FULL NOVELXO The Assassin’s Bride: Chapter 9
It was late when Gil returned.
“I hope you’ve brought something to eat with you,” Thea grumbled, though she’d already satisfied her stomach with provisions pulled from her bags. Being trapped inside was far from a welcome reprieve, but she’d taken advantage of the quiet anyway, drawing patterns and plans for embroidery and dozing in between ideas. The beds here were not as comfortable as the one in the room Jaret had given them. She doubted Gil would mind.
“What I’ve brought is far better, I assure you.” He locked the door after him and drew something out from underneath his cloak. A small box and a stack of papers.
She was less than impressed. “How is that better?”
“Because of what they can achieve.” There was no table here, so Gil sat on the floor and brushed a hand over the wood to ensure it was clean. Then he spread out the papers and opened the box. Inside, a wooden pen with a shiny steel nib lay on a bed of wool. Small bottles of ink rested at one end.
Thea’s brow furrowed, but she kept her skepticism to herself as she leaned forward to inspect the papers. Half were blank. Half bore writing, some of it embellished with decorative swirls and frames. “What are those?”
“Examples. My memory is accurate enough for some things, but not accurate enough to fool officials who make comfortable livings from finding mistakes.” He chose a bottle of ink and scanned the room as he shook it. “That lantern in the corner. Bring it. It’s growing dim outside and I’ll need the light.”
She slid from the bed and retrieved it for him, along with the little chest of matches left beside it. Those were a commodity; even in Samara, the artisan mages who made them charged a fortune. To find them in a place as common as an inn struck her as curious. Perhaps the extent of trade in Heartroot made some things easier to get.
Gil lit the lantern and closed its glass door, then set to work. “First, your passport.”
“Are we not going to the passport office?”
“No. I’ve been in the streets and heard whispers of what happened in Samara. We have no way of knowing what the people here know. If the royal guard has already ordered your capture, then making an appearance in such an office would be no better than handing you to the…” He trailed off strangely, interrupted by some thought that made his face fall. He caught himself and gave his head a shake. “To the headsman.”
Thea tilted her head to one side. “What’s wrong?”
He held the pen above a blank paper and frowned. “For a moment, I found myself thinking that I don’t know what to put on your passport, because I don’t know your full name.”
“But we can’t use my name,” she concluded.
“No,” Gil said. “We can’t.”
She quirked a brow. “I suppose we’d best make something up, then.”
“That’s a task for you. This is who you’re to be for the rest of your life, after all.”
“What does yours say?”
The smile he gave her was nothing shy of mysterious. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Thea stuck out her lower lip. “You can’t expect me to think Gil is your real name.” Though Jaret had relaxed when she’d given it. If not his real name, maybe it was the alias he used with everyone.
“Well, it is. That’s what makes it easy to recall. I suggest if you mean to lie about your identity, do it by bending the truth. Put Thea in your new name, as well. That way, if you slip, you won’t be wrong.” He dipped his pen into a bottle of ink and began to copy the decorative framing.
She considered asking where he’d gotten his examples. They were official documents, with other people’s names on them. The passport document did not appear to be his.
“It’s a woman’s passport,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. “Kentoria produces them in different colors. Brown for men, blue for women, and black for children. The frame motifs differ somewhat between each version.”
Which only provided another excuse to hide his own. “Put my first name down as Theadora.”
He paused. “How close is that to the truth?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she replied with a smirk.
Gil cast her a long-suffering look.
Sense got the better of her, and she relented. “My given name is Arathea.”
“Arathea,” he repeated in a murmur, his voice like a caress. It sent a shiver down her spine and she caught herself. He was helping her, but he was no savior. All he was doing was righting his mistakes.
His pen swept across the paper, neat and precise. He replicated the image from left to right, ensuring his hand never touched the ink.
Thea settled back on her bed and drew the blankets around her shoulders. “Should I be concerned about how good you are at that?”
“Forgery is one of many things for which I was trained. I don’t need to explain why I might need to falsify passports. You know what I do.” When he looked at her, a hint of gray showed through the illusory brown of his eyes.
She reached for her sewing basket. “I need to make you more clothing. I’ll do trousers next.”
“I prefer a closer fit than what’s popular in Kentoria these days.”
“I can do that. I can make them fit like a second skin.”
He snorted in amusement. “Perhaps not that close.”
“You’ll have to stand up so I can take measurements.” She tilted her hand to display the rolled measuring tape.
The sheer inconvenience that drew across his face made her second-guess the idea, but he cleaned his pen, put it aside, and stood.
