The Taste of Waterfruit and Other Stories (Story Portals)

by Richard Lee Byers

  Story Portals Presents:

  Katya, Lady Assassin

  A Child’s Eyes and Other Stories

  Copyright ©2011 by Story Portals, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  The Taste of Waterfruit by Steven Mohan, Jr. 4

  Never to Heaven Go by Phaedra Weldon. 17

  Castle of Whispers by Richard Lee Byers. 34

  A Glamour of Pearls by M. P. Ericson. 46

  Lady’s Choice by Irene Radford. 56

  The Nightmare Beast by Laurie Tom.. 70

  The Hawk in the Sky, The Mice in the Fields by Steven Mohan, Jr. 79

  Double-Booked by Aaron Rosenberg. 94

  About the Authors. 107

  About Story Portals. 109

  The Taste of Waterfruit

  by Steven Mohan, Jr.

  WEEK OF THE FULL MOON

  Ship-chieftain Hu Lin of the Hai Do clung to the side of a rolling black mountain that swerved and shuddered, rising up in a moment that held its breath, then falling back down in an explosion of sound and spray that shook the world. Icy seawater glued Hu Lin's gray tunic and trousers to her body. Brine stung her eyes and filled her mouth with its filthy taste. The ship's bulk blocked out even the faint light of the full moon, plunging ocean and vessel into darkness.

  Fatigue burned in Hu Lin's arms, as she fought the ache of cold and the terrible burden of holding her body fast against the monstrous, lurching motion of the ship. The grip of her sweat-slick palms on the handle of her axes was all that separated her from death.

  But it wasn't only Hu Lin's life that hung by this delicate thread. There were the lives of the men climbing the hull alongside her. And the welfare of her ship and the entire Hai Do tribe. There was the honor of her mistress, tribe-chieftain Darva.

  Hu Lin's trembling arms carried the weight of all of this as she hung against the ship's cold side.

  She was a small woman, lithe and short, with shoulder-length black hair, pale yellow skin, and clever, dark eyes. She was pretty, yes, but that didn't mean she did not have scars: a white line on her left palm where she'd slipped and cut herself with a fish knife. A jagged welt as long as her thumb on her right cheek where she'd been cut by someone else.

  The vessel dropped down into a trough of the black ocean below and she tensed. Then the ship rose, and she jerked her left axe free, borrowing the ship's motion to swing her body up, slamming the blade into the vessel's wooden hide with a thunk just before the ship plunged into the next trough.

  Hu Lin climbed, body swinging back and forth, moving to the rhythm of ship and sea, teeth gritted against pain and cold and fear. Climbing, always climbing.

  Finally, she reached the end of her treacherous journey, using her last morsel of strength to vault the ship's rail, landing on the wooden deck in a silent crouch. She froze, all motion suddenly banished from her body.

  Soundless and still, she watched.

  The moon splashed cold, silver light across the merchant vessel's deck, turning the oak plankings into a shadowy patchwork of gray and black. Even in the poor light Hu Lin's practiced eyes picked out important details: lines and sheets coiled neatly or tied off with square hitches, spare canvas stowed smartly aft of the paired masts, barrels and crates securely lashed to deck. The men who crewed this ship were obviously fine mariners.

  But they had much to learn about piracy.

  The ship's crew crowded the port rail, opposite Hu Lin and her party of boarders, their backs turned to the true danger. Hu Lin's eyes flickered to the sea beyond the merchant vessel's port side. The pale moonlight revealed a second ship, five thousand strides distant and showing port aspect.

  Her ship.

  Swift Shark was a two-masted raider, built from the finest blackwood, her sails dyed the color of coal, her lines sleek and cruel.

  And every man on the merchant's deck was watching her sail on by.

  Hu Lin picked out the merchant's captain easily enough—he stood on the raised quarterdeck, a glass pressed to his face, watching the danger she wanted him to see.

  Hu Lin glanced left and saw Sun Kai crouching behind a dozen barrels secured under a net. She raised her left hand, palm held vertical and flat, then brought her right fist up against her palm. Proceed as planned.

