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  The halls were narrower here and whitewashed, lit by electricity but showing the wear of generations of slaves walking these paths on their way to serve their masters. She began walking without knowing exactly where she was supposed to go and soon discovered the connecting corridors and random intersections to be a confusing maze. She crossed the paths of several other slaves but feared asking for directions when she was supposed to be mute. Tiana was probably not going to tell her evil stepmother about Aveline, but she dared not risk trusting other strangers with the secret.

  At long last, after half an hour of searching, she reached a long hallway lined by dozens of doorways, each of which was marked by a different color sash. She slowed and peered into the first few doors. Large bays containing wooden bunk beds stacked four high and armoires appeared well kept, if worn. Several people were sleeping in the bunks, and she quickly assessed the dorms on the right hand side were for men, those on the left for women.

  Doorways designated by green sashes were at the far end of the hallway and numbered twice as many as any of the other sashes. She entered one of the three on the women’s side at random.

  “That’s her.” The quiet voice came from a corner near the door.

  Aveline glanced towards the five women seated at a round table, eating. All of them glared at her with varying degrees of unfriendliness. Unconcerned, Aveline ventured farther into the dorms and sought some sign the bunks were assigned or claimed before she selected one.

  “You don’t belong here, new girl,” one of the women called gruffly.

  Aveline returned to the front of the bay. She pointed to the dorm on the right and then the one on the left then shrugged, hoping to convey she did not know which was hers.

  “I don’t mean you don’t belong in these barracks,” the woman said. “I mean, you don’t belong here at all.” She stood. Aveline was startled by her size. At close to six feet tall, with short hair and an athletic build, the woman before her resembled a soldier in the Shield.

  “You stole Jacque’s position. She was supposed to be promoted to a Hanover’s personal slave,” another piped up.

  “My family has been serving the Hanover’s for nine generations. Nine. And they give the position to a mixed girl off the streets?” Jacque, the towering woman, shook her head.

  Don’t push me, Aveline warned silently. While nothing suited her mood or spiked her Devil’s need for blood more than a confrontation, she recalled how many times George had tried to tell her not to make waves. For his sake, she decided to ignore Jacque. Aveline paced towards the door. She could return later, after talking to George, or take up residence in one of the other dorms.

  Jacque moved quickly to block her path.

  Aveline assessed her with expert eyes. She had nothing to fear from anyone here. If they had been servants their whole lives, they had no experience surviving on the streets or fighting.

  But she did.

  “I don’t like you, new girl.” Jacque said and shoved her. “You ought to know your place here. You should be on the bottom floor, serving the Willows and not all the way at the top where I belong. I deserve this!”

  Aveline’s anger sparked. If only George hadn’t claimed she was mute! Once again, she tried to avoid the confrontation she knew was coming by skirting Jacque to reach the door.

  The woman moved into her way again.

  Aveline sighed. A fight on her first day was not the best way to start off, but neither was she going to take a beating or abuse. She rolled the bundle of weapons into her cloak and set them on the ground nearby then returned to the position in front of Jacque, prepared to set the boundaries the tall woman desperately needed to learn.

  Ready for a fight, Aveline was willing to let Jacque throw the first and only punch when her instincts blared a warning. Before she could whirl to face the danger, one of the other women had thrown a blanket over her head and torso and then grabbed her, trapping her arms against her body.

  Blinded, Aveline grunted when Jacque punched her in the abdomen and then the chest.

  The other women began to cheer and encourage the jealous slave, their voices swelling as more slaves joined their ranks to watch.

  A familiar sense of calm fell over Aveline as her training and instincts synced with one another and began to guide her. She lashed out with her legs and felt them strike flesh. She threw her weight around to try to dislodge the woman holding her. More blows fell all over her torso, and she bore them without making any sound that might give away her secret.

  Aveline managed to throw off the balance of the woman holding her by swinging her legs and knocking them both to the ground. She thrashed loose from the blanket amid vicious kicks. With her vision unhindered, she snatched the next kick aimed at her head and twisted the woman’s foot, yanking her leg all the way around and sending her tumbling to the ground.

