City of Betrayal Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Character Guide

  Acknowledgments

  Want More?

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  CITY OF BETRAYAL: An Isandor Novel

  Copyright © 2017 Claudie Arseneault.

  Published by The Kraken Collective

  krakencollectivebooks.com

  Edited by Jess R. Sutton.

  Cover by Gabrielle Arseneault.

  Interior Design by Key of Heart Designs.

  claudiearseneault.com

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  À Marianne et Audrey,

  Sans qui ces histoires dormiraient encore dans un tiroir

  A dead man had freed her assassin.

  Lieutenant Sora Sharpe stared at the body sprawled in front of her on the hard bed of the Sapphire Guard’s headquarters, his ankle cuffed to a railing. He didn’t look like much. A bit strange, yes, but white cornrows and threadbare outfits from another era didn’t mean a dangerous opponent. Yet this man, Lord Arathiel Brasten, had lived in Isandor a hundred thirty years ago. She’d asked Aren, their old agender healer, if they had an explanation. According to them, Arathiel should be dead.

  “Only magic keeps his body together,” they had said, “a spell worthy of Ezven, Lord of the Dead and Reborn.”

  Magic wouldn’t heal Arathiel either, not completely. Aren had described the healing as a cold pull, numbing their senses until they couldn’t feel the room around them. They had been forced to stop, then, but at least Arathiel had recovered enough not to die. Sora had let him rest, chafing at the unexpected wait. Nothing she could do about it, however.

  She turned over the events in her mind again, reflexively doodling on her notepad. She wished she could pace, but if Lord Arathiel woke up and caught her in the act, she would start his interrogation from a position of weakness. It had started a dozen days ago with a routine arrest. A tavern brawl involving a noble—which meant whoever had invoked the noble’s wrath had found themselves dragged into a cell and taught a lesson. Only this time, the chosen dark elf had a unique dagger on him. One which fit the description of several unresolved cases they’d gathered through the years. Sora would know: she’d pored over those every few months in the hope fresh eyes would let her pick out new leads.

  She had investigated, reviewing old notes on these cases, digging out every occasion on which she or her colleagues had run into wounds corresponding to Hasryan’s dagger. After a full night of work cross-referencing old information with this new weapon, she could connect half a dozen murders to it. These included the most noteworthy assassination of the last decade, which had sparked a bloody feud between two Houses unlike any Isandor had seen: Lady Allastam’s death.

  From the very start, Hasryan had sworn he hadn’t committed that particular murder. Sora clenched her pencil at the memory of their interrogations—all infuriating sparring matches. He’d been smug, taunting her, certain his boss would get him out of trouble. And why wouldn’t he? Sooner or later, Brune would come, and no one refused the leader of the biggest mercenary organization in Isandor. The Crescent Moon had its hands in every pocket. Half the city owed them, and they could get almost anyone out of prison if they wanted. It didn’t matter if Sora dragged the necessary tidbits of information from Hasryan—even building a grudging but solid respect between them as her investigation progressed—their corrupted system would protect him.

  Sora stared at her doodle, its shape strangely reminiscent of the arches above Carrington’s Square from which they hanged criminals sentenced to death. Brune had had other plans for her assassin. She had let Hasryan take the fall for Lady Allastam’s murder, framing him with the very dagger that had first caught Sora’s attention. Hasryan’s shocked betrayal had shattered Sora’s determination to bring him to justice. He should hang for his crimes, but from the moment Brune had blamed him for the city’s most heinous assassination, Sora had understood he’d had nothing to do with it.

  Innocence in one case didn’t erase how Hasryan had killed several others, however. When Hasryan was sentenced to death, she told herself it was good news for his real victims. She schooled herself to think of him as an assassin, to ignore the vulnerable, broken half-elf sulking in a cell. He wasn’t a poor soul betrayed by the one he trusted most. He was a murderer, and he deserved to die.

  “I wished you hadn’t killed anyone,” she’d told him. And when Arathiel had saved him the following day, snatching Hasryan from right under the noses of two dozen guards and all of Isandor’s most noteworthy nobles, she had been relieved. Sora tapped the center of her doodle, groaning at herself. Relieved. Despite all of her previous efforts, despite the destruction of her promotion, despite the complicated days to come, and despite the relentless pursuit she intended to give now, Sora Sharpe was glad Hasryan had survived.

  Somewhere along the line, she had allowed herself to grow attached to him. To see the man behind the crimes—the broken, vulnerable elf who’d carved a space for himself in a world that wanted to eat him alive. She and Hasryan had little in common, but she recognized that fight. She’d had her own, claiming her rightful place as the next Sharpe investigator, the last in a long line of women—and, she knew with absolute certainty, not the first trans woman in it. Except that unlike hers, Hasryan’s confidence and sense of self were projected. She’d watched the illusion shatter and hoped she could support and befriend the man laying behind it.

