Assassin

by Kacey Ezell

“Jeha built this?” he asked, forgetting his awe and wariness.

  Arow swiveled one ear toward him and away. His silence reminded Blade that no matter how they were allied, they were not friends. Ichys brushed the back of Blade’s hand with her own, then bounded ahead of the males, leaving them to walk in their own tension.

  “Arow,” Blade began, weighing his words.

  “Dirrys decided I failed her when our litter did not survive through birth,” Arow said, musing, as though Blade were not there, hadn’t spoken. “I should have seen who she was then, when she hated me. I thought she was young and grieving, but that was never who she was.”

  They moved down the main corridor of the ship; the lights held a steady warmth, and the air smelled clean and only of Ichys’s recent passage. Blade glanced at the older male and away, unsure of the moment and not wanting to interrupt it.

  “Her second mate bragged that his strength would overcome her luck when she became pregnant again. He died on a hunt before she gave birth. He was older, but still impulsive; no one was surprised he’d been careless. Then, I didn’t think she’d done it. Now, I still don’t know how she managed it. Two kits survived birth, only Ichys grew to be weaned. Dirrys basked in the achievement. I taught Ichys to hunt.”

  They neared the second airlock, and Arow’s steps slowed. Blade kept his pace to the older male’s, skin jumping under his fur. Had Dirrys always been mad? What did it say of them, to elevate such a Hunter to run a clan, all because she could bear young?

  “Her dama bore other young, but the other kita she had disappeared. I would lay that at Dirrys’s feet as well, if I could. She is the worst of us and wants only for herself, and she will kill you today if she can.”

  “She won’t,” Blade said, confident in his youth, strength, and cunning.

  “She can.” Arow flicked both ears at him, dismissing the confidence. “She has not survived this long by being weak. She killed the Governor, the Peacemaker, and your dama. Do not underestimate her because she is mad.”

  “They didn’t see her coming.” Blade turned to look at Arow, willing the older male to meet his eyes. Arow glanced at him, held his gaze for a moment as they walked. “I know who she is. I know she’ll fight like a cornered Tortantula. She didn’t destroy my clan, though she tried. She didn’t destroy you or Ichys. She won’t win.”

  “No,” Arow said, softly now, turning away. “She will not.”

  Just before they reached the dropship, Blade stopped and reached his hand just short of Arow. The older male felt the gesture and turned.

  “Ichys is good,” Blade offered. “The best of us. Thank you for that.”

  Arow clucked in reply, and cuffed Blade on the side of the head—not gently.

  “That’s her doing, not mine, jungle kit. You are lucky to know her.” Without waiting for a reply, the deo cycled open the door to the dropship and vanished inside.

  Blade looked around at the beautiful ship once more, steadied himself with a breath, and followed.

  * * *

  “Ichys, Heir of Whispering Fear,” she announced herself, gaze at the center point between the two Hunters in front of the door. Beyond them, the council would momentarily begin, or had just done so. They had timed their arrival to get the best chance for Dirrys to be distracted, so they could make their final approach. Given Dirrys’s schemes, a public setting gave the safest opportunity for confrontation. As long as the gathered elders from other clans didn’t summarily move to execute them.

  “My mate.” Ichys added the last casually, not sharing his name. He mattered because she mattered. Flame could have sneaked past the guards, her lightbending undetected, but they’d decided it was better for Blade not to risk it.

  “You are late,” the larger male replied, unimpressed. He examined Blade and shrugged. “Your dama will not be pleased.”

  “No,” Ichys agreed, aggressively pleasant. She rested her fingerpads on her swelling abdomen and stared at him, until his companion cleared his throat.

  “Enter, Damita, and do not interrupt the proceedings. The Speaker has begun discussion of the Governor and Peacemaker contracts.”

  He did her a kindness by telling her what she would find inside. Unfortunately, she would not return the favor by heeding his advice.

  They moved inside, Blade two steps behind Ichys until the doors closed behind them. Ichys pulled up her quintessence field, and Blade continued alone through the curving corridor that deposited him at the back of the large audience chamber.

