Urgh, reposted because when I had a little more sleep and looked it over today, I noticed an embarrassing number of mistakes throughout the chapter. Second part should be coming within a day or two; thank you ever so much, those who left reviews. It's wonderful encouragement.

Hola. Two notes; one, I don't remember how many beats a trot uses anymore. Forgive me; it's been quite a few years since my horse-craze days. Two, I don't remember what units of time/measurement the world of Valdemar uses, so I apologize in advance for any confusion concerning that until I can find some books and skim them for usage. Oh, I lied. One more note: some of the characters are mine, but most of the concepts, world, etc are actually Mercedes Lackey's.

The Words Between - part 1

He held his breath, eyes narrowed in the dim hallway, waiting and watching as he sifted through the house's noises for anything that might indicate danger to himself or his assignment. When he had counted fully to thirty with nothing presenting itself as worthy of waiting for another night, he released the rest of his breath slowly and eased his way down the side of the corridor, wary of creaking floorboards. Not that they would have been tolerated for long in a rich and well-run household like this, but one should never leave to chance that this might be the first time that a panel decided to give way with a note of complaint.

He had watched the merchant Sovnessan and his household for the better part of a fortnight. The thin, sallow-faced man was well known in guild circles, and while not well liked, he also had few grudges held against him. He was a careful, shrewd tradesman, had a keen nose for where business was to be had, was openly acknowledged as one of the higher ranking members of the merchant guild, and was over fond of onions. He had little to do with the actual running of his estate, the mundane matters being left in his steward's too capable hands, and while the rotund man with the florid nose of an aspiring drunkard put more on the house's accounts than he should have, Sovnessan seemed not to mind. The estate wasn't accruing prohibitive debts, the steward carefully touched nothing but those accounts allotted him in his work's capacity, and the merchant found few issues that needed his personal attention after returning home late at night, looking for only dinner, mulled wine before the fireplace, and bed. All in all, Sovnessan was a remarkably mild parasite, keeping his shadier dealings to a minimum, almost hardly worth noting in the grander scheme of games that the rich and mighty played in the capital of Valdemar. Yet somehow, Sovnessan had managed to upset someone, very badly...for Kyn had been sent to kill the merchant.

Kyn did not dwell on the possible motives behind his assignment as he slid noiselessly past one, two, three doorways to pause at a fourth. There was nothing he needed to know beyond the purvew of his mission, whatever it may be; in this particular instance, who the target was, how long he had in which to do the job, and what methods were the most desirable. There was nothing he was supposed to know beyond that. His master had drilled that concept into him long before he had ever been allowed outside the manse.

Soft sounds of breathing, not quite rising to the level of snores, leaked through some of the doors he passed. Maidservants, and two nieces who had been sent by Sovnessan's sister-in-law to be exposed to culture in the capital. The rest of the staff were housed in the lower floors. He had slipped in through a window left open to what was left of the fall breezes, one of the maids in the habit of stealthily nudging it open a crack to relieve the lingering heat - and the oppressive scent - despite express instructions to latch all windows and doors by nightfall, closing it again before the master of the house rose in the morning. Even if he had not carefully noted the position of the merchant's room from the outside and known exactly how many steps on the inside it would take to reach it, he would have known from the thick perfume of burnt herbs and incense that seeped from it, permeating nearly the entire floor. It had been a relatively simple matter to gain the third story entrance left unwittingly by the maid, the house being built right next to an older, more dated building that had more accessible routes up its facade, and only the original commissioner of the work knew why the two were set but eight feet apart and yet had nothing but empty air to connect them. Both were owned by Sovnessan, as well as the park-like garden that surrounded them. Sovnessan only visited this house, and then only to sup and sleep.

A small bladder of oil insured a quiet entry as he eased the door open, slipping inside as quickly as possible and closing it again behind him to insure that no change in lighting, no matter how subtle, would waken the merchant. There was a stirring in the thin blankets, a hand raising itself to sprawl across the edge of the pillow. Then stillness.

It was only a matter of five steps to cross the room, placing him at the merchant's bedside, a twist of hand and wrist to drop the slender knife from its sheath around his wrist into his hand. Then, waiting, patiently, barely stirring to breath through his mouth for fear that the miasma of lingering odors would tickle his nose into a sneeze, until Sovnessan mumbled something in his sleep and shifted again. Then again, before finally settling flat on his back, mouth falling open slightly, gray-brown wisps of hair arranging itself in a worn halo about his balding head. Leaving his neck perfectly exposed.

