by Sam Hawke
The assassin rolled his head toward me, his eyes struggling to focus. His lips, wet with frothy saliva, twisted up into something close to a smile, as if he had just recalled some pleasant memory. His voice was a soft burr, drawn out, as he struggled to form words. “He was … supposed to … to come for me. I was … I was not meant to die here … in this foreign place.” The smile turned into a spluttery laugh.
“Who is he? Why are we important to you, to him?” I asked. My voice was too high, too frantic, but we were running out of time. “Why is my family important? We’re not enemies. I don’t even know where you came from!”
His laugh became a wet cough, and I kept talking, aware I was begging, but past caring about the power dynamic. “Your employer isn’t coming for you. He’s sold you out, had you killed when you didn’t serve his purpose anymore! You don’t owe him anything.”
The physic came skidding into the room and pushed past me roughly. “What happened?” he barked, and I stepped out of his way as he quickly examined the assassin.
“He’s been poisoned, I think,” I said, and the physic looked sharply back at me, eyes narrowed. I gestured at the man in exasperation. “Honor-down, help him if you can!”
“Get me a purge!” the physic shouted to an assistant who had just peeked his head into the room.
“Tell me who he is,” I begged again. “Tell me what is the plan?”
The prisoner shrugged, or at least I thought he tried to; the physic was turning him onto his side, letting the bubbly spit and drool drain out of his mouth. He mumbled something incomprehensible, perhaps in his own language, his eyes half-closing.
“Obedience again?” I could have screamed with frustration. “They left you here and then they tried to murder you, why keep their secrets? Whatever you were planning to do, you failed, it’s over!”
The assistant raced back into the room, feet slapping, a tray of bottles and pastes rattling frantically in his hands. The physic snatched something off it and forced it into the man’s mouth. “Swallow! You must swallow!” he urged, turning his glare back on me.
“Failed?” The assassin choked and spat the dark substance from his mouth and his head flopped back like a doll’s. “My work … not the goal. Just … one of the means … to an end. Your end.” He laughed thickly, his voice drawling like a drunk’s now. Abruptly, his body started to shake with proper force.
“Get out of here!” the physic snapped at me, thrusting a rough hand between us and forcing me a few paces back. “You’re making this worse!”
But the assassin, convulsing properly now, kept spitting words out between his clenching and unclenching jaw. “Death … is not good enough for you … thieves and heathens. We … we take everything from you first. All … your protections … all your friends. You are weak and broken. Soon you will know. We don’t forget. We are patient. We are coming.”
“Get her the hell out of here!”
A tentative hand on my arm; the assistant. “Please, Credola,” he urged me, and I let myself be tugged backward, eyes still fixed on the assassin jerking and flailing on the bed while the physic riffled through the tray his assistant had brought, pulling out a glass needle. My heart pounded as forcefully as if someone were pressing up and down on my chest. The assistant released me, also unable to stop staring at the dramatic convulsions on the pallet. The assassin resisted the physic’s attempts to hold him still, his eyes wild and his muscles spasming. “Help him,” I said to the assistant, and he leapt away from me and back to the patient. But the assassin, perhaps inadvertently, perhaps in one last fragment of control, punched out with one powerful hand and struck the assistant across the cheek and jaw; the man crumpled to the ground and his colleague, the Guard, and I all sprang to assist. The assassin fell off the pallet right beside us and his clawing hand caught my coat in his spasming grip.
Almost involuntarily, it seemed, his muscles tightened and he yanked me in close. “They sent me to my death … and they will finish you, too. You think I am your only enemy in this city? You are surrounded, you fool.” He struggled, his body moving in big jerky efforts. I remembered his terrifying strength and speed lurching at me from the cell, but now the effects of the poison had him, and his fist slackened and dropped away. His head cracked against the floor, and with one last twitch, he lay still.
INCIDENT: Poisoning of Credo Evano Brook. Update: and Credola Reka Reed.
POISON: Winterberry/slagol
INCIDENT NOTES: C. Evano’s body found bloated and covered in own vomit in public bathhouse. Physical examination showed clear signs of slagol poisoning, including distinctive discoloration of lips. Private examination of stomach contents (Brook family did not consent) suggests poison was dissolved in kavcha (substantial quantities of which had been consumed). Widely speculated suspect is rival rushuk player C. Reka Reed, noting considerable history of disagreement and witnesses seeing C. Reka at bathhouse on previous night. Update: C. Reka also found dead by the southernmost canal, also slagol poisoning. Further investigation of rushuk team being pursued by determination council.
(from proofing notes of Credola Jaya Oromani)
21
Jovan
We had left the city onboard a passenger vessel heading north, carrying many frightened people, both citizens and visitors, fleeing Silasta and its uncertain future. I kept my head down and my arms covered, and if anyone recognized us, they didn’t say. I was grateful for even the illusion of anonymity. I did not want to spend my time worrying about assassins quietly following us through the farms and villages. Truth be told, I had proven myself an easy target. If our enemy had set another assassin to stalk us, it would only be a matter of time before they succeeded, and there was little I could do about it. Most days it was an exercise in self-control to manage my anxieties about everything that was going wrong as it was.
