The Perfect Assassin

by K A Doore

  Yufit’s fingers strayed across the charm again. Then he dropped them, his certainty back in full force. His eyes caught Amastan’s and he smirked. “If there are—who knows, maybe I’ll save you next time.”

  “I hope so,” said Amastan, hoping instead that he’d never have to see a jaani again.

  “Tell you what.” Yufit leaned forward, his elbows perched on his knees. “I’ve got to leave, but I’ll make it up to you next time. You desperately need to learn how to have some fun away from your dusty scrolls and I think I know just the thing. How about it—same time and place tomorrow evening? Except this time, I get to pick our destination.”

  Amastan licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry and his pulse fluttering erratically. He felt loose and light and utterly terrified. He wanted to say he was busy, but he needed to find out anything else he could about Yanniq. At least, that was the lie he told himself.

  “Okay.”

  10

  “A-ma-stan!”

  The punctuated syllables of his name came from behind, each one closer than the one before. He was halfway across the bridge when he felt it ripple with another’s weight. Before Amastan could fully turn, Menna grabbed his shoulder.

  “That’s only the third time I called you,” she said. She tried to look annoyed but it only lasted a moment before a smile broke through. She let go of his shoulder and patted him on the back. “Are your ears full of sand or is your head full of smoke?”

  Amastan shook his head. “I was just … preoccupied.”

  “Head full of sand.” Menna nodded, then she set her feet and crossed her arms. “Where were you last night? We had practice, but you never showed.”

  Amastan vaguely remembered a promise to meet at Dihya’s for another round of practice. The jaani yesterday must have driven it completely from his mind. All he’d thought about since then was Yufit and the information the scribe could get him. His head still whirled with thoughts, but now there was more than just information. His conversation with Yufit had gone better than he’d hoped, but it had left Amastan more confused than before.

  He had several possible leads now, but scant information. He’d wanted to return to Barag’s immediately so that he could look up more details about Yanniq’s past decisions, but the evening had passed and the night was growing thicker and he’d been caught by a dozen or so yawns already. His thoughts were growing fuzzy with exhaustion. He needed sleep.

  Menna was still waiting patiently and Amastan realized he hadn’t answered. Where had he been last night? At the inn, and then—had that only been last night? And when was the last time he’d seen Menna? Not since they’d found Yanniq’s corpse. Menna didn’t know about the drum chiefs’ demand, didn’t know about his current mission, didn’t know about the jaani or Yufit or what would happen to the family—to herself—if he failed.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Menna stopped when they reached the next platform and solid ground. “What? That’s it? That’s your excuse? Just ‘oh’?”

  “It’s … a lot,” he admitted.

  Menna’s eyes brightened. “Are you in trouble? Were you too polite with the baker’s daughter? Did you keep walking when a watchman told you to stop? Are you selling day-old porridge?”

  “I— What?”

  “G-d, ’Stan, I’m only teasing. I can’t imagine the kind of trouble you’d get yourself into.”

  “It’s Yanniq.”

  Menna frowned. “But Tamella was going to deal with that.”

  “She did.” Amastan sighed. “The drum chiefs decided to push it off on us. Which means me, because Tamella can’t exactly go around asking pointed questions.”

  “So you weren’t meeting with one of your many secret lovers last night?”

  Amastan’s ears instantly burned. He forced himself to meet her eyes. “I was getting information about Yanniq. And then I was attacked by a jaani.”

  That made Menna pause. “A jaani? Was it…?”

  “Yanniq’s? Who else?”

  Menna closed her eyes and let out a breath through her nose. “That’s not possible. The sands should’ve taken it. Jaan don’t stay in Ghadid.”

  “Well, this one did.”

  “Shards. If you’re right—well, there’ve been more than a few people claiming they’d seen a jaani. I’d assumed they were just sun-struck, ’cause it’s end of season and everyone’s been stupid about water. But no, Yanniq’s jaani really did decide to stick around.…” She opened her eyes and looked at the stars. “Shards. I’ll have to let the elders know. We can’t leave a jaani loose in the city. Did it”—her gaze dropped and sharpened on Amastan—“are you sane?”