  It had been more than a season since he’d first walked that aisle with his dama, and it felt like years. He let the loss of her, and his corresponding rage, wash over him. Acknowledge it, and pack it away. He would need that anger soon enough.

  Etiquette dictated he should stay in the back of the room until there was a break in the proceedings, but he walked directly down the main aisle, passing elders of the most accomplished clans of Khatash. Any of them could lunge at him for such hubris, but luck, shock, or a light-bended hunter on his side prevented any of that.

  When he reached close enough to the front that the Speaker paused, lifting a hand in silent question, bemusement coloring her expression, he stopped as well and lowered his head to her. He held it for a breath, two, then turned unerringly toward the reclining Dama of Whispering Fear.

  “Dama, I challenge you.” Blade stepped forward, fully facing her, for once not cataloguing the reactions of everyone in the room.

  “I am Cunning Blade, of Night Wind Clan.” A yowl of shock answered that, somewhere to his left, but he trusted in Ichys and ignored it. “You attempted to murder my clan. You murdered Reow, Dama of Night Wind. Hrusha, Peacemaker for the Hunters. Sissisk, Governor for the Hunters. You accepted a contract on another Hunter, and I name you anathema.”

  Blade’s bold words, confidently delivered, fell into the most dangerous silence he had ever experienced. Every eye of the foremost assassins in the galaxy fixed on either him, or Dirrys. The dama had not even stood to meet the challenge, the black tips of her gray fur supremely still, her ears canted toward him in polite interest.

  The moment held, then her pupils went wide. Ichys dropped her field and stepped in front of Blade. Her pregnancy had begun to show, and many eyes dropped automatically to observe it.

  “Dirrys, I challenge you.” Ichys stood tall, eyes steady on her dama. The lack of title was deliberate, and the faintest of stirs moved through the crowd. “You have betrayed our kind. You sent a clan hunter to kill me.” This received the most dramatic response yet, with two males coming fully to their feet before they controlled themselves. “You are anathema. I claim Whispering Fear.”

  Now, finally, Dirrys reacted. She stood slowly and stretched indulgently. Her laugh echoed through the room. While she endeavored to look relaxed, Blade saw the tension in each major joint, the readiness to lunge.

  “Little Damita,” she said, pitying, tail curling behind her. “I know it is shocking to find your mate is a traitor. Arilys ran to your side when we discovered who he was, to kill him. I am sorry this…creature,” her gaze didn’t so much as flicker to Blade, she knew which threat was more dangerous to her in this moment, “dragged you into his treachery. You can still recover, my kita. Come to me and be safe. You bear Whispering Fear’s future inside you.”

  “I am Whispering Fear’s future, Dirrys.” Ichys’s voice did not waver, her posture pinpoint focused on the hunter who had borne her. “It will be secured with your death.”

  “Speaker,” Dirrys began, turning to look at the dama above them. Blade was impressed how quickly she had turned his identity to her advantage and didn’t want to know what other truths and lies she would spin together in this room. He didn’t have to find out.

  Directly behind Dirrys, breathing over her shoulder, Arow released his field.

  “No, kita. There is no squirming out of this. Speaker, we have sent you proof, in the financial records of Whispering Fear and the ship logs of this betrayer that prove what these Hun
ters say.”

  The proof was not incontrovertible. Compelling, damning, but it hung on several conjectures. Dirrys could ridicule them, relax, and likely some in this room would believe her.

  Such was not Dirrys’s way.

  The Speaker conveyed interest in every line of her form as she reached for her slate. At that motion, when the Speaker did not dismiss this out of hand, the dama took matters into her own claws.

  She blurred into invisibility mid-leap, but Blade was expecting it. Dirrys would not attack Arow first, nor a pregnant damita. Blade expected she thought him the weakest link, having seen him fight and stalk, having heard of him from her hunters.

  She had seen Chirruch. Not Blade.

  He vanished into his field and spun, taking the fight from where he had been, too close to Ichys, and closer to the pedestal where the Speaker still stood. Around them, hunters moved back, but there was no chaos. No scrambling.

