by E. S. Bell
He twisted like a snake, spun around, and jabbed the pommel of his dagger under the big man’s chin. The shadow adherent made a gurgling sound and clutched his throat. Sebastian slipped behind him, using him as a shield, and laid the tip of his blade under the man’s ear.
“No ice,” Sebastian warned, and pressed his dagger into the man’s flesh for emphasis. A fat red drop of blood welled up. The other Bazira lowered their open palms, the words to call their magic dying on their lips.
“It’s just until night,” the big man wheezed. “The High Vicar…he doesn’t like the sun.”
“Then he should have arranged for me to come at twilight.” Sebastian jerked his dagger down the hallway they had come. “Outside.”
They walked the path back out. His scimitars and pistol had been pissed on. By more than one man. Sebastian shoved the big shadow adherent away from him and sat on his heels beside his weapons. He lit a cigarillo.
“I should kill you,” the Bazira seethed.
“But you won’t.” Sebastian rose to his feet. “You can’t, to be more plain.” He strode over to a barrel of water that rested against the curve of the fortress, in the shade. He sat upon it and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ll have my weapons cleaned. I’ll be needing new powder for my pistol since what’s there is now…damp.”
“Fuck you.” The big adherent spat.
“You’ll do as he says,” said a voice. A female voice.
A beautiful woman clothed in black and with hair the color of flame, sauntered out of the fortress to stand before the big adherent.
“We don’t treat our guests so poorly,” she said. She turned and raked her gaze up and down Sebastian’s form. “Especially not guests of such high esteem.” A scowl twisted her face as she turned back to the shadow adherent. “The High Vicar will be displeased, Gregor.”
“High esteem,” Gregor snarled. “He’s a bilge rat—”
Faster than a striking snake, the woman’s hand shot out and she slapped Gregor across the face. The sound was flat and loud in the still air.
“Clean his weapons,” she seethed. “You may use a cloth. Disobey me again, and you’ll use your tongue.”
Gregor’s face reddened and Sebastian was sure the big man was going to strike the woman, and when he did, her neck would snap like a yard in a fierce wind. But he swallowed hard and strode away, barking orders at the Bazira who stood watching to clean the weapons. The men scattered like flies to do his bidding.
The woman turned to Sebastian, a placid smile on her face. “Captain Tergus, was it?”
“As far as they need to know,” Sebastian said with a nod at the Bazira men.
The woman inclined her head. “Of course. My name is Jude Gracus. I apologize for the misunderstanding. The High Vicar will see you now.”
The chamber must have once been a meeting room of sorts. The shadows were thick but Sebastian could feel the emptiness around him. Its lone window, set high on one wall, was small and had been draped with a swath of velvet so that the narrow spill of sunlight appearing on the table formed the shape of a crescent moon. His hooded face hidden in shadow, Zolin, High Vicar of the Bazira, sat with his elbows planted, his fingers steepled.
The red-haired woman, Jude, shut the door behind Sebastian and took her place behind the High Vicar’s chair, beside another Bazira guard whose face was lost to shadow.
“Sebastian Vaas,” Jude said. “He wears a dagger, my lord.”
The High Vicar waved a gaunt hand. “I’m sure he does. How do the songs go? Bloody, bloody Bastian, killed the captain…” Zolin’s voice sounded old and dry from inside the black cowl. “The man of song and legend in this very room.”
Sebastian sneered and took the chair in front of the table without being asked to sit. “Try to lock me up again and I’ll give the bards another song.”
The old man chuckled and reached for the decanter of red wine that stood between them on the stone slab of a table. The wine looked like old blood. “Insolent, aren’t you?” He drank from a crystal goblet. “But deadly, and so useful to me.”
Sebastian kept his face placid. He’d had clients who considered him merely their tool. He supposed that was true in a way but it always chafed him.
I’m a dagger with no handle; I cut both ways.
“You’re useful to me, Zolin, if your coin is the right color and there’s enough of it. I don’t come cheap.”
