by K A Doore
Until my wife, Barag had said. Tamella had made a name for herself and the family when she’d stopped a civil war, but at the same time she’d ended her career. Everyone knew about the Serpent of Ghadid, if only through rumors and myth. And an unmasked assassin couldn’t be an assassin anymore. She’d been reduced to a story to scare children.
“They’ve left her alone all this time,” continued Barag, still more to himself. “It’s only natural they’d want to question her when a drum chief died.”
“But there are no contracts. Why would they want to talk to her?” said Amastan. He finally wrenched his gaze away from the door and found Barag watching him thoughtfully. “What?”
“If you’re going to learn all of the family’s secrets,” said Barag, “you might as well learn this one: Tamella has killed outside of a contract.”
Amastan stared, felt something inside him shift as the new knowledge took its place. As realization spread through him, he wondered how he’d never made the connection before. He knew that over a decade ago, a handful of merchants had conspired to pitch Ghadid into a civil war and profit off the chaos. He knew Tamella had stopped them. He knew that that single, selfless act had unmasked her and ended her career, even forced her to withdraw from the community to avoid compromising her cousins, her brother, even her own daughter.
He’d assumed Tamella had misstepped somehow in her execution, that she’d revealed herself. But now that he’d learned about the contract ban, he also realized it had to have been more than that. The drum chiefs had punished the entire family. They’d been afraid.
And if Tamella had killed outside of a contract, they’d had every right to be.
“But she didn’t kill Yanniq.”
“No.”
“What will they do to her?”
“Nothing. Probably.” Barag pushed a scroll toward Amastan. “Now, stop worrying about my wife and start working on these. We’ve still got a lot to do today and our clients won’t forgive us if we’re late, murder or not.”
* * *
The light through the windows had shifted from brightest white to dusky red to a thin, flickering glow. At some point, Amastan had helped Barag light a few torches. He didn’t usually stay this late, but he’d wanted to start on the family’s history and to do that he had to finish his other duties first.
Usem had come and gone, dropping off Thana and a basket of still-warm bread. A piece of crust remained at his elbow, already too dry to eat. His eyes hurt from the strain of reading all afternoon and evening, and his fingers cramped from transcribing. He had just finished rerolling the scrolls he’d been working on, and stood, reaching up as high as he could in a back-cracking stretch, when the door banged open. Then Tamella stalked in and he realized that he’d been dawdling for another reason.
Tamella’s hands were balled into fists and her jaw clenched and worked. But it was another heartbeat before she could spit out the words she was chewing on.
“They want me to find the killer,” she said. “Or they’ll condemn us. Publicly.”
“What?”
Barag shared the single exclamation with Amastan. Barag stood and moved around his worktable, but stopped a few feet from his wife.
“They want me to be their personal watchman,” she spat. “As if it’s our fault Yanniq was stupid enough to get himself killed. They think, just because we’re assassins, we’re responsible for every death. Next they’ll want us to quiet his jaani.”
“But only a marabi—” began Amastan, immediately regretting his words.
Tamella’s gaze fell on him like a thrown stone. “I know that.” She turned her whole body toward Barag, shutting Amastan out. “How dare they do this. How dare they threaten us. After everything we’ve done, I’ve done, for them. By G-d, if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t even be drum chiefs anymore. And yet—the audacity. I just—I can’t—aargh!”
Tamella punched the table. Amastan jumped. Barag closed the distance between him and his wife and wrapped his arms around her. For a moment, she remained tense, as if she might fight him. But then her shoulders and chin sagged and her body shook. Amastan looked away, his cheeks and ears too warm. He shouldn’t be a witness to this much emotion. To preserve their modesty, Amastan slowly and deliberately made his way toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He froze, his hand outstretched for the doorknob. Tamella had untangled herself from Barag and now glared at Amastan, her eyes red-rimmed and wet.
“I—to give you privacy.”
“No,” said Tamella. “You’re going to stay and help clean up this mess.”