  “I am.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  “Ran.”

  That made Menna snort. “’Course you did.” She shook her head. “What about the man himself? You learn anything good about Yanniq?”

  “Maybe.”

  Menna rolled her eyes. “I can help. I was there, too, you know.”

  “Thanks,” he said sincerely. “If you can find and quiet Yanniq’s jaani, that’ll help me concentrate on the drum chiefs’ order.”

  Menna mock-yawned. “Fine. You go fight killers and leave me with the boring bits. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.” She gestured at her wrap.

  Amastan frowned, finally taking in Menna’s strange attire. She wore her marabi wrap, the pale gray softly glowing in the moonlight. “What are you doing here?”

  “What does it look like? Working, obviously. An old lady was on her way out and Elder Dessin wanted me there. We did the rites and quieted her jaani. It was the first time I’d done either. I’d kinda hoped it’d be more challenging.” Menna turned down an alley. “Come on—are we going home or not? This way’ll be faster.”

  She tightened a few knots in her wrap, then gave the wall a cursory glance before finding her first handhold and beginning her climb. Amastan watched her for a moment, then followed. Suddenly, he didn’t want to walk home alone. Not when the jaani was still out there, somewhere.

  A few breathless moments later they were both on the roof. Menna dusted off her hands and Amastan glanced around, not sure what he’d expected to find. A smudge of red, an unworn sandal, or a pair of steel-gray eyes. He shook his head to clear his thoughts.

  “So who is it?”

  Amastan’s heart jumped into his throat. But she hadn’t been reading his mind, she was only continuing their conversation from a few minutes ago.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “But Yanniq let some criminals free during his time in the Circle. It’s possible a victim wanted revenge.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Menna. “I bet you’ll have this all cleared up before season ends. At least you get to do something fun.”

  “I wouldn’t call it fun, exactly.”

  Menna pursed her lips. “Of course you wouldn’t. You’d rather be sitting in a dusty library surrounded by nothing but scrolls. Some of us actually wanted to be assassins, ’Stan.”

  “So did I,” protested Amastan.

  “Uh huh. Which is why you were relieved when you found out about the contract ban. You know, you can leave the family, ’Stan. You wouldn’t be the first, not by far.”

  Amastan shrugged. “No, I don’t want to leave. I just … didn’t you ever have doubts? About whether you could kill, when it came down to it?”

  “Of course. We all did. We’re not murderers,” said Menna. “But that’s also part of the excitement, not knowing if you’re going to choke or not when it’s just you and the mark. Not knowing whether you’re going to get caught. Not knowing what could go wrong.”

  “If you plan properly, nothing would go wrong.”

  “And there you go again, taking all of the fun out of it.” Menna sighed. “But you’re missing my point: Tamella didn’t choose us because we’d enjoy killing. She choose us because we’d be good at it. Entirely different things.” She took a deep breath and straightened. “I will be good at it. The ban
will be lifted.”

  “Eventually,” said Amastan. “But it’s been over a decade, at least.”

  Something cracked in Menna’s expression, but she looked away. “They’ll lift it. They’ll have to.” But she didn’t sound certain. Without warning, she moved toward the roof’s edge. When she turned back, a grin split her face as sudden and bright as a spark, burning away whatever had been there a moment before. “But until then, let’s live.”

  “Wait—!”

  Menna took off running, laughing as she reached the edge of the roof. Amastan couldn’t help but smile as he took off after her. Although he had a longer stride and stronger legs, she was tiny and built for speed. It was easy for her to propel her small frame across the wide gaps between rooftops, gaps that forced Amastan to find a narrower spot or divert to another roof or find one of the boards the street kids sometimes left behind.

  But he kept up. This was all a game to her, always had been, and for a moment Amastan could see why. The warm wind against his face, making his eyes water and his vision blur; the dark sky overhead and the smear of stones beneath his feet; the constant calculation and recalculation of each stride, each direction; the rooftops and platforms ahead spiraling away into darkness—

  Menna disappeared behind a glasshouse on the next roof. Amastan vaulted to the same roof and circled around the glasshouse, but he didn’t see her there or on the adjacent roof. He was about to jump across when he heard a short, sharp cry.