“I’ll be quick,” Thea promised. She left the blankets behind and ran the tape down the side of his leg first. “Light, but you’re tall.”
“Had you not noticed by now?” He rotated in place when she twirled her finger.
“I suppose my powers of observation are lacking when it comes to everything but fit and fashion.” She looped the tape around his waist and tightened it, then let it slack and slid it down to his hips. “You want it close at the ankle and thigh?”
“With enough space to let me move freely.”
“How comfortable are these?”
“Quite.”
She passed the tape between his knees and drew it up to his thigh, then paused. “Move your dagger, it’s in the way.”
Gil glanced down as if he’d forgotten it existed, then undid the buckle that strapped the sheath to his leg so he could swing it out of the way. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” It was a first, anyway. She’d never tailored anything to an assassin before. The possibility for unique designs that were both attractive and functional flitted through her head before she could stop them, and a tiny frown drew lines in her face. She would not fantasize about the intimidating garb she could create for a killer. Not even for Gil.
“Ankle,” she said.
He twisted his foot free of his boot.
She measured and stood. “I need one more. Would you hold the tape like this?” She demonstrated against herself, holding the end against her stomach and letting the rest fall so it could be drawn back between her legs. “For the seat depth.”
Gil took the tape and obliged without a word. Everything he did and said was professional, polite. She’d gotten more than her share of rude comments from men she’d sewn for as she took their sizing before. Why was a man like him, of all people, the only one she’d met who had manners?
She pressed the tape to his lower back and checked the length, then pulled it from his hand and wound it around her fingers. “That should do.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He removed his other boot and pushed them both under the edge of his bed, then sat cross-legged on the floor to resume his work.
Thea would have preferred to draw the pattern on something other than fine fabric first, but her options were limited. She was less confident in her familiarity with his size, even after she wrote down his measurements and worked their calculations in her head. It was just as well, she decided after she finished her planning and preparation. She wouldn’t be able to lay out the fabric to mark or cut until he was finished, anyway.
After a time, Gil collected a few papers. “Behold, your passport. Miss Theadora Emroth. It just needs one more thing, and I think that’s a job for you.”
She took the papers when he offered them, blinking in confusion. “What can I do?”
“It’s supposed to be a booklet.” He indicated the sides of the papers, which he’d already folded together. “Women’s passports are sewn with black thread at the spine.”
“Oh,” she said.
He produced his example and turned it for her to study. His work was remarkable; she could distinguish no differences between the official document in his hands and the forgery she held.
After she’d examined the thickness and spacing, she nodded. “I can do this.”
“Then do it, and I’ll begin work on the next thing we’ll need.” He returned to the floor and prepared a new piece of paper, larger than what he’d used for the passport.
“What’s that one going to be?”
He drew a breath to speak, then stopped.
Uncertainty made the fine hairs on her arms prickle in chill. “Gil,”
“A forgery,” he said quickly. “Nothing to be concerned about. But it may require… ah, some acting.”
Uncertainty morphed to unease. “What do you mean?”
He put his head down and dipped his pen. “Think carefully, Thea. How might a man get a foreign woman into his home country without question?”
Her stomach dropped. “No.”
“I suppose it is time,” he said, the faintest hint of a playful smile curling the corners of his mouth. “Past time, even. I’ll be thirty-two in the spring. My mother, Light rest her, would have been disappointed that I took so long.”
“You cannot be serious,” she protested.
“I am, and if you truly intend to settle in Ranor, you’d best be serious, too. I’ll be gone to tend business long before you’re settled, and word of my untimely demise will follow to satisfy Ranor’s insatiable hunger for paperwork. You’ll be free within a year.”
Free to establish herself, to start her new life. Safely, after she’d settled, after his forgeries ensured she’d be welcome and secure. “But I—I can’t—”
Before she had time to think of some reasonable protest, he turned the half-finished document. “Sign here, Miss Emroth, and I’ll finish the rest.”
“Gil—” she choked.
He presented her with the pen. “Remember, it’s only a forgery. This isn’t even your name.”
Thea’s heart quickened as she stared. Slowly, she reached for the pen.
Just a forgery, she told herself, as if it would still the trembling of her hands. It wasn’t real.
She pressed so firmly, ink bled and feathered across the paper as she spelled out her false name.
With the last letter, Gil snatched the paper away and took the pen from her hand. “Congratulations,” he said, a deep rumble of humor in his voice as he swept his own signature across the proper line. “We’re married.”