The Assassin's Blade

Eleven days earlier, Celaena is sitting in the rafters of the theater, watching the symphony. She used to attend every fall with Arobynn, who now sits in his box with Lysandra at his side. After winning her Bidding, he continues to hire her for her courtesan services. Celaena tries to enjoy the music, but she’s distracted by her jealousy about no longer being at Arobynn’s side. She wonders how long she can cling to her title as Adarlan’s Assassin while outside the guild.

When she returns to her apartment, it is cold and empty, Sam having left a note that he is out for the night. She knows where he is and goes to the Vaults to find Sam participating in a pit fight. She watches him win, upset that he’s fighting at all. Afterwards, he tells her he did it because they need the money, neither of them able to easily pick up contracts without Arobynn’s help, though they are still technically members of the guild. Sam wonders if they should move, but Celaena argues that moving costs money, so they need one more contract each to earn enough to move. She also tells him that they need to make peace with Arobynn before they move so he doesn’t kill them. He kisses her to calm her, and she chides him for using her expensive lavender soap while wondering if Arobynn will let them leave.

Celaena and Sam go to Arobynn’s office to tell him they want to leave. The tension is thick, and Celaena tries to diffuse it by offering a parting sum of money for their freedom to leave Rifthold and establish their own assassin business somewhere else. Arobynn makes a counteroffer of the exact amount of money in Celaena’s savings, indicating he still tracks her. Celaena agrees to pay it, much to Sam’s chagrin. They argue about it as they leave, and Sam says he needs some space, leaving Celaena to walk home alone. She walks past the Glass Castle and considers the impact of the Adarlanian empire and the evil King of Adarlan’s actions on the other countries of Erilea. The castle feels emblematic of the evil of the empire, Celaena even thinking of the castle as the “soul” (359) of the empire that oppresses, enslaves, and kills innocent people. She returns home, and Sam comes back after dinner. He tells her he found a contract to kill Ioan Jayne, the king of Rifthold’s criminal underbelly, and Rourke Farran, his sadistic second-in-command. Celaena is hesitant, as Farran is terrifying, and Jayne is incredibly powerful. She tells Sam she’ll think about it and apologizes for their fight. They go to bed, kissing passionately, but Celaena is not ready to consummate their relationship. Sam tells her he is happy to wait.

Celaena wakes beside a shirtless Sam and decides she would give up being Adarlan’s Assassin to have a life with him. She tells him that she’ll help him take down Jayne and Farran. They decide to target Farran first. They go to the bank and transfer the necessary money to Arobynn, then they scout out Jayne and Farran, looking at their houses and tracking their movements. They see Farran while out, and Celaena pretends to be impassive, though she finds him terrifying due to his penchant for sadistically torturing his victims. Sam tells Celaena that he will kill Farran and she can kill Jayne because he wants to keep her as far away from Farran as possible. Celaena argues with him but agrees when she sees a flash of the jealous bitterness she often saw in Sam before Skull’s Bay and the start of their romantic relationship. 

Celaena goes to her weekly dance class, where she thinks about all the things in Rifthold that she’ll miss when she moves, including her apartment, her favorite stores, and the symphonies at the theater. When she arrives home, Arobynn is in her apartment.

Celaena shakily makes tea, concerned by what Arobynn could have found if he snooped through her things. Arobynn asks why she plans on killing Jayne and Farran, as they are so dangerous that even Arobynn himself would not take on their assassination contract. Celaena challenges him, asking if he just does not want Celaena to surpass him in notoriety. He tells her it’s a bad idea and asks her to stay with him, telling her that he loves her. Celaena is shocked, wondering if he means fatherly or romantic love, but still says she’s leaving with Sam, who loves her selflessly. She kicks Arobynn out of her apartment. Before he leaves, he asks her if she’s told Sam the truth about who she is.

Sam and Celaena go to the Black Cygnet pub for a relaxing dinner, and Celaena asks Sam what his deepest secret is. He says his only secret was that he loves her. Celaena says her deepest secret is that she’s a coward, that she’s afraid all the time. Sam tells her that when he’s afraid, he says to himself, “My name is Sam Cortland, and I will not be afraid” (377). Celaena likes it, and Sam says he likes her and kisses her.

Sam and Celaena trail Farran as he moves through the city running errands, before he ends up above the Vaults. They follow him into the Vaults and see enslaved people cleaning the blood and gore before the pit fighting starts again in the night, trafficked sex workers trying to rest before they are taken advantage of again, as well as some patrons eating lunch. Sam orders them two ales, and they watch as a chained prisoner is brought forth to Farran, a fighter who owes more money to Jayne than he can possibly pay back. Farran drags the man through a door into a side room, then Celaena hears an inhuman scream as the man is brutally tortured by Farran. Celaena tells Sam they should leave, though he feels obligated to help the man. As they leave, Celaena sees some of the girls crying and wonders what other horrors they’ve heard and seen. Sam wonders if he and Celaena are like Farran, but she assures him they are not, because they do not enjoy hurting others; they only enjoy killing those who truly deserve it. 

