Hath No Fury

by Melanie R. Meadors

  “A powerful man, clearly. But is he happy?”

  Teren chuckled. “He must be, considering the number of enemies he has made lately. There’s his new wife, obviously. Then there’s the greater half of the Fourth Tier of the Senate, along with the lesser half too. Unfortunately that makes it more difficult for us to work out who wants him dead.”

  A pity. Jenna always liked to know who was paying her bill in case that person decided later that she was a loose end that needed tying off. “What about the go-between you spoke to?”

  “A Maru, judging by his white hair.” Teren grimaced. “Sour fellow. He was probably brought in just to place this contract, and if he’s going to be returning to Marul now, he can’t get there fast enough.”

  Jenna eyed him skeptically. If making new friends was so important to Teren, he’d chosen a strange line of work.

  The sun set behind the dome of the White Lady’s Temple, framing the roof in fire. The stones had that familiar shine to them that always made Jenna wonder if the building would retain its glow even after night came. But it never did. In the end, even the brightest light must succumb to the dark.

  Teren said, “There’s one condition to the contract you should know about. Our client wants Erekus killed outside the auditorium on the night of Fool’s Grace. Apparently that date is significant to our patron. As to the relevance of the auditorium, the Maru would not say.”

  Most likely, Jenna mused, it was not the place itself that was important, but rather who would be with Erekus when he was there. Sometimes her clients wanted to be present when the mortal blow was struck so that they could confirm the kill. Or for the dubious pleasure of watching the life fade from their enemy’s eyes.

  Teren said, “You haven’t asked about the fee they’re offering.”

  “Is it fair?”

  “More than fair.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Teren hesitated over his next words. “You never ask about the fee,” he said. “That tells me one of two things. Either you trust me implicitly to represent your interests—which sounds very flattering, until I remember you won’t let me see your face. Or it shows you’re not interested in the money.”

  Jenna did not respond.

  “Why do you do this if not for the coin?” he asked. “There has to be a reason.”

  The assassin sighed. It appeared the time was fast approaching when she would have to dispense with Teren’s services. Since arriving in Arkarbour, she had been represented by three different agents, and each of them had eventually strayed over the line that divided professionalism from familiarity. It was always the same: spend enough time in an associate’s company and sooner or later their wariness gave way to respect. Then before you knew it, you were on the path to camaraderie and even attachment. It was a slippery slope, for sure. Jenna had never understood the progression. Teren knew almost nothing about her except for her voice and her vocation. And a shared interest in killing people was hardly a strong foundation upon which to build a friendship.

  If Jenna did have to part ways with him, it would be with regret. The man was efficient. He was also surprisingly good natured for someone in the trade. Last month Jenna had seen him at the Feast of Hands, where he had passed within an armspan of her without realizing it. He had spent the night dancing with every woman who would humor him—including the Beloved of the White Lady. Afterwards, the Beloved had sensed Jenna watching her and looked across. The priestess’s subsequent smile had left the assassin feeling like an intruder. The Feast of Hands marked the longest day of the year, and the revelers who had come to celebrate it had been eager to shake Jenna’s hand or toast her health with brim-full tankards. Just as if she belonged in their company, and wasn’t a cold-blooded killer at all.

  Teren shifted on the bench. Jenna had still not answered his earlier question, and the silence stretched out.

  “Apologies,” he said at last. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Of course not,” Jenna replied. “That’s why you started asking personal questions.” But she made her voice light to take the edge off her words. She took a final drink from her flask, then replaced the cap and put the flask back in her pocket. “Let me read the papers you’ve given me on Erekus. Tell the client they will have my answer within the week.”

  JENNA LISTENED TO THE SWELL of voices from the auditorium across the street. The troupe of singers giving tonight’s concert was testing the boundaries of what constituted song, and whenever the racket died down, Jenna could make out a strained silence as their audience struggled to find some redeeming feature to the performance. A handful of people had already abandoned the effort and departed. Jenna suspected it was just a matter of time before Erekus too remembered important business elsewhere.

  It had been a simple matter for Jenna to choose a vantage point from which to shoot the senator. Opposite the auditorium was an abandoned house that had recently been damaged in a sorcerous quarrel between a fire-mage and an earth-mage. Jenna was stationed at a broken window in an upstairs bedroom. The chamber had a stink of charred wood and an even stronger whiff of privilege about it. The paneled walls were covered in brass fittings and blackened tapestries showing hunting scenes. At one end of the room was a hole in the floor through which the bed had fallen, while at the other end was a fireplace. Around the fireplace was an area of roughly ten square paces where the floorboards had been burned away or ripped up. The crossbeams beneath remained intact, and between them Jenna could see the shadows of ruined furniture in the room below. Every breath of wind outside drew a creak from the exposed timbers, as if the house were stirring in its sleep.

  Jenna’s breath was warm against her skin, trapped by the scarf that covered the lower half of her face. This was the part of the job she disliked most: the waiting. With too much time to think, her mind could travel down all sorts of treacherous paths. None of those paths led to places that Jenna cared to revisit, but as a friend of hers had once said, if you didn’t feel regret as an assassin, you weren’t doing your job properly. To pass the time, Jenna considered again the various scenarios she might encounter tonight. What happened if her view of Erekus was obstructed as he left the auditorium? What if her preferred route of escape was blocked? She couldn’t anticipate every eventuality, of course, but at least if one of these things transpired, she would be able to react without hesitation.

