by Cari Z
“A few problems with your latest kill?” Daeva asked after a moment, still not looking at Rafael.
“No.”
“Really? It seems to have taken a lot out of you.”
“It’s true that it wasn’t as simple as some people led me to believe,” Rafael replied caustically. “How much did you really know before telling me about him?”
Daeva smiled slightly. “You mean did I know that he was an assassin? I did. Would it have mattered to you?”
“It might have changed my plan of attack, but it wouldn’t have prevented it.” Rafael didn’t express the caveat he now felt, but Daeva seemed to sense it anyway.
“Not even knowing that you shared the same master?”
“A distraction I didn’t need in the middle of a fight.” Rafael couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his tone, and Daeva’s smile grew wider.
“And yet you survived.”
“True. Bathing in the blood of a High One does wonders for your longevity.” Now Rafael smiled as Daeva looked sharply at him, all traces of amusement gone.
“I recall telling you that wasting their blood is inexcusable.”
“I recall replying that I am neither your butcher nor your slave.”
“I need that blood for the people, Rafael. They have to understand it in order to want it. They have to see its power in action to learn to crave it. Once they desire it…” Daeva gestured outside with one hand. “The people of the Lower Half outnumber the High Ones nearly fifty to one! It doesn’t matter how fast or how strong they are, odds like that inevitably lead to defeat in conflict. With your continual success at killing them, you prove that they are not invulnerable. Now my followers must desire the end result—their blood for the taking. If enough people want it, then they’ll be unstoppable.”
Rafael shook his head. “The odds don’t matter. It could be a hundred to one and they would still just die. You know that. You know the defenses of the Upper City as well as I do, and you also know that these sheep you amuse yourself playing savior to don’t understand my kills. They would be led to the slaughter, and you would be the one responsible for it.”
“True.” His easy acquiescence surprised Rafael. “They would die in masses, of course. But some High Ones would die as well. Every corpse is precious. Even better if we could take some alive, to drain them slowly over time, keeping the blood fresh for as long as possible.” He grinned and it was the grin of a pure predator. “It always comes back to their blood. Who wouldn’t desire such a precious commodity? It’s the source of their power, the difference between leaving you constrained to humanity or rendering you a god.”
“Which is why you’ll never be getting it from me.”
“I think I will.” Daeva looked out of the window and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How is your friend Feysal?”
The nameless pain that Rafael detested suddenly gripped his chest, but he forced himself to answer calmly. “Prosperous.”
“Mmm. So I’ve heard. His fortunes have risen over the past few years. His establishment is one of the finest in Little Heaven, from what I understand.”
“Your point?”
“Simply that he has a lot to lose. His money, his building, his family… He has a daughter, doesn’t he?”
Rafael’s hands clenched the arms of his chair a bit more tightly. “You speak very casually about things that could have deadly consequences for you.”
“Oh, I know full well the implications of my threat. No fail-safes in the world would protect me if you decided to kill me, but it would still be too late for Feysal and…Mina, isn’t it?” Daeva looked at Rafael’s face and chuckled. “I’m merely reminding you of how many pieces are on the board. You may work in solitude but you don’t play that way, and I am prepared to kill thousands to achieve my ends. You can save everyone involved much grief if you simply reserve the bodies of your kills for me and me alone.”
“Drinking their blood won’t make you a High One, Daeva. It just makes you a parasite.”
“A parasite with power that will someday rival theirs. I know things about the Upper Half that you don’t, Rafael. Nothing lasts forever. Do keep this conversation in mind when you feel these regrettable spells of independence coming on.” He looked back down at his parchment for a moment. “Ah yes. The matter of your next target.”
“Beautifully engineered, I have to admit.”
“I rather liked it,” Daeva said with a slight shrug. “Master Xian has always shown a tendency toward loyalty to his former protégées, and this confrontation will certainly galvanize the masses. You will kill him, his body will go on display and fill the people with fervor, and the swell of rebellion will continue to rise.”
“You may be overestimating my skill.”
“Perhaps. If I am, I gain a martyr to my cause without risking myself. Your death will still provide a useful symbol, and your own blood retains a great deal of its former strength. Either way, my ends are served.”
He looked entirely too self-satisfied for Rafael to leave it there. “You seem to think that death is a linear process. See, stab. Hunt, kill. Something swift to arrive and immediate thereafter.”
“This is relevant how?”
“You’ve been making one vast assumption about our relationship, Daeva,” he said. “You’ve been gathering information on me, using my friends against me, treating me like a pawn in your pointless little conflict… You assume that I haven’t been doing the same.”
Daeva looked discomfited for the first time. “You have nothing to injure me with.”
Rafael chuckled. “This is where your network breaks down. You think because you were trained in the Upper City that you know everything there is to know about it. You don’t know everything about me, and you certainly don’t know everything about my profession. I’ve been seeing you about once a month for the past three years, Daeva. Do you know how many poisons exist that can be administered without your target ever knowing it? There are so many interesting ones. Some don’t kill until you stop administering them, the body can’t take the lack and begins to degrade. Others require continual applications of the antidote in order to keep them at bay.” He watched his enemy’s sallow face pale even further. “Every plan has a flaw. Yours may prove to be fatal if you don’t rethink your dealings with me.”