  A challenge had been issued.

  A challenge would be met.

  Dirrys screamed in frustration when she missed Blade, flickering in and out of her field in her frustration. He lunged for her, projecting where she would land, missing whatever warning Ichys shouted.

  It had been, of course, a trap. Dirrys met him midair, expecting him to take the bait, clawing him across the face so deeply he forgot to breathe.

  Don’t underestimate her, Arow had said, more than once. The words echoed in his head again as he shook off the blood. It wouldn’t clear his vision, the blood kept coming, but it centered his thoughts.

  He reached, as he’d sometimes been able to reach for Flame, for that whisper hint of another field. She knew she’d wounded him, she wouldn’t have gone far.

  There.

  Blade lunged with front claws extended, connected and dug in, piercing through fur and skin. Before he could bring his hind legs to bear, to disembowel her, she twisted away, leaving strips of flesh in his claws.

  They both bled too much to effectively hide in a field, and Blade could barely see out of one eye.

  Fast. Savage. No hesitation or quarter. He would finish this.

  For his dama. For his family.

  She saw the determination in him and sneered.

  “Do you know how to best kill Cheelin? You let them bleed, slowly, over time. A wound here,” she darted forward to slice him, and while he spun out of the worst of it, she raked his haunch. He rolled and lashed at her, barely missing. “A wound there. If you’re lucky, they take you back to their den, and you get a whole brood.”

  Blade flickered into his field, dodged where he thought she’d strike, and rammed into her, knocking her askew. She laughed again, rolling with the new momentum, and struck a glancing blow on his side. He’d winded her, perhaps cracked a rib.

  He mustered himself, crouching low enough his quintessence field would hide the drops of blood scattering around him, and considered. Wrestling with his littermates had prepared him in part to fight another Hunter, and he knew he was better than this. He could win. He needed to account for her complete disregard of injuries. She didn’t move sensibly, protecting herself. She opened herself for injury, to hurt him worse.

  He had play-fought his siblings. She had killed other Hunters.

  As he fought to develop a plan, a blur of motion between him and Dirrys distracted him. He felt it more than saw it.

  Arow had entered the field.

  He did not move as an elderly Hunter might. He moved like air through the tall canopies, the current of the river. Natural, inevitable. Dirrys rose to meet him, claws extended.

  They were hard to follow, blurring in and out of quintessence. Now the gathered elders moved away, as Dirrys and Arow covered broad distances in their conflict. Someone pulled Ichys back, protecting her kits above all.

  A spray of blood here.

  A grunt of pain there.

  Limbs appeared and vanished. A snarling face. Two bodies, locked.

  Blade’s depth perception struggled to adapt, given the blood congealing on his face, but he knew this would be hard to follow even were his vision clear.

  After a stretch of time, minutes or months, the flickers of motion and sprays of blood stopped. Three breaths. Four. Blade stumbled forward, not sure what he was going to do, and then they appeared.

  Arow’s back left leg was buried in Dirrys’s lower midsection, his front paws occupied controlling her head. He bled freely from so many wounds it was astonishing he still lived.

  And Dirrys, dying, stared up at his face. And she laughed. Spat blood at him. Laughed again.

  “Should’ve frozen you,” she said, beginning to go limp. Blade would have missed the words if he hadn’t kept lurching forward. He’d forgotten he’d been moving, staring at the tableau in front of them.

  “What did you say?” Arow’s voice was nearly as faint as hers, but he shook her, slamming her head against the floor.

  “You know exactly what I mean.” Her laughter was ragged, but the hatred in her eyes shone clear. “Froze you. Thought you hid your tracks, but I found it. Built it. Used it, you clawless kit. You never even knew I’d hacked your ship, did you? All these years, you thought you were hiding from me. I was there in the programming, always tracking your field. You can’t get away from me, Arow. How’d Sissisk die?” She spat again, blood and bitter anger boiling out of her. “Frozen in place. Staring at me. Just like you.”

  Hatred carried her out of the world, the dregs of life oozing from her body.

