“What about the other servants?”

“It was near Christmas, and all had been sent to visit their mortal families for the month. We sorted out what garments the mare had left unscathed and found we had but a mere dozen changes of clothing left—not nearly enough to garb a hundred men—and the high lord due in less than an hour to inspect the garrison.”

“Laundering what you were already wearing would have taken at least another day,” she guessed.

“It would, had any of us known how to use the bloody machines,” he agreed. “Which, of course, none of us did.”

Simone couldn’t imagine a solution to the embarrassing dilemma. “Did you go to your master and explain what had happened?”

He made a cutting gesture. “Sooner I would have fallen on a copper-clad sword. No, what I did was order the men to bathe their faces and then don full armor. When our lord came to the courtyard to inspect the guard, he asked me why they appeared prepared to march into battle. I told him that I had decided to conduct surprise readiness drills.” He waited a beat. “For the entire week.”

Shocked, she caught her breath. “You lied.”

“I saw to it that the men made it the truth. Every night for the next week, half the garrison ran drills in full armor,” he told her, “while the other half became acquainted with the joys of sewing on buttons and mending seams. Never have needle and thread been so repeatedly, continually cursed.”

His laugh invited Simone to do the same, but the sound that caught in her throat felt like a sob. All at once there was too much of him, too close to her, as if he had somehow slipped through her defenses and was only a heartbeat away from possessing her soul. No one, not her father, not even the sisters, had made her feel so open, so vulnerable.

And then her father’s voice, as soft as a caress, snaked out of her memory. Are you unworthy, daughter?

She would not do this, not in his presence. A sign for a rest area appeared and she quickly moved into the exit lane, hoping she could make it before he suspected what was wrong.

“I must stop for a moment,” she managed to say, and had the Land Rover parked and the engine switched off a moment later.

“I will accompany you.”

“No, thank you, Captain.” Without looking at him she pushed open the door and climbed out. “I will return shortly.”

She did not run until she was out of his sight, and she made it as far as a sink in the women’s restroom, where she doubled over and vomited. To cover the sound of her retching she turned on the tap, and then braced herself with her hands as she brought up the rest.

Finally the nausea receded and she could breathe again. She splashed her face and rinsed out her mouth, running the water until the sink cleared before she looked into the mirror, and then wearily rubbed at her pale cheeks until some color returned.

When the bell rings, the dog feeds.

“I am not a dog.” The words came out on a whisper and ended with a single tear that welled on the edge of her lashes. She used the heel of her hand to dash it away.

Someone, probably the captain, was walking toward the restroom; the heavy footfalls made her straighten. She dried her face and mouth on her sleeve, set her cap to rights, and composed herself. If he had heard her puking, she would blame it on Sister Paulette’s too-sour preserves, and tell him the story and make him laugh again. This time she would endure the warmth of it and let it pass through her without stirring her feelings or making herself sick.

Stepping out, Simone didn’t see Korvel or anyone, and she glanced across at the men’s restroom. Why would he go—

Something whistled through the air at her ear, and she ducked as the hard, short object connected with her head. Although a glancing blow, it threw her off balance, her shoulder slamming into the concrete wall as a hand clamped onto her shoulder and an arm raised a lead-filled sap above her face.

With no time to assess the attacker, Simone dropped out of range, hunching over and rolling into his knees. Before he could adjust his stance, she hooked her arm around his ankles and jerked his legs out from under him.

He went down with a low grunt, breaking his fall with a rigid arm. She heard his wrist bones snap as she flipped forward, her head tucked low, and landed two feet away, pivoting as she straightened.

Halfway to his feet, the man pressed his damaged arm against his chest and kept his damp eyes on her face. He shuffled to the side, sweat popping out on the space between his reddened nose and whitened lips as he measured the gap between them and slowly reached down to slip a knife from his boot.

Simone mirrored his movements as she assessed him. His dark blue knit pullover and loose black trousers had been chosen to allow freedom of motion and conceal stains. He bobbed slightly as he made jabbing motions with the blade in an attempt to distract her. His flat eyes, however, never wavered from hers.

Simone had no doubt he had been sent to kill her. If he had chosen to strictly obey his orders, he would have first come at her with the knife. But he’d chosen to use the sap first in order to knock her unconscious, the hallmark of a rapist and torturer.

Such animals are easy to provoke, her father’s voice reminded her. You have but to question their manhood.

