Bound In Blood (Bound In Blood - Book One)

Chapter Two

I awoke late in the day, feeling well rested and ready for whatever lay ahead. Leaping from my cot, I pulled open my chest and fetched my armour. I hardly wore anything else. I placed my dagger firmly in its sheath and wandered to the dining room. In front of me, I saw Romanus Halstia making his way toward the heavenly scent that wafted through the air, tossing his dagger in the air as he did so. Like me, he preferred his small, nimble blade over anything else.

Clara Scarce, the maid and cook, was busy setting plates on the table filled with scrumptious delicacies when I entered. She was a young girl - a year younger than I - and always worked hard to keep our base - or as Silva called it Sanctuary - clean and our bellies quiet. It was strange how she happened upon our organisation just a few years before. Back when she was only just past her childhood, Silva found her. The girl's parents had both been marks, though she didn't know that. All she knew was that her parents were no longer but we were forever. I think Romanus had been the one to carry out the deed.

To this day, I didn't know who had wanted them off the map or why. They were neither wealthy nor a threat to anyone. There was no political advantage to their demise nor a fortune in gold to be had. Someone must have had a pretty big grudge against them is all I can say.

A dear friend of mine, Hermia Westshield, was sitting at the table eating away, dressed in her usual black robes, her hood lowered over her back, revealing her unruly brown hair which cascaded down her shoulders. She was not like me and Romanus. She had no favour toward the blade nor was she like Conner who liked his bow. No, Hermia had a particular preference to poisonous concoctions she made herself. She took joy in brewing strange herbs together to create devastating poisons to eliminate her targets. "Much harder to trace," she had once told me. It was true. It was difficult to pin any one person for poisoning another as there was little to no evidence to hold against them. Sometimes, she would craft a special poison which I could dip my blade in to make it even more deadly where a single cut would fester over time. By the time they had fallen, I was long gone. Often, this meant no blood had to be spilled and it was much easier to escape unseen.

Hermia often sat at her special station with bottles, decanters and other strange tools set out filled with bubbling liquids and producing foul scents. There would also often be tomes and journals spread across which she would gaze upon and study very intently, always making sure her measurements were correct and such. She also documented any discoveries she made or accidental improvements on a specific brew. She never let anyone touch or read her books for she feared we might steal her ideas. I doubted there was any danger of that considering the lot of us hardly knew the top of one of her vials from the bottom.

I took my usual seat beside her and dug into the meal Clara had prepared this morning. It wasn't unusual for us to have our morning meal so late. When one works all night, it is expected to sleep through the light of day. That was how we worked.

I stabbed at the fried eggs and shoved them into my mouth hungrily, hardly leaving time to breathe between mouthfuls. She'd cooked us sausages, too, along with too-dry bacon and some lentils. I didn't complain. There was always a feast in Sanctuary.

Conner soon joined, sitting across from me and eating far more elegantly than I ever did. He had better manners than any of us combined, always keeping himself tidy and talking with a far more advanced tongue. A lot of the time, I didn't know what he was saying to me. I wondered where he had learned to speak like that. He wasn't like that when we were young, but now, he could pass for some uptight politician.

He sat upright with a straight back, holding his cutlery in a formal manner. He was dressed in his light armour as I was, though a dagger was not at his hip. Instead, his bow was hung on the hook behind him, waiting for him to take it and string it to his back. He hardly went anywhere without the thing. He was certainly skilled enough with it, often hunting for provisions for Clara to prepare for us. However, Clara was always cautious when requesting anything of us. She wasn't an assassin like the rest of Sanctuary's residents and it was obvious that still scared her after all this time. While Conner was the easiest to talk to by far, she was a cook and cleaner while he killed for a living. I understood her reluctance.