“But I—I’m not involved,” protested Amastan.
Tamella’s smile was as sharp and deadly as a knife. “You’re an assassin. You found the body, Amastan. You are very much involved.”
Amastan recognized the futility of arguing with that smile. Still, he couldn’t help but protest, “I don’t know who did it.”
“Neither do I,” said Tamella. “You’d better find out, though, and fast. The drum chiefs only gave us until season’s end. You’re a scholar, right? Then this should fit right in with your other skills.”
“Historian,” corrected Amastan.
“Glorified records keeper, it doesn’t matter. Those sand-cursed drum chiefs aren’t giving us a choice. They’re just looking for an excuse to blame this murder on us. They don’t want anyone involved in this who isn’t already, because they don’t want certain unsavory details getting around. They think people will panic if they know there’s a wild jaani on the loose.”
“Maybe people should panic.” Amastan felt a flutter of panic himself. He’d been doing pretty well not thinking about the wild jaani until now.
“That’s not up to us,” said Tamella. “But the end result is this: I can’t bring anyone else in on this, and I can’t exactly go around asking pointed questions myself. No one will trust the Serpent. And Barag’s out, too. That leaves you, Amastan.”
His stomach sank. “And Menna,” he added, not because it would help, but because it was true.
“Yeah.” Tamella sighed. “Two novices who’ve never had a contract.” She forced a smile. “Well, we work with what we’ve got. And after we find this killer, I’ll personally give the drum chiefs a piece of my mind. Light of my moon,” she turned to Barag, “what do we know about Drum Chief Yanniq?”
Barag folded his hands in front of him. “You should remember him, joy of my heart, because he was the only drum chief who didn’t want to have you executed or exiled.”
Tamella waved a hand. “Yes, of course, but that was over a decade ago. I meant: what else?”
“Off the end of my tongue, he was close to sixty seasons old, had four wives and six children, and had been a drum chief since his brother died some twenty seasons ago. It was a contentious issue at the time, if I recall correctly. Which I do. The brother had children, but they were too young to lead. Yanniq took up the drum as regent, the assumption being that he’d step aside. But when the eldest came of age, the Aeser neighborhood wanted Yanniq to stay.”
“There.” Tamella jabbed a finger at Barag. “The brother’s kids. One of them killed him. We find them, we’re done.”
Amastan shook his head. “It’s been twenty seasons. Why now? Why would they wait so long? Yanniq was old enough that they could’ve just waited a few more seasons. Or pushed him down some stairs. Instead, someone bled him out on a rooftop and hid the body. Whoever did that—that’s all they wanted. Not a drum.”
Barag walked over to one of the shelves. His hand hovered over a section before plucking a thick scroll from its top. He unrolled it and scanned the text before saying, “His family makes most of their money through trade. They were hit particularly hard during the Empire’s last caravan embargo. Maybe they never recovered.”
“He owes someone money,” said Tamella. “They got tired of waiting, confronted him, and it turned bad.”
“Why hide the body?” challenged
Amastan.
“People are stupid, fearful creatures. They probably panicked.”
Amastan pictured the scene, the way the body had been carefully laid out and hidden, the undisturbed, desiccated pool of blood. “It wasn’t panic.”
“I don’t see any evidence that they avoided paying their debts,” said Barag, reading a different scroll now. “At least, no one brought their grievance before the drum chiefs’ Circle. Yanniq had a few against him recently, but they were small things. People unhappy with the way he decided a dispute, or displeased at his baat allocation, or generally worried about the water rationing.”
“Nothing that stands out?” asked Amastan.
Barag shook his head. “Not recently.”
“We could be dealing with a madman,” said Tamella. “Perhaps they thought Yanniq looked at them wrong.”
“Could a madman plan? Someone lured Yanniq up there, or at least knew he would be on the roof,” said Amastan.
“A jilted lover? Maybe he was having an affair.”
“I don’t know,” said Amastan, exasperated. “We don’t know anything about the man. How’re we supposed to find his murderer?”
