One Word Prompts 2021

Roof - The Little Lord

They stood on the roof, under a sky of stars and smoke. Below them, the city burned. Not their fault, yet they found themselves not faultless.

"Can't we..." the boy asked, his words catching in his throat. Even as he asked, the hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed him. His own powerlessness drowned him.

"Come on," his last guardian said, taking the child's hand in her own. She looked away from the burning city, to the dark forest beyond the walls. Together they ran along the rooftop, the boy scurrying as fast as his short, untrained legs would carry him.

How often had she stood sentinel on these rooftops over her lord's city, watching for trouble from above? Cloaked in shadow and night, hiding her presence, she had stolen secrets for his council, had stalked suspects, had slain enemies of his court.

She was not a bodyguard. She'd watched his bodyguards fall. And what was a shadow to do? She could not stop an army of armored men. Not alone. Not confronted head-on. Not taken by surprise as she was.

She'd watched them storm the city gates. Watched them ravage through the city. Watched as the castle fell and they took her lord's keep. She'd watched her lord, the boy's father, fell to a pretender's sword.

The two, the assassin and her charge, came to the end of the roof. The boy looked up at her, "What now?" written clearly on his face.

"Jump," she said, pointing to the next rooftop, about a foot down and four feet away.

His eyes grew large. "Couldn't we just take the streets?"

She shook her head, pointing to another of the many enemy soldiers racing through the town, his sword raised. Below the ring of screaming rose like the smoke. Much screaming of voices, very little of sword against sword. A one-sided massacre, if she'd ever heard one.

The boy paled as he looked down, though whether it was the heights or the sights that scared him, the shadow could not say.

"We are going to need to go over the walls," she explained. "It will be easier if we do that from the roofs than it would be to find a way up from the streets." As if avoiding the chaos down there wasn't enough.

The boy nodded, but his hand gripped tighter around her own.

This would have been easier without him. The thought struck her again, as it had come unbidden several times already. Her lord was dead, he could not pay her. And if he could, protecting this child would not have been his request.

The boy was young, defenseless and asset-less. Too trusting to boot. She was not a guard. She could not guarantee his safety should they be confronted with armed opposition. If they could not run from an enemy one or both of them would die. Taken together, it made more sense to leave the child.

Hell, bringing the kids head to the city's conquerors might even win her a place under the new management.

And yet, once again, she found herself in the castle's garden. It was by the old annex, where the first lady had died in obscurity. The night was young and clear. She'd just cleared the castle walls after a job gone wrong. Her hand clasped the still oozing gash on her left arm.

In the dark, the annex garden was a jungle, overgrown and uncared for. But, for her, it was unmistakable safety. An area undoubtedly within her lord's fortress. She relaxed as she walked deeper into the garden on her way to the main building. She was safe now. As badly as the mission had gone, it was over now. She would have a chance to rest, recuperate, and plan again.

She had planned on reporting to her lord—the mission hadn't been a complete failure and there was much he would want to know—and then finding the castle's doctor. Her wound was painful, but not life-threatening, and the doctor would do a more thorough job if he knew he didn't need to rush so she could make her report.

That was how she had expected her night to go. An efficient report to the lord. A trip to the doctor for stitches and pain killers. A fitful night's sleep.

And that might have been how it went if she had noticed him.

And she should have noticed him. A shadow was always aware of their surroundings, no matter the situation. To not was to invite their own death. But, pain and relief were a heady mix, capable of dulling even razor senses. She didn't notice him until she walked into the garden's plaza.

He sat in the moonlight by the dry fountain, looking at the stars, maybe six years old. He should have been scared of her. A proper lordling should expect strangers coming out of the bushes to be assassins. This boy all the more.

And yet, he took one look at her, and his little face turned to worry. Not for himself or what she might do to him, but for her bleeding arm. He had wasted no time, scurrying up to her, asking if she was okay, asking if she needed help. She'd tried to brush him off. She knew what she was doing. She had a job to do.

"What job is more important than your life!" the little boy had yelled as he ripped the hem of his nightshirt to wrap around her bleeding arm.

"I'll go first," she said, snapping back to the present, again standing on the edge of one roof looking down on a roof across the narrow road. "You follow. I'll catch you."

The boy, now twelve and barely any bigger than he'd been then, started to protest, but she was already in the air.

It would be easy, that cynical voice inside her said yet again, to leave him here. To just keep running when her feet hit the shingles of the next roof. There was no shortage of rich men in need of shadows. No shortage of lords with enemies. She would find employment again. There would be another lord.

Her feet alighted on the roof with barely a sound. She took a deep breath. She turned.

Stretching a hand out to the boy, she gestured for him to follow.

His face pale, he took a couple steps back. It was too much for him. He was only a kid. She wouldn't be abandoning him if he refused to follow? Would she? She sighed. There was only so much she could do for—

The boy came sprinting off the roof. He sailed through the air, his eyes wide.

He'd jumped! She was so shocked she almost forgot to put out her arms to catch him like she'd promised. Almost.

He landed with a thud in her arms, his little arms wrapping around her, shivering with fear. Or perhaps cold.

"I got you," she whispered into his ear, slowly lowering him to the roof. He nodded, reluctantly letting go of her and looking on to the next rooftop.

"Come on," she said, taking his hand again. There was still quite a way to the walls. There would be quite a few more jumps.

But the boy didn't pull back as they ran. He hurried beside her, clumsy and awkward beside her practiced steps, but with unquestionable determination.

There might be other rich men in need of shadows. But they would have to find another. She had a lord, little though he might be.