  Launching to her feet, Aveline fearlessly entered the fray with fists and kicks swinging. The crowd around them was somewhere around a dozen, and six additional slaves were trying to hit her.

  Six untrained combatants were a nuisance but nothing Aveline was unable to handle. She slammed the head of one into the wooden post on a bunk bed, smashed her heel into another’s throat, and unleashed an avalanche of rapid punches into two more. Her father had required her to be trained in street fighting as well as the more traditional, dignified martial arts, and she held nothing back as she fought off the slaves who meant to bury her so one of them could take her place. Her Devil’s blood cheered her on, urged her to every last one of her opponents.

  “Stop this! Immediately!” The sharp command came just as Aveline dropped the last of her attackers.

  The women fell silent and created an opening for George to walk through. He was accompanied by two Shield soldiers.

  Aveline lifted her chin in mild defiance, not about to apologize when she had been the one attacked. Straightening, she dabbed at her bloody nose and mentally assessed her body as George stared at the damage she had done. By her count, two slaves at least were dead, another two unable to walk anytime soon and the final two unconscious. Jacque, who had started the fight, was one of those she knocked out.

  “Check them and tell me who still lives,” he instructed the Shield soldiers. His gaze settled on Aveline. “You. Come with me.” He pointed at her.

  She went, eyeing the crowd she walked through. No one lunged or lashed out at her, and she snatched her bundle from the ground near the door. Aveline did not start to relax until she was in the hallway. George continued walking quickly, down the opposite direction she had come, and turned a corner before confronting her.

  “That cannot happen again,” he said.

  “I didn’t start it.”

  “Did I ask?” he snapped. “You are here for one reason only! If you are expelled or worse, burnt, by the end of the first day, who will protect my master’s sister?”

  Aveline resisted the reaction of rolling her eyes. She dabbed at her bloodied nose. Bruises were forming on her torso and legs, and her nose was starting to hurt. The fight, however poorly timed, had the result of freeing some of the tension she had been carrying since she woke up in a brothel.

  “Do you understand we cannot risk bringing anyone else in here? That you are the only hope?” he continued.

  “I know how to do what I was hired to do. I don’t need you lecturing me,” she retorted. “That bitch came at me. What was I supposed to do? Let her beat me?”

  “Yes. Because then, she would have left you alone, and no one else would be talking about how the new slave to Tiana fought off six slaves! I thought your ilk were supposed to be discreet! Is that not one of your primary directives? Do you have no concern for what is at stake?”

  Rocky’s life.

  George had a point, she ceded silently. Her indignation melted when she thought of her friend. His life depended upon her blending in. Assassins were never supposed to be seen and if they were, to leave no impression on the minds of others. Killing two slaves wa
s not going to help her ability to move unnoticed among the slaves or earn her the trust of those she might need to help her at one point. By reacting instead of thinking, she had unwittingly endangered Rocky’s life.

  “By your silence, you know you were in the wrong.” George was calming down. “For now, you will sleep on Tiana’s floor, until I can find a way to smooth over the murder of the family’s slaves and ensure you are not likewise murdered in your sleep.”

  As much as she hated being lectured by someone whose hands had never known a callous, Aveline nodded. “I apologize,” she forced herself to say. “It was not my intention to cause a mess.”

  “I appreciate your humility,” he said. “Do not do anything like this again!”

  She said nothing.

  “Come. We will fetch your bed linens.” George turned away and began walking.

  “Hey, George. Why is Tiana locked away?” Aveline asked, at his heels.

  “It is not for me to say.”

  “Try not to be too helpful!”

  “You are fortunate I am willing to hide the bodies and not force you to face Matilda for your crimes.” He gave her a pointed look. “If preventing you from being burnt is not helpful, I am uncertain what is.”

  “Point taken,” she grumbled. “I am trying to understand what I’m doing here.”