Hadrea, by contrast, looked more comfortable than I could remember. By the time we exited the boat at a routine stop at the first of the villages on the river and made our way inland, toward the Oromani lands, back was the swagger, the self-possession, that had so impressed me when we first met. So too was her urge to tease me in relentless good humor. By unspoken agreement, we had avoided the topic of our last, terrible fight, though the shape of it was still there, like the hole in a hagstone, passive but ever-present. I did not want to damage the peace between us. She had agreed to come with me without hesitation, without second-guessing or criticizing my reasoning, even in relation to my decision to leave Dija behind.
“She would come in a flash, that one,” Hadrea had said, her tone admiring. “She is made of fire and stone, both. But out here, we cannot protect her properly. She is safer in a guarded house and in the presence of the Chancellor.”
I could not deny that I felt a failure as a guardian, the farther we got from the city, but in any case what kind of guardian had I really been to her? She’d almost been killed. Safer by far to stay with Kalina and Sjease and Etrika and Tain, all looking out for her, rather than follow me into the unknown.
We headed first for the village of Ista, a farming community on my own estates. It was the last place from which An-Ostada had reported, and one of the closest incidents to the city, though still several days’ travel out. It was hard to determine a timeline for the incidents, but having studied the map and discussed it exhaustively with Hadrea as we traveled, it was possible to at least approximate the pattern, and it seemed to both of us that the spirits had begun dying or otherwise going missing far from the main cities, then drawing closer and closer to Silasta, like some kind of ominous wave. Hopefully memories would be fresh.
We traveled by back ways and camped in the countryside rather than using the main roads. It was not just to make us harder to follow but to prevent word spreading of our presence. If I was right and our enemy expected us to be distracted with internal intrigue in the city, I didn’t want them knowing that we were investigating in the estates. We’d agreed that if anyone asked, we were fleeing dangerous
times in the capital to return home to our family croft in Rokan, to the northeast. Hadrea, at least, had the believable manners and speech patterns of someone who grew up in the country, not the city, though she was also a terrible liar.
When I heard sounds of the creek bushes rustling, like someone might be there taking a piss or having a quick bath, I prodded her and spoke in a low voice. “We might have company. Remember who we are.”
She rolled her eyes but her grin took the edge off it. “Simple country folk, yes, very frightened of our ordeal in the city. Maybe if you could stop looking so much like someone who is desperately missing his hot food and books, we might be more convincing?”
I gasped in mock indignation but my heart felt oddly light. We were working together, being honest with each other; I felt closer to her, more connected, than I had since those first heady days after Kalina had come home and the world had felt like it was turning once again along the right path. So I grinned back, shook out my shoulders, and kept walking without haste, waiting for the interruption from the stream.
It didn’t come. We continued to walk and though I heard rustling again, and closer, it must have been a bird or an animal, because no person emerged. “We might remain city folk today after all,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth I saw Hadrea’s eyes go wide and her hand fly to the dagger on her belted skirt.
I spun in time for a glimpse at what had alarmed her, but not in time to get out of the way. The creature, an adult taskjer, hit me in the chest with plate-sized paws and knocked me to the ground. I flung my arms up, bracing them between me and its snapping, grasping jaws. Its brown teeth were cracking in alarming proximity to my face, and the reek of its breath dousing me with foulness and gobs of hot saliva, when Hadrea struck it with her pack to the side of its big face. It was a forceful swing and it knocked the taskjer on its side, but it rolled immediately to its feet and lunged back at us again, this time its attention on the greater threat. It almost had Hadrea’s leg when I kicked it in the ribs, and it let out a dull yelp and leapt at me instead.
I pulled back just in time and leapt sideways, so close to the crack of its teeth that I felt the swish of its long whiskers brush my leg, and tripped on an uneven patch of ground. My ankle turned and the weight of my pack unbalanced me; I fell, but the ground wasn’t where I thought. I rolled, hitting the ground and going over and over, half-bouncing down the slope to the creek in an ungainly and painful set of blows and tumbles through the long grass until I hit the stream in a spray of icy spring water. For a moment it was over my face, up my nose, shocking me with the sudden change in temperature.
I came up with a gasp, shaking water off my face, to see the beast charging down the last few lengths of the slope to hurtle into the water. My bag saved me; I pivoted my shoulder sharply just as the taskjer tried to take a chunk out of my side, and though I felt a painful gouge and sting in one spot, most of the force of its bite struck my pack instead of me. Before it could recover from the surprise of having a mouthful of cloth instead of blood and flesh, I dropped my weight on top of it and pinned it, biting and thrashing, under the shallow flow of the stream.
“Jovan!” Hadrea was coming down the bank now, the belt dagger glinting in her hand.
“Here,” I grunted, but with effort; the creature was squirming, bucking, wriggling under my pack, thrashing to get out of the water, and I couldn’t hold it. “Quick!”
Without hesitation she leapt into the stream beside me and plunged the dagger, with the strength of both her muscular arms, into the frothing space where the taskjer was freeing itself from my pin. It stiffened in one big jerk, and a cloud of red puffed out in the water. Panting, I let go and stepped back, dripping. Hadrea stood over the creature, holding the dagger firm until it stopped moving and the body lay still, water flowing gently around it, sending the red cloud downstream.
