Assassin

by Kacey Ezell

  Shock struck, his every claw briefly extended, ears flattened in confusion. He stared back at her for several long moments, not a single thought moving through his usually busy mind. Then he realized the import, and moved, launching across the room, stopping just short of her, and winding his body around hers.

  “I did it all to secure a life with Whispering Fear,” he said in her ear, taking the buffet of her front leg against his head as his due for such a ridiculous comment. He wanted, more than anything, to tell his dama, and to see Susa’s face brighten in that Human way it had when they had unbearably good news. The inability to do so, to not even discuss Susa with Ichys, made him want to leave the room, find Dirrys, and bury his claws in her gut.

  But in perfect distraction, Ichys turned her head so their noses touched, slow-blinking a smile and grabbing his face in both front paws. They stood in that manner, celebrating silently, until thoughts of his true home ebbed. For now, with Ichys, this could feel like home.

  If only for this moment.

  * * *

  Blade did not have the privilege of being in the room when Ichys told her dama the news. How Death and Night Wind had done things was not exactly how Dirrys liked to learn of significant updates to the future of her clan, so Blade was left to pace in a waiting room, restless and alone.

  Until he wasn’t.

  “Such tension, young Hunter.” Arow sat comfortably on a perch near the ceiling, as settled as if he had been there the whole time. Blade was sure the deo hadn’t been in the room moments ago, but he hadn’t so much as sensed another presence before Arow spoke, which left him even further off balance.

  “Deo,” he said, forcing himself to stop and sit, embarrassed at both his own surprise and his overly transparent attempt to hide it. He felt entirely off-center, and this inability to deal with Arow’s sudden appearance pushed him further from true.

  “Is this not a time for joy and celebration?” he asked, tail slipping from his shelf and slowly waving in the air below him.

  “Deo?” Blade asked, confused, and uncomfortable being so.

  “Ichys’s news. It has been some years since we have had a pregnancy in Whispering Fear. Some of us worried we may have seen our last one.”

  “Whispering Fear did not grow old and ancient by luck.” Blade tilted his head, grasping for his equilibrium. “Surely there are many females to follow the dama in time.”

  “I can see why you might think such a thing, jungle Hunter. Even the largest of clans can falter, and as you know from your hunts, success takes skill, yes, and luck as well. Whispering Fear has been lacking in that of late.”

  “Luck? Or skill?”

  “Ichys being pregnant will change things. Our dama is talented in many things, but she does not love change.”

  “Even that which makes the future of the clan more secure?”

  “The clan, yes. But not everyone in it.” He leapt from his perch more easily than one of his age should be able to, and crossed close to Blade. “Consider who this changes things for. You, and Ichys, and…”

  If Dirrys were truly mad—and Blade believed to his core she was—an official Heir to the clan could be read as a threat to her position as Dama. Especially if Dirrys had offended enough influential clan members, treating them the way she treated Arow.

  Blade did not know Arow well, but he knew enough not to push the older male to say explicitly what he was so clearly implying. Instead he dipped his head, and Arow’s pupils contracted in satisfaction.

  “Clever, for a little jungle Hunter. Walk the paths carefully, kit—the highest canopies have the loosest vines. I heard you were being considered for an off-world contract. That’s the best place for the two of you, as soon as you can go.”

  “I’m not in danger,” he said, distracted by trying not to protest being called a kit.

  “It’s not you I care about,” Arow replied, staring directly into his eyes. “She’s not my kit, Chirruch, but she could have been. This matters for our clan. She matters most of all.” He slipped past Blade and left before Blade could summon a reply. Every time he thought he had a handle on how deeply Dirrys would pervert their few unassailable rules, she found a new low. What dama was weak enough to be threatened by her own offspring, by the natural order of clan, damas, and Hunter life?

  Killing her would be a service to all Khatash.

  * * *

  Not long later, Dirrys summoned Chirruch. He entered the audience room on light paws, attempting to convey both confidence and nervous deference at once. The effort of finding that balance kept his rage and disgust well-buried.