Knife sliced through flesh with almost frightening ease, just a little tug to indicate it had passed through anything at all. But even as the merchant's dying gurgle reached Kyn's ears, indicating another mission completed successfully, the realization that he had made one of the biggest mistakes of his life washed through him like freezing water. The premonition was so strong, so overwhelming, that he didn't even dodge the gout of blood that inevitably sprayed from the man's severed vessels, stood there staring dumbly as if he were still an un-blooded trainee, brought back to himself only with the feeling of warm liquid striking his arm and flecking his cheek. Flinching as if he were the one that had been dealt the deathblow, he sucked in a sharp breath, feeling his heart jump as it might have after a mile's run.

He shouldn't have finished this tonight. Instincts that had never led him wrong told him that, though they had found a most inconvenient time to be tardy. Cursing roundly inside his head, he didn't bother wiping the blood off, something edging far too close to panic for his comfort pushing him to flee as quickly as he can, consequences be damned. He would be punished later for his sloppiness. But punishment was preferable to whatever it was he felt - could almost literally see - looming on the horizon.

Reversing the slender knife, he peremptorily slipped it back in its sheath, an idle corner of his mind tallying another black mark against him for returning a soiled weapon to its home, uncleaned. It would just have to wait like everything else, though. His first priority was to get out of the house, preferably off the estate altogether, before he began worrying about appearances and caring for his tools of trade.

Slipping back out of the window, he crouched on its sill and raked the nearby casements and alleys with his eyes before leaping up and out, barely catching the roof's edge of the next building. Hauling himself up by brute strength, he trotted across the flat top, reflexively bent over, toward the line of faux-balconies that punctuated each floor down to the ground. The small protrusions were vaguely egg-shaped with the upper half missing, carved from a plain white stone, but decorated with enough bas-relief to more than make up for their lack in color. Large enough to hold a person comfortably, they were filled with earth, and had thick masses of exotic vegetation spilling out. Their beauty was wasted on him, though, as he used them as giant steps, hanging from the lip of one and barely assuring that his feet were aimed at the edge of another before letting go. Even were he not in a hurry to be out of the area, he would not have paused for the delicate creations of pastel pink and purple scattered amongst froths of jadeite ferns. He simply wasn't interested.

A spark of discomfort shot up his left ankle as he landed on the gravel-paved path circumscribing the houses. Grimacing at his carelessness, he carefully tested its flexibility as he watched for any movements nearby, finally darting for the estate's nearest wall when he was satisfied that nobody was around.

The wall was scaled and left behind without event. The streets were deserted but for a few far-flung pedestrians and lamp-tenders. The alcove formed by an after-thought of a servant's shack abutting a manse proved just as perfect as he had hoped as a momentary shelter in which to pause and catch his breath. As he leaned tremblingly against the dressed stones of the manse's wall, he blinked and wiped absently at the stickiness along his jawline, wondering if, for once, he had imagined the impending danger. He was loath to discount an instinct that had proven so useful and infallible in the past, no matter how late it was, but he had no evidence to base his hunches on either. And things were going so well...there had been few assignments where circumstances had fallen into place so smoothly, in spite of his own bungling...

Forcibly calming himself, he waited until his heartbeat was only slightly more elevated than usual before taking a deep breath and stepping out of his temporary hiding place. Taking one last swipe at his cheek, he hid his streaked hands in his pockets, straightened his back, and proceeded to stroll for the main street toward the city's border, trusting to his dark, patchy clothes to hide the rest of the half-dried stains.

Only to stop as he found himself face-to-face with a horse.

It was almost enough to make him jump, the spookiness of it. He had not heard its approach, and he was quite sure that he had been the only sentient thing in sight when he had entered the alcove. Yet there the horse stood, placidly switching its silvery tail back and forth across its rump, head half-lowered so that they were nearly eye-to-eye. Pure white, he admired it with the clinical eye of one used to measuring horseflesh for the work or money that can be gotten from it rather than the beauty. Clean lines, not too slender, not too bulky, with the deep barrel and long cannons that promised the breath for stamina and the stride for fleetness. A dozen other minute details made its way into his assessment, all garnered within a second's examination. The estimate came out to a hefty sum, but the exercise was academic only as he moved to step around the horse, intent on hurrying on his way.

With a soft whuffle, the horse shifted to block him.

Frowning, he wasted a moment wondering if the animal had actually done it intentionally before he shifted to slip past the other way.

The horse moved to block him yet again, its chuff this time sounding disturbingly like a chuckle.

