“You have no proof!” Marla protested, throwing her arms out wide into the air.
Garin just stared at her coldly. He didn’t break the silence. The sparsely furnished Assassin-Master’s office seemed to grow even colder as if the aire between them had solidified into ice.
Marla resisted the urge to shuffle her feet, knowing it would only make her look guilty. She was guilty, of course, but that was hardly the point. Garin didn’t know that, however omniscient he seemed.
“You’re never this hard on the other assassin apprentices,” she said, hating the whine that clung to her voice even now.
Still, Garin didn’t speak. Marla cast her eyes around the empty room as if seeking for the inspiration that was going to get her out of this mess. The room was as bare of excuses as it was of furniture though.
Honestly. Garin was always prattling on about not having personal attachments, and how anything could be turned into a weapon against you, but she would have hated living in such abominably bare surroundings.
She clenched her hands in her blacks, the uniform of all the assassin apprentices.
“Lots of children play Break-the-barrel,” she tried. “It could have been any one of them.”
Break-the-barrel was especially popular amongst the assassin- and spy-apprentices of Hollowick though, she had to admit. The game, breaking into someone else’s house, rearranging all their stuff and leaving again without getting caught, was considered a mark of honour amongst the apprentices--a testimonial to their skill.
Perhaps that’s why Garin keeps nothing, she thought to herself suddenly with a grin. He doesn’t want to fall victim to Break-the-barrel and lose his authority. Though who would be foolish enough to venture into Garin’s offices uninvited, she didn’t know. That was a terminal type of stupidity.
As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Garin frowned.
“Perhaps,” he rumbled, breaking the silence at last. “But not a lot of children would be foolish enough to break into the palace to try it upon Prince Delphin’s personal chambers. That is an arrogance reserved solely for you, Black.”
She almost grinned again then. Anyway, she wasn’t a total fool. She had chosen the soft-hearted Delphin to practice upon, not his proud and haughty elder brother, Dorian, nor the youngest, Davon, a child of ice and stone who was already shaping up to be as ruthless as his father.
“Even if I did do it--and I didn’t do it, Garin--then I didn’t get caught, so you have no proof,” she reminded him again.
His eyes tightened slightly, but she thought that despite his stern demeanour, he was trying not to laugh.
“May that comfort you all the way to the whipman, Black,” he retorted. “And be grateful that I don’t have you sent down to the younger classes again to teach you some sense.”
Marla jutted up her chin defiantly. The sunlight which streamed through the windows alighted on her pale and freckled face, tangling in her auburn hair.
“You always say that you can’t teach me anything,” she retorted, turning on her heel and marching away.
Despite everything, she thought she heard half a huff behind her, which was as close as Garin ever came to laughing, and Marla smiled, too.