  When the dama looked up to acknowledge his presence, she bared her teeth in a gesture that could result in joy, but left Blade further on edge, regardless.

  “We will gather all of Whispering Fear who are on-planet, to celebrate Ichys, and what her pregnancy means for the future of our clan.”

  “Dama, wouldn’t it be better to wait until we are sure of a live birth?” The tip of the damita’s tail twitched, and Blade wished he could comfort her as she worked to control her emotions. “Of course, you should announce as you see fit, but to wait to celebrate—”

  “You’re being ridiculous, Ichys. You shall announce your news, and I will confirm you as Heir in front of all the clan. You are pregnant, which means you are fertile, which means this pregnancy or the next, this mate or another, will succeed. We will have a path forward, kits to secure our next generation.”

  “Dama—”

  “You have certainly waited long enough for us to have this moment, Ichys. Perhaps I should send your younger sister to the northern jungles, given their stock. Do you have a brother, Chirruch?”

  Ichys was trying and only partially succeeding at hiding her frustration, so Blade stepped forward, ears pointed toward the dama, eyes lowered. He could tell his show of respect pleased her, especially given Ichys’s apparent stubbornness. He tried to modulate his tone to convey enough deference to please her, but he was afraid he only got as far as cordial, perhaps even pleasant. He would have to work harder, given how high the stakes of this game had become.

  “No, Dama, there was just me. We were not as lucky in kits or adopted Hunters as Whispering Fear has been.”

  “Lucky?” Dirrys snorted, tail lashing. “We are not lucky, Chirruch. We are good. Bloodlines last as long and as well as ours only with skill and determination.” She lost interest in him as quickly as she’d taken it, turning her too-wide pupils back toward Ichys.

  “Speaking of determination, if certain contracts fall our way as they should in the near future, I will be able to leave much of the clan in your fingerpads, Ichys, rather than keep it all on my own shoulders.” Dirrys didn’t seem to realize how her inability to still her tail and her darkened eyes made that sound like a bad thing. Blade wanted to throw himself between dama and kita, though no threat was clear.

  “I will always serve as you need, Dama,” Ichys said, her own eyes aimed at the floor. Blade read from her posture it was more about hiding frustration than lowering herself, though Ichys was better at hiding her emotions than her dama in this moment.

  “Of course,” Dirrys replied, shaking herself and settling her fur back into place. “I will speak with our elders at the celebration, and see how well they will trust our new Heir, to take more of a role.”

  As she gestured for them to go, Blade knew Arow was right. The knowledge sank into his gut like a river stone; there was no avoiding the danger they were in. If the elders showed any enthusiasm about Ichys taking over from or for Dirrys, she would strike. He needed to take Ichys off-world, immediately, or he would soon see a new level of the depth of her perversion.

  And while that would, perhaps, be the proof he needed to restore his clan, he knew to his marrow he wouldn’t sacrifice Ichys to do it.

  * * *

  “He’s an official delegate holding up a critical trade agreement,” Blade recited dutifully, aware of Ichys’s unblinking regard. “His aide gets the vote if somet
hing happens to him, and she is more sympathetic to the trading party. The aide is not the client and is very loyal, so it must be an accident as far as the aide is concerned, but the trading party needs to know it was deliberate, in order to give a more competitive rate to the client. The delegate has a number of risk-taking interests, but never indulges when on an exploratory investigation. He always eats the same thing, and poison is the aide’s top fear.”

  “You’ve just memorized the contract,” Ichys said, flicking her ears toward him and away in a blatant tease. “What do we do about it?”

  “The aide should witness the accident, so her guilt and own perception will keep her from pushing for an investigation. Also, an invite should be sent to the trading party, implying a matter of great interest, to make evident that it is planned without leaving a real path for the aide to follow, at least not before the vote.”

  “You studied the aide! Overachiever. I see why Arow likes you.”