The side of Simone’s head throbbed in time with the slowing beat of her heart. The belittling words lay on her tongue, impatient acid waiting to be spilled. She could have his life in her hands in five seconds, and end it in three moves: Shatter the knee, splinter the ribs, and stop the heart.

He came at her, head lowered, eyes up, pistoning his legs and then lunging across the last half meter, the hand holding the knife sweeping out wide. At the last moment Simone shifted and kicked, knocking the blade from his grip. As she turned back toward him she clamped her hand around her wrist and drove her elbow into his throat, knocking him backward. He clutched at his neck as his eyes bulged and his body dropped to his knees.

Simone kicked the knife away. She had no use for his weapon. By crushing his trachea, she had ensured that he would suffocate within three minutes.

Finish it.

She moved around him, encircling his neck with her arm and applying pressure to the arteries, cutting off the blood supply to his brain. He brought his fist down against her leg, hard enough for her to feel the thick ring he wore on his smallest finger, and then the shocking sting of a needle in her flesh. She tore his hand away, but not before a burning sensation spread across the top of her thigh.

She felt his pulse stutter, but held on until it stopped. He slumped over and did not move again.

She grabbed the body under the arms and dragged it into the men’s restroom and into one of the stalls. Her arms and legs began to shake as she hefted up the body and positioned it on the toilet. She searched through his pockets, finding them empty. An unnatural heaviness began to weigh on her as her vision blurred.

She locked the door from the inside, and then crawled out through the space underneath. Soon Korvel would come looking for her, or the drug would take effect; she wondered which it would be. If the captain discovered the body of the assassin, he would know she was not the harmless mortal he assumed her to be. He would definitely ask questions that her oath to the council would not permit her to answer. She risked the time it took for her to clean up again at the sink and check the knot on the side of her head for blood before she staggered out of the restroom.

She breathed through the numbness the drug caused and quickened her steps, lifting her aching head and moving as naturally as she could. When she reached the Land Rover, her head was spinning and shadows crowded in on the edges of her vision. She went around to the passenger side and opened the door.

“Would you mind driving, Captain?” she asked in what she hoped sounded like a tired voice as she held out the keys. “I’d like to rest.”

“Of course.” He took the keys and climbed out.

As he went around the car and got in behind the wheel, he glanced over at her. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“No,” she lied as she reached for the handle to adjust the seat back. The little white stars spiraling down to light upon the windshield came from the effects of the drug, not the sky. She was forgetting to do something, but it was too late. The shadows had stretched out and now were dimming the stars. “Wake me…in an hour.”

She closed her eyes as he said yes.

“Wake up.”

The guard nodding over his clipboard jerked to attention and swiveled on his stool to face the truck. “No one in after dark; come back…” He hesitated as he looked at Pájaro’s face. “Oh, it is you, Monsieur Helada.”

Pájaro considered shooting him in the face, but the sound of the gunshot would attract unwanted attention. “Let me in.”

“Oui, monsieur.” The security guard hurried out of his little shack and nearly dropped his keys as he removed the padlock and chain and pushed open the rusty gate.

The facility appeared deserted, except for two vehicles: a large truck and a small red Fiat, which had been left outside the only warehouse with its windows lit. Pájaro drove past them to the end of the dock, where he parked his BMW between two pylons.

Pájaro removed the pistol he carried, emptying the bullets from it before returning it to his pocket. Such precautions annoyed him—he should no longer have to trouble himself with mortal banalities—but he was not yet invulnerable. Nor would he be until he had taken the elixir of eternal life.

You are unworthy, Pájaro.

The old man had done his best to terrify him with his warnings and his judgments. For a time Pájaro had even believed him, and worked all the harder to master the skills necessary to survive the final trial.

The other boys at the château had tried to befriend him at first, but he knew their game and remained aloof from them. In time he had become the old man’s finest student, faster and deadlier than any of the others. He knew he would emerge from the severance with victory and honor. There had never been question of it.

No one talked about the girl at the château, or how she managed to win every battle she fought. Once two handlers joked about the real reason the old man had taken the girl from her prostitute mother in Paris. As pretty as she was, she was less than nothing, a whore’s castoff. It had disgusted Pájaro to see her behave as if she had a right to be there. The château was to be his, and the night before he faced the last challenge of his training, the final bout known as the severance, he decided he would show her exactly what her place would be in his household.