Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(52)

twenty-two


WE SPENT HOURS TRYING DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS, our hopes high. But after a few hours of frustration and frayed tempers, we decided to try again later and went home for some much-needed sleep.

In the morning I headed to a different market to look for clothes. The old one had good prices, but I didn’t want to face the women of Acacius again.

It didn’t take me long to find a shop. I bought two dresses and changed immediately. I was almost tempted to throw out the stained one, but even if I didn’t wash it or ever wear it again, I could use it as a blanket or a pillow on my saddle-blanket bed. There was no point in being wasteful.

I used some of my coins to buy a filling lunch, one that would hopefully last me the rest of the day. Then I headed to the mail office. Faraday had said he was going to send me another letter, so I wanted to keep checking.

It was the same postman as before, and he bobbed his head as I entered. “Oleander, right?”

I nodded and he flipped through the envelopes in the bin. He pulled one out, then glanced at me over his shoulder before returning to the letter.

“Is it for me?” I asked.

He faced me, letter held at his thigh. “Do you go by any other names?”

Another name. Of course I did, but why would Faraday use it when he’d used Oleander before? “Lea,” I said. I would’ve forsaken the letter before I risked giving him my last name, too.

The postman set the letter on the counter. He pulled out his ledger and made a mark on a line. “Two gold again.”

I passed him the coins and he slid the letter over to me.

“Thank you.” I walked out of the shop into the bright afternoon sun.

The letter was addressed to me, but I understood why he’d hesitated before handing it over. It had my name, Oleander, written on the front, but someone had crossed that out, a single black line through the letters, and replaced it with Lea.

I sat on a bench outside and cracked the seal of the letter, the pages unfolding in the gentle breeze.

A pressed white poppy fell into my lap.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel my heart beating, couldn’t do anything but pinch the poppy between my two fingers.

I opened the letter and read.

Maybe this will find you. If you’re even in Yvain. If you’re even still alive. I don’t know. I must be an idiot to think this letter will go anywhere. But I found this flower in a saddlebag kept at a monastery, and I couldn’t believe it was simply a coincidence.

Maybe it is, though. Maybe I’m just crazy.

But if you are alive and do get this letter, I want to say . . . I want to say a lot of things, actually. And I wish I could say them to you, but I guess if this is the only chance I have, then I’d better take it.

I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t mean anything, and maybe it doesn’t even matter because you’re dead anyway and this letter will go nowhere.

But if you are alive, and you do get this letter, please be careful. I’ve spoken to the Addamos, and they’ve scoured the dead plains. Yvain is the only place they haven’t searched yet. It won’t be long before the rest of my Family catches on. We’re close. We won’t give up. Better for you to disappear, to vanish and never come back.

That was it. No signature. Nothing to tell who had written it, but I knew the letter came from Val. If he’d found the flower in Butters’s saddlebag, it meant the Da Vias were closer than I’d thought. If the Addamos had steered Val to Yvain, enough to send a blind letter anyway, then the others would be close behind.

Dumb. I was so, so dumb. I should’ve destroyed the poppy when I’d found it after the fire, should have crushed it. But I’d kept it, put it aside somewhere I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore, so I wouldn’t have to feel the things it brought to the surface. And now here it rested in my fingers, a reminder of all the mistakes I’d made, that I continued to make, and the consequences that seemed to never end.

A shadow fell over the letter. I looked up. Les stood before me, blocking out the sun.

I squinted. “What are you doing here?”

He glared at me until I shifted. “You stole from us.”

I narrowed my eyes. So that was the way this conversation was headed. I took a breath. “I needed the money. It was just sitting there. You weren’t using it.”

“Oh, of course,” he scoffed. “You needed it, so you just took it because we weren’t using it. It all makes sense. I thought you were a thief, but now that you’ve explained it, I see I was mistaken.”

“That’s not—”

“I don’t even know what’s worse,” he interrupted, arm cutting through my words. “The fact that you’re still going to want me and my master to trust you, to help you, after all this, or that you didn’t trust me enough to just ask for the money in the first place.”

I blinked. If I had asked him for it, I would have been beholden to him. I couldn’t let him hold that over my head. We had agreed to an even exchange.

“My master will never help you now.” He paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “I would’ve given it to you,” he said. “I wouldn’t have even asked why you needed it.”

“Clothing,” I said. “And food.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”