The Sprinter

Chapter 8

Eloise gripped the handle of her mug, her fingernails digging into the edges of her knuckles. She couldn’t wait much longer - a feeling they had no doubt intended to plant in her. The assassin - Arothena - had offered to tell her everything, had sat down and opened her mouth to tell her - then stopped. She had said she wanted to wait for another member of their group, a man called Aidrel. Then, she’d gone to prepare breakfast for herself, disregarding Eloise's obvious indignance.

She looked up as another man entered the room, and sat down on the other side of Ronan. Aidrel, she presumed. He reached across the table to shake her hand, his fingers brushing against the blisters she had procured in the kitchens of The Curved Swords.

“Good morning. You’re Eloise, right? My name is Aidrel,”
“Yes, I’m Eloise,” she nodded, stammering. She steeled her face, schooling it into a blank expression, no matter how awkward it felt not to smile at him. Success, she reminded herself, lay in hiding. Always.

The assassin came and sat down next to her. Eloise looked up, and turned to face her.

“So. Are you ready?”

She nodded. She had been ready for the last half hour, but she didn’t dare to say so. Not with Ronan’s eyes on her, his stare so calm, but with an undercurrent of strength that promised violence. Arothena began to speak.

“For many years, I lived as an assassin in this city, as you may have guessed. I was the most skilled, the strongest, and I held the most power, though none dared to acknowledge it. Indeed, few people were actually aware of my skill, or of who I was. After all, success lies in discretion. You, of course, know that. A year ago, I was captured and taken to a prison, which is when I met this brute here,”

She gestured towards Ronan.

“I had planned to give up my previous profession when I got out, but that changed when I found that strange creatures had infested my city. My city. And these things - they are an ever growing darkness that threatens to strangle it. They are the same creatures that have been chasing you. I suppose you were the one that brought them here. I have been hunting them for weeks now, interrogating any I can find, or at least trying to. They’re rather taciturn. Our encounters usually wind up with me killing them. They call themselves the yenaki. They are strange - humanoid forms, but with something very different underneath. Something magical, evil - they're like demons. We were planning to get rid of them in one go at Rajkule, the prison. But then I saw you. And you were desperate to run.”

She fell silent. Eloise waited for her to continue, but the assassin was done. She frowned.

“That’s it?” she asked, her incredulity clear in her voice. They all stared at her.

“What did you expect to hear?” Ronan asked, his voice quiet and firm, while somehow keeping from sounding angry. With a burst of indignation, she realised they were all talking down to her. It didn’t matter what she had done, or what situation they had found her in. In their eyes, she was still just a little kid. An ignorant child, running from anything that scared her.

“I expected to hear what you plan to do now,” she retorted, fury rattling through her words,
“I expected to hear what you plan to do with me. I expected to hear about you, and why you’re all here together, and who you are, and what role I have to play in this. I expected to hear what you intend to do next.”

Her voice had quietened throughout her speech, descending from a trembling anger, to a low outrage.

“Right. You expected us to spill out our plans to you, despite our complete lack of knowledge about you. About who you are, and where you come from, and why the hell those things are chasing you, and - most importantly - how you managed to evade them for months without any fighting abilities.”