Back at home, Celaena sharpens her daggers while Sam reviews the plan to kill Farran. He will go alone, while she stays home to pack as he’s booked them passage to the southern continent on a ship leaving in five days. Celaena is initially angry, as she wanted to stay in Erilea. Sam asks if she wants to stay because of Arobynn: He saw Arobynn in the street, and Arobynn told him that he came to the apartment and hinted at the truth of Celaena’s backstory. Sam tells Celaena he does not care about her past and will be ready to hear the truth whenever she’s ready. Celaena agrees to leave, and Sam tells her he loves her, to which she replies that she hates packing.

Celaena waits at home for Sam, trying to distract herself with reading, playing cards, and even thinking about what to pack though she does not actually start packing. At 11 pm, she heads out into the streets to look for Sam, even though they agreed she’d wait until midnight to search for him. She listens to gossip in case someone has news of Farran’s death, but she hears nothing. She stops by Jayne’s house, and everything looks normal, so she goes home.

At 1 am, Sam is still not home. Celaena falls asleep on the couch, waking at 4 am to see Sam is still not back. She wonders if he stayed the night at the Keep, hoping to feel safe after killing Farran. She falls asleep again and wakes in the morning, going to the river to look for evidence of Farran’s death. When she returns at noon, Arobynn is in her apartment, and he tells her that he’s sorry.

Arobynn tells her that Farran thought Sam still lived in the Keep and left his body there as a message. Celaena throws the clock across the room and watches it shatter. Celaena says she wants to see Sam’s body, but Arobynn urges her not to. She goes to the Keep with Arobynn trailing her. When they arrive, he leads her to the morgue where Sam’s body is. Celaena vomits when she sees what Farran did to him, how he broke all his fingers, carved into the flesh of his chest, and tore out his eyes. Celaena leans atop his body, which has a strange smell in addition to smelling like the cheap soap she made him use instead of her expensive lavender soap. She sobs, refusing to leave him.

Celaena wakes up in her old bed. She does not get out of bed, crippled by the grief of losing Sam and knowing she will never get to see him again, never get to hear his laugh or see his smile. Arobynn and the other assassins discuss their plan for retribution outside her door, then Arobynn enters and strokes her hair before locking her in her room. Someone changed her into a nightgown, so she tears the room apart to look for her suit. She only finds a standard tunic, pants, and boots. She escapes out the window but is stopped by Wesley, one of the other assassins, who tries to warn her about something before she knocks him out. She decides to kill Jayne first, then Farran. She runs along the roofs, jumping onto the roof of Jayne’s house.

Celaena jumps into the window of Jayne’s house, which uses blackout curtains to make the room look empty when it is full of men having a meeting. Celaena kills two guards then stabs Jayne in the neck. She kills two more guards before the strange smell that was on Sam’s body hits her senses, and she falls unconscious. When she wakes, she’s paralyzed from the gloriella incense Farran used to sedate her, the same poison Ansel used on the Mute Master. Farran tells her that she fell into his trap, and the bargain he struck was for her to kill Jayne, to blame her for Jayne’s death, and to turn her over to the King of Adarlan in exchange for taking Jayne’s role as the head of the criminal underworld. She wonders who betrayed her, thinking it impossible that Arobynn would work with either Jayne or Farran, given his hatred of them. Farran slaps her but does not torture her, as he promised to leave her mostly unharmed. He says he wishes he could break her before a guard knocks her out.

Celaena wakes with a jarring headache in a dungeon. Arobynn has not come for her, which surprises her. Royal guards appear to give her food. She eats and drifts in and out of consciousness, heartbroken that she failed Sam. She listens as the guards wonder if she’s really Celaena Sardothien, given how young she looks. The guards also reference the captain of the guard and the prince missing her trial and likely execution.

The guards put Celaena in shackles she can walk in and take her to her trial before the King. She does not speak as they read aloud the long list of people she’s killed, a list courtesy of Arobynn who always started whispers about each live Celaena took to increase her notoriety. The King approaches Celaena and forces her to look at him as he decides her sentence. He asks if she has any requests, and she requests a quick death. To spite her, he sentences her to nine lives’ worth of labor in the salt mines of Endovier, enslaving her. Celaena feels the world spin around her as they drag her into a wagon leaving the city.

Arobynn and Farran stand on the roof and watch the wagon go. Farran asks why Arobynn is going after Celaena, as he had a daring rescue planned for the day of her execution. Arobynn reveals he was the one who betrayed Celaena and made the deal with Farran, to make him the new king of the underworld. Farran asks why Arobynn is letting Celaena go to Endovier, and Arobynn tells him that he does not like sharing his belongings.

The journey to Endovier takes two weeks, and Celaena barely moves in the wagon, swept up by grief at the loss of Sam. One day, the wagon stops, and Celaena looks out the window to see a large white stag, the physical embodiment of the Lord of the North, the constellation she told Ansel about in the desert that guides the people of Terrasen home. The guards try to shoot the stag, but Celaena screams to warn him to run. As she watches him run, she feels overwhelming fear about her future in enslavement.

Celaena knows they are near Endovier when the forest gives way to rugged terrain. She holds back a sob. Then, she feels a breeze of Terrasen, the scent of pine filling the wagon. She knows she must stand up or be broken, and she refuses to break. She tells herself that she is Celaena Sardothien, and she will not be afraid. She survived losing Sam, survived the King of Adarlan, and she will survive this. She stands up and walks into Endovier.