by Devin Madson
“So they didn’t tell you he was all weird and capable of shit that makes no sense like you’d fallen into a story.”
“No.”
I shook my head against the wall. “Idiots.”
I could have let silence fall there, could have laid down to rest, but I wasn’t ready to stop talking, having found someone so like me. “I was also contracted by the hieromonk,” I said, for something to add to the conversation. “For his son. Just to make things more fun.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. His Holiness seems to have grown increasingly troubled by his son’s popularity. And the number of people expecting him, even pressuring him, to name Leo Villius Defender of the One True God so the succession would be secure. Not that the Nine wanted that. He’s not… controllable enough for them.”
“How do you know so much about Chiltaen politics when you’re not Chiltaen?”
“I investigate thoroughly before every job because you never know what small detail could overset your plans.”
His answer made me feel vastly underskilled for my profession, just a blade flailing around in the dark.
“I… haven’t ever really talked to another assassin outside my own family,” Yakono said after a time. “Usually it worries people, though I don’t kill for my own enjoyment.”
“Do you enjoy it?” I thought of the thrill I’d had the first time I’d killed for money, the legitimacy of the job wiping away all sense of guilt and leaving only satisfaction. There was joy and power in being no one, a no one who could strike from the shadows and change the world.
“Yes?” he said, the admission wary. “I am trained to do the job and enjoy performing it well. People tell me that sounds cold, but I don’t like to pretend for the sake of others’ sensibilities.”
Laughing hurt every part of my chest and my back and my stomach, but oh how I laughed. How many times had Kaysa told me I was heartless and cold, that we could have chosen to do anything else with our life yet this had been my choice, to fuck and kill people because I was good at both and took joy in being good at both.
“Did I say something amusing?”
Yakono sounded hurt, and I had the impulse to throw my arms around this earnest killer whose face I had never seen because I could hear myself in his voice. I had done all I could to bury my doubt and my shame and the part of me that gave a shit what people thought of me, but it was still there, still bubbling its pockets of self-hatred to the surface like a cruel, jeering swamp.
“No,” I said, rolling to face the wall. “No, you didn’t say anything amusing at all. I laughed because…” Shame roiled up from that ever-present pit and I shoved it down, determined not to let it show. “Because I am both a whore and an assassin, and I too take joy in a job well done.”
Did his jaw drop? Did he smile? Did he wrinkle his nose at the idea of someone selling their body as he didn’t at being paid to take life? For all too many heartbeats I waited, worrying, before he said, “I can understand that. Sex doesn’t overly interest me, but I am aware I’m rather on my own in that regard.”
“A man disinterested in sex? Unique, I would have called that,” I said, relief escaping in another laugh.
When he didn’t answer, I wondered what he was thinking. Had I upset him? I had a hundred questions about where he had been trained and by whom and why he didn’t sound Chiltaen, but perhaps I wouldn’t like all the answers, or perhaps he wouldn’t like my questions, and I was far too tired to deal with such knotty problems. But sleepy though I was, I wanted him to keep talking. The murmur of his deep voice through the wall was as comforting as the warmth of Captain Aeneas at my back had been. I had never trusted anyone in my old life, ought not to trust anyone now, but the choice to do so was oddly freeing.
“Do you use a blade, Yakono?” I said, pressing my shoulder to the wall and resting my forehead against the wood. “I’ve generally found it to be the quickest and easiest way. I was never taught fancy things like poisons myself.”
“A blade to the inner thigh if I can. With enough practice it can be made almost painless. Poisons are such slow and painful ways to kill. Choking and destroying the digestion and exploding blood vessels. I was taught to dose with a few, but they are not my preferred way.”
I had never thought about it before. I’d never taken pleasure in the prolonged suffering of my clients, but in the end, dead was dead, however it was done. That here was a man who practised ways to lessen the pain was extraordinary.
“But what did you practise on? People you were paid to kill?”