  Sun Kai repeated her gesture. Acknowledged.

  Keeping to the shadows, Hu Lin moved towards the quarterdeck. When she was twenty strides from her target, she pulled a hollow reed from a pouch tied to her belt. She drew a deep breath and put the reed to her mouth.

  She let out a short, sharp breath.

  The merchant's captain slapped at his neck as if he'd been stung by an insect.

  Somehow he didn't fall.

  Hu Lin watched him, counting her heartbeats. Worrying. The drug was powerful. Two darts might kill a man.

  After fifty heartbeats she fitted a second dart to her reed and put it to her mouth.

  The captain chose that moment to go down, toppling like a felled tree, not even putting his arms out. He hit the deck with a muffled boom. Commotion suddenly ruled the merchant's bridge, but it was too late.

  Men were already falling all along the vessel's port rail.

  *

  "Report," whispered Hu Lin as she drifted down the stairs, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. Sun Kai carried a small lantern in his left hand, glass panes set in a wrought-iron frame, a small candle burning within, giving off a flickering, watery light.

  "Grain and salted meats," said Sun Kai quietly. His blade was drawn. "Twenty bolts of dyed silk, ten ingots of steel."

  Hu Lin shook her head. "Is that all?"

  "No treasure," he said softly.

  Grain and meats. It was like robbing grething peasants. "Deaths?" she asked, stepping into the narrow passage at the bottom of the steps. Someone had snuffed the candles in the bulkhead sconces, leaving nothing behind but the bitter taste of smoke mingled with the sweetness of incense. They were meant to believe that this section had been abandoned.

  "One," said Sun Kai. "It was the boy, Tong Yi, a blow to a sailor's throat that crushed his voice box."

  Hu Lin scowled. Among the Hai Do it was considered bad form to take a life. Bad form and bad luck.

  "Tong Yi is young," said Sun Kai, "he will learn."

  Hu Lin trailed her fingers across the bulkhead's wood paneling. The Windtrader's passenger accommodations were fashioned from polished teakwood. She felt a stirring of hope. No captain would spend coin on such luxury unless his customers demanded it. His rich customers.

  This job still might be salvaged after all.

  They stopped at the first hatch. Hu Lin reached out and slowly, very slowly, turned the knob. When she felt the latch free itself she glanced at Sun Kai.

  Then she exploded through the hatch.

  In the crazy light of Sun Kai's swinging lamp, Hu Lin saw a rumpled bed with silk sheets dyed violet, glittering baubles strewn across a teakwood sitting table, a looking glass mounted in a gold frame, a wardrobe filled with fine dresses.

  A spidery shadow suddenly darted through the dim light. Hu Lin wheeled, flashing on a woman, tall and regal in a pale green dress, sword clutched in her shaking hands.

  Then the woman collided with Sun Kai, knocking his lantern to the deck, plunging the space into darkness. Hu Lin heard the clang of steel on steel, the scuffle of feet, Sun Kai cursing.

  Hu Lin crashed into the other woman. She felt her body: tall and powerful, but unschooled in combat. Panicked.

  Hu Lin
sensed the other woman turn in the darkness. She swung, connecting with the other woman's jaw with a blow that sent agony singing through her knuckles.

  The woman dropped like a stone, her sword clattering to the deck.

  Hu Lin was on top of her before she could regain her senses, sitting astride her body.

  The woman started to struggle and Hu Lin hit her again. Hard. In the face.

  That seemed to take all the fight out of her. She lay beneath Hu Lin, trembling.

  "Who are you?" Hu Lin asked the darkness.

  "I am a daughter of House Tinkin."

  Hu Lin snorted. "And you said there was no treasure, Sun Kai."

  He grunted. She heard him pick up the lantern.

  "What is your name?"

  "Katerina," said their new hostage.

  Light flared and Sun Kai held the lantern up.

  Hu Lin looked down on a lovely olive-skinned woman who was clearly terrified. She had long, silky black hair and spectacular blue eyes that held just a hint of purple.

  The woman smiled tentatively. "But you can call me 'Kat.'"