“Aye, but I wonder for how much longer that will be true?” Zolin replied. “With all the unrest on the Eastern Edge, it’s a short matter of time before your particular services—and their high cost—will no longer be as valued as they once were. Assassination is a burgeoning trade.”
“I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
The High Vicar smiled. “Indeed, when the time comes. And it will come, I can assure you. But in any event, I didn’t send for you to mince words.”
“True enough. You sent for me.” Sebastian kicked his boots onto the table, tucked a cigarillo into the corner of his mouth and struck a match on the table. The sweet-smelling smoke hung in a gray haze in the airless chamber. “I guess that means time is still on my side.”
“Insolent,” Zolin said again. He leaned back in his seat. “And not what I expected. I imagined a monstrous, hairy beast of a man with madness in his eyes and blood lust dripping from every pore, such as the stories paint you. But no, you’re a comely man and young. Thirty? Thirty-two?”
“Close enough.”
“I should think it would take more time to acquire the level of killing mastery you are reputed to have, not to mention the bloody reputation to accompany it.”
“It only takes two acts of real fucking depravity to make a reputation.” Sebastian counted off on his thumb and forefinger. “The first to get everyone’s attention and the second to show you were serious the first time.” He took a drag off his cigarillo. “I’ve been for hire for ten years.”
“Ten years? If I recall, you reserved your most delicious depravity for the Zak’reth, just after the war, and I haven’t heard word of your exploits in almost four years. Taken time off, have we?”
Sebastian hardly heard the question. The Zak’reth. Memories of the war arose at once, summoned by the name and filled with blood. He could see thousands of warships, and red armor-clad men swarming over his home island, like locusts, ravaging and burning and consuming all until there was nothing left. Nothing left of his home. Of his father or sister.
Mina…
Sebastian blew a perfect smoke ring, and reburied the memories before they could reveal themselves on his face. “A man’s allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labor, isn’t he?”
“You have to understand my reservations,” Zolin said. “Before I entrust the infamous Sebastian Vaas with this task—and pay him a bloody fortune in gold doubloons—I want to make certain I’m getting who I think I’m getting.”
Sebastian held up his hands. “You take my word or you don’t. But I’m getting tired of sitting in this dark, smelly dungeon waiting for you to tell me just what it is you want.”
“I want,” the High Vicar said, “for you to get your bloody feet off my table.” He made a fist and then opened it again. “Krystak.”
A shaft of ice lanced out of his palm and struck Sebastian’s nearest boot, riming it with frost and giving his foot an excruciating chill. The little blast caught him by surprise for exactly half a heartbeat.
Sebastian righted himself, drew the knife from the catch on his wrist and lunged forward, like striking lightning. Zolin reared back, drawing another breath to call ice, but Sebastian flipped the knife in his hand and laid the tip onto the table. With a deft flick of his wrist, he sent it spinning; a silver sliver that danced in the crescent moon-shaped light cast on the stone table.
Then he disappeared into the dark.
In the space of a moment, he’d crept up behind Jude, silent as the shadows that concealed him. He snaked one arm around her neck and thrust upward so that he
r chin was tucked into the crook of his elbow. He squeezed and twisted, contorting her neck to the point of snapping it. Her sword hung from nerveless fingers. Before she dropped it, Sebastian wrapped his hand over hers and laid the tip of her blade against Zolin’s back.
“I wouldn’t,” Sebastian warned the other Bazira, the young man whose face was concealed in shadow. The man backed off. Zolin remained still, but at ease, as if waiting. The knife on the table spun.
“You smell of cinnamon,” Sebastian told the woman in his grasp. “Cinnamon is a common spice on Isle Juskara. The sand barons make a bloody fortune off it. I know this, because it was on Isle Juskara that I learned to move among shadows.” He gave her head a jerk. “But not this maneuver. This maneuver will put you to sleep in a minute and kill you in three. I learned this on the Isles of the Painted Kings. They enjoy hand-to-hand combat there. The painted kings feel that killing a man ought to be done bravely, with bare hands and not with the advantage of blades and certainly not with the cowardice of pistols. I can appreciate that. But I use everything. I use it all.”
