Chapter Six: Part Sixteen

Caden’s answering smile is so bright I feel the need to shield my eyes. He jumps forward and throws his arms around me, hugging me hard. He pulls back and is grinning from ear to ear.

“Thank you, Solees. You’re a good friend.” He says softly. I smile back at him and give him a fake punch in the shoulder. He smiles good naturedly and laughs.

…

Another six months pass in much the same way. I send off my letter to my ‘uncle Massers’, telling him where me and my mother live and that we’re safe and I look forward to seeing him again. He sends back a letter explaining nothing that I don’t already know.

The King is having trouble keeping his throne but everyone who rises up to oppose him turns up dead but there is no way to connect the deaths to the King himself.

We continue to write to each other but I continue to get all the same information from Caden who is still running his ‘errands’ for the master.

Then, the master returns. He’d come home maybe three times in the entire year and a half I’d been working at the estate but never stayed for more than two days and I never got a chance to meet him.

But then he’s here and he’s standing in front of me. He’s tall and imposing. Large in the shoulders and chest and narrow in the hips. His clothes are tailored to fit him perfectly and definitely not scratchy like my own clothes I’ve gotten used to over the course of the past year and a half.

“So you must be Solees.” He says, unnecessarily. I’m the only teenage boy living on the estate other than Caden, since the master refuses to allow children to live and work here. I nod and bow deeply.

“Yes sir, I am Solees. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” I say to my shoes.

“I’ve heard so much about you.” I add, straightening up and looking him in the eye. It’s a blatant act of disrespect to look my master in the eye like I am, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s staring at me with a thoughtful expression.

“You and Caden are close, yes?” he asks, speculatively.

“Yes sir.” I answer, unsure where this is going.

“Lidiya informs me that you’ve spent nearly every moment of your free time together for the past year and half.” He says.

“Yes sir.” I say, although I can tell that he’s not really talking to me as much as he’s talking to himself.

“You must be close…” he murmurs. The way he’s looking at me sends shivers down my spine. I want to flee. To run from his look. I feel like prey caught in the gaze of a hungry predator, frozen, waiting for the strike which will end my life.

Chaper Six: Part Fifteen

“I was four. As soon as I was bought, the very next day the training started. And if I didn’t perform well, I was beaten. I learned very quickly that I needed to memorize my lessons and I needed to push myself in the physical training so I wouldn’t get a beating.” Caden says evenly. I feel myself practically vibrating with fury and have to quell the urge to strike something.

I close my eyes and breathe deeply and evenly, attempting to quell my rage. I feel Caden’s hand on my arm, holding firm. I keep my eyes shut for a moment longer, allowing my anger to completely abate before I open my eyes and meet Caden’s brown eyes.

I want to cry at the reassigned expression on his face. This is Caden’s life. It’s all he knows. He tried to escape it and he was always brought back, kicking and screaming, until he was so broken that he’d do anything they asked. And he did. Caden has killed for this man he calls master; multiple times.

This day, on the riverbank beside our willow tree, I vow to myself that someday, I will free Caden. He and I will make the master pay for his crimes against an innocent child and we will make our escape. I will take Caden with me and he will stand by my side when I take back the Kingdom. I will protect him.

“I’m fine, Caden.” I say, reassuring. I reach forward and straighten Caden’s tunic which is hanging slightly off balance on his narrow shoulders.

“And you will be too, someday. We’ll get you out of here and the master will never harm you or make you do anything again. Do you understand?” I say, gripping his shoulders and staring hard into his eyes, willing him to understand and believe the sincerity of my words.

He’s staring back at me, incredulous and, if I’m reading him right, ever so slightly hopeful.

“You want to save me?” he murmurs, staring into my eyes as I stare back. I nod my head firmly.

“Yes, Caden. I am going to help you get out of this mess. No matter how long it takes, I will get you out of the master’s service.” I say.

Chapter Six: Part Fourteen

Again, Caden nods and I abruptly stand and begin to pace, wringing my hands in front of me as I go. Caden just watches me sadly. Then I turn and fix him with a look demanding the truth.

“Who are you killing?” I ask. Caden apparently doesn’t find this to be a hard question because he answers with no hesitation.

“Men who will attempt to overthrow the new King.” He says and I feel myself grow cold. I narrow my eyes.

“Who exactly?” I ask. Caden just shrugs.

“I don’t know. The new King isn’t very popular with his people after what he did to the royal family. It’s been hard for him to keep his throne. Master has been instrumental in keeping the uprisings at bay and I help by taking out any men who may or may not have the ability to take the throne.” Caden says.