“Oh no, my master had very realistic dolls made of an assortment of materials, and he would put them in different positions and challenge me to find the right spot with my blade. Sometimes he would time me, or make me do it in the dark. I thought it was a fun game as a child.”
“As a child? How long have you been training?”
“All my life. Well, as long as I can remember anyway. I don’t recall much from before my master took me in. Once I was older, he sometimes used dead bodies so I could cut real skin. That’s how I learned about anatomy.”
He spoke of it as anyone might about their childhood, a sense of nostalgia in his words as he recalled better times.
“And you?” he said, shifting against the wall. “How did you learn?”
“I’m… not sure I did. Some Blessed Guards at the hospice I lived at taught me how to fight as a child, but I just figured the rest out for myself, really. I had seen enough dead bodies”—bodies that had called to me, called and called until I had gone to see what they wanted, what they needed, their wounds glaring a history at me from dim alleyways—“to figure out the most… vulnerable places. I just tried it after that. People die if you stick a blade in them in enough places.”
My laugh ended on a grimace. How awful that would sound to someone who gave their art such thought and care? Terrible enough that I hadn’t been trained, had just… made it up as I went along. Perhaps I wasn’t an assassin, only a killer.
“I did that once.” His voice sounded a little closer, like he had turned his cheek to the wood. “The first kill I ever did. We’d been contracted for a merchant. He wasn’t anyone particularly important, and neither was the man who paid us. A personal vendetta, over a woman, I believe, but we don’t ask questions.” He paused, and I thought I heard him lick dry lips. “So, my master said it was a good first test for me, to do the job for real and see how it went. I was… sixteen? Old enough to be capable but not old enough to be wise. I thought I was very very good and imagined all the way to the man’s house how my master would be staggered by my skill and speed.” Yakono laughed, not a bitter sound but one full of humour. “It didn’t turn out like I imagined. He wasn’t in the place I expected. And my fine plan of quickly nicking his thigh or neck and being gone in a puff of wind was thwarted. He saw me. I panicked. All I could think was that I didn’t want him shouting for guards because I had no contract for their lives, and I was so busy focussing on his mouth that I stabbed him in the cheek instead of the throat. By the time I finished I’d put at least eight holes in him.”
“I almost sawed through half my first kill’s neck,” I said. “And I once killed the wrong woman by accident.”
“I accidentally caught one of mine while they were using the chamber pot.”
I laughed and so did he, a reluctant gurgle of sound as though he knew he ought not laugh at such things, but unable to help himself.
“That I’ve never done,” I said. “I’ll make a point of trying it sometime, shall I?”
“Oh no, don’t, it’s horribly messy and embarrassing. The man was so shocked by someone appearing while he was shitting that he was more concerned with protecting his nether regions than his life.”
I could well imagine such a scene and lay laughing gently against the wall, tears tracking down my cheeks. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Well, I killed him,” Yakono said, like there could be no question of proper etiquette in such a case. “
But it has always been my habit to lay bodies out respectfully if I have the time, and all the time in the world did not increase my desire to… clean the man—”
I could barely see for tears, my laughter a great, racking thing as impossible to control as a bout of coughing.
“—nor dress him again. I wasn’t even sure all the right bits of clothing were there. He seemed to have recently gotten out of bed, which was where he was meant to be, and how much I wish I had been five minutes faster in reaching his house—”
I sucked a ragged breath, sure I had never laughed so much.
“—so in the end I was a complete coward and bolted out the window, leaving his servants quite the shock. I had barely climbed down the outer wall before I heard them all screaming.”
I gasped another breath, wiping tears.
“Are you all right?” he asked, all worry and solicitude again.
“Fine,” I managed between eruptions of laughter. “Just… never heard… anything… quite so funny… in all my life.”