  He stumbled to a stop just shy of the roof’s edge. His throat constricted and his pulse thudded with a surge of fear. Menna had been startled by something. That was all. She was fine.

  But he loosed the knife at his belt as he turned and scanned the rooftop he’d just crossed. Moonlight spilled through the glasshouse, casting dark shadows across its floor. Raised beds remained empty but for a few stiff stalks. Outside the glasshouse stood several metal barrels and an abandoned ladder. Amastan didn’t see Menna.

  He moved toward the glasshouse. Its door was on the other side, and from here he couldn’t quite see all the way through. Menna could be hidden by a beam or a shadow or any number of things. She couldn’t be dead.

  But he didn’t hear anything else except the pulse in his ears and the wind as it picked up speed. The wind spun around him now, sudden and tight as it tugged at his wrap. His new charm grew warm, then hot. The wind carried the smell of burnt vellum and over-boiled blood. It wasn’t the same as the scent in the alley near Idir’s inn, but it was terrifyingly close. Amastan froze halfway toward the glasshouse.

  “Menna?” he whispered, not sure why he didn’t raise his voice to a shout. No one else was up here. No one else would hear him.

  A foot scuffed the roof behind him and he spun, raising his knife. Menna stood inches away, eyes wide. He lowered the knife but didn’t re-sheathe it.

  “There’s a body,” she said, voice unnaturally even. “Another.”

  She pushed past him and walked around the glasshouse. Dread filled Amastan, but he followed. Even though he expected another body, he wasn’t ready for what he saw when he arrived at the front. The glasshouse door was shattered, its edges painted with something dark and thick: dried blood. More blood spilled across the stones inside, smears that led to a prone figure facedown in the middle of the glasshouse path. The rows of raised beds had hidden the body from a casual outside glance.

  “Who is it?” asked Amastan.

  “I don’t know,” whispered Menna. “But, ’Stan—that fabric—”

  Amastan immediately understood. In the harsh light of day, the wrap would have been a damp green, but at night it was barely indistinguishable from the shadows. The wrap was designed that way, so that assassins could complete their contracts unseen. Which unfortunately left no doubt that this was—had been—a cousin. Worse still, one who had reason to slink around at night.

  “But there aren’t any contracts,” said Amastan, more to himself than Menna. He met her gaze. “Right?”

  The wind picked up again, circling them before spinning into the glasshouse where it played with the dried leaves and stalks, making them dance. The leather pouch at the hollow of his throat flared with sudden heat. Amastan cried out and grabbed at it, pulling it away from his skin. But he didn’t dare take it off. He caught Menna’s gaze and saw the same conflict warring there. She hadn’t ripped off her charm, but she held it away from her chest by its cord. A wisp of thin smoke curled out of the pouch’s neck.

  Amastan grabbed Menna’s arm, pulling her back and away from the glasshouse door. “We have to get out of here. This isn’t like Yanniq—his jaani was already gone. This is too recent, the jaani is still here.”

  But Menna resisted. “We have to see—”

  She yanked free and stumbled toward the corpse. When Menna stepped through the broken door, the wind picked up. Amastan hesitated, cold fear sweeping through and immobilizing his limbs. He could only watch as Menna picked her way down the blood-spattered walk and slid to her knees next to the corpse. She pulled at its shoulder, trying to roll it onto its back, but the body was big and she was small and she was only using one hand, her other still holding the charm away from her skin, and now the wind had grown storm-strong, spitting grit and sand and dirt. Menna tucked her chin to her chest to avoid the worst of it.

  More than just dirt thickened the air, though. Amastan caught a smear of red and his heart jumped into his throat. At the same moment, Menna snapped out a loud curse, let go of her charm, and grunted as she shoved the corpse with both hands.

