The Assassin's Curse

  One of the first lessons Papa ever taught me, back when I could barely totter around belowdeck, was how to sneak around. "One of the most important aspects of our work," he always said. "Don't underestimate it." And sneaking around in public is actually the easiest thing in the whole world, cause all you have to do is stride purposefully ahead like you own the place, which was easy given my silk dress. I jutted my chin out a little bit and kept my shoulders straight, and people just stepped out of the way for me, their eyes lowered. I went on like this until I found a laundry line strung up between two buildings, white fabric flapping on it like the sails of our boat.

  Our boat.

  The thought stopped me dead. She wasn't my boat no more. Never would be. I'd every intention of finishing what I started, like Papa always taught me. But finishing what I started meant I'd never get to see that boat again. I'd spent all my seventeen years aboard her, and now I'd never get to climb up to the top of her rigging and gaze out at the gray-lined horizon drawn like a loop around us. Hell, I'd probably never even go back to the pirates' islands in the west, or dance the Confederation dances again, or listen to some old cutthroat tell his war stories while I drifted off to sleep in a rope hammock I'd tied myself.

  A cart rolled by then, kicking up a great cloud of dust that set me to coughing. The sand stung my eyes, and I told myself it was the sand drawing out my tears as I rubbed them away with the palm of my hand. There was no point dwelling on the past. I couldn't marry Tarrin and I couldn't go home. If I wanted to let myself get morose, I could do it after I had money and a plan.

  I ducked into the alley. The laundry wasn't hung up too high, and I could tell that if I jumped I'd be able to grab a few pieces before I hit the ground again. I pressed myself against the side of the building and waited until the street was clear, then I tucked my skirts around my waist, ran, jumped, spread my arms out wide, and grabbed hold of as much fabric as I could. The line sagged beneath my weight; I gave a good strong tug and the clothes came free. I balled them up and took off running down the alleyway. Not that it mattered; no one saw me.

  At the next street over I strode regally along again till I found a dark empty corner where I could change. I'd managed to nick two scarves in addition to the dress, so I draped one over my head in the Lisirran style and folded my silk dress up in the other. I figured I could pass for a Lisirran even though I've a darker complexion than most of the folks in Lisirra. Hopefully no one would notice I was still wearing my clunky black seaboots underneath the airy dress – those would mark me as a pirate for sure. The dress was a bit tight across my chest and hips, too, but most dresses are, and the fabric was at least thick enough to hide the lines of the Pirates' Confederation tattoo arching across my stomach.

  I knew the next step was to find a day market where I could sell my marriage dress. I couldn't go back to the one where I stole the camel, of course, but fortunately for me there are day markets scattered all over the city. Of course, Lisirra is a sprawling crawling tricky place, like all civilized places, full of so many happenings and people and strange little buildings that it's easy to get lost. I only knew my way around certain districts – those close to the water and those known to shelter crooks and others of my ilk. That is to say, the places where my parents and the Hariri clan would be first to look. And I had no idea where the closest day market was.

  I strolled along the street for a while, long enough that my throat started to ache from thirst. It was hotter here than it had been in the garden district, I guess cause it was later in the day, and everyone seemed to have retreated into the cool shade of the houses. I walked close to the buildings, trying to stay beneath the thin line of their cast shadows. Didn't do me much good.

  After a while I slouched down in another shady alley to rest, sticking the marriage dress behind my head like a pillow. The heat made me drowsy, and I could barely keep my eyes open…

  Voices.

  It was a couple of women, speaking the Lisirran dialect of the Empire tongue. I peeked around the edge of the building. Both a little older than me, both with water pitchers tucked against the outward swell of their hips. One of the women laughed and a bit of water splashed out of her pitcher and sank into the sand.

  "Excuse me!" My throat scratched when I talked, spitting out perfect Empire. The two women fell silent and stared at me. "Excuse me, is there a market nearby? I have a dress to sell."

