by Sam Sykes
Chariel didn’t weep. Chariel never wept.
Chariel didn’t say a damn thing.
That wasn’t how she did things. She was a woman that wasted nothing. She was an assassin. And she moved through life with the exact knowledge that everything she did would one day hurt somebody.
And though I never said it, I wondered if she knew that saving my life would do that, too.
22
A Late Winter, A False Spring
I saw magic for the very first time on a street in Katapesh.
It was a wizard—or a sorcerer? I can never tell the difference—a young man, tall and skinny with facial hair, just out of puberty. There was a crowd gathering around him, and Sem and I were at the front.
Somehow, I reluctantly let him talk me into giving him a coin. I’d tell you I was drunk, but I was just young, so same thing, really. Anyway, he took one of my coppers in his hands, whirled it around a little, made a puff of light and smoke and, when he handed it back to me, it was a shiny gold piece.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t throw it back in his face, but even then, I didn’t trust it. I had fought off six other kids in the street for that copper and he turned it into gold? Just like that? I couldn’t believe it.
Then, when I tried to buy something with it and the illusion spell wore off and it turned out it was just a crappy chunk of wood, I finally understood magic.
If you didn’t pay attention, you’d think that magic-users did what people like me did: they went places they shouldn’t, got past things designed to keep them out, and did in a few seconds what a warrior does in a lifetime of hacking and slashing.
And if you were stupid, you might even think that magic-users were better at what we did than we were.
But there’s a crucial difference. Wizards study, sorcerers harness, but people in my line of work? We learn. We watch, we observe, we try and we fail and we get back up. Magic-users go through life confident in their powers, never learning the price of failure. So they never plan for failure. And they never see it coming.
Much like that street wizard never saw it coming when Sem and I jumped him outside of a tavern, kicked him in the teeth, and stole his money.
Point being: Magic is cheating. And not good cheating, either.
So when I walked out of the temple of Abadar, ostensibly free from whatever Vishera had done to me, I still didn’t feel right. The fever that had plagued me was gone, whatever visions I had seen were gone, and though I was a little shaky on my knees, I still felt otherwise fine.
But I didn’t feel right. I didn’t like that someone could just do that to me, send me back to Katapesh like that, all with the wave of a stick and a fancy word. I didn’t like that there were people like that in the world: rich people, magic-users, assholes who just took whatever they wanted without earning it.
And I didn’t like that Dalaris was out there with one of those people right now.
“He said it was poison.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Chariel leaned against the temple door, staring at me, arms folded over her chest, lips set in a frown, cold blue eyes unblinkingly fixed on me.
Which was about as close as she got to “concerned,” so hey, that was nice.
“Magic poison. Not the honest kind. Some kind of thing that makes you weak.” Chariel shrugged. “I wasn’t listening for a lot of what he said. But he managed to cure it.” She looked straight at me. “It wasn’t easy. Or cheap.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Sorry about that.” I managed a weak smile at her. “Next time I get blasted by a power-mad devil-woman’s evil spells, I’ll try to do so in a more cost-efficient manner. Maybe a nice, easy-to-patch fireball to the—”
“Don’t.”
Everyone expects an assassin to be fast. And when motivated, Chariel’s quick. But a good assassin is deliberate. And so every step she took toward me felt like a knife working its way under my skin.
“Don’t act like you can solve this with jokes.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Or with running. Or with disappearing. Or with drinking. Or with killing.”
“I was just—”
“I know what you were doing.” Her face twitched, a mask cracking at the edges. Her voice became a snarl and she narrowed her eyes. “Because you always do this. You always run: into a bottle, into someone else, or into thin air. But you always run when you’re feeling scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“I heard you.” Chariel swept up to me, looked down at me with a scowl. “In the temple, I heard you crying out. I heard you sobbing. I heard you—” She stumbled over her words, looked away briefly. “I heard you say that name again.”
I rubbed my temples, let out a long sigh and turned away from her.
“You’re doing it again,” she hissed.
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re running.”
“I am not.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“I don’t know!” I whirled on her, gestured to the empty air between us. “This thing? This right here? This is the sort of thing I’d expect from, say, a farmer’s daughter. Becoming entangled with a remorseless assassin should not come with nearly this much emotional bullshit.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she hissed. “I’m not staring out a window, waiting for you to return. I’m not a simpering little broken heart. I’m simply tired. I’m tired of your cowardice, your ineffectiveness, your running—”
“Would you stop saying that?” I don’t know how to roar dramatically. I just kind of squawked out something. “I’d be running if I were smart! And if I were smart, I’d be gone by now! I’d have left before you and your thugs caught up to me! I’d have left when that dumb girl asked me to solve her problems! I’d be gone, understand? I’d be gone instead of standing here … standing…”
With nothing.
That’s how it always ended, somehow.
No matter how hard I worked, no matter how much blood I spilled, it never seemed to make a difference. Coins, power, people; it didn’t matter. At the end of everything, I’d be standing there with empty hands. Alone.