He chuckled against the other side of the wall. “I’m so glad my misfortunes could entertain you, Cassandra. It is… nice to meet someone who is not immediately afraid of me. Or who doesn’t want to bring some god or other into my life so I will see the error of my ways. My master always said it would be so, and not to trouble myself over the values other people claim yet do not follow. Life and death is a business that would go on without us, he said. Our service allows it to be undertaken with respect and dignity. Well, most of the time. Chamber pot man excluded of course.”
After a moment of silence, he added, “My master also used to say I would have to accept less than perfection because such a thing is not possible to attain. I’m still working on that one.”
In the silence he left, I slowly calmed my gasps of laughter and I wondered if he had stopped talking to allow me to do so, perhaps able to hear my little fits of coughing through the wall as I could hear the scratch and rustle of his clothing.
We ought to sleep, the empress said, and almost I was surprised to hear her, so little had she been present while Yakono and I talked. I didn’t want to interrupt; you were enjoying yourself. But we need rest if we’re to have any chance of making a difference.
My eyes did ache and I could barely feel the lower half of my body, but I did not want to sleep and leave Yakono alone.
We are no good to him dead, just as we’re no good to Miko dead. Sleep now.
She was right and I hated it. Hated the weakness, the disease, that I’d gotten trapped in this body at all.
“I have to sleep now,” I said through the wall. “Will you… be all right?”
Had I ever asked anyone that before? The words felt the wrong shape, the weight of them constricting my chest in a way I wasn’t sure I liked.
“I will,” he said. “But take care of yourself, Cassandra. I would like you to be all right as well.”
I could think of no reply and let the empress take over, curling her body up the way it found most comfortable to sleep, and soon drifted off.
Voices murmured nearby and I glanced up—no, Kaysa glanced up, catching sight of Leo’s face in profile. The physician was shaking his head. “No, I have not seen this before, not like this,” Master Ao said. “It is a little like fever, and something like exhaustion of the spirit, but neither is accompanied by such inflammation of the joints.”
“I thought you were the best physician in this district.”
“I am, and I am giving you all the information I have, on the honour of my profession. I have made up some more of the tonic, and you must encourage her to rest. Rest is the most important thing in healing.”
“Indeed.” Leo’s brows sank low. “You may go.”
Master Ao drew himself up, and I looked away as he departed. A door opened and closed, and I went on staring at the page. Candlelight flickered across its neat lettering.
“You are reading very intently,” Leo said as he approached, very much the Leo I was used to. The Leo who had taken his own head from me and killed Captain Aeneas. “Trying to find a way to fight me?”
He leaned close, the heat and weight and sheer presence of him something I wanted to thrust away. It’s not him, Kaysa told herself. Not him.
“No,” she said aloud. “I’m just reading the Presage.”
“But of course.” His breath was warm by my ear, and I shivered. “Ah yes, a curious paragraph.”
My heart hammered, making me light-headed with an intense fear I couldn’t wholly understand.
“The empress with two voices,” he went on. “You are perhaps considering that the old translation states it as the leader with two words and wondering how you can convince me to marry the wrong woman and ruin the prophecy.”
For a moment I was sure I would be sick. “No, I… I was just reading, I—”
“Of course you were. Perhaps wondering how you could get Unus back. I’m afraid that’s not happening. He’s got to go, and once Cassandra is feeling better, she will see to it for us. Then I can marry Empress Sichi without him getting in the way.”
I looked up into his self-satisfied smile. “But she won’t get better.”
“Not get better?” He gripped my shoulders, his eyes boring into mine unblinking. “What do you mean she won’t get better?”
I knew he could read the answer in my mind, but still I stumbled out angry words. This man had hurt Unus the way Cassandra had hurt me all my life.
“It’s the Imperial Disease,” I said. “They aren’t going to get better. The Witchdoctor says there’s no cure, so Cass isn’t going to kill Unus for you. And she damn well won’t live long enough to help you get rid of Empress Hana’s daughter, so you can marry the other—”
His fingers squeezed my throat. “But they aren’t dead yet.”
Unus, fight back! Kaysa thought.
