Why couldn’t she have been young?
“I don’t know about this,” he whispered, the steady hiss of the rain covering his words. “Who gets that old without an army to protect them? Might be she’s a mercenary, or worse.”
“Keep your bladder buttoned,” said Jassa, glaring. “Look at her face, boy. Smooth as a nugget of amber!” She pulled her pack around under her cape. “Someone’s put a scare into her, that’s all. Shocked her hair white.”
Rafe squinted at the woman’s broad-cheeked face, which didn’t look old, he supposed, but nor did it look like the face of an easy target. “I just don’t know.”
“So you said. But Fortune does. And so do I.” Jassa pulled something heavy and red out of the pack and into her palm. “You’ll feel Her eyes swing down on you soon enough. Her gaze will grant you faith.” She reached for his chin with her empty hand. “And when it comes, boy?”
Her finger was as cold as an icicle.
“Do not squirm from it. Do you hear me?”
Rafe nodded, pushing against his fear. If only he could have the drash before the deed. But he knew better than to ask. He squeezed the dagger’s hilt, feeling dizzy.
“Remember that what we do is not for you,” Jassa whispered. “It is for us. It will steer our fate. We will take the city, for Lady Eff, for Fickle Faena, for Left-Handed Luce, whose dart never goes astray. And it all starts with your blade.”
Rafe was breathing hard, grimacing at the pain in his lungs as he watched the wiry woman. She lifted the rabbit by its back legs. She pulled its muscled stomach open and scooped its guts into a wooden bowl, then laid its body down on the plank of wood. She hefted the cleaver and swung it down time and again, dividing the body into gleaming sections of muscle and bone.
Thunk. Thunk.
THUNK.
“That cleaver, though,” he whispered. “This dagger’s sharp, but I’m not a killer, Jass. I mean, I’ve never even been in a—”
Rearing back, Jassa punched him in the ear, hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. He fell back into the mud, glancing up frantically at the farmhouse.
The wiry woman hadn’t seen.
“Everyone’s a killer, boy,” Jassa hissed. “Some just haven’t had the opportunity to prove it. And this should make your job less terrifying.” She gave him a good look at the object in her hand, a bulbous red bottle encircled in a shining belt of wirework runes. “Fortune will provide. Do you hear?”
Rafe blinked, reaching out a hand. “Is that—an enchantment? Is it real?”
“Course it’s real,” she said, stowing it before he could touch it. “They’re nearly as expensive to fake as to make.”
“But that’s—” His throat tightened with anger. They’d been scrounging pennies for weeks, barely able to afford a meal. “How did you pay for it?”
“With the help of these ten tiny soldiers,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “The keeper of the inn at Idlet had an extensive cabinet of curios, and he was a sloppy drunk. Now steady your hand, boy, and show Fortune your steel.”
An enchantment. They had an enchantment.
Rafe pulled himself up. His hands were steady.
Whoever the woman in the farmhouse might be, she was no enchanter, or she wouldn’t be cooking her own meals in the cold. He no longer doubted that they’d bring her down. He simply wanted to see what would come out of that bottle.
The fire in the farmhouse’s shattered hearth began to smoke and sputter, and the wiry woman rose to tend it. Once it was stoked, she slid an iron pot beneath the rope of rain pouring from a hole in the roof. The pot’s black belly sang out into the trees.
“That racket is all the cover we’ll need,” whispered Jassa, pointing. “Position yourself on that end of the farmhouse and give me a count of one hundred before you distract her.”
“What should I do?”
“Use your brains, boy. Make a birdcall! Toss a rock into the trees! But wait until the bottle breaks to make your move.”
Rafe drew the blade.
Jassa closed her hand on his arm. “We’ll move quickly, after. While Fortune’s gaze is on you. First the harvest, then we play.”
Rafe was off, sneaking through the trees. His body was buzzing, kiss or no.
This was what it felt like to put a thumb on the scales.
At the back of the farmhouse a half-burnt wall kept him out of sight. Leaning in, he caught a glimpse of his quarry dumping meat into the stewpot. Panting, pulling a fist-sized stone from the muck, he wound back his arm.