  "A market?" The taller of the women frowned. "No, the closest is in the garden district." I must have looked crestfallen, cause she added, "There's another near the desert wall. Biggest in the city. You can sell anything there."

  The other woman glanced at the sky. "It'll close before you get there, though," she said. She was right; I must have fallen asleep in the alley after all, cause the light had changed, turned gilded and thick. I was supposed to have been married by now.

  "Do you need water?" the taller woman asked me.

  I nodded, making my eyes big. Figured the kohl had probably spread over half my face by now, which could only help.

  The taller woman smiled. She had a kind-looking face, soft and unlined, and I figured her for a mother who hadn't had more than one kid yet. The other scowled at her, probably hating the idea of showing kindness to a beggar.

  "There's a public fountain nearby," she said. "Cut through the alleys, two streets over to the west." She reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a piece of pressed copper and tossed it to me. Enough to buy a skein plus water to fill it. I bowed to thank her, rattling off some temple blessing Mama had taught me back when I was learning proper thieving. Begging ain't thieving, of course, but I ain't so proud I'm gonna turn down free money.

  The two women shuffled away, and I followed their directions to the fountain, which sparkled clean and fresh in the light of the setting sun. Took every ounce of willpower not to race forward and shove my whole face into it.

  I reined myself in, though, and I got the skein and the water no problem. The sun had disappeared behind the line of buildings, and magic-cast lamps were twinkling on one by one, bathing the streets in a soft hazy glow. I could smell food drifting out of the open windows and my stomach grumbled something fierce. I managed to snatch a couple of meat-and-mint pies cooling on a windowsill, and I ate them in an out-of-the-way public courtyard, tucking myself under a fig tree. They were the best pies I'd ever tasted, the crust flaky and golden, the meat tender. I licked the grease off my fingers and took a couple of swigs of water.

  I didn't much want to sleep outside – it's tough to get any real sleep, cause you wake up at the littlest noise, thinking it's an attack – but I also figured I didn't have much choice in the matter. I curled up next to the fig tree and used the marriage dress as a pillow again, although this time I yanked my knife out of my boot and kept it tucked in my hand while I slept. It helps.

  I had trouble falling asleep. Not so much cause of being outside, though, but cause I kept thinking about the Tanarau and my traitorous parents: Mama smoking her pipe up on deck, shouting insults at the crew, Papa teaching me how to swing a sword all proper. It's funny, cause all my life I've loved Lisirra and the desert, so much so that I used to sleep belowdeck, nestled up among the silks and rugs we'd plundered from the merchant ships, and now that it looked like I'd be whiling away the rest of my days here in civilization, all I wanted was to go back to the ocean.

  Figures that when I finally fell asleep, I dreamt I was in the desert. Only it wasn't the Empire desert. In my dream, all the sand had melted into black glass like it had been scorched, and lightning ripped the sky into pieces. I was lost, and I wanted somebody to find me, cause I knew I was gonna die, though it wasn't clear to me if my being found would save me or kill me.

  I woke up with a pounding heart. It was still night out, the shadows cold without the heat of the sun, and I could feel 'em on my skin, this prickling crawling up my arm like a bug.

  My dress was damp with sweat, but the knife was a reassuring weight in the palm of my hand. I pushe
d myself up to standing. Ain't nobody out, just the shadows and the stars, and for a few minutes I stood there breathing and wishing the last remnants of the dream would fade. But that weird feeling of wanting to be found and not wanting to be found stuck with me.

  Maybe the dream was the gods telling me I wasn't sure about leaving home. Well, I wasn't gonna listen to 'em.