Daeva stared at him for a long moment. “You could be lying.”
“I could be. Would you accept my assurances one way or the other? I wouldn’t accept yours.”
“I will remove some of the pieces from the board, if it makes you feel better about the situation,” he finally offered.
“That would certainly be a comfort to me as I plan my next kill,” Rafael replied blandly. “No distractions, no loose ends… I would take care of those as well.”
“We understand each other, then.”
“Unfortunately, we do.” Rafael stood up and straightened his cloak. “That’s all, I take it?”
Daeva stared at him for a long moment, his face expressionless, but Rafael could see the hatred in his eyes. “I find myself hoping that your master is every bit as good as he’s reputed to be.”
“Oh, he is. I wouldn’t wonder if he knew more about all of this than you’re comfortable with. Think on that for a while.” Rafael turned and left, feeling better now than he’d thought possible a few hours earlier. Daeva was as slippery as an eel, but once you tied him in a knot he bargained. He could afford to. He had more time than Rafael did, and they both knew it.
Planning for Xian’s attack… No, he couldn’t think of it that way, that way led only to defeat. Planning for Xian’s death. Rafael ignored the sharp, painful pangs that he couldn’t seem to control and began to alter his course, heading out of the press of humanity in the commerce district for a place where he knew no one in the Lower City could follow him.
Chapter Four
It took nearly an hour to get there, twisting and turning through deeper alleys and less-populated parts of the city before Rafae
l finally arrived at the dead zone. Over a century had passed since a tremendous fire had raged through this part of the Lower City, leaving blackened and skeletal ruins in its wake, but the terrain was still extremely treacherous. The Upper Half didn’t want to pay to rebuild and the Lower Half didn’t have the means, so no one ever returned. Eventually the whole place would fall down around itself and perhaps then people would venture in again, but for now it was left to the rats, the desperate and the suicidal.
Magic was the foundation of Clare, and not just because of the potent power of the High Ones. It literally helped to shore up the island city. It was the only way the land could withstand the weight of the changes people had wrought on it. Heavy stone had been imported to build with, tunnels dug, spires erected, and the earth beneath it all became a lacy lattice of tenuous support. That lattice was fueled and strengthened by magic worked by the High Ones, but fire was one of the few things that had an immediate purifying effect on magic. It consumed it like it consumed nearly everything else, and the effect of that here had been devastating.
Whole sections of the ground had fallen away, some only collapsing a few feet, some becoming yawning craters that went deeper than the eye could see. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Bottomless chasms sat side by side with piddling gutters, and the landscape changed constantly. No path was safe to tread, no skeleton of a building was immune from the entropy that continually pulled at it. Going into the dead zone was almost certain death.
Nevertheless, Rafael had been determined to explore the dead zone. It had worried Feysal at first, fearing that his friend hadn’t gotten over his death wish, but while the prospect of death didn’t bother Rafael, he hadn’t been seeking it when he’d started feeling the place out. It was inevitable that he would someday come up against someone more skilled than himself. If he knew that in advance, he could minimize their advantages by stacking the odds in his favor. Knowing how to stay alive in the dead zone certainly did that. If he’d known more about whom his last kill was beforehand, he might have―
No. He had to stop thinking about that. What-ifs would drive him insane now, and Rafael needed every bit of his sanity to help him through what was coming, and he wasn’t just referring to the inevitable confrontation with Xian. The dead zone never stayed the same, even if it looked that way, and he needed to be sharp.
The ground fell away from under his feet twice. Twice where it had been sturdy just a month before, now it crumbled. One time he had saved himself by leaping out of the way, the other by grabbing an overhanging beam and crawling along it to dubious safety. His reflexes were standing him in good stead so far. It would be the same for Xian, at least at first. Rafael wouldn’t be able to outrun him. He needed to draw him into the dead zone, find a perch and kill him from a distance. Getting close to his former master would be disastrous.
Rafael smiled wryly as he surveyed the paths in front of him, contrasting his future peril with the current danger. It felt oddly appropriate to his situation. Any way he looked at it, there was a very good likelihood of dying. The only positive thing that would come out of the impending confrontation was the fact that, no matter who died or how, Daeva would be denied a body. He would never risk coming into the dead zone to search for it.
Rafael’s first choice for a perch had dissolved since he’d been here last. That was a shame. It had looked out over the remains of a plaza and would have afforded him an incredible range advantage. His second choice was at the apex of the spindly husk of a cathedral. It was a treacherous climb and a fall from that height would be fatal, but the stones held firm and he could see for a long way in every direction. The alcove he secreted himself into was barely large enough for his body, but it concealed him well enough to make him feel safe from projectile weapons while facilitating his use of them. There were some obstructions, but he couldn’t afford to be too choosy. He didn’t know when Xian would come after him, but he had to count on it being soon. Possibly even immediately, depending on how much he’d loved his former apprentice.
