"It's a test," Kate whispered to herself as she stalked her victim. "It's a test."
She kept saying it to herself, perhaps in the hope that repetition would make it true, perhaps because it was the only way to keep herself following after Gertrude Illiard, keeping to the shadows while she sat on the balcony of her home for breakfast, slipping silently through the crowds of the city while the merchant's daughter walked with friends through the early morning markets.
Savis Illiard kept dogs and guards to protect his property and his daughter both, but the guards had been at their posts too long and relied on the dogs, while the dogs were easy to quiet with a flicker of power.
Kate watched the woman she was supposed to kill, and the truth was that she could have done it a dozen times over by now. She could have run up in the crowd and slid a knife between her ribs. She could have fired a crossbow bolt or even thrown a stone with lethal force. She could even have taken advantage of the environment of the city, startling a horse at the wrong moment or cutting the rope that held a barrel as her target walked beneath.
Kate did none of those things. She watched Gertrude Illiard instead.
It would have been easier if she had been an obviously evil person. If she had struck out at her father's servants in pique, or treated the people of the city like scum, Kate might have been able to see her as just a step away from the nuns who had tormented her, or the people who had looked down on her on the street. Instead, she was kind, in the small ways that people could be when they didn't think too much about it. She gave money to a beggar boy as she passed. She asked after the children of a shopkeeper she barely knew.
She seemed like a kind, gentle person, and Kate couldn't believe that even Siobhan would want someone like that dead.
"It's a test," Kate told herself again. "It has to be."
She tried to tell herself that the kindness had to be a fa?ade masking some deeper, darker side. Perhaps this young woman showed a kind face to the world to hide murders or blackmail, cruelty or deception. Yet while someone else might be able to tell themselves that, Kate could see Gertrude Illiard's thoughts, and none of them pointed to a predator lurking beneath the surface. She was a normal enough young woman for her place in the world, made wealthy by her father's business, perhaps a little unconcerned about it, but genuinely innocent in every respect Kate could see.
It was hard not to feel disgusted at what Siobhan had commanded her to do then, and at what Kate had become under her tutelage. How could Siobhan want her dead? How could she demand that Kate do this thing? Was she really asking it just to see if Kate had it in her to kill on command? Kate hated that thought. She couldn't, she wouldn't, do such a thing.
But she had no choice, and she hated that even more.
She had to be sure, though, so she slipped back to the merchant's house ahead of her prey, slipping over the wall in a moment when she could feel that the guards weren't watching and sprinting to the shadows of the wall. She waited another few heartbeats, making sure that everything was still, then clambered up to the balcony to Gertrude Illiard's room. There was a latch on the balcony, but that was an easy thing to lift using a slender knife, letting her pad inside.
The room was empty, and Kate couldn't sense anyone nearby, so she quickly searched it. She didn't know what she was hoping to find. A vial of poison saved for a rival, perhaps. A diary detailing all the tortures she planned to inflict on someone. There was a diary, but even at a glance, Kate could see that it simply detailed the other young woman's dreams and hopes for the future, her meetings with friends, her brief flash of feelings for a young player she'd met in the market.
The truth was that Kate couldn't find a single reason why Gertrude Illiard deserved to die, and even though she'd killed before, Kate found the thought of murdering someone for no reason abhorrent. It made her sick just to think about doing it.
She felt the flicker of an approaching mind and swiftly hid under the bed, trying to think, trying to decide what she would do. It wasn't that this young woman reminded Kate of herself, because Kate couldn't imagine this merchant's daughter ever truly knowing suffering, or wanting to pick up a blade. She wasn't even like Sophia, because Kate's sister had a deceptive streak when she needed it, and the kind of hard practicality that came from having to live with nothing. This girl would never have spent weeks pretending to be something she wasn't, and would never have seduced a prince.
While a servant went around the room, tidying it in preparation for her mistress's return, Kate put her hand to the locket at her neck, thinking of the picture of a woman inside. Maybe that was it. Maybe Gertrude Illiard fit with the picture of well-born innocence Kate had when it came to her parents. What did that mean, though? Did it mean that she couldn't kill her? She touched the ring that sat beside the locket, intended for Sophia. She knew what her sister would say, but this wasn't a choice that Sophia would ever be in a position to have to make.
Then Gertrude came into the room, and Kate knew that she would have to make her choice soon. Siobhan was waiting, and Kate doubted that her teacher's patience would last forever.
"Thank you, Milly," Gertrude said. "Is my father home?"
"He isn't expected back for a couple of hours, miss."
"In that case, I think I will take a nap. I woke too early today."
"Of course, miss. I'll see that you aren't disturbed."
The servant walked off, shutting the door to the room behind her with a click. Kate saw embroidered boots pulled off and set down next to her hiding place, felt the shifting of the bed above her as Gertrude Illiard sat down on it. The timbers creaked as she lay down, and still Kate waited.
She had to do this. She'd seen what would happen to her if she didn't. Siobhan had made it clear: Kate was hers now, to do with as she wished. Kate was as tightly bound to her as she would have been if her debt had been sold to another. More tightly, because now it wasn't just the law of the land giving Siobhan power over Kate, but the magic of her fountain.