  TWO TENDAYS BEFORE THE FULL MOON

  The barkeeps and serving wenches who worked at the Sailor's Flagon never gave the storeroom a second look. It was a dark, cramped room filled with leaking ale barrels that smelled sour and yeasty. A finger's width of dust coated the floor and the tops of the casks. Gossamer cobwebs hung from the ceiling like tappestries, each home to dozens of crawling things.

  There was no sensible reason to linger in the storeroom and yet there was a man sitting on one of the casks, his hands folded over his prodigious belly, head bowed. Kuriga was a great, corpulent mass of flesh who had once been a wrestler in Wenshi's oma rings. None of the Flagon's workers could discern why this battered giant of a man sometimes came to the storeroom—but then none of them had ever asked.

  It was a minor mystery whose answer was unlikely to reward close inquiry.

  What the barkeeps and serving wenches did not realize was that to a certain kind of person the storeroom was a prize. The layers of filth allowed a sharp eye see if someone had been there before. And the darkness was sure to blind a man who had just stepped in from the bright street. The room was hidden and difficult to access, though if one knew about it there was a secret way out.

  Which was why Kuriga was there, because, in truth, he wasn't really a washed up oma wrestler.

  He was something else entirely.

  *

  Katya didn't bother to look up when the man stepped into the storeroom, she didn't stand, didn't even unlace her fingers.

  The man, whose name was Gao Jin, was on the tall side of average. He wore a sky blue silk tunic trimmed with gold thread at the sleeves and the high collar. The tunic proclaimed him a merchant-lord, though the powerful muscles beneath that garment told quite a different story. His skin was the bright red-brown color of a turnberry nut and his head was shaved clean to show a lot of it. He carried a sack in his right hand, but what it contained she could not guess. Katya's protection spell had uncovered neither magic nor weapons, so she let it go.

  Maybe the most important thing about Gao Jin was that he seemed inordinately pleased with himself.

  He stopped a dozen paces from where she sat and bowed from the waist, deeply enough to convey considerable respect. "Greetings, honored assassin."

  "Not an assassin," said Katya. "Wrestler."

  Gao Jin snorted. "You are a wrestler like I am a merchant."

  Katya merely grunted. That was one of the things she loved about the Kuriga persona. No one expected a washed-up oma wrestler to actually use words.

  "I have a job for you, if you will hear it."

  "If you are looking to hire a quiet knife, you have come to the wrong place," said Katya. "Now, if you'd like some muscle, I'll take payment in—" Katya tapped the keg she was leaning against.

  The man laughed merrily. "That terrible stuff? I'll be happy to get you all the horse piss you can drink, but I always heard that the great Lady Kat's tastes were more refined."

  Katya felt a chill wriggle down her spine. He knows who I am.

  "Perhaps you'll hear me out before you say no," said Gao Jin easily.

  Katya protected her identity with spells and go-betweens and clever lies and yet this man had pierced her shield. She considered using a flash of blinding light to escape. She considered killing him. But Gao Jin was clearly formidable.

  Better to know something about him.

  She nodded.

  A bright smile lit Gao Jin's face. "I am a ship-chieftain of the Hai Do."

  Hai Do. A tribe of pirates that preyed on Wenshi's commercial rivals. Rumor said they were a banished clan from the distant island of Misso. They were fierce and clever and unusually merciful to those whose goods they stole.

  The man set his sack down on a cask and pulled out a piece of fruit as big 'round as a man's clasped hands. Its rind was deep cobalt, the mysterious, lustrous color of the ocean. Gao Jin held it up. "Ever tasted waterfruit, Lady Kat?"

  She shook her head. Waterfruit grew only on the island of Tong. It was a rare delicacy in the lands of Melanesia, though not unknown.

  "Darva, mistress of the Hai Do, has called a conclave of ship-chieftains at which her successor will be named. Darva grows old. Soon she will pass from this world."

  "And you want me to speed her passing," said Katya dryly.

  Gao Jin shrugged. He produced a small knife and began peeling the fruit, dropping long curls of its blue rind on the floor. Katya was surprised to see its segmented flesh was a deep, rich pink.