I’m reeling with the onslaught of information. My mind is in a whirl, trying to process what I’ve been told.

“You kill for the new King. To keep him on the throne.” I say lowly, staring at Caden, incredulous. He flinches and looks away.

“Not of my own violation. I’d rather not kill at all!” he says, a hard bite to his voice. I flinch as well, suddenly feeling contrite for insinuating that he would be doing any of this if he had the choice.

I push down my anger, though it’s difficult, and walk back up to him and hold out my hand. He looks up at me, relief clearly visible on his face, and lets me help him up. I follow him back to the river and then help him wash the blood from his clothes and body.

It’s only after the dried blood is off his skin that I notice his torso is dotted with scars. His back has long, thin scars crisscrossed from his shoulder and disappearing below the waist of his leggings.

“Caden,” I murmur, staring in horror at the obvious evidence of his torturous early life. He looks up at me, clean tunic in his hands, and sees where I’m looking. Flushing he quickly pulls the tunic on over his head, ignoring the fact that it’s completely wet and its cold outside.

I still stare at his upper body, even though the scars are now covered up. On top of everything he’s told me, he was abused as well?

“How old were you when those started?” I ask thickly, gesturing. He can’t meet my eyes. This is Caden’s nervous gesture. He avoids eye contact if he feels uneasy or threatened.

Chapter Six: Part Thirteen

“He forced you? How?” I ask. Caden’s head jerks up and he looks at me, horrified. It looks like I’ve jerked him out of the stupor he was in and he is now realizing all that he has just told me.

Caden goes to stand up, panicked, but I reach for his arm, clamping my hand tightly around his wrist, refusing to let him leave. He glares at me and tries to jerk his arm free but I don’t let him. He gives a huge tug and I get pulled along the ground a few inches. I refuse to let go.

Then he tackles me and we’re rolling around on the ground, wrestling for dominance. He’s strong. Part of his tutoring is physical training and he’s deceptively strong for someone his size.

After minutes of scuffling on the cold ground I finally pin him beneath me. Both of us are breathing raggedly and we’re glaring at each other.

“I am not going to leave you!” I exclaim. He sucks in a breath and stares up at me, stricken.

“No matter what you tell me, I’m not going to leave!” I growl, putting my face close to his. He stares up at me, wide-eyed for a moment before going slack and closing his eyes, nodding in defeat.

“Can I let you up without you running away?” I ask and he nods. I slide off him and sit on the ground next to him, crossing my legs. He sits up and brushes himself off, glaring at me. I can tell that there’s no real anger behind his glare, however. Instead, resignation lurks in his eyes.

“The man they brought, he had a daughter. She was only about three or four years old. If I didn’t kill her father, than she would die as well. It was one or both and I chose one.” Caden says, refusing to look at me.

I sigh and reach out, putting my hand on his arm comfortingly. I hate the master with an all-consuming passion. I know I can’t do anything about my anger and it just makes me all the more furious.

“You just killed someone else, didn’t you?” I ask and Caden swallows, biting his lip, and nods.

“Is that what the master has been making you do on all your trips?” I ask, incredulous. Caden has been on many trips over the course of the past few months. Nearly ten separate trips in total.

Chapter Six: Part Twelve

“Why do you do it?” I ask. Caden sighs.

“It’s all I knew. For the longest time I wasn’t even really sure what an assassin was! After a while I realized that I was being trained to kill people, but I didn’t know that it was a bad thing until I was nine.” Caden explains, sitting on the ground cross-legged. I sit across from him, settling in for what is sure to be a long discussion.

“My father sold me to Master when I was four. I barely remember my mother or father and, being so young, after a while I almost completely forgot about them. All I knew was what Master told me.” Caden is staring off into the water beside us, lost in his own world.

I keep quiet, not wanting to break his train of thought. He’s so distracted by his reminiscing that he probably doesn’t realize how much he’s sharing with me.

“When I was nine I began spending a lot of time in the library. Through books I explored the world outside the manor. I realized that it was wrong to kill people the way I was being taught. I wouldn’t be doing it to protect or to save. I would be doing what Master said with no regard as to what the crimes of the victims were.” Caden’s eyes are glassy and his face is pinched with remembered pain.

“So, I tried to run away. I never made it far. I was always found and taken back quickly and then punished. For three years I fought back. I refused to do my lessons. I refused my training. But I was starved and beat and all my freedoms were taken away. By the time I was twelve I was tired of fighting. I couldn’t do it anymore. So I gave up.”