The stone cracked against the limb of a hollow tree.
The woman grunted. Hold steady! he thought, and then he heard the bottle bursting. He leapt around the wall and onto the farmhouse floor, blade at the ready.
Red glass had shattered between the woman’s heels. The bottle’s wirework frame skittered between her feet, landing between them. She looked down at it, then up at him, mouth agape.
For an instant, the liquid was acting as liquid should, dripping down from her bare calves.
Then the wirework flashed.
Words rang out from the runes, an echo of the enchanter’s voice, stretched to the point of incomprehensibility by time and power. Rafe reared back as the air between himself and the woman filled with the stink of burnt herbs and sewage. The liquid surged, taking on volume as it rose, thickening into a dark wave of sinew that slithered up to enfold both of her legs.
She thrashed against its tendrils, twisting her body until she was nearly free. Rafe stepped back, spotting the cleaver a few feet away.
Then the sinew drew her deep, slurping her up from ankle to hip. Gripping her tight, it heaved her into the air, then slammed her on her back.
Her skull struck the floorboards. Rafe dashed around, kicking the cleaver into the clearing, crouching down over her body. She lay still, the tendrils binding her so tightly to the floorboards that wood splintered.
The dagger felt alive in his hands.
“For Fortune.”
He swept the blade through her belly.
Her tunic yawned open, dark around the edges like a great, wet mouth.
Rafe goggled as if he was a witness to this scene, not its author. Jassa was there already, kneeling beside him, laying out a leather belt stuffed with tools. She tossed him a satchel. He held it open as she began to harvest, dropping the woman’s organs, one by one, through the dark ring of fabric between his hands.
“Hold Her,” whispered Jassa. “Hold Her steady, now!”
He nearly set down the satchel to comply, but the wiry woman’s body was already still. It was Fortune Jassa meant. Hold Her steady—hold Her gaze.
Was She watching him now? Was that why he felt such excitement?
He ought to feel sick, or guilty. That’s what a normal person would feel. But no—he felt elated.
Like a good boy.
Jassa dropped the woman’s heart into the sack. She was almost done, already. He hummed to himself, shuddering happily.
Was it really the gaze of a goddess that made him feel this way? Or was it just the promise of the drash’s kiss?
Either way, Rafe had killed a woman, unless the sinews had killed her first. Her body was almost empty, and when it was they’d take her insides back to Eth, where the Assemblage would deliver them to the Puppeteer. Rafe and Jassa would be heroes, at least for a night. Maybe Jassa was right, and this would be the beginning of their lucky streak.
Things were changing. He could feel it.
“Is it time?” he said, his anxious excitation making his voice squeak.
“Yes, boy. You’ve earned your reward.”
Rafe tied off the satchel, panting. Jassa cleaned her fingers on the edge of the mud-brown tunic, then pulled two metal boxes out of her own knapsack, along with her ever-present notebook. Rafe crouched next to her, and for once she didn’t begrudge his closeness.
One box was the size of her hand, the other as large as a prayer book. Both were scratched and dented from frequent use. She fid
dled with the latches on the smaller box, and Rafe inhaled deeply, his mouth flooding with spit.
The box reeked of molasses and musk. A single lump of tlak, sticky and brown, was all that remained inside.
He frowned. Had they burned through so much since they’d left Eth? They must’ve done most of it yesterday, he supposed, though he remembered getting up from that session with the hunger still lapping at his bones.
Rafe nearly bit his tongue, but hunger overwhelmed caution. “Why the hell didn’t we bring more?” he grumbled. “That’s barely enough for a session. What happens on the way home?”
“One kill,” said Jassa, grinning, “and the puppy thinks himself a wolf.” The glint in her eye suggested that he was lucky her hands were busy. “We buy from the Puppeteer,” she said with exaggerated patience, searching the pockets of her bag. “He controls who gets tlak. Perched over the sacred catacombs of Eth, from whence Fortune’s sweetness comes.” Finding a pair of tweezers, she began to wipe them with her filthy shirt.
