomach, and slapped her spine into the correct posture. Occasionally, Ilias would train alongside her, never too close, but close enough for her to know his presence was more than coincidental.

Like the assassins in Adarlan, the Silent Assassins weren’t known for any skill in particular—save the uncannily quiet way they moved. Their weapons were mostly the same, though their bows and blades were slightly different in length and shape. But just watching them—it seemed that there was a good deal less … viciousness here.

Arobynn encouraged cutthroat behavior. Even when they were children, he’d set her and Sam against each other, use their victories and failures against them. He’d made her see everyone but Arobynn and Ben as a potential enemy. As allies, yes, but also as foes to be closely watched. Weakness was never to be shown at any cost. Brutality was rewarded. And education and culture were equally important—words could be just as deadly as steel.

But the Silent Assassins … Though they, too, might be killers, they looked to one another for learning. Embraced collective wisdom. Older warriors smiled as they taught the acolytes; seasoned assassins swapped techniques. And while they were all competitors, it appeared that an invisible link bound them together. Something had brought them to this place at the ends of the earth. More than a few, she discovered, were actually mute from birth. But all of them seemed full of secrets. As if the fortress and what it offered somehow held the answers they sought. As if they could find whatever they were looking for in the silence.

Still, even as they corrected her posture and showed her new ways to control her breathing, she tried her best not to snarl at them. She knew plenty—she wasn’t Adarlan’s Assassin for nothing. But she needed that letter of good behavior as proof of her training. These people might all be called upon by the Mute Master to give an opinion of her. Perhaps if she demonstrated that she was skilled enough in these practices, the Master might take notice of her.

She’d get that letter. Even if she had to hold a dagger to his throat while he wrote it.



The attack by Lord Berick happened on her fifth night. There was no moon, and Celaena had no idea how the Silent Assassins spotted the thirty or so soldiers creeping across the dark dunes. Mikhail had burst into their room and whispered to come to the fortress battlements. Hopefully, this would turn out to be another opportunity to prove herself. With just over three weeks left, she was running out of options. But the Master wasn’t at the battlements. And neither were many of the assassins. She heard a woman question another, asking how Berick’s men had known that a good number of the assassins would be away that night, busy escorting some foreign dignitaries back to the nearest port. It was too convenient to be coincidental.

Crouched atop the parapet, an arrow nocked into her bow, Celaena peered through one of the crenels in the wall. Ansel, squatting beside her, also twisted to look. Up and down the battlements, assassins hid in the shadow of the wall, clothed in black and with bows in hand. At the center of the wall, Ilias knelt, his hands moving quickly as he conveyed orders down the line. It seemed more like the silent language of soldiers than the basic gestures used to represent the common tongue.

“Get your arrow ready,” Ansel murmured, dipping her cloth-covered arrow tip into the small bowl of oil between them. “When Ilias gives the signal, light it on the torch as fast as you can and fire. Aim for the ridge in the sand just below the soldiers.”

Celaena glanced into the darkness beyond the wall. Rather than give themselves away by extinguishing the lights of the fortress, the defenders had kept them on—which made focusing in the dark nearly impossible. But she could still make out the shapes against the starlit sky—thirty men on their stomachs, poised to do whatever they had planned. Attack the assassins outright, murder them in their sleep, burn the place to the ground …

“We’re not going to kill them?” Celaena whispered back. She weighed the weapon in her hands. The bow of the Silent Assassins was different—shorter, thicker, harder to bend.

Ansel shook her head, watching Ilias down the line. “No, though I wish we could.” Celaena didn’t particularly care for the casual way she said it, but Ansel went on. “We don’t want to start an all-out battle with Lord Berick. We just need to scare them off. Mikhail and Ilias rigged that ridge last week; the line in the sand is a rope soaking in a trough of oil.”