“Careful,” I cautioned as she crouched and scooped up the body with a grunt. It probably weighed about as much as her little brother; knee high but muscular, with long coarse hairs along their back in a dusty silver that helped them blend into the grasslands, taskjers were about the only wild animals in Sjona genuinely dangerous to humans. But they usually gave human settlements a wide berth and we were perhaps an hour at most from Ista.
“Did it bite you?” she asked me as she dropped it onto the shore and surveyed the body, dagger still sticking out between its ribs.
I dropped my sodden pack and pulled up my shirt, for the first time grateful for the country-style clothes I wore. There was a scratch and a shallow puncture in the center of a tender spot where I’d caught the edge of one of its teeth, but it wasn’t serious. “Got me a little, but it’s all right. You?”
She shook her head, and we both stood there, catching our breath, staring down at it.
“They do not usually attack like that,” Hadrea said. She pried off one of her wet boots, then the other, and tipped the water out with a frown of irritation. “We saw them sometimes in Losi when I was growing up, but they are shy of people. They only attack if they have to.”
“It was like it was stalking us,” I muttered. I put my foot on the side of the creature and pulled the knife free; Hadrea took the hilt and crouched by the stream to clean the blade. “Huh.” Something caught the light in the fur. I bent to get a closer look, and found a very thin metal chain wound around the creature’s neck. It came loose to my tug, and from the end dangled a very small cloth packet, like the kind sometimes kept in beds with perfumed dried flowers and herbs, or clothes chests to repel insects.
“What is that?” Hadrea, one hand squeezing out the water from her skirt and the other drying the knife against the side of her thigh, stepped closer, wary.
My suspicions were confirmed as I shook out the contents on top of my pack. More dirt and feathers, and this time a whorl of hair in the middle of it, dark and curly. Involuntarily I reached a hand up to my head.
“Is it your hair?” Hadrea, face twisted in disgust, peered at the contents, evidently unwilling to touch them.
“Impossible to say, I guess.” But I felt sure it was. “Kalina thought there was some kind of magic from the Talafan people. Witchcraft, she called it. If that’s my hair … do you think it was able to track us because of that?” It sounded crazy.
“Perhaps. I can say that I do not like it.” She backed away. “These are dark magics, Jovan.”
The remembered smell of the creature’s breath in my face made me shudder. “Yeah.” I picked up my pack with a shaking hand, more unsettled than I wanted to admit. “Let’s just get moving.”
* * *
We arrived in Ista later in the day than intended, when the shadows were long and the looks locals shot us mildly suspicious. Hadrea pointed out the tree to which an ancient spirit had once been attached. It was a twisted, heavy-boughed old thing, but its spring leaves had shriveled on the branches and it cut an imposing, ominous silhouette against the violent pinks and oranges of the western sky. The village administrator, a woman with a thicket of gray curls and the remnants of a city accent, greeted us politely at her home but with a wary air. These were my family’s lands but I felt like a stranger. “We told the Speaker everything we knew,” she said almost immediately, before I had even fully explained our visit, her eyes flicking frequently to Hadrea. “I don’t see as there’s anything else to be said. We’ve done everything any of those Darfri folk have told us since that Compact. We stopped farming the east field for a whole year like they said. We let them do their dance, or whatever, out by the rise on the days they said. Put their shrine thing in the center of the village.” Another bristling glance at Hadrea. The administrator brushed her hands down her paluma more aggressively than its neatly crisscrossed cording could tolerate, then hastily smoothed out the resultant bunching. “No one’s mistreating any Darfri round here.”
Hadrea raised a brow. “Yes, I can see how supportive you are of your community.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” I said quickly,
putting hands between the two of them as the administrator’s posture stiffened. “I want to ask you about something else.”
“Oh?” She looked both relieved and unsettled.
“Has anyone gone missing from the local area? Anytime recently, around the time you first had the issues with the spirits?”
Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. She sat down abruptly as if her legs had lost strength. “Well! I suppose the answer to that is yes, truth be told.” She blinked several times. “Where’s my manners? Let me pour the tea.”
“Thank you.” We sat, turned our cups, waited for her to elaborate. Hadrea was like a charged presence beside me, but she kept her mouth shut. The administrator fussed with the tea and her cup and drew out the ritual far longer than necessary. I let her gather her thoughts.
“Well,” she said again. “We did have someone vanish around the same time; I know it was then because everyone was distracted by that when your Speakers arrived. Our Pemu from up at the way. She was lost and we never saw her again.”
“You did not mention this when we were here,” Hadrea said; not quite an accusation, but not far enough off for my liking. I touched her leg under the table and she pressed her lips together again.
“Why would we?” the administrator said, and she sounded genuinely puzzled rather than defensive. “It hadn’t anything to do with the tree spirit your Speaker was asking about. It was … well.” She stared down at her tea. “It was a nasty business, I’ll give you the drum.”
Hadrea and I exchanged looks. “A nasty business?” I prompted, when the administrator had stared at the swirling steam from her tea long enough for it to thin out into weak wisps.