Caden isn’t looking at me. He’s still looking down at the river and all I can do is stare at him, horrorstricken. I can’t believe that someone would do anything like this to Caden. He said he was only four when his training started! The master was training a four-year-old how to kill!

Abruptly I’m seized with an indescribable fury. I want to find the master and I want to do him bodily harm. I want to make him suffer, slow and painfully. I also want to kill Caden’s father for selling him to the master in the first place.

“I killed for the first time last year.” Caden says quietly. I focus back on him and he’s hunched down, his hands clenched together in his lap.

“A few months before you showed up. A man was brought to me and I was forced to kill him.” Caden says.The way Caden words that sentence catches my attention. Forced?

Chapter Six: Part Eleven

Caden won’t tell me what he does on his trips. He refuses to even mention them and when I bring them up, he finds an excuse to leave and he runs to the house and hides somewhere. I’m always a little put off by asking him, but he seems to be so put out by what he does while away that I can’t help but bring it up because I just want to help him.

It was a day just about a year after I’d come to live in the manor that I discover what exactly it was that Caden is being forced to do. Caden has been gone a few days and I have the afternoon off.

Deciding that I don’t want to hang around the house in case I get asked to help with the housework, because that has happened before, I head to the willow tree, intending to lounge around and relax.

I’m surprised when I get there, however, because there is someone already there. I can see immediately that it’s Caden wearing his tight traveling pants, his shirt in his hands. He’s also covered in blood. He’s kneeling at the edge of the brook and trying to wash the blood from his shirt.

I’m stuck frozen. The water is running red from the shirt and I can see that his face and hands are covered in it. I can’t see his face but I suppose he’s so absorbed in what he’s doing that he didn’t hear me coming like he normally does.

“Caden?” I exclaim incredulously when I finally find my voice. Immediately his head whips around and he’s staring at me, eyes wide and panicked. He jumps up, abandoning his shirt on the river bank, and stands facing me, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“Oh gods, Caden.” I say, hurrying over, eyes raking his lithe frame for injuries.

“What happened?” I ask, reaching for him. But he takes a step back, staring at me warily through narrowed eyes. I let my hands drop and look at him closely instead, studying his form. I don’t see any wounds which leaves the blood. It’s not his own.

“What happened, Caden?” I ask quietly, staring into his eyes. He studies me for a moment before flushing beneath the layer of blood and looking away.

“The master made you do this, didn’t he?” I ask, taking a leap. Caden bites his lip and nods.

“Tell me.” I demand, voice firm. He looks back up at me, fire in his eyes, ready to tell me off, I’m sure. But I let all my concern for him show on his face and he deflates before my eyes.

“I’m an assassin.” He whispers. “I’ve been trained since I was four to be his perfect little assassin.” When he calls himself a ‘perfect little assassin’ I can tell by his tone that those are not his words. He’s quoting his master.

Chapter Six: Part Ten

We end up playing in the river for far longer than we intended and are late for dinner. Both of us get reprimands from Lidiya, although mine is much harsher. And, true to her word, Lidiya ensured that I didn’t get dinner.

Lidiya also makes sure that Caden and I don’t see each other for several weeks. She continues to send the master messages about us. She really doesn’t like me and doesn’t like that Caden has taken a shining to me. She wants me gone and the house back to normal. But the master never answers.

Then Caden, fed up with Lidiya’s antics, sends a letter himself, explaining all that has happened since my arrival. He explained how Lidiya was keeping him from me by increasing his tutor schedule without the master’s permission. He spun a wonderful tale about how Lidiya was directly defying the master just to keep Caden from spending any time with me at all.

Immediately, a reply arrives and Lidiya is told off for interfering with Caden’s tutoring schedule and for presuming to know what the master’s answer would have been to Caden’s request for my friendship.

Then, at the end of the letter, he said yes. As long as Caden does all his studies and training, and I get all my chores done, we can be friends.

Excited, Caden and I speak with Jorn. It takes a while to convince him, but he allows me to work around Caden’s schedule. As long as I don’t slack off and my chores are completed, I can spend my spare time with Caden.

So, the months pass and Caden and I become close, spending every spare moment together. More often than not, we can be found at the willow tree, playing in the river and surrounding forests.

And then Caden turns fifteen. He starts getting called away by the master, at least once a month. He’s gone for days at a time and comes back tired and drawn. It always takes me a few days after his return to coax a smile form him. He’s haunted by whatever it is the master has him do while he’s away.