  Earlier, she had walked every step of the house, opened every door, committed every exit to memory. An abandoned building immediately outside the auditorium was too convenient a boon to be regarded with anything but suspicion. Yet Jenna had watched the place for two days prior to this one, and she had seen no one enter or leave. Upon arriving tonight, she had searched it and searched it again, only to find the house empty save for an echo that had dogged her steps. The back door had been ripped off its hinges, while most of the furniture had been smashed into firewood. The only piece that remained intact was a high-backed chair that Jenna had carried up from the drawing room and positioned to her right.

  She shifted her grip on her crossbow. Three women emerged from the auditorium before setting off along Harbour Street at a pace that suggested they were keen to put the singing out of earshot. Then behind them appeared …

  Jenna went still. Erekus Rayne.

  If she hadn’t seen him previously, she might have wondered if the senator had swapped clothes with one of his bodyguards. Erekus’s haircut looked like shaving stubble, and he had the crooked nose of a brawler. If the rumors were to be believed, he was a man who, in the conduct of his affairs, was not only willing to get his hands dirty, but positively enjoyed doing so. Last month, one of his servants had been fished from the sea off Baker’s Point, his face smashed almost beyond identification. By a quirk of fate, Jenna had been there to see the man dragged ashore. And pure coincidence, obviously, that the servant had apparently been overheard a day earlier questioning his master’s virility to a friend who has also gone missing.

  Jenna always
demanded from Teren a detailed report into her targets’ backgrounds. She had taken to watching them before accepting a job too, seeing their lives in action, developing a sense of their character. It was the height of foolishness, she knew. Who was she to weigh another’s life in her hands? She was granting herself the role not just of executioner, but of magistrate and jury too, as if her targets—and not herself—were the true villains in this business. The reality, of course, was quite different. And she never let herself lose sight of that fact, however uncomfortable it might be. The truth must always be confronted, not dressed up in frills so it looked more palatable.

  Yet she was turning down more and more commissions of late. Where once the world had seemed black and white, now all was shades of gray.

  Erekus halted outside the auditorium. With him were six bodyguards. Three carriages were situated a short distance away, but Jenna knew a man of the senator’s self-importance wouldn’t demean himself by walking to them. Instead he hailed a driver and waited for the coach to come to him.

  Jenna lined him up in the crossbow’s sights, picturing the shot she would make.

  The breeze picked up, eliciting another chorus of creaks from the house.

  Sudden movement through the doorway to Jenna’s right. In the hall outside the bedroom, shadows gathered.

  Crossbow strings twanged.

  Jenna had already reached for the armrest of the chair beside her. Earlier, she had positioned it just so, and a tug now was sufficient to turn it so that its back piece screened her from the doorway. Two missiles crunched into the wood, throwing up splinters.

  Jenna peered over it.

  A Maru entered the room, his white hair seeming to glow in the gloom. Was this the same Maru who had placed the contract with Teren last week? It has to be. He walked with a strut that said he knew his worth and held it considerable. Judging by his sneer, his opinion of Jenna was less lofty, but the assassin no longer troubled herself with the views of others. She was perfectly capable of perceiving her own faults, thank you very much.

  The pieces of the picture were falling into place for her—a picture that she had glimpsed just enough of previously to warrant positioning the chair where she had. Her contract was a sham; she was her client’s real target in this, not Erekus. And how do you eliminate an assassin whose identity you do not know? An assassin who hasn’t shown her face even to her agent? You give her a false job, of course, and lure her to a location of your choosing. But the luring has to be done with care. If Jenna had been instructed simply to kill her victim from this house, she would have known something was wrong. So instead, her client had told her that Erekus must be killed as he left the auditorium—an auditorium that just happened to be situated opposite an abandoned house that offered unrivaled views of the street. It was obvious that Jenna would choose this window to shoot from. And thus easy for her employer to set a trap.

  In the hall, more figures assembled. Jenna’s skin prickled. Half a dozen at least. Too many for her to fight alone.

  Fortunate, then, that she had helpers standing by—albeit helpers of the unwitting kind.

  Looking down into the street, Jenna saw Erekus still waiting for his carriage. She took aim and pulled the trigger.

  Her crossbow bolt hit the senator square in the chest, and he was knocked back into the arms of his bodyguards. In case those guards weren’t sure where the shot had come from, Jenna waved to them through the window.

  A man shouted a challenge.

  Jenna looked back at the Maru and cocked her head. It was clear from his expression that he hadn’t anticipated this development. It was equally clear he understood the gravity of his predicament, for Erekus’s bodyguards would soon be breaking down the front door, and the Maru would have a hard time explaining his presence in the same building as Jenna. What were his options? The assassin knew he couldn’t retreat. If he fled, he and his troops might be mistaken for the killers, allowing Jenna to slip away. His only choice would be to split his force and send some warriors to slow down the bodyguards while he himself engaged Jenna—then hope to overpower Erekus’s men after she was dead.