Leo’s fury was like the pressure of a gathering thunderstorm. “You’re pathetic. Get out of my sight.” He threw us from him, sending Kaysa sprawling onto the floor.
Wake up! Wake up! I screamed in my mind. Oh shit oh shit, Hana, wake the fuck up right now. Wake up. Wake—“Up!”
We jerked awake upon our mat in a tangle of sweat-laden sheets. The room was dark, a mere suggestion in the faint moonlight.
What is it? the empress said.
“I know why he wants us,” I said, our voice crackled and our eyes bleary. “I saw it. In the dream. With Kaysa. I saw it.”
Calm down. What is it?
“He wants us to fulfil the whole stabbed in the back by an empress thing, but more than that. It’s Miko. And someone called Empress Sichi. There’s a thing in the book, the holy book. He thinks it means he has to marry her, and you’re going to help him.”
He wants to marry Sichi?
“Yes.”
No. No. He can’t. Surely Minister Manshin wouldn’t… She trailed off, disbelieving her own words.
“Marry her and get rid of Miko. Whatever he means by that.”
I don’t care what he means by that. I won’t let him. We need to do something. Now.
“But what?”
I don’t know. We closed our eyes upon a room that spun and drew the covers up around our trembling shoulders. I don’t know.
20. DISHIVA
The cellars beneath Kogahaera were dark and damp and I hated them, but it was the only place we could be sure of not being overheard. The network of caverns and tunnels led from one, but this one was used as a bathhouse. A wooden tub sat in its centre, and a pair of braziers failed to warm the air. A small troop of servants carrying heavy buckets and jugs had been needed to fill the tub with hot water.
“Are we ready?” Empress Sichi asked. She sat in the bath, the better to ensure we weren’t disturbed. Nuru sat perched on a stool beside her, translating.
“Can we be any more ready?” The chill of the stones was seeping through my clothing. “The longer we wait the more likely it is Leo will figure out what we’re up to.”
And Leo wo
uld get what he wanted from Sichi.
Since the execution, we’d fallen into a tense stalemate, as many Levanti intent on protecting Gideon as there were Levanti who wished to tear him apart. It might have turned out poorly without the presence of Lord Edo and his Kisian allies, and the Chiltaens marching toward our gates. Kisians too, now, coming from the east with a host of Levanti. There were whispers that Rah was with them. That they had defeated Grace Bahain in battle. That Whisperer Ezma led them. Their arrival would shatter our peace as surely as the arrival of the Chiltaens, forcing us all to choose who and what we really wanted to fight for.
Herds no longer felt important.
“We can’t wait,” I said, pushing off the wall. “It’s shit and I wish there was another way, but we have to do it. If those two armies get here while Leo is still in control of Gideon, it’s gates wide open, and that’s bad for all of us.”
For a moment we just existed there in silence together, but the moment couldn’t last. We had a plan and we had to see it through to whatever end. It risked everything, but so did doing nothing, and there was an odd sort of comfort in that.
Sichi shifted in her bath water, the slosh echoing around the small stone space. “We had better move, or there won’t be time to dress before Leo arrives,” Nuru translated when she spoke.
Empress Sichi stood, water streaming off her naked skin. A towel sat ready, and Nuru held it up as she stepped out of the tub, the two of them walking through the routine like they’d done this a hundred times before. A murmur. A wry smile. A lingering touch of thanks. I thought of Jass hiding in the caves, and could only hope I would see him again. Would get the chance to discover the depths of what had started to grow between us.
“All right,” Sichi said through Nuru’s lips. “It’s time. I’ll keep him as long as I can, but I suggest you move fast. Just in case he sees through me.”
Almost I asked if she was sure, and seeming to understand, she flashed a fleeting smile. “Don’t worry, Dishiva. I can take care of myself.”
“And I can take care of her,” Nuru added when she had finished translating. “You get to Gideon and don’t worry about us.”