If she failed Siobhan in this, at best, she would find herself sent off into some living hell, forced to endure things that would make the House of the Unclaimed look like a palace. At worst…Kate had seen the ghosts of those who had betrayed Siobhan. She had seen what they suffered. Kate wouldn't join them, whatever it took.
She just had to keep reminding herself that this was a test.
She watched Gertrude's thoughts as she fell asleep, noting their changing rhythms as she slid into slumber. There was silence around the room now, as servants kept away to let their mistress get her rest. It was the perfect moment. Kate knew she had to act now, or not at all.
She slid out from under the bed without making a sound, rising back to her feet and looking down at Gertrude Illiard. In sleep, she looked even more innocent, mouth slightly open as she lay with her head on one of a pair of goose down pillows.
It's a test, Kate told herself, only a test. Siobhan will stop this before I kill her.
It was the only thing that made sense. The woman of the fountain had no reason to want this girl dead, and Kate wouldn't believe that even she could be that capricious. Yet how did she pass the test? The only way that she could see was to actually try to murder this girl.
Kate stood there contemplating her options. She didn't have any poisons, and wouldn't know the best way to administer them if she did, so that was out. There was no way to engineer an accident here, the way she might have on the street. She could take out a dagger and cut Gertrude's throat, but would that leave enough of an opportunity for Siobhan to intervene? What if she stabbed or cut so fast that there was no saving the target of this test?
There was one obvious answer, and Kate contemplated it, lifting one of the silken pillows. It had a river scene from some far-off land woven into it, the raised threads rough under her fingers. She held it between her hands, stepping so that she stood over Gertrude Illiard, the pillow poised.
Kate felt the shift in the young woman's thoughts as she heard something, and saw her eyes snap open.
"What…what is this?" she asked.
"I'm sorry," Kate said, and bore down with the pillow.
Gertrude fought, but she wasn't strong enough to dislodge Kate. With the strength the fountain had unlocked, Kate could hold the pillow in place easily. She could feel the young woman struggling to find any space in which to breathe, or scream, or fight, but Kate kept her weight down over the pillow, not allowing the least crack of air to sneak through.
She wanted to reassure Gertrude that it would be all right; tell her that in a minute, Siobhan would stop this. She wanted to tell her that as bad as it felt now, it would all be fine. She couldn't, though. If she said it, there was too much of a risk that Siobhan would know that she wasn't treating this as real, and force her to go through with it. There was too much of a risk that Siobhan would throw her soul into the hellish depths of the fountain.
She had to be strong. She had to keep going.
Kate kept the pillow in place while Gertrude thrashed and clawed at her. She kept it in place even when her struggles started to weaken. When she went still, Kate looked around, half expecting Siobhan to appear from nowhere to congratulate her, revive Gertrude Illiard, and declare this done.
Instead, there was only silence.
Kate pulled the pillow away from the young woman's face, and astonishingly, she still looked peaceful, despite the violence of the seconds before that moment. There was no life there in that expression, none of the animation that there had been while Kate had been following her around the city.
She could feel that there were no thoughts there to sense, but even so, she put her fingers to the pulse at Gertrude Illiard's throat. There was nothing. The young woman was gone, and Kate…
"I killed her," Kate said. She stuffed the pillow back into place beneath the merchant's daughter, beneath her victim, and stumbled back from the bed as if she'd been shoved. Her feet caught the boots that Gertrude had kicked off, and Kate fell, scrambling back to her feet in a hurry. "I killed her."
She hadn't believed that it would happen, not really. She hated herself in that moment. She'd killed before, but never like this. Never someone so helpless, so innocent.
"Miss, is everything all right?" the servant's voice called from the other side of the door.
Kate wanted to stand there, to let the ground swallow her up, to let people find her and kill her for what she'd done. She deserved it, and more than that. The full horror of what she'd just done started to dawn on her. She'd stood over an innocent woman and smothered her to death, with nothing quick or clean or gentle about it.
She deserved death for that. She should just stand there and let the merchant's guards give her it. She didn't, though. Woodenly, stumbling, Kate made her way back to the balcony. Around her, she could sense the guards springing into life as they started to understand that something was wrong.
A few more seconds, and there would be no way to escape. The guards would be hunting for intruders, and then Kate would have to fight to get clear. She would have to kill again, too, because if anyone recognized her later, she wouldn't be able to go back to the forge, or to Lord Cranston's company.
That thought was enough to drive her forward, sending her into a leap from the balcony that ended in a roll across the hard ground. Kate was up and running then, sprinting for the outer wall even as she pushed the dogs away from her with a burst of fear. She planted her feet on the wall, running up it and then leaping to catch the top. Kate hauled herself over, the way she might have pulled herself into a tree back in the forest. She leapt again, landing lightly on the other side and quickly losing herself in the crowds of the city's streets.
As she did it, Kate couldn't work out who she hated more, Siobhan or herself. Maybe she didn't need to choose. Maybe, after what she'd just done, there was enough hatred to be found for both of them. Kate knew one thing-she was going to find Siobhan, and she was going to get answers.