  Amastan pushed through his fear and the wind to get to her side, where he gritted his teeth and added his strength. Together, they rolled the corpse onto its back. Amastan pulled back the tagel while Menna yanked her charm off her skin. He looked at the dead man’s face. He’d seen him once, probably, or twice—family, a cousin, older than him with a graying puff of hair and a closely shorn beard. But no name rose from his memory to match the face.

  His charm burned—no, not just burned—seared. The pain tore through him and he knew that if he looked, he’d see only a hole where his skin had once been.

  Take it off, said a voice he now recognized as a jaani’s. It burns. It brings only pain. Remove it.…

  The air had turned red. Amastan hissed through his teeth and stood, pulling Menna with him. She resisted for a moment, her hands at the dead man’s waist, then they were both stumbling toward the shattered door. Amastan closed it behind them, as if that would do anything to stop the jaani.

  Menna freed herself again, turning and rushing back toward the glasshouse. Amastan lunged for her, but too late. The jaani swirled inside, condensing, forming into a column, one that grew two arms, a head, two legs: the vague shape of a man. One arm, grotesquely long and with too many fingers, reached toward the door and Menna.

  Menna raised her hand as if returning a greeting, the smoking charm dangling at the end of her fingers. Amastan’s stomach lurched—she’d torn it off. She was mad, the jaani had somehow gotten to her, it was too late. Yet he ran after her anyway.

  But Menna didn’t go inside to the jaani’s waiting grasp. She stopped at the door and jumped, looping the charm’s cord around a glass shard jutting from the side of the door’s frame. She fell back and into Amastan, letting him wrap his arms around her, as if mere skin and bone could protect her from the jaani, but she didn’t take her eyes off the door. At a loss, Amastan held her and hoped that she knew what she was doing.

  The jaani’s hand touched the door, but there it stopped. The jaani spun tighter and darkness tore through its head, opening a gap that widened into a maw. But it didn’t come any closer.

  Menna let out a breathy laugh, then squirmed out of his grip. “What’re you dawdling for? That’s not gonna last. Let’s get out of here.”

  She grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the glasshouse toward the edge of the roof. Amastan glanced back once to make sure the jaani was still trapped. Thick, greasy smoke roiled from Menna’s charm and, as he watched
, the charm burst into flame. Then he slid over the side of the roof and grabbed its edge. He fell, caught himself on the lip of the roof, then fell again to land with a jarring thud on the street below. A pulse of wind made him glance up, but there was no sign of the jaani pursuing them. Not yet.

  This time when Menna tugged on his arm, he resisted. She glared at him and any lingering trace of doubt about her sanity vanished in that moment.

  “What’re we doing?” he asked, surprised at his own calm. This was the second jaani he’d now faced, after all—and survived. He suppressed a laugh at the thought, knowing it would come out hysterical.

  “Getting away,” said Menna.

  “But we can’t just leave an angry jaani trapped on a roof.”

  “Why not? It hasn’t fully untethered. It won’t get far enough to harm anyone, not yet, and who else is climbing roofs at this time of night? Any kids who get up here will know better than to get near that. There might even still be a chance to quiet it, but I’d need to get some water or ink.” Menna bit her lip, glanced up. “By the time I can get some, it’ll be too late. Maybe if I were more experienced, maybe if I could find one of the elders…” Her gaze fell back on Amastan, annoyance cutting through her regret. “If we’d been there only a few hours earlier, I could’ve stopped it. Whoever did this…”

  “It’s their fault. Not yours. We’ll find them.”

  “They were messy,” said Menna with disgust. “Yanniq didn’t put up a fight, but our cousin did.”

  “You think it’s the same killer?”

  “Who else, ’Stan? Or do you really want to believe there’re two murderers going around Ghadid, hiding bodies?”

  Dread filled his stomach, heavy as lead. When he closed his eyes, all he saw was blood-stained glass. So he didn’t close them. “But … why Yanniq and the cousin?”

  Menna poked a finger at him. “You’re the one in charge of that question, as you made so clear earlier. I’m just here for the jaan.” She glanced back up at the roof. “We need to let someone know. We can’t let a watchman find him.”