The Assassin's Tale Read Online Free Page A

all this adventure and wealth. You might have to wait on some fat fool of a knight. But you’ll have security and peace. You could find a wife and have a crop of children, instead of a long drop at the end of a short rope.” 
    His smile did not waver, but his eyes got colder. Angrier. And…sad, perhaps?
    “All that could be true,” said Jager. “But perhaps I tried that life, and found it wanting.” 
    “You were betrayed, I think,” said Mara.
    “And how do you know that? Were you there?”
    “Because,” said Mara, “only betrayal can create that kind of rage.”
    “Well.” Jager sighed and took a longer drink of his wine. “You think I was betrayed, and I think you were coerced. Let us make a bargain. Tell me if I am right, and I shall tell you if you are right.”
    They sat in silence for a moment.
    “You are,” said Mara.
    “And you are, too,” said Jager. “The honorable life of humble service and devoted duty. I believed in that once. I believed it with all my heart…and then my eyes were opened.”
    “I’m sorry,” said Mara.
    “An odd thing to apologize for,” said Jager, “considering you are going to kill me.” 
    “I know what it is to lose something,” said Mara.
    “We all do, in the end,” said Jager. “So you have been coerced into joining the Red Family. Was it money? They bought up your debt? Or a threat over a…parent, perhaps, or a child, or a lover?”
    “My parents are long dead,” said Mara, since her mother was dead and he would not believe that her father was the dark elven lord of Nightmane Forest. “I have no children, and no lovers.”
    “Then what is their hold over you?” said Jager.
    “You would not believe me,” said Mara, “if I told you.” 
    “Well,” said Jager. “Aren’t we a pair? The rogue and the coerced assassin.”
    “You are wearing a mask, are you not?” said Mara.
    “Really?” said Jager. “An appalling thing to say about my face.” He rubbed his cheek. “I shave every day, you know.”
    “All the jokes and the smiles and the audacity,” said Mara. “You’re a very sad man beneath it all.”
    He shrugged. “One can weep or laugh.” He lifted his goblet. “A toast, then. To all we have lost.”
    Mara lifted her goblet, and they drank to it.
     
    ###
     
    “Well, my daughter,” said the Matriarch later that night. “How goes the hunt?”
    They stood alone in her solar, the Matriarch gazing into the darkened garden. The Matriarch often invited Mara into the solar at night. She held the rest of her servants in contempt, and she seemed to consider Mara the closest thing she had to an equal, even if Mara was a half-breed bastard. So the Matriarch often talked to her, or at least at her, for hours. 
    “It is a dangerous game, Matriarch,” said Mara. “He knows I am of the Red Family, and he knows that even if I fail, others will come.”
    “But he speaks to you nonetheless,” said the Matriarch in her unearthly voice.
    “Yes.”
    “Why?” said the Matriarch.
    “I think,” said Mara, “that he is lonely. That he rarely has the opportunity to speak honestly with someone.”
    And if she were honest with herself, she knew that both things were true about her as well.
    “Enemies can often be candid with each other,” said the Matriarch. “A deadly game you play, my daughter. Do not fail me. For if you do,” her empty black eyes strayed to Mara’s left wrist, “the consequences shall be most dire.” 
     
    ###
     
    Two weeks later, Mara sat in an overstuffed chair in Jager’s library, her knees drawn up around her, another goblet of wine in her hand. The library was as opulent as the rest of the domus, the shelves lined with handsome books. Jager had admitted that he had not read most of them, that he had bought them as simple markers of status. 
    “Ten years,” said Mara. She had drunk too much wine, and it had gone to her head. 
    “You’ve been part of the Red Family for that long?” said Jager. He sat