But gods—for a little while there, when Dalaris looked at me like I could do something, like I was the one that could help her …
Things almost seemed all right.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I closed my eyes.
“We could go,” Chariel said. “Together, this time. Leave the Brotherhood, leave Taldor, leave everything. They can’t follow us past Galt.”
“I can’t.”
“The hell you can’t. I’ve seen you—”
“Char…” I took her hand in mine, turned to face her. “I can’t. I can’t leave her.”
Chariel didn’t have the emotional capacity to look wounded; that sort of thing had been beaten out of her long ago. But the twitch across her face, the crease of anger in her brow—I knew that was as close as I was going to get to her looking hurt. It didn’t feel great.
“You and her…” she said. “Do you…”
“Not like that.” I shook my head. “She’s just … she was counting on me.”
“A lot of people were.” Chariel glared at me. “I was.”
“Yeah, but I always knew you were going to take care of yourself. The Brotherhood, they wouldn’t miss me once I was out of Taldor. No one was going to mind that I disappeared. But Dalaris is different. She’s got the blood of Heaven in her. She can probably trace her lineage back to a god, and even they aren’t looking out for her right now.”
“You expect me to believe you want to be a hero?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t expect much of anything except that…” I sighed. “Even if everything else goes to hell, at least someone should come out of this okay. And neither you nor I deserve for it to be us.”
I didn’t know if Chariel believed me. Hell, I didn’t even know if I believed me.
I had a good thing in front of me. Vishera sent me t
o hell with just a flick of a little wooden stick. I knew the scope of her plans and I knew what she had under her house. And even if I somehow made it out of there, there was still the Brotherhood’s presence here.
I was in over my head.
And if I was smart, I’d run for it. Chariel was right, the Brotherhood wouldn’t pursue us beyond Taldor’s borders. She would know how to evade them long enough for us to get to Galt and beyond.
I wasn’t the sort to believe that the kind of heroics that happen in operas even existed, let alone that I could be part of them. I wasn’t the sort to believe that I’d be the person that hope came to rest on.
I wasn’t that kind of person. I was smart. And the smart thing would be to run.
And somehow, every time I tried to tell myself that, my mind just drifted back to Dalaris and those big eyes of hers and how I wondered if I once had eyes like that.
And I knew I couldn’t go.
And even if I didn’t believe it, even if I wasn’t a hero, I was a damn good liar. And I looked at Chariel like I believed it. And, as her face softened as much as she was able, I knew she believed it, too.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, sighing.
“Kill the richest woman in Yanmass, I guess.” I shrugged.
“Just like that, huh?”
“I’ve got a plan?”
“Do you?”
Of course I didn’t. I had just barely come out of whatever pit Norgorber had dragged me into. But I had an idea, at least.
“I do,” I said. “And I need your help.”
She cringed. “The Brotherhood can’t get involved in this. We’ve got too many pieces in play.”
“Not the Brotherhood. You. I need you to deliver a message for me. Go outside the city walls, there’s a centaur there who’s…” I paused, scrutinized. “How many curse words do you know, anyway? You’re going to need a lot for this to work.”
23
Into the Maw
Gods are hard to come by in this line of work.
The decent, loving deities don’t approve of thievery. The evil, vicious deities don’t feel thievery is quite enough to warrant their blessings. And the less interested deities don’t feel any particular need to look out for you.
Thus, those of us with a talent for getting places are left with Norgorber.
Not a good god. Not a kind god. He’s a sneering, weaselly, vicious little prick of a god. But if you know what he likes, you can sometimes beseech him. Selfishness, he approves of. Murder, he likes. But what he really loves is when someone sets themselves up for such a tremendous, spectacular failure that he can’t help but lean out a little and push them into it.
Which is why tonight, I was beseeching him.
Because I was about to give him a show he wouldn’t soon forget.
And it all began with me walking up to the gates of House Stelvan and looking up.
You’d think it’d look foreboding, what with being the domicile of a madwoman and all, but it looked a touch cozy that night. The stars were out, not a cloud in the sky, and the lights above twinkled as softly as the warm light beaming out of the manor’s many windows.
A good night to get killed.
I jiggled the gate’s handle, found it locked. In short order, I had my tools out and the door picked. It swung open with a noisy creak—Stelvan could spring for a torture dungeon but not oil for hinges, I guess—but that was fine. I wanted them to hear me coming.
I took my time strolling down the walkway through Stelvan’s gardens. The last time I had seen these shrubberies and statues, they were cover—places to hide and shadows to slip in. Here, in the light of the stars, I could see the delicate care put into their maintenance: the rounded cheeks on the sculpture of a young lady, the precise corners of a square-cut hedge, the bright smile of a stone child standing at the center of a fountain.
This, I supposed, is what Vishera thought she was protecting. To me, it was just a rich person’s junk: wealth thrown about to show everyone else how wealthy she was. And maybe if I hadn’t met her, I would think Vishera was just one more of them.