All of this he knew. “Right, and he’s not taking coin any more, just guts. But—”
“But murder might cause quakes in the city,” she said, like she was helping him complete a thought he was too dim to finish alone. “So we’re out here, in the leftmost ventricle of no place at all, where the deed won’t cause any aftershocks. Providing for the family. Hunting and gathering, just like a number of other Aces and Deuces. But we won’t,” she murmured, lifting the tlak and warming it with her breath, “be among them for long. You’ll soon have all you can handle!”
He frowned. “But for safety’s sake, shouldn’t we—”
“Fix before we start sweating? Yes, boy, we damn well should!” She glared at him. “Well? Ready the board!”
He was already too hard-up to argue. From the bottom of the box he took up a stub of chalk, four leaden bumpers, and a set of dice. He scrawled out the diagram, set the bumpers at its sides, and laid out the dice, two for Jassa, two for himself.
He heard a scrabble.
He held his breath.
Jassa had opened the larger box. A mesh screen covered its wide floor. Through it, dim storm-light struck the dull, umber chitin of a palm-sized insect with long, jointed legs and an overabundance of mandibles. Annoyed at the intrusion, the drash struck twice at the mesh, then retreated with a wary clatter.
“Everyone’s hungry, little love,” Jassa cooed. She lowered the tweezers toward a tiny hole in the screen, dropping the tlak inside. Skittering over, the drash plucked up the grain, coating it in moistness as it worked it into its craw.
“Good girl,” muttered Rafe, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Make it sweet for us, now.”
“For Fortune.”
The drash stared up at them with gray, gelatinous eyes that flooded with blackness as the drug hit its system. The grain had already dissolved, and the sac beneath its carapace would be full of liquefied tlak in a matter of moments, along with enough poison to kill a cow.
Strip away all the ceremony, and it was plain enough why members of the Assemblage traveled in pairs: no one could withstand two stings in a row, but wasting one was unthinkable.
Jassa tipped the box to one side. The drash slid across its metal floor, its black eyes staring mindlessly up at the roof.
“Deuces first,” she said.
Rafe had already tugged his collar open. She peeled back the mesh. The creature barely twitched as she plucked it up and set it down on the left side of his neck, its mandibles tickling his earlobe.
“Hello, lovely,” he murmured.
The drash’s long middle legs gripped veins and tendons.
Jassa stroked the long, stiff hairs atop its carapace with a grubby forefinger. With maddening languor, the drash unfurled a stinger three times the length of its body, then plunged it deep in the meat of Rafe’s throat.
The liquid was as cool as the drash’s body, but it felt like it was boiling as it hit his blood. Rafe clenched his teeth and rocked, waiting for the pain to subside. The first kiss held more poison, or so he’d been told; as Jassa’s Deuce, he’d never had the opportunity to taste the second, which the aficionados of the Assemblage held to be perfectly decanted. Grinding his teeth, he waited for the agony to recede.
Before the Assemblage, Rafe had eaten his tlak, and there had been no pain.
But nor had there been pleasure like the wave that overcame him now, crashing on his tongue and then his body. As the poison burned his muscles, the tlak itself bubbled through his salivary glands, thick as caramel and twice as sweet. As he chewed it, satisfying his stomach’s hunger as surely as that in his bones, a second rush came, flushing his bits, candying his nerves. All his aches were washed away, except for the stabbing pain in his lungs, which felt less like an ailment now than a private joke. Losing his balance, he held out his arm for Jassa, but fell too far, forcing her to steady him. Whispering unpleasantries, she tugged the stinger out of his throat, lying down on her side as she set the drash down on her neck. Woozy though he was, he tended to his duties; as Jassa closed her eyes, he coaxed the second kiss into her, waiting for the last of the tlak to settle out before he lifted the creature and locked it back in its box.
Giving Jassa time to savor the rush, he turned his attention toward the board he’d sketched on the floor, struggling to remember what he’d been taught. He’d only been given a fraction of the rules to begin with, but Jassa insisted this was immaterial. A Deuce, she’d said, should know how to sketch a serviceable board—which was intricate enough that he’d bungled it the first few times, done no favors by the tingling of his brain—but no more, for as long as possible. His job was to roll, not to question, and if he pressed her as to why, she’d only say that Fortune loved a beginner.