  The Maru barked an order to his companions before entering the room. He wore a blackened breastplate sculpted to resemble a muscled torso, and he carried a shield and a longsword. Only one other person came with him—a woman with a face as round as her shield. Neither of them had crossbows.

  Jenna liked her odds better all of a sudden.

  There wasn’t time for her to reload her own crossbow, so she left it on the window seat and scampered towards the fireplace. The floorboards here had been destroyed, and the exposed crossbeams groaned as they took her weight. She drew two throwing knives.

  From downstairs came the first thuds as Erekus’s bodyguards pounded on the front door. The Maru’s female partner, Round Face, looked back towards her colleagues in the hall. Missing the safety of their company already? Jenna’s face twisted. As if such safety existed. True strength came not from numbers but from standing alone. Lean on others and one day all your power would be shown for naught when their support was taken away.

  The Maru stepped confidently onto the first beam and advanced. Round Face, when she followed, was less sure-footed. The timbers were aligned at right angles to her progress, meaning Round Face had to step from one to the next, and she tottered forward as if she were crossing the deck of a pitching ship. When the woman next lifted a foot, Jenna sent a throwing knife spinning towards her. Round Face raised her shield, and the blade ricocheted away. But with her attention on Jenna’s knife, it couldn’t also be on her feet. Her boot slipped off a beam, and she fell forward onto the other timbers, her shield trapped beneath her.

  Jenna’s second throwing knife took her in the eye. Round Face collapsed, and her body slithered between the beams and toppled into darkness. With a thump she hit the floor of the room below.

  Jenna unsheathed her longknives.

  If the Maru was concerned at the loss of his friend, he gave no indication. He stepped onto the next beam, and it creaked beneath him.

  Jenna glanced at the Maru’s breastplate. “Nice armor,” she said. “Looks heavy.”

  The man did not respond. Setting his feet on adjacent beams, he stabbed out at the assassin with his sword. Jenna parried the blow, then countered with a backhand cut that her opponent blocked with his shield.

  So far, so simple.

  Voices came from the hall. It seemed the Maru’s companions meant to make their defense at the top of the stairs, for a woman ordered her fellows to look for something to use as a barricade.

  Jenna circled right, staying on the Maru’s shield side so he would be forced to attack her across his body. For an instant they stood on the same two beams, and the left timber groaned. Jenna stamped on it, making it judder.

  The Maru wobbled but stayed upright. “Surrender,” he said. “No assassin is a match for a trained warrior. That’s why you must strike from the shadows like the cowards you are.”

  “This from the man who tried to ambush me just now.”

  “We are nothing alike,” the Maru snapped. “I serve a man of vision. A man of breeding. I kill for a cause, not for coin.”

  A distinction that was unlikely to bring much comfort to the souls he sent through Shroud’s Gate.

  Jenna continued her circuit of her opponent, watching his feet all the while. As he twisted to keep her in view, his legs became briefly crossed, and Jenna surged forward, feinting high with one of her longknives. When the Maru lifted his shield to block, the assassin checked her attack and planted a kick on his shield.

  He staggered back, only for his boot to land safely on the beam behind him.

  Lucky bastard.

  Downstairs, the banging on the front door continued. Jenna could also hear running steps in the atrium, meaning someone must have thought to try the back door. Clicks sounded as the bolts to the front door were drawn back. Voices spilled into the house.

  Jenna went back to circling her opp
onent. The Maru tried to surprise her mid-step with a bash from his shield, but a tensing of his posture had betrayed his intent, and the assassin was able to dance back out of range. They came to stand on the same two beams again. When the right one voiced its complaint, Jenna stomped on it and was rewarded with a crack. The wood shifted, and the Maru hurriedly lifted his boot from the beam.

  That gave the assassin an idea.

  From the direction of the hall came pounding steps as Erekus’s bodyguards stormed up the staircase. The crossbows of the Maru’s troops strummed in answer. A man screamed. There was a clang of metal as two swords met.

  “Surrender,” the Maru said to Jenna again. “You are only delaying the inevitable. Prolong this, and when I am finished with you, I will track down your family and make them suffer.”

  Jenna’s voice was flat. “You can’t do anything worse to them than I have already done myself.” Another regret, another memory best left undisturbed. It mattered not that what had happened all those years ago had been an accident. Some mistakes were too grave to ever be forgiven—at least by Jenna herself.

  She jabbed at her opponent’s groin with her longknife, testing his low guard. The Maru parried, yet did not counter. He was trying to encourage her to attack again, but the assassin wouldn’t let herself be drawn into a longer engagement. She recommenced her circling. The Maru clucked his frustration. He would have to start taking more risks soon, for Erekus’s bodyguards might fight through to the chamber at any moment. If that happened, Jenna would risk a drop into the room below and seek to slip away in the confusion. But the Maru? Encumbered by his armor, he was less likely to be able to walk away from a plunge through the beams.

  He unleashed a decapitating cut at the assassin, and Jenna ducked beneath it. The damaged beam was now in front of her. She made a point of stepping over it, then quickly retreated from the Maru, forcing him to come to her.