A slow smile spread across Tamella’s lips. “How would you learn more about Yanniq?”
Amastan frowned, thrown off by the sudden change in the conversation. It took him another moment to realize what Tamella was asking. Cautiously, he said, “Surveillance? But he’s not a mark and he’s dead.”
“The same principles apply. Watch, wait, learn.” Excitement laced her voice. “We need to find where Yanniq was vulnerable. We need to discover his enemies, his routines, his likes, dislikes—everything.”
“Treat him like a mark,” said Amastan, finally understanding.
“Exactly.” Tamella’s smile this time was subtler, and yet somehow more terrifying. “This is like a contract, but the hard part is already done—the mark’s dead. We just need to work backward to find out who killed him. Congratulations, Amastan—you have your first contract.”
7
The leftover date wine splashed into the barrel and across the front of Amastan’s wrap. He grumbled under his breath but didn’t dare move back lest he spill more. This mixture of undrunk wine and spit, collected from the bottom of each patron’s glass, would be used in the glasshouse to keep its scrubby plants alive until season’s end. Idir had made it clear as glass that Amastan was worth less than spit.
Amastan left the empty jar next to the barrel and patted ineffectively at the damp spots on his wrap. But there was nothing he could do. They would dry and join the myriad of other stains he’d accumulated over the last three days working in the inn.
“Asaf!” Idir’s voice boomed down the narrow corridor. “What’s taking you so long? You pissing in the barrel?”
Amastan breathed deep and channeled his frustration into one long breath. Then he wiped his hands off on his wrap—lost cause, that—and headed back to the kitchen.
The innkeeper, Idir, pointed with one thick hand toward the only full table. “Take these bowls over there.” As Amastan passed him, Idir slapped his shoulder, making him flinch. “And don’t forget the bread this time, Asaf.”
“Yes, sa,” said Amastan tonelessly.
He set the bowls of rusty red porridge on a tray, then added two circles of flat bread from off the counter. Before Idir could harass him again, Amastan hurried out of the kitchen and into the well-lit room, which was warm and stuffy with torches and talk. For most of the year, iluk travelers and caravanners clustered in the inn, close and tight, speaking in foreign tongues and wearing foreign fabric. Part-time whores worked the crowd, and the whole room stank of alcohol and exhalations.
But not tonight. With season’s end so close, the only travelers in Idir’s inn were those who were here for the long term. Outside Ghadid, the wells were dry and grass nonexistent and the air crackled with a dangerous heat. At this time of year, only death-keen and fools crossed the sands.
The inn was relatively quiet, so the table crowded with men drinking and laughing stuck out. Amastan headed toward it with his tray, passing two whores sitting alone, discussing something over a half-empty bowl of porridge. The rough, dull cloth of the men’s wraps and their low-knotted tagels showed their low class. One wore no tagel at all, his head shorn clean—a slave. Amastan had discovered that this varying collection of servants and slaves belonged to Drum Chief Yanniq. They spent their free evenings drinking and gambling in Idir’s inn, mingling together as if there was no fundamental difference between their classes. It hadn’t taken Amastan long to find their favorite haunt; Idir’s was the only inn in Yanniq’s neighborhood.
Idir’s regular server, Sarif, had fallen ill three days earlier—tainted date wine had that effect—and a man named Asaf had arrived at Idir’s door, looking for a temporary position. The timing had been fortuitous. Although Asaf was slow and frequently mixed up the patron’s requests, he didn’t ask for much in payment and Idir couldn’t be bothered to find someone more capable, not at this time of year and not when Sarif would be back any day.
Amastan hoped he wouldn’t have to work here long. Keeping Sarif sick was proving tricky; the man had already visited the healers once. If he returned, the healers would become suspicious. Amastan was betting that pride—and a lack of baats—would keep Sarif home in bed for another day. Hopefully two.