  He gave her a showy little fillip of his tail, and she very deliberately curled her own tail around so that it brushed her chest. On the edge of suggestive, but he didn’t take the bait. She had run him through hundreds of different scenarios as they approached their target, and though she greatly enjoyed flirting with and teasing him, she also took his ‘training’ very seriously—meaning if he broke his concentration to answer her almost-invitations, she would slap him down. She wasn’t very gentle about it, but it still took him more times to learn the lesson than it should have. Served her right, for being tempting, even though he was the one who ended up with the bruises.

  “So, what should we do?” she prompted, seeing he wasn’t taking the bait.

  “Give them the sort of off-temper day that has them sniping at each other, ensure an argument on the stairs, and I’ll trip him from inside my quintessence field just as he turns to yell at her.” He delivered it over-earnestly, rewarded by one of her soft barks of a laugh. “Send her threatening messages from the opposing trade party, telling her to stop influencing the delegate against them, and then set up the assassination to aim at her, but take out him. She might end up working out a bonus for the client, just to spite the opposing party.”

  “It won’t work in this case, with the opposing party full of pacifists, but I was always sure that’s what happened on Sakall with those Sikar a few years ago.” She made a chuffing noise of pride, and he came back to himself with a start. He’d been so interested in entertaining her he’d outlined one of his own contracts, from exactly a few years ago. It had been needlessly complicated, but he’d needed a bit of flair for the client, and that didn’t matter. He needed to stop showing off for her, and make a plan a rookie off-world Hunter would suggest.

  “His respiratory organs are weakened. We treat some of his files with ackleen spores. When she brings in his new files, he breathes in the spores, in the next hour while he’s doing his customary reading his system fails, he dies, she feels terrible. We wait in the room, and if anything seems to go off, we just make sure he gets a more direct dose. Ackleen is native to Elgon IV, and it’s not out of season for blooms, so if it looks like it just leveled up in his body over their time there, she’ll feel terrible for not noticing his state along the way, and we’ll be sure to send an ackleen plant to the client directly before he dies.”

  “An asset to the clan,” she said, making an approving noise and dropping to all four feet to gesture a break. He bounded across the room to her without a moment’s hesitation, to reap his reward.

  * * *

  The contract itself had gone well. While Ichys and Blade waited in the delegate’s temporary office, wrapped in their quintessence fields, the aide noted her delegate had been sounding raspy, and reminded him to take his medicine.

  Because the updated stack of bylaws was unusually thick, he ignored her. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had taken his medicine, but when he quietly choked to death half an hour later, he had to have wondered about it. For the briefest of moments, Blade considering dropping his field, so the delegate could die knowing his own death wasn’t his own fault, but it was a passing notion.

  He had made sure the client saw a flash of him when the ackleen plant arrived, and Ichys praised that inspired bit of improvisation as they made their careful way halfway across the planet to their well-hidden dropship, invisible and silent for most of the trip. Let word get out a pair of Depik had been seen wandering anywhere near the sudden death of a key vote, and the aide’s suspicion would outweigh her guilt.

  As they made their final approach to their dropship, they walked the perimeter to ensure nothing had been disturbed. The dropship itself was camouflaged well, an extravagant part of the even nicer ship tucked away well above them.

  Dirrys had proclaimed in front of the clan that Ichys must help herself to the finest ship Whispering Fear had, rather than her own usual sleek ship. Of course, the Heir must bring her mate, must be entirely comfortable on this last contract before she dedicates herself to pregnancy and the protection of her young. Of the clan’s future!

  The dama had nearly shouted this last, and it had drawn sounds of approval from the gathered Hunters.

  It had been awkward, but the dropship had been a luxury that eased their approach to the target, and Blade was sure he could talk Ichys into taking a detour rather than returning directly to Khatash, given all the time they’d saved.

  With the perimeter of their landing site secure, they were finally able to drop their fields, given its distance from civilization and the lack of disturbance.

  Ichys threw herself at Blade, tumbling them both to the springy moss-covered ground, making such approving noises Blade stopped thinking about the world around them entirely.