But I had looked into her eyes.
I had heard the fear in her voice.
And in it, I had heard the same hungry terror that had been in the voice of every orphan, every urchin, every rat in every back alley I had ever met in Katapesh. They had been poor kids with nothing but a hunk of bread to their name, but they lived in perpetual fear of even that much being taken from them. And when you’re rich, you have a lot more that can be taken from you.
I just saw riches. But Vishera saw love, saw tenderness, saw all the care she had poured into making this manor her home. And in her mind, I suppose that’s all it was: a home. Her home. One she would do anything to protect.
And when put that way, was I right to stop her?
I don’t know. You want philosophical questions, go ask a priest.
I was here to stab a bitch.
I walked up to the massive doors, found them locked. Unfortunate. I was planning on kicking them in. It was going to be all dramatic and whatever. Ah, well.
I picked the lock, folded up my tools, and tucked them into the back of my belt. I slid my knife into my hand; not that it would do me much good, but it was something. I put my shoulder against one door and shoved.
It opened with a slow groan, revealing Vishera’s massive grand hall.
And the three dozen or so guards within, blades drawn.
I took a deep breath, fought down that common-sense urge to run, and walked in, shutting the door behind me.
I glanced across the many men and women surrounding me. I saw their blades, leveled at me. I saw the reflection of my eyes, calm as they could be, in the gleam of their steel. What I didn’t see was any of that steel embedded in my flesh and soaking in my blood.
So, hey, off to a good start.
“Expecting me?” I asked.
One of them, a fellow with slightly nicer trim to his garb, stepped forward. “We had warning this time.” He cast me a sneer. “See how much nicer it is when you don’t come crawling in like a rat?”
“I’ll admit, I didn’t expect it to go quite this well.” I glanced pointedly around at the guards and their weapons. “So, are we going to have wine before you kill me or what?”
“The mistress requested we speak properly before engaging in combat.” The head guard sniffed. “You could try running, if you’d like. But…” He allowed himself a little grin. “We took the liberty of moving a few of our people in behind you once you came in through the gate.”
“Courteous.” I eyed the dagger in my hand. “So, what’s your mistress want to know?”
“She found her study compromised.” He ran a finger along the lapel of his coat. “The man I inherited this uniform from was in charge of security on the night you broke in. We’d like to know what you took, so that his soul might be at peace.”
“His soul, huh?”
“Well, the mistress is more concerned with what delicate equipment might have been compromised by your intrusion.”
“That sounds about right.” I folded my arms. “So, I tell you, then you kill me? Sounds like a short conversation.”
“The mistress is willing to be lenient. Her progress cannot be further hindered, obviously, so any deal would involve your silence.” He held up his hands, put on a grin that I think was meant to be reassuring. “There are magical means to this, completely painless. With just a few words, we can seal away your voice with minimal effort.”
“Compelling,” I said.
“Afterward, the mistress is willing to locate a suitable domicile for you. A monetary stipend will be set aside for you. Trivial to her. You could lead your life in comfort and silence.”
“Uh huh. And why not just torture me for the information?”
His face turned to a sneer. “The mistress wishes me to inform you that she considers torture to be more the purview of your people.”
I pursed my lips, nodded slow
ly. Not that I should specifically be offended by that kind of statement—what with all the other horrible stuff going on here—but it didn’t make it any easier.
“That said,” he continued, “should you prove uncooperative, we may hesitantly resort to such unpleasantness.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want things to be unpleasant. But…”
I paused as I heard a distant sound. Something heavy hitting stone. I smiled.
“But?” the guard pressed.
“But I’ve got no reason to trust you. And even if I did, I’ve become a little attached to my voice.” I grinned, held my hands out wide. “True, I prefer to do things quietly. But on occasion, I do love a good…”
I licked my lips.
“Spectacle.”
A long moment passed. Nothing happened. The guards traded baffled looks. The one in the lead stared at me blankly. I held my hands out for just a moment longer before sighing and looking back at the door.
“Ah, damn.” I rubbed the back of my neck, then turned back to the guards. “Sorry, I thought I had it all timed out.”
“What?” the head guard asked.
“See, I was going to hold my hands out, say ‘spectacle’ like I did, and then—”
The doors flew off their hinges.
An arc of steel cut the air where I had just been standing. I tumbled away as the splintered doors sailed through the air and landed in the crowd of guards, knocking a few of them to the ground.
Hooves clopped on stones, massive sword screeching as he dragged it behind him, eyes burning like fires as he surveyed the crowd before him.
Halamox made a hell of an entrance, I had to hand it to him.
It would have been more impressive if he had come in when I had said “spectacle,” sure, but, anyway …
I leapt to my feet, my back to the guards. I held up my dagger and pointed it at Halamox and screamed.
“There he is, boys! I told you he’d come! Gut the horse before he reaches the mistress!”
The guards, bless them, looked confused. Halamox, however, looked anything but.