He just needed Yanniq’s servants to let something slip. So far, they’d only talked about their own problems, which wasn’t too surprising, but it meant he needed to try a different tactic. Amastan set the porridge and bread on the table, keeping his eyes down. But as he turned to go, he raised his head and caught the gaze of one of the men.
For a moment, Amastan stared into steel-dark eyes. The man’s gray tagel was knotted higher than his friends’, covering both his nose and his ears. The fingers he curled around his mug were stained black and blue with ink. Amastan had him marked for a scribe and someone who might be useful.
The servant next to the man said something and he blinked. The man gave his head the slightest shake, then said, “I’m sure you’re correct as always.”
The servant frowned, his gaze flicking toward Amastan. “So you are obsessed with the new server. Why don’t I call him over and ask his name?”
Amastan pretended not to hear, but he dragged his feet on his way back to the kitchen.
“No!” said the first man with a mixture of horror and surprise. Then he laughed and added, “I’m just—He’s so bad at this. Where’d Idir find him?”
“The brothels, probably,” said the servant.
“Megar.”
“I’m going to call him over.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Watch and learn, little brother.” Megar raised his voice. “Hey, you!”
Amastan paused and looked back. Megar was half out of his seat, finger pointed at Amastan. The servant beckoned to him while his friend looked away, clearly mortified. Amastan glanced around, as if Megar could possibly mean anyone else in this empty inn, before returning to the table.
“What’s your name, boy?” asked Megar.
“Asaf, sa.”
“Come on, take a break.” Megar scooted over on the bench. “Sit with us. If the old man harasses you, you can tell him we threatened you.”
Amastan took the offered seat. This close, the air reeked of stale breath and cheap wine. Through it, Megar smelled like oil and leather and metal. He wore a drab bronze wrap like the other servants, the black embroidery around its edges marking him as Yanniq’s. But silver detail was interwoven with the black: he was a gear worker. If he worked for Yanniq directly, then that meant he was in charge of the pumphouse for this neighborhood—the most important job a servant could possibly have.
But he was still a servant and he wore his tagel low. When Megar smiled, Amastan could see the bridge of his nose crinkling along with the corners of his eyes. The slave shoved a half-empty mug toward Amastan, his own bare features slathered with a smile. A
mastan couldn’t bring himself to look the slave in the eye, even though the rest of the servants managed to. A man’s emotions shouldn’t be on display like that, even if a slave’s emotions were never their own. It was just crude.
“G-d be with you, sai,” said Amastan.
“You work here long?” asked Megar.
“No, sa.” Better to stay as close to the truth as possible. “The other server is sick. I’ll only be here until he recovers.”
“Shame.” But Megar sounded pleased. “Well, when you’re done here, you should try for a position with us. Now that you know the right people, you shouldn’t have a problem. Then you’d get to work with the best of the best. And by that, I—of course—mean myself.”
The steel-eyed servant snorted into his drink, but Megar ignored him.
“And where would that be, sa?”
“The late Yanniq’s household,” said Megar. “Or what remains of it. Several servants have already left. They think the house’ll lose repute, but I’m betting the opposite. And I’m never wrong. Basil ma Yanniq will turn things around. She’s fierce and she’ll keep the other wives in line. She was already running the household before Yanniq took a lungful of sand.”
“You don’t know anything about me, sa,” said Amastan, perplexed.
“I know you’re willing to put up with an old ass like Idir,” said Megar. “And my friend here thinks you’re pretty.”
Amastan ducked his head to hide his embarrassment. The man with the steel-dark eyes and silver tagel next to Megar choked and coughed into his hand. Megar laughed, throaty and deep, and clapped Amastan on the back.
“I never said—” began the other man.
But Amastan wasn’t ready to let the conversation change. He was so close. “It might be unlucky,” he said quickly. “Working in Yanniq’s household.”
Megar shot his friend a glance filled with meanings Amastan couldn’t parse. Then he leaned back. “Unlucky? Just because the old mule is dead doesn’t mean the whole house is cursed.”
“But … didn’t he die in unfortunate circumstances?”