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It’s a plan ten years in the making. It costs her a dagger she was fond of, but that’s a small price to pay.
Ten long years of choking down hate, angry words and pain.
Amber de Riva was dead, and a nameless young woman stood now over the corpse that would set her free.
It was a poor elven servant that had gotten caught in the crossfire on this latest job, who just so happened to be the right height, tied up with wood stacked at her feet. Fire would take care of the rest.
She’d dressed the poor girl in her armour, strapped her weapons to the body, tied her to the stake and said a quiet prayer to the girls’ spirit as she watched the flames devour any differences between them.
The crows bought her from the orphanage at six, a nameless little elven child with no future. The chantry sisters had tried many names for her, and none had stuck, because no one could remember the name her dying mother had given her while bleeding to death on their stoop.
One of the trainers, a heavy-handed asshole named Marcus, had saddled her with Amber for the colour of her eyes. Better than Red, which is what the other redhead in her batch had been stuck with.
She didn’t even know if Red was still alive, fledglings died so often. They broke too badly during training and were cast aside, or they got in over their heads during their first year and paid for their inexperience with their lives.
She’d gotten the noble family like the contract demanded, poison on the good silverware. The guards had killed this poor girl and a handful of other servants for the crime, though the majority had fled into the night.So she’d poisoned the food the guards had looted from the pantry. Every guard lay dead in their feasting hall, as dead of the masters they’d failed to avenge, and she stood in a villa emptied but for the ghosts.
This was the chance she’d been waiting for.
She reached out toward the burnt corpse but chastised herself and turned her back on it. She couldn’t afford to disturb the ashes, even if it would comfort her to touch her weapons one last time. She tugged at the fine dress she’d taken from the closet of the lady of the house, folded and tucked and belted to almost fit her smaller form, and strode out of the courtyard without another glance at her own dead body.
She rifled through the coat closet, looking for a good traveling cloak, and paused when her hand brushed across silky fur. She stroked her hand down it and pulled a black furred pelt from the pile. She brought it to the lone torch by the door, reveling in the feel of it. Held up the pelt would cover her like a cloak, the front legs would hang down her front and the back paws would knock against her knees.
She recognized the beast this pelt had come from now in the light, a great hunting cat she’d seen in the menagerie of a merchant prince once. She’d been assigned to trail after Viago, a pretty and menacing aide to pour his wine and hold his cloak.
A leopard, that’s what he’d called it. Rarer than any other in the city for it’s unusual black hide.
It was a pretty enough cage, thick with plants and a fake little creek winding through the middle. All of it ruined by the thick bars separating them from it. The beast hadn’t come into the light, had stared at them imperiously from the back of its cage with dispassionate menace. What little she could see was powerful, thick muscles, sharp teeth and sharper claws. The cage had reeked of blood and rotten meat.
She’d felt that same cold disdain for years and wondered at the time if she or the beast would ever be freed of their respective cages.
She draped the fur across her shoulders, wondering idly if she could poison the claws on the giant paws that lay against her stomach. Satisfied that she looked like a lady’s maid wearing her mistress’ cast offs she left the closet and made for the front door.
She cracked the door open and hesitated, sending one last look at the corpse that would set her free where it was tied up in the courtyard. She ruthlessly squashed one last regret for what this might do to Viago, the only one she was at all fond of, before walking out the door.
She didn’t look back again. Amber de Riva was dead.