  She still wanted him caught.

  Sora tore away the page with her drawing, brushing aside her conflicting desires. She had enough mysteries to unravel without dealing with the tangled mess of her heart. Not to mention it was a lot easier to focus on other people and mine their secrets than to face her own.

  Arathiel stirred, and she straightened, attentive. He might not wake, but he’d mumbled many words over the last few days. About a Well, and a girl named Lindi—his sister, for whom he had left Isandor all those decades ago. She had interviewed th
e head of Arathiel’s noble family, but Lady Brasten didn’t have a lot of information to give on Lindi. Her sickness was a family disease, one that had grown more frequent and taken several members of House Brasten over the last century, including her father. She spoke of it with a tight voice and a dark gaze. Sora hadn’t pushed the matter. While it might help her interrogations to understand Arathiel, she could feel the grief below the surface. Exposing it wasn’t worth it.

  Except Arathiel didn’t mumble anything this time. He groaned, opened unfocused eyes, and raised a hand. He stared at his fingers with wonder for a moment, then tried to sit up. The cuff at his ankle slid along the railing with the movement, and he froze, perhaps hearing the sound. He hadn’t felt it around his skin, Sora knew. The healer had been adamant Lord Arathiel didn’t perceive hot, cold, pressure, or pain. She wondered what he did sense.

  Arathiel finished straightening, and Sora allowed him time to take in the room. His gaze rested on her first, sitting nearby, and he frowned at the crumbled page in her hand before moving on. She followed his eyes as they passed the eleven empty beds separated by large potted plants, then the double doors leading to the rest of the headquarters. The Sapphire Guard’s symbol had been engraved over them, a half-circle with four spire-like lines jutting out. The barren room didn’t hold much else, and his attention reluctantly returned to her.

  “You must have questions,” he said.

  Three days without speaking turned his voice raw, and he cleared his throat. Sora withheld a bitter laugh. Questions? She had so many—about him, his reasons, his past, his relationship to Hasryan—she didn’t know where to start. Only one mattered, however.

  “Welcome back,” she said. “You have been out for three days. Three days in which Hasryan gets farther away from me.”

  “Good.”

  “Where is he?”

  Arathiel smiled. Not a mocking smile, not even a self-satisfied smile. She’d grown so used to Hasryan’s quips and smirks that Arathiel’s soft, almost sad expression caught her off guard. He tilted his head, staring at the chain on his ankle. “I have no intention of telling.”

  “Did anyone help you?”

  He shrugged. Silence stretched between them. Sora tried to size him up. She’d always been a good judge of character, and though Arathiel was in many ways a mystery to her, she could draw some early conclusions. He didn’t strike her as outgoing, yet she suspected he formed quick and solid friendships. He’d risked a lot and almost perished for Hasryan. Yet Arathiel had stayed calm when she had put him under arrest, despite knowing he’d lost a lot of blood and was dying. Either he was ready for that sacrifice, or death didn’t scare him. Perhaps he’d experienced it before, she mused, or close enough.

  “Anyone from the Well, perhaps?” It was a wild guess, one not meant to hit home but to break his composure. From the way he stiffened, it worked. He kept staring ahead.

  “What does it have to do with anything?”

  “I’m just trying to understand.” And she was, though the ultimate goal was to find Hasryan. “Lord Arathiel Brasten, a noble born a hundred fifty-seven years ago, dead at an unknown date, has just—”

  “I’m not dead.”

  “—just freed an assassin of dark elven descent accused of a half a dozen murders, including Lady Allastam’s.”

  She’d knocked him off balance. His dark brown skin might hide his flush, but she caught the uncertain lick of his lips, and his voice fell to a whisper. “I’m not dead. I never died.”

  “My healer thinks otherwise,” she replied, and when Arathiel cringed, she pushed on. She needed to break his calm. “A spell worthy of Evzen himself, they said. Congratulations, I guess?”

  Arathiel drew his legs back to himself, sitting tucked together in the way scared children do. Sora tapped her notepad with her pencil, shoving her guilt deep down. Arathiel closed his eyes. “So I’m … half-alive, is that it?” A bitter laugh escaped him. “I’ve been feeling like a ghost ever since I returned. You’re not helping.”

  “I’m not here to make you feel better about yourself.” She tapped her notepad, not bothering to take up a quill. She doubted this would lead them anywhere, or that Arathiel would share anything worth investigating this early on. “Several members of House Dathirii have confirmed your identity, and Lady Brasten found proof of your existence in their records. You might be a ghost, but all this tells me is that ghosts are real, and they can destroy my career as easily as anyone else. What is the Well?”

  “I don’t know!” Arathiel clenched his hands. “A trap, perhaps, but not one that provides an explanation while it sucks senses out of you. I’m afraid you’ll have to live with the mystery, as I do.”

