The Rogue Guardian

Chapter 51: Like Blood

I know, another glitch in the updating schedule, we might have a couple of Wednesday update weeks. Anyway, get ready for [pause for dramatic music] EMOTIONAL CHAPTER!!

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Irina had said she would stay until Nemia fell asleep, and Nemia was sure she did. But she was gone by the time her nightmares woke her in the late, silent hours of the night, and Nemia refused to examine her sudden misery at being so awake and so alone.

It hadn't been one of her usual dreams. This one had started out as a recent memory: Irina leading her down a lower city alleyway a week or so before, on the night they went to search the Match House for clues about Morie. That wasn't unusual; she often had confusing, panic-drenched dreams of searching for Morie among crowds of people or along dark streets. But in the dream, that less sinister memory melted into one that was a year older, and suddenly it was Xalva who pushed open the Match House door and drew her inside with an eerie magnetism.

The hall inside was a confusion of dark shapes, faces and sounds worn away by the dream's callousness. Only Xalva, leading her through the crowd, stood out in sharp detail, the contours of his face in razor focus, his eyes gleaming and cruel. She glided after him, not breathing, barely taking in her surroundings. A ghost.

"Nemia," Xalva said, and his voice cut like a knife through the indistinguishable murmuring of the crowd. She hated that he could make the very syllables of her name sound like a weapon.

In the dream though, she had no voice -- at least not yet. All she could do was drift to his side and look across at the man he pointed to. He sat at a table with people who must have been his friends, not yet noticing them watching him. He was perfectly forgettable, yet it was a face she'd never forget.

"Do you know him?" Xalva asked.

She nodded.

"I thought you might. He used to be a castle guard. His name is Cabrel, though that is not important. What is important is that this man, he has... insulted me. He has gotten in my way. He has made himself a nuisance. Normally, I can abide this insolence. But normally he is in another city. He has come to the capital on a short visit and I have decided to make it his last. Do you understand, Nemia?"

She understood that Cabrel was in very grave danger. She assumed that was what he meant, so she nodded again.

"I am going to make this man an example to people who disagree with my views. You are going to make this man an example."

Nemia looked from Cabrel to the stage in the center of the room, but Xalva quickly set her thoughts straight.

"An assassin," he said, "Must know how to kill quickly and cleanly. You know how to do this in theory. This is your test."

She was a ghost.

She was scared and weightless and fragmented, and she was not a killer.

She did not want to know how to kill even in theory. She did not want to pass his test.

"Nemia," Xalva said. Her name was a weapon.

"Nemia," Cabrel said, without looking up. He still had not noticed them. Her name was a trick of the hall's echoes.

"Nemia," Irina said, her voice trickling from one memory to another. Her name belonged to everyone but her.

"No," Nemia said, and Xalva turned to thunder.

The dream dissipated into mist, but the taste of the word remained on her tongue, in her throat. Her heart pounded like a drumbeat in the darkness.