  “It was my master’s belief the threat to her life comes from inside the family,” George replied quietly.

  “They already treat her worse than a slave.”

  He glanced at her. “I have heard this rumor many times before. No slave has ever seen Tiana or accessed her quarters. Matilda takes her food and prepares her for events where her presence is required.”

  “She lives worse than I did in the streets, and Matilda starves her.”

  George frowned. “Then you will obtain her food directly from the kitchens from now on. My master is permitted to see her monthly. He has no way of knowing how his sister is treated daily.”

  “He thinks Matilda will try to kill her?”

  “He believes the threat comes from within the family, which extends to the cousins and extended family on the floor below the Hanover’s,” George replied carefully. “To speculate who is behind it without proof is irresponsible.”

  “What I can’t figure out is why?” she asked again, perplexed by what value there was in spending the money Karl’s benefactor had pledged in order to kill a girl who never left her room.

  “It is not for me to speculate.” George said and entered a massive laundry and linen room filled with pools of steaming water and red-faced slaves scrubbing clothing and bedding.

  Aveline’s nose wrinkled at the pungent scents of cleaners. The open bay was more humid than the hallway. Within seconds of entering, her clothing was sticking to her skin. George went to a shelf extending all the way to the thirty-foot ceiling stacked with folded linens. He plucked a blanket from one shelf, sheets from another and a pillow from the third and piled them into her arms.

  His gaze lingered on her before he strode down another aisle and pulled a cotton bag from a shelf then filled it with soft bandages and clean rags. He piled the bag on top of her other linens, blocking much of her vision, and motioned for her to follow him.

  Aveline trailed him through the underground maze. Accustomed to learning and adapting to the ever-changing streets, she instinctively chose random landmarks and recorded them so she could find her way back. They passed several bays filled with metal, pottery, and cotton spinning artisans hard at work before reaching the kitchens located next to the stairs for easy access.

  George stopped walking when he reached the stairs. “Return to Tiana,” he ordered. “No more trouble.”

  Aveline snorted and started up the stairs, balancing the heavy armful of linens.

  Ten minutes later, she passed the guards outside the Hanover’s apartment and teetered through the opulent rooms and hallways to Tiana’s door. Aveline dropped the bedding on the ground and straightened, checking her nose once more. The bleeding had stopped, but she was going to have a black eye in the morning.

  Unlocking Tiana’s door, she nudged it open with her hip while bending down to retrieve the linens. She entered and pushed the door closed and crossed to the table to deposit the armful.

  Tiana had eaten everything except for one strawberry, which sat in the middle of her plate.

  Aveline glanced from it to the bed, where the girl was curled up in a fetal position, her back to the center of the room. The defensive position drew Aveline’s thoughts once more to the bizarre statement Tiana had made about her father.

  Aveline’s father, an assassin leader, had mourned the loss of his wife so much, he lost all control of himself and went on a rampage, the Devil’s Blood Massacre, to try to soothe his pain. Their time on the streets had been rough, but he had always doted over Aveline, always spoken warmly of her mother and ensured none of Aveline’s native past and history was lost.

  Unable to imagine a scenario where her father hurt her mother, Aveline grappled with the idea of being abandoned by the only family she had. Was this why Tiana crumpled every time someone spoke harshly to her? Refused to look at anyone and curled up on her bed as if waiting for someone to hit her?

  “You didn’t finish your strawberries,” Aveline said awkwardly.

  “I saved it for you,” came the soft response. “As an apology for angering you. I should not have spoken out of turn.”

  The words punctured the veneer of control Aveline had over her emotions. She imagined Tiana expressing the same exact sentiment to Matilda, after her unstable stepmother had hit or screamed at her. After George’s explanation about no one being allowed to see Tiana except Matilda, Aveline did not doubt at all that Tiana’s bruises and fear came from Matilda’s wrath.