The chill of disaster crept into his extremities once again as he stared at the creature, wondering if there had been something other than incense that was burned in the merchant's room, and if he wasn't still there yet, drooling and dreaming in a corner. If nothing else, the animal should have shied away from the smell of blood, and yet it continued to stand there calmly, turning its head slightly this way and that, for all the world as if...as if...it were trying to catch his eyes...

His head snapped away and up when there came the sound of hoofbeats clopping down the paved streets, moving unmistakably closer. No faster than a trot, but who would be out at this time of the night in a hurry enough to saddle a horse and move it past a walk, but not enough to disturb the entire neighborhood with an all out gallop? Except...except...one, two, three, more were being nudged from the two-beat gait of a trot to the three-beat one of a full gallop. Hissing to himself in annoyance for becoming distracted, he slipped a hand out to shove the horse's nose away to push past it.

Snorting, ears flattened, the horse danced aside - and then snapped at him with large, white teeth that could sheer through inch-thick stalks of vegetation. Almost before he realized what had happened, the animal had fastened its incisors on the excess folds of cloth at his shoulder - with remarkable aim and delicacy, considering that he made sure his attire had little that could catch on stray corners or hooks - and given him a good shake.

Teeth rattling, he squinted at the infernal beast, ears filled with the fast approaching hoofbeats and the one, short command that had been given out in a most guard-like tone, only half an estate away now from the volume. His own teeth bared in a snarl, he jerked sharply enough to tear away, leaving a streamer of dark-dyed linen in the horse's mouth, punctuating the movement with a fist flung toward the delicate muzzle in a last hope to drive it away. As the horse dodged nimbly aside, he looked up to watch its ears, gauging its mood, and then to its eyes, to see if he had finally managed to panic it enough that it would consider desisting in its games.

When he fell into depthless pools of sapphire, he knew with a sinking heart that he had made an even bigger mistake than when he had decided to take the merchant's life on this night.

:My name is Sianni,: an ageless voice crooned to his soul. :I Choose you, Kyn.:

Caught with his feet rooted to the spot, mouth half agape, he was only vaguely aware of the voices rising as the guard saw him and the utterly impossible horse with the gemstone eyes. Almost, almost, he could have wept, though what emotion or fact prompted it, he couldn't have said, caught in Sianni's young-old gaze. The only thing he was sure of by then was that he had failed completely and utterly, in absolutely everything.

Everything but one, perhaps.

The first flicker of movement in the corner of his vision broke him out of his trance. Giving himself no time to dwell on his actions, giving himself no chance for hesitation, he dropped the knife into his palm, the blood still damp enough that the weapon had not stuck in its sheath. Closing his eyes against the cerulean ocean that threatened to swallow him whole, he tilted his head back and brought the knife up -

There was an almost terrifyingly human scream, the only warning he received before something struck his knife hand with a sickening snap. The limb went almost instantly numb, up to the elbow, and he was distantly aware of the weapon dropping with a soft thump to the grass, almost drowned out by the louder sound of a several hundred pound animal dropping back to all four hooves, tearing at the turf with an agitated snort. Blinking his eyes open, he was only beginning to realize that the horse had struck at the knife in his now-broken hand before he could slit his throat, missing his head by mere inches, when a gruff voice interjected from behind him, "All right, calm down, th'both of y's...boy, we can talk this out first, no need t'take such drastic measures..."

Instinct made him throw an elbow back. Training followed it up with a half-turn and a punch with the undamaged hand. There was a satisfying oof as the man was caught off-guard with his first strike, but when he turned, he glimpsed the uncharacteristic white uniform that the man was clad in, realized belatedly upon recognition that he was well and truly finished now, and let the punch waver enough to merely graze the man's cheek when the Herald dodged desperately and tackled him. A good strategy, in normal situations, bulling forward and overwhelming a smaller opponent for the moment to recatch one's breath and balance. As they sprawled across the grass and the Companion danced away, snorting in worry, it became an even better strategy than usual as the broken hand glanced across the Herald's shoulder, leaving a streak of rusty-red on the pristine white and bringing tears of pain to Kyn's eyes. Blinking them clear as best he could, he set his jaw, reaching for the Herald's own belt with his good hand, searching for the knife - any knife, even if it were just an eating one - that must surely be there...

"Only one way there is to secure this one right now," a new, gravelly voice suddenly interjected. He barely had enough time to tilt his head back, to see a dark figure crouched over them both, silhouetted by a nearby streetlamp, heard the beginnings of a protest from the one pinning him just as his fingers grasped the worn, bound hilt of a dagger at the man's waist...and then knew nothing more as the newcomer brought a pommel down sharply against his temple.