Stop! He had to stop thinking things that gave him such deliberate pain. Not immediately. Xian planned. He always made a plan. He always took his time, was never hasty, never rushed. He seemed immune to anxiety and outside interference. Maybe it was the calming weight of so many years behind him. Xian was one of the oldest High Ones, his life stretching back nearly to the beginning, to the founding of Clare centuries ago. He had been killing for over five hundred years. He wasn’t going to be rushed into anything by anyone, especially not his prey.
Rafael closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard. It was difficult to maintain the pretense of initiative when he thought about how incredibly proficient at death his former master was. Rafael’s life was like the turn of a page in the book of Xian, perhaps no more than a footnote. He didn’t want to kill Xian, didn’t want to bring his considerable skills to bear on his master, not just because of their past, but because he didn’t want to have his suspicions confirmed. He didn’t want to show him just how poor a student he’d truly turned out to be when he failed.
No. Age was no proof of skill. Many masters became less proficient as they aged, more self-satisfied and less cautious. Rafael had taken advantage of that time and again. The young ones were often harder to kill, with the memory of their mortality still fresh. His great age would be Xian’s undoing, his skill and confidence would make him take risks. He’d come into the dead zone, and Rafael or the earth itself would kill him. Rafael told himself this, and felt that if he repeated it often enough, he might come to believe it.
Now to the matter of timing. Proper timing was an important part of any assassination, and right now it lay in the hands of his target. Rafael needed to usurp control of the situation, he needed to steal the initiative. Xian was forming a plan? Make him change it. Rafael didn’t want to wait to have his attention. Waiting would drive him mad.
The following morning he left a severed head on the floor of the grand council chamber of the Upper City. It wasn’t the head of a High One, which was important. However, it was the head of the highest-ranking human servant of the council’s current chairman, which was also important. Every death should have a reason, be a message. Rafael sent his loud and clear. The crossbarred hilt of his athame protruded through the head’s gaping mouth, mockingly gagging it. The tip of the blade was barely long enough to glint out the back of the skull.
A decent mixture of contempt, deliberate crudeness and pressure, Rafael thought as he witnessed from afar the reaction his present garnered. Every High One was beholden to the council’s will, and the council itself wasn’t immune to pressure from their human servants. That burden was certainly there now. The victim had been their spokesperson, their pride, the one of them whom they had safely assumed would be given the First Draught and inducted into the High Ones’ august company. The killing was an embarrassment for the council—that they should be reduced to worrying about what their slaves thought of them, and that they had been put into that position in the first place by the dawdling of one of their own. Xian would come fast now. He would have to. He had said it himself—to be a member of that society, you had to abide by their rules.
Rafael headed into the dead zone. He didn’t bother to make his trail obvious. Xian would find him no matter where or how he went along his way. He had water, a little food and a large assortment of weapons. He didn’t intend to close with his former master if he could at all help it, but he did intend to be prepared.
He reached his perch a few hours after noon. Xian wouldn’t be able to come into the Lower City until nightfall—it had none of the safety measures against sun exposure that the Upper City did. Direct sunlight was one of the few things that a High One needed to avoid, and even the shadows weren’t proof against damage. Strange that the First Draught should give them so many abilities, yet take away even the most basic inheritance of man, the freedom to move about in the sun. Their skin couldn’t take it, it crackled and shrunk as the magic within them pulle
d back, searing layer after layer of flesh as it burrowed deeper and deeper. It was one of the reasons they kept regular humans around, to run their errands and mind their affairs in the larger world when the sun ruled the skies. Night-time was their balm, twilight their hour of ascendance, and Rafael had to be ready for it.
He lay on his back and unstoppered a small vial. Very carefully he tilted it and let two drops of tincture of belladonna fall into his eyes. The stinging was immediate and he shut them and kept them shut. The belladonna would improve his night vision, forcibly enlarging his pupils, but it made the hazy afternoon light filtering through the dust painful. He lay there, calming his mind and his body and extending his senses until he could hear the wood slowly rotting in a beam twenty feet away. Now to wait. Wait for nightfall. Perhaps an hour after twilight, Xian would be here. He would see him again…
Time crept by, unrelentingly slow, forcing Rafael to battle his own thoughts for second after agonizing second until finally he felt the balm of evening cover his face. It was dark enough to get ready, dark enough to lift himself out of his self-imposed soul-searching. It hadn’t done him any good. He felt anxious, prickly and confused. His nerves were on edge and his newly enhanced eyes darted this way and that, staring penetratingly into the darkening recesses below him even though he knew it was too early, too soon. Xian might be leaving now, perhaps. Perhaps he’d wait until full night. He should, for his own sake. He had—
A shift. It was so fast he barely caught it, just shadows moving within deeper shadows. Black on gray, like a hole in the night. Rafael narrowed his eyes. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t have gotten here by now. It wasn’t safe enough for him to move in the Lower City before the sun went down, much less pick his way through the dead zone. Instinctually he readied his crossbow, drawing the slide back and inserting the first bolt even as he continued to strain into the darkness, looking for another hint of movement or, better yet, nothing.