  Not only that, but Matilda had given Tiana the most bruised of the bowl of strawberries sitting on her table. Tiana was already waifish and had admitted to loving strawberries. That she saved one, when she had to have been hungry, bothered Aveline.

  Rarely did Aveline feel unable to adapt to her circumstances. This situation, which called for a level of empathy she was unaccustomed to receiving or sharing, stumped her. Kindness was not among her tools for surviving the streets, and she did not quite grasp how to express it to someone who appeared to need it.

  Aveline returned her gaze to the berry then to the linens. Tiana’s bedding consisted of rags sewn together, and she possessed three flat pillows.

  “I brought you new bedding,” Aveline said. “I need to strip your bed.”

  There was a pause and then Tiana shifted. She sat up and twisted, away from Aveline, and left her bed. Her eyes remained trained on the floor. The lighting of the room was too weak for Aveline to see their color.

  She pulled the rags off Tiana’s bed. The slaves had better bedding than the Hanover daughter, and Aveline puzzled over this as she moved. At first, she had thought Tiana’s childlike fascination with strawberries indicative of madness. As she made the bed, a second possibility emerged.

  Tiana never looked up. Was she blind? Or was it a combination of factors the wealthy Hanover’s were ashamed of? A little madness and complete blindness certain to make Tiana clumsy in public?

  Aveline reached for the pillow at the end of the bed and paused.

  Was it just her, or was it floating?

  She blinked, and the pillow was where it belonged on the bed. Chalking the incident up to her swelling eye, which was blurry, she grabbed and tossed the pillow at the head of the bed before stooping down to gather up the old bedding.

  Without an explanation to Tiana, she left and traversed through the apartment quickly one more time, down the lift and to the basement. Using the landmarks she had memorized, she found her way back to the washroom and deposited the dirty linens into a random bin without caring what it contained. She followed George’s initial footsteps through the aisles, invisible among the other bustling slaves, and collected her own bedding.

  On her
way back, she paused in the wide doorway of the kitchens. Massive stone ovens lined one wall while the far wall contained an entrance to a pantry whose entrance featured bundles of herbs hanging from the top of the doorway. Rows of counters stretched between the two walls along with a line of ten spits.

  Aveline juggled her bedding and made a mental note of where slaves wearing different sashes were lining up to pick up trays of food. In the morning, she would join them and ensure Tiana was fed a full meal instead of scraps.

  She returned to the top floor and to Tiana’s room. The blonde girl was lying down again, hugging the fluffy pillow.

  Aveline made her bed in the middle of the floor, where she would be alerted if anyone entered. She stretched out on the floor with a grimace, her body beginning to stiffen after her fight. The sunset edged the boarded up window, and she watched the orange-pink colors splattered across the ceiling.

  Tiana’s breathing was deep and regular. She was asleep at an early hour, though Aveline was accustomed to staying up much later. Bored, she stood and went to the books on Tiana’s vanity. She picked up one. It was much heavier than it appeared to be, and she opened the cover. Reading was not an essential trait for an assassin, and she had never learned. The squiggles inside had no meaning to her, though she stopped to study the drawings and pictures when she reached them.

  Her interest waned, and she replaced the book. Tiana’s belongings consisted of the tomes, the empty perfume bottle, a brush and a few pins for her hair, an armoire filled with fancy clothing and shoes, a trunk of nothing but brightly colored threads and other sewing supplies, and a closet containing a dozen more of the plain sleeping gowns. Aveline assumed the drawer full of vials was not Tiana’s but Matilda’s. She examined one of them before replacing it.

  Was this how Tiana had spent every day since she was born? Trapped in the most restrictive place Aveline was able to imagine?

  As soon as the sun set, the poor lighting in the room became even more evident. It was downright gloomy. Aveline lay down and forced herself to stay still when she wanted to do anything else. She placed two knives under her pillow and another under Tiana’s bed. The room was utterly silent, as if the walls had been soundproofed. Nothing was unusual or out of place, except for the strange charge that seemed to exist solely in Tiana’s room.