Not that She loved him well enough to let him win. He’d lost by a wide margin each time.
Yet what did it matter? What were they playing for, anyway, but the affections of an abstract concept, a goddess who didn’t exist?
Rafe knew better. The Gone-Away gods were real, once. But even they were long dead, buried in the catacombs under Eth. That didn’t stop everyone around him from worshiping shadows and figments, pouring their money into fantasy.
He lapsed into a coughing fit, then realized he was doing it to keep Jassa from hearing his thoughts—which got him giggling.
Jassa opened her eyes, snorting as she leapt toward the board. “Hurry!” she cried, though she took the time to pick up her notebook and resume her scribbling.
“I’ve been ready,” he said, wiping his eyes.
“Shut your orifice. I saw something.”
He’d asked her once what she kept in those pages, but all she’d say was, I’m studying to improve my chances, as should you.
At last she gasped and dropped the book on the floor. He scooped up his dice. She scooped up her own. Both their faces were gleaming in sweat.
“For the luck you give us,” Jassa said, holding her rattling dice in cupped palms above her forehead, “for the peaks and the valleys, for your patience and wrath, for the stonily twisting prayers of your catacombs under Eth, for the sweet troves of treasure they contain, for the moody thunder of their quakes, for the inscrutable path we travel toward owning them at last—”
She went on like this for a while. As he shook the dice over his brow, Rafe glanced over at the dead woman’s body, its lower half still encased in naked muscle, its upper half a peaceful cave of rib and gore.
I made that, he thought.
“—for all these things we see, and all those we cannot, we say unto you: fuck you, Fortune.”
Rafe giggled. “Fuck your rotting body straight through the sewers on a boat made of cocks and shite.”
Jassa looked impressed. “Ha!” she cried, still shaking her dice overhead. “And have you chosen an aspect, as I taught you?”
“Of course.” He hadn’t, and he struggled now to remember one she’d like, mentally pawing through yet another list—this time of Fortune’s avatars. “I’
ll be, uh—I’m Left-Handed Luce.”
She barked with condescending laughter. “Then why are your dice in your right hand, boy? Luce has no north paw—even a simpleton knows that!”
“Sorry,” he said, too amused to be aggrieved. Shifting the dice, he shook them harder, delighting in the sound.
“Now roll,” Jassa whispered, “while Fortune still smiles on the blood you’ve shed.”
The dice clattered down so rapidly that it didn’t matter whose hands were whose, not to Rafe. To Jassa, everything mattered: she kept score on the wooden floor, scrawling out her inscrutable calculations in tiny labyrinths of chalk, consulting her notebook with frequent murmurs and exclamations. Leaving her to it, he zeroed in on the parts of the game he could sense, like the way the dice jumped as they struck the pits and knots in the wooden floor, or the sound of them rebuffed by the bumpers that kept them from tumbling into the grass.
He must’ve got lost in staring at the clearing—all those blades pelted by the rain, all trembling at once!—because Jassa was shouting, and was red enough that she must’ve been at it for a while. “—out of the groove entirely, you baby-faced buffoon,” she cried. “You’re losing Her!”
Flecks of spittle darkened her chalky calculations. He tore his gaze away from that, too. “What do you want me to do?”
“Keep Her fucking eyes on you,” she snarled. “I swear, idiocy like yours is perilously close to lucklessness.” She reared back from him, as if he might be contagious. “Are you sure you haven’t any unquiet dead following you about? At times you seem almost—blighted.”
“No such thing as unquiet dead,” he muttered. “When you’re gone, you’re gone, is all.”
But the question brought Gingerbeard’s face to his mind.
“You’re about to learn whether that’s true,” shouted Jassa, “if you don’t get back on Fortune’s good side—and fast! Her eyes, boy!”
He bit his lip, seeking the clarity of pain. The weight of all this ridiculous ceremony was crushing him.
But Jassa would strike him soon, and it went worse when she was high.
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