  “The deep jungle prepared you for this better than I could have hoped,” she said, touching the tops of his ears with the very edge of an extended claw. “Confirmation of a bonus from the client is already tagged to our account, you clever little kit.”

  “Chirruch the mighty off-world Hunter,” he said, twisting under her to send them rolling again, wrestling with all the excited energy of successful Hunters. “You would be lost without me.”

  She opened her mouth to retort, and but he froze, looking around. He shoved her and they sprang apart. Just in time, as a sizzle of energy blasted between them, leaving the air hissing in its wake.

  Ichys pulled her quintessence field up and vanished, Blade bounding for the closest overgrowth of vegetation to draw fire away from their ship. He wished for the endlessly tall trees of Khatash which would give vantage and cover, but made it behind a hillock of moss and pulled his quintessence field. To his surprise, the shots turned to scatter, spraying the area around the vegetation, as though anticipating he might come back out, unseen—was he being attacked by another Hunter?

  Not a very good one, if so; they had to have lost track of Ichys. Another burst of scatter spray spat back the way they’d come.

  Blade raced away from his cover, just missing a long shot and taking a long circling loop around, using the ship now that the shooter couldn’t follow him. He leapt onto the curve of the lower part of the ship, jumping to the lower and stubbier of the pair of wings. Movement in the trees, but nothing visible other than the broad barrel of the gun. Cursing himself for losing focus even after the contract had been completed, he made a plan that accounted for the worst-case scenario—if they were being stalked by fellow Hunters. He’d circle further, come in as quietly as the sprawling vegetation allowed, and—

  The sound of the small explosion was so perfectly familiar he froze, every bit of his mostly formed plan disappearing. The probes at their den had had that same pitch—the tortured mechanical shriek followed by the inner pop, then the larger external corruption of the globe itself ratcheting apart.

  Dirrys. The realization should have launched him into motion, but for a long moment disbelief held him to the ship as though electrified in place. She hadn’t hesitated to come for their clan, and that had been bad enough even though there w
as the slightest chance she might not have known Death was pregnant. But this, her own kita, her own offspring and the future of her clan, definitively pregnant…to attack her betrayed every tenet of their species so deeply he couldn’t process it, even knowing how dangerous she was. But this…this madness was complete, at a level he couldn’t…

  With a curse he threw himself from the ship, moving as fast as he ever had to loop behind the shooter, just as the gun went silent and disappeared.

  “Ichys,” he said through their comms, unsure if he was out of earshot of their invisible opponent and uncaring, “it’s a Hunter. At least one.” Blade smelled nothing, heard nothing. Whoever had been sent after them might not be the best of the clan, but they were more than skilled.

  Still, he’d trained all his life against his siblings, and Flame could vanish more thoroughly than almost any other Hunter he’d encountered.

  “Arilys!” Ichys trumpeted, flickering into and back out of sight, daring their attacker. “I smell you, traitor. I feel the pull of your quintessence like muck against my fur. Take your death as you deserve. Meet me!”

  “You betrayed the clan!” a male voice, on the move, and Blade changed direction instantly, angling for what would, with luck, intersect with his path, counting on Ichys’s challenge to distract him. Had he met Arilys? No—one of the off-world Hunters, who’d been out on a contract since before the attack on Night Wind. Devoted to the dama, no surprise that, and either loyal enough Dirrys could count on his silence after taking out Ichys, or expendable enough that she could kill him too, if he were successful.

  Why would she reveal herself so obviously?

  No, he’d wonder later, after they handled this threat.

  Blade missed the direct intersection with their attacker’s path, but he was sure Arilys remained nearby. Ichys flickered in and out of the visible spectrum once more, and the softest yowl of frustration sounded from Blade’s left. He leapt unerringly, with the briefest flash of gratitude for the many lessons with his siblings, and rammed into the other Hunter’s back. They went down silently, Arilys struggling to roll over and get purchase against his attacker. Blade found the gun and ripped it free, throwing it clear of their fields. The motion caught Ichys’s attention, and she released her light-bending, racing their way.