  "Darva favors Ship-Chieftain Hu Lin," said Gao Jin. "If the old woman simply dies, Hu Lin will become the new mistress of the Hai Do. Darva must be removed in such a way that Hu Lin is disgraced." He tore the fruit apart with his hands and tossed her half.

  Katya looked down at the pink fruit and then looked up at Gao Jin.

  He smiled broadly. "You're careful. Good." He popped a pink wedge in his mouth.

  Katya followed suit. Flavor exploded on her tongue, the fruit's sweet juice filling her mouth. The taste was like a fine white wine and orangefruit and a bite of apple and—

  It was like nothing she'd ever tasted before. But there was something else, too, a bitterness lurking beneath the sweetness.

  "What you're proposing is impossible," she said. "The Hai Do keep to themselves. Your people are not known to traffic with strangers."

  "Well, I never said it would be easy. But you will find I can be very generous." Gao Jin popped another segment of fruit into his mouth. "And surely an assassin of your skill would relish such a challenge."

  An assassin of your skill. For Katya, assassination was a form of worship. A means to honor the lost goddess Shi'in. Just the night before Katya had dreamed of Shi’in. The goddess had been wearing the face of a woman Katya once loved as a child loves a mother. Marya, oh sweet Marya, taken from her when the temple of Shi'in had been pillaged and burned.

  The goddess's hair was the color of iron and her skin was leathery and brown and lined with age. Her left eye was missing, a gaping, empty socket. But she smiled and Katya saw nothing but beauty. Marya.

  "I grow weak, daughter," the goddess had whispered, and her voice was the gravelly rasp that Marya had once owned. "I need your worship to survive."

  Worship. Assassination.

  In the dream the goddess had commanded her to take a job. But it was only a dream. The night before that, she had dreamt that she and Master Valesh had painted the Unicorn's Horn wearing naught but their undergarments. Dreams were nothing more than weavings of madness or fancy that came in the night. She would not risk working with this dangerous man who knew her name.

  Not because of a dream.

  "No," said Katya, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, but you've come to the wrong person."

  Gao Jin frowned thoughtfully. "In case you change your mind—"

  "I won't."

  "—I will return to this place tomorrow." He reached into his b
ag, producing a second waterfruit. He tossed it to Katya, who caught it with a slap.

  "I said no," she said irritably.

  "Keep it anyway," said Gao Jin. "As a mark of my friendship."

  "I do not want it." Katya tossed the fruit back to him. "It has a bitter aftertaste that is displeasing."

  Gao Jin looked at her, the great blue fruit cradled in his hands. Then he set it gently down on one of the casks. "I will leave it here for you. You might find the taste grows on you."

  *

  That evening, Katya's journey to slumber was a long and difficult slog filled with sweat and tangled bedclothes. And when at last her body finally fell into a troubled sleep, her mind got no such respite.

  She dreamed.

  *

  Katya crouched in the mountain stream, icy water as clear as liquid glass swirling around her bare feet as she banged a pale blue cotton blouse against a wide, flat rock. Her fingers were stiff with cold, little blocks of wood she could no longer bend, the skin cracked and bleeding from the soap and the scrubbing.

  Laundry was a miserable chore, but Katya allowed no sign of it to show on her face. She suffered.

  But she would not let it show.

  You never let weakness show. Ever. It was a lesson taught to her by the followers of the dark god Malin, men who'd murdered her family and carried her from her home. It was a cruel lesson.

  But they'd taught it well.

  She felt a soft hand on her shoulder and she jumped, wheeled around, the fabric of the blouse she'd been washing suddenly gathered up into the fist she'd made of her left hand.

  What she saw was the last thing in the world she expected.

  She was confronted by an old woman, a woman who'd been ill-used by time and circumstance. She was a short, round thing dressed in a brown dress that had been mended and patched and seemed to contain a million pockets. Her hair was as gray as the winter sky and the ugliest part of her very ugly face was her left eye which had been scooped out of her head.

  The sight wrung an involuntary gasp from Katya, but instead of taking offense, the woman laughed merrily, her single dark eye twinkling.