  Without looking, Arow reached for Blade, grabbed him, dragged him closer. The old deo’s breath was labored, and he struggled to stay upright, but when he turned his face toward Blade, his gaze still landed like a blow.

  “Search everything she’s ever owned. I killed a Human, years ago. He found a way to freeze us in our fields. If she had it. If it exists…”

  “I will,” Blade said, his mind lumbering to catch up, his head heavy.

  Arow blinked, acknowledging him, and looked around, searching for something. Someone. Blade knew Ichys was pulling away from the Hunters protecting her, trying to come to them.

  The old Hunter saw her, relaxed, tried to speak, and died instead. He slumped to the ground, and Blade belatedly reached for him, feeling something tearing deep within.

  It overbalanced him, or maybe he’d already been falling. Dirrys was dead. It was over. The elders would agree…

  He never felt Ichys catch him.

  * * *

  A ninenight or so after their conversation about Conason and sex (it was hard to keep track—Humans used an entirely different way of reckoning time, and Death found it easier just not to care) Death went into labor.

  It started benignly enough. It was the middle of the day, and she woke from a bizarrely vivid dream. In deference to the mercs’ training needs, she had holed up in one of the non-operational CASPers for the day. The technicians were waiting on some part or other to fix it, and so she had been confident of an undisturbed sleep.

  But something had pulled her to wakefulness. Death felt a trickle of wetness from between her back legs, and looked down to see what was going on. She wasn’t relieving herself, that was certain, and she wasn’t bleeding, from what she could tell.

  Suddenly, her entire middle contracted like a fist. She let out a gasp and instantly heard it echo throughout the large hangar bay that housed the Horde’s CASPers as the internal mic picked it up. A mutter of voices that she hadn’t noticed until then stilled, and she panted her way through the contraction.

  “Death?” Conason’s voice came through the speakers inside the cab of the CASPer. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” Death said, drawing in a deep breath as the contraction eased. “Please get Susa. I think I need her.”

  She heard the muffled sounds of CASPers moving quickly outside the cabin, and concentrated on breathing and relaxing. Slowly, she realized she was generating a low, rumbling purr, which helped to ease her trembling muscles. She’d just gotten her breathing back under control when two
things happened—another contraction ripped through her, curling her up into a ball on the seat of the CASPer—and an explosion rocked the building, causing her temporary den to rattle from side to side in its storage rack.

  “Horde!” Conason’s voice shouted through the speakers. “Breach in the south wall! Bubba, Connor, cover that—!”

  The rest of his orders were cut off by another deafening boom, followed by the distant repetitive thumping of some kind of automatic projectile weapon. As she forced herself to breathe through the contraction, Death spared a thought for Susa, hoping she was safe and under cover.

  The contractions came faster and harder. Death panted in between, sucking in air and trying to force her body to a calm, relaxed state. Hunters have been giving birth for thousands of years, she told herself, your body knows what to do.

  She steadfastly ignored that Hunters had been dying in childbirth for just as long. That wasn’t a helpful fact at this particular moment.

  Her body coiled itself up tightly again, but tighter than before…and this time, much to her surprise, she felt an overwhelming need to push back. So, she did. Lying on her side, half curled into a ball, Death bore down and pushed out with all of the considerable strength she had to muster. More explosions and projectile fire shattered the space outside her CASPer, but she focused her attention down to a single word, a single action backed by her iron will. Push.

  Something released and slid from her body. Death looked down to see a tiny, wet newcomer resting on her lower thigh. She dragged in a breath and reached down to touch this most precious of gifts. It gave a small “mew” and turned instinctively towards her warmth.

  Another contraction hit as Death gathered her first kitten up into her forelegs. She closed her eyes and pushed again, feeling the movement inside her as the new one’s littermate moved closer to the outside world. Above her, there was a great sucking sound, and daylight flooded in, violating the dark sacredness of her hiding place.

  “Death?” Susa asked, her voice strained and frantic

  “Here,” Death managed to croak as the contraction raged inside her body. She closed her eyes tighter and hunched over her kitten, trying to protect it from the hammering light. “They are coming.”