Zolin chuckled, watching the dagger spin.
Sebastian released Jude and she fell to one knee, gasping for breath. He disappeared into the shadows and reemerged to take his seat. The dagger was wobbling now. Sebastian caught the point between two fingers and put it back in its place, up his sleeve.
“Any other questions as to my qualifications? Or can we get to the bloody point of this meeting?” He leaned back, knocked the ice from his boot and lit another cigarillo, his first having fallen to the ground in the flurry.
Zolin laughed heartily. “Quite so, quite so.”
Jude got to her feet and, despite the redness marring her neck, favored the assassin with an approving smile before retreating into the shadows.
The High Vicar poured a second glass of red wine and slid it across the table.
“Bloody Bastian, in the flesh. I have to tell you, I had my doubts. Not just because of your youth, but the speed in which you agreed to this meeting. There are many words one could use to describe Sebastian Vaas. Desperate is not usually one of them.”
Sebastian thought of his Black Storm. How the sails needed mending, his crew needed paying. How four years of odd jobs—menial, humble labor— weren’t filling his strongbox fast enough. Honest work, turns out, didn’t pay as well as murder-for-hire.
Sebastian held up his hands. “I happened to be in the vicinity.”
“And good fortune for both of us that you were.” The High Vicar took another long draught from his wine glass. “The job I have for you is lucrative but far more dangerous than those you’ve been accustomed to, I’m sure.”
“Try me.”
“My informant on Isle Lillomet tells me that the Alliance has sent an Aluren Paladin to kill two of my adherents. One of my Bazira is no longer welcome in our fold. Accora has long outgrown her usefulness to me. By your hand or the Aluren’s, she may die. But Bacchus is another matter. It would displease me to lose him.”
“Who’s my mark?”
“The Aluren bitch sent to kill them, of course. She can succeed in her first endeavor; she must die before she accomplishes the second. It will not be easy for you,” Zolin said. “She is a tremendously powerful Paladin.”
Even though his face was mostly swathed in shadow, Sebastian fought to keep it expressionless.
An Aluren and a woman. Bloody bones and spit, what did you expect from the Bazira?
He took a drag on his cigarillo and mulled this information over.
“To be clear, you want me to wait to kill the Paladin until after she kills Accora?”
The High Vicar smiled through his words. “I’m not one to presume to tell you how to do your job.”
“Well, that’s a different job altogether,” Sebastian said. “It means I have to trail the Aluren until her first target is dead. That’s going to cost more than a straight hunt-and-kill. A lot more.”
“We are prepared to compensate you accordingly.”
Good. This could be good, Sebastian thought. This, my last job. My last…
“What happens if my target fails to kill Accora?” he asked. “What then?”
Zolin snorted. “Accora is weak and cannot hope to defeat Selena Koren.”
“Selena Koren.” Sebastian tasted the name. He did not find it unpleasant.
“Yes,” Zolin replied. “Although, like you, she is known by another name: the Tainted One.”
“Why?”
“Have you not heard of the Tainted One? Why, I had thought her story was legendary, especially in the Eastern Edge. Or have you been too busy fucking and drinking the fruits of your labor away on the Pleasure Isles?”
“Something like that.” One lesson no one had taught Sebastian, but one he learned himself, was that it was always better to let the other person think they knew more than he did. “What happened?”
Zolin wet his palate with more red wine; his third glass. The assassin’s remained untouched.
“It was the end of the Zak’reth war,” the High Vicar said. “Isle Calinda. The Zak’reth savages were set to land ten thousand warriors on that little island. Seventy-five warships, all told. It was to become a midway point from which the Zak’reth would launch the full might of their armada into the northern seas of the Eastern Edge. The Isle of Lords, the Ho Sun Empire…they’d all fall. But Skye—surely you’ve heard of Skye?” Zolin tittered.
Sebastian’s lips curled. One last job…
“Skye, in command of the Alliance Armada, got wind of the Zak’reth plans and ordered Selena Koren to stop them,” the Bazira continued. “Koren is possessed of a unique ability. I told you she was powerful, but I did not say that she is likely the most powerful Aluren next to Skye herself.”