  Sora gritted her teeth. If she enjoyed mysteries unsolved, she wouldn’t be a Sapphire Guard investigator. Understanding the Well was not her job, however. “Where is Hasryan?”

  “Long gone.”

  Determination filled his voice. Sora hoped he was wrong, but with three days of delay? Their search hadn’t yielded any results, and without Arathiel’s knowledge, she might never find his trail again.

  “Why did you free him?”

  More than the Well, that was the true mystery behind Arathiel’s very public rescue. Everyone she’d talked to had shared the same story: Arathiel and Hasryan had only played games of cards together, and Arathiel hadn’t even been in town for a full month. How did a bond so strong grow over such an insignificant activity, in so short a time?

  Arathiel’s expression softened. He studied her in silence, and his intense gaze made her squirm. As if he could see behind her professional mask and unravel the very contradictions she’d been unwilling to examine herself. Arathiel’s survey was thorough, yet heavy with kindness, as if it couldn’t contain an ounce of aggression. He did not mean it as an attack, but still Sora disliked the scrutiny. She forced herself to endure. Perhaps he’d be more forthcoming with answers after.

  “You already know,” he said. She didn’t bother to deny it, and Arathiel continued. “Sometimes you meet someone who immediately understands you thoroughly, and whom you understand, too. Hasryan is that to me. We knew each other, even from the start. We didn’t need years. It … isn’t friendship, not quite.” Arathiel gestured at the air, as if the vague movement could explain. “It’s something different altogether, a unique deep link. I know him. I know his struggles. He doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “He killed for money.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  She knew that. Sora gritted her teeth. Her relief at Hasryan’s freedom was a crack in her armour, and Arathiel hammered at it. She reached for her extra protection, which lay on the table next to her. Six scrolls, each detailing an assassination she could attribute to Hasryan without a sliver of doubt. “Not to me, and not to the law,” she said, dumping them on Arathiel. “These are the cases he is responsible for. I don’t care if they framed him for Lady Allastam. I can prove he killed these six. Merchants, travellers, other mercenaries. People who had families and saw their lives cut short in the Crescent Moon’s rise. But their deaths didn’t provoke a feud, so no one cares. Maybe you should open them and look at the names.”

  Arathiel didn’t. He played with the string keeping the scrolls rolled, a frown marring his otherwise calm face. “Hasryan is not the source of their death. You know this, too. He was a tool for her, the middle man. But he is not … evil.”

  Sora lifted her chin and met his gaze. She’d stared down monstrous criminals who had taken glee in their horrendous acts and held the prideful glares of nobles convinced of their superiority, but faced with the tranquil certainty of Arathiel’s eyes, she found herself looking away, her throat tightening. Sora snatched the scrolls out of his lap, more uneasy than she’d been in years.

  “I cannot afford to care about that,” she snapped, then stood. “Rest. We are far from done here.”

  Interrogating Hasryan had tried Sora’s patience to its limits. Until Brune’s brutal betrayal, every qu
estion had been answered with smirks, laughs, and candid jokes. She’d brought years of experience with insufferable criminals to the table to deal with this assassin, who was so convinced his boss would snatch him out of the boiling water that he could mess around and play with her. Sora had thought of it as one of the greatest challenges of her career. And yet, here she was, storming out of the infirmary with as much dignity as she could muster, thrown off by Arathiel’s calm faith in his friend and the way he could, with a few choice words, bring her own doubts to the surface.

  This, she knew, would be harder than Hasryan’s games. She would arrive better prepared next time, but Sora had to accept a simple, obvious fact: every moment sparring with Arathiel would chip away at her desire to capture Hasryan, until it vanished. She could not let it happen. The entire city watched her now and, more importantly, six victims and their families counted on her. They would be her shield, her anchor to this duty. She refused to let them down.

  Heavy blankets were pressing down on Hasryan when he woke. Panic shot through him at the throbbing in his leg—a wound!—but the comforting scent of lavender soothed him. Nothing to worry about, not here in Lady Camilla Dathirii’s quarters. He was no longer in a prison cell.

  He’d tried to leave yesterday. The safety had been too much. Never before had Hasryan relaxed so thoroughly. Surrounded by delicious cookies and soft tea, Hasryan had let his guard down, dropped the constant alertness that had seen him through the difficult years of his existence, and allowed himself to feel completely, utterly safe.

  It terrified him. It wouldn’t last, he knew that. Nothing peaceful endured in his life. What was he thinking? He couldn’t count on this, and so he’d slipped out in the middle of the night. He would gather what little he still had, hidden in the Crescent Moon Headquarters, and leave.

  He never made it past the guards. Brune had doubled the men lurking in the shadows around her base. They spotted him, chased him, wounded him, but he got away.