“In what way?”
“She can call the sea to do her bidding,” the High Vicar said. “At Skye’s command, she used her magic to draw an immense tidal wave to the coast of Isle Calinda, and sent it crashing over the Zak’reth. That Aluren bitch killed every last Zak’reth warrior, and destroyed ever last ship.” He made a cutting motion with his hand. “Every—last—one.”
Sebastian stubbed out his cigarillo that suddenly tasted foul. “I’ve heard that tale before. I didn’t realize the Aluren— Selena—still lived. I had thought she died in the aftermath of the spell. Or became ill…?”
“She is very much alive,” Zolin said. “For now. Until you.”
My mark is the Aluren who destroyed the Zak’reth?
There was a silence and then the High Vicar asked, “Does that bother you?” His words were slurring now. “I know you reserved your bloodiest talents of assassination for the Zak’reth. They were the teeth you cut your bloody reputation on, as it were, yes?”
Sebastian didn’t reply as memories assaulted him again: the Zak’reth attacking his island, laying waste to his village, murdering his father. The Zak’reth warriors in his home, one bent over his sister, rutting like the fierce animal carved into his red armor. He could still hear Mina scream sometimes when he closed his eyes at night.
And now I must kill the woman who destroyed those bloody shit-eating bustards?
He lit a new cigarillo and then turned back to the High Vicar, fumbling for something to say without appearing to.
“That was ten years ago,” he said. “Why do you call her the Tainted One?”
“Not I. That name originated among the Aluren, her own people. Because when little Selena Koren—not more than a girl she was at the time—cast that spell, she killed the Zak’reth, aye, but she also massacred the four hundred people who called Isle Calinda home. The Shining face of the god was not pleased. The Two-Faced God, in its wrath at that innocent loss of life on Calinda, struck Selena Koren down and left its mark on her sweet little breast.” Zolin tapped a bony finger on the crescent of light spilled on the table.
Sebastian raised a brow. “The crescent moon? A Bazira symbol.”
“Indeed.”
Sebastian blew
a smoke ring and watched it waver and then dissipate in the gloom. “A Bazira mark on an Aluren Paladin.”
“Paladin, yes,” Zolin said. “Selena Koren is a woman who has dedicated her life to heal, weave light, and spill blood for the Shining face. And her reward for doing all three during the Zak’reth war was a terrible smiting.” The pleasure in Zolin’s voice was tangible.
Sebastian snorted. “Nothing’s ever good enough for the gods, eh?”
Zolin leaned back in his chair, his voice now distinctly absent of pleasure. “You show contempt of a great power with such words.”
The assassin shrugged. “I respect the sea and nothing else. Any sailor who doesn’t is a fool.” Sebastian waved a hand. “You still haven’t told me why the Aluren aspect of the god would punish the girl with a Bazira mark.”
Zolin snorted. “The answer is rather obvious. Pain.”
The assassin cocked his head.
“The two halves of the god are not ignorant of one another. The Shining face wanted to punish the girl, so it turned to the Shadow face for the means. And the Shadow face did not fail.”
Sebastian shifted in his seat. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Cold. Simple. Devious. Torturous cold. The crescent wound Paladin Selena Koren bears prevents her from ever knowing warmth. Not in ten years since the war’s end has she felt anything but cold, in various degrees.” He sighed lustily. “An ingenious, delicious torture. Almost a pity you will kill her before I can see the wound for myself.”
Ten years of cold…
The chamber in which they now sat was growing cooler in the shadows of the setting sun. Sebastian tried to imagine a decade of it. Of basking in the hot summer sun, or soaking in a steaming bath and feeling none of it.
Might not be so bad, this last job. I’ll put the girl out of her misery.
Sebastian leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring.
“You seem unimpressed,” Zolin said. “Or is this the mask of the hard-hearted killer I see before me?”
“War is war,” the assassin said. “Innocent people die. Gods exact revenge.” He shrugged. “It’s the price that’s paid.”