  I took a couple more drinks from the skein then tucked my knife in the sash of my dress and headed toward the desert wall. I was still shaky from the dream and figured I wasn't going to be sleeping much more tonight, so I might as well take advantage of the night's coolness and get to the day market right as it opened.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The woman from yesterday hadn't lied; the day market was the biggest I ever saw, merchant carts and permanent shops twisting together to create this labyrinth that jutted up against the desert wall. I wandered through the market with my dress tucked under my arm, the early morning light gray and pink. The food vendors were already out, thrusting bouquets of meat skewers at me as I walked by. My stomach growled, and after ten minutes of passing through the fragrant wood-smoke of the food carts, I sidled up to a particularly busy vendor and grabbed two of his goat-meat skewers, even though I do feel bad about thieving from the food vendors, who ain't proper rich like the merchants we pirate from. I ate it as I walked down to the garment division, licking the grease from my fingers. Tender and fatty and perfect. You get sick of fish and dried salted meats when you're out on the ocean.

  The garment division was an impressive one, with shop after shop selling bolts of fabric and ready-made gowns and scarves and sand masks. Tailors taking measurements out on the street. Carts piled high with tiny pots of makeup and bottles of perfumes.

  It was a lot of options. I knew that I wanted a merchant who wouldn't ask me no questions, but I also couldn't use someone who was the sort to traffic in stolen goods, since I didn't want anyone who might have gotten word from the Hariris to be on the lookout for their missing bride. I decided it was probably safer going the slightly more respectable route, and that meant cleaning up my appearance some.

  I snatched a pot of eye-powder and a looking glass from one of the makeup carts and darted off into a corner, where I wiped the kohl off my face with the edge of my scarf – a mistake I realized too late, when I saw I'd stained it with black streaks. I flipped the scarf around and tried to tuck the stained ends around my neck. Then I smeared some of the eye-powder on my lids the way I'd seen Mama do it, a pair of gold streaks that made my eyes look big and surprised. Good enough.

  The market was starting to get busy, people walking in clumps from vendor to vendor. I kept my head down and my feet quick, scanning each dress-shop as I passed. None seemed right. One I almost ducked into – it was large, a couple of rooms at least, and full of people, which meant my face would be easily forgotten. But something nagged at me to walk on by, and I did, sure as if I had seen my own parents leaning up against the doorway.

  I was nearly to the desert wall when a shop – the shop, I thought – appeared out of the crush of people. It was tucked away in the corner of an alley, and I only noticed it cause someone had propped up a sign on the street with an arrow and the words We buy gowns written out neat and proper.

  The shop was small, but a pair of fancy gowns fluttered from hooks outside the door, like sea-ghosts trapped on land. I went inside. More gowns, some only half-finished. The light was dim and cool and smelled of jasmine. No other customers but me.

  "Can I help you?" A woman stepped out from behind some thin gauzy curtains. She wore a dress like the one I'd stolen, only it was dyed pomegranate red and edged with spangles that threw dots of light into my eyes. As she walked across the room, the sun splashed across her face. She was beautiful, which set me on edge, but there was something off about her features, something I couldn't quite place–

  "Oh, I apologize," she said in Ein'a, which was the language of the far-off island where I'd been born, the language my parents had spoken to me when I was a baby. "We don't normally get foreigners."

  Maybe I wasn't as inconspicuous as I thought.

  "I speak Empire," I said, not wanting to stutter my way through Ein'a.

  The shopkeeper smiled thinly, and I realized what it was that bothered me about her face – her eyes were pale gray, the same color as the sky before a typhoon. I ain't never seen eyes that color before, not even up among the ice-islands.

  Something jarred inside of me. I wanted out of that shop. But even so, I unwrapped my silk dress and laid it out on the counter, the movements easy, like I was acting by rote. "I was hoping to sell this," I said.

  The woman ran her hands over the dress, idly examining the seams, rubbing the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. She looked up at me.

  "It's dirty."

  I bit my lower lip, too unnerved to make a joke.

  "And it reeks of camel." She glanced back down at the dress, tilted her head. "I recognize the cut, though. It's from court. Last season. How'd you come across it?"

  "My mother gave it to me." Avoid lying whenever possible. Always leave out information when you can. Another one of Papa's lessons.

  "Hmm," she said. "Looks like it's been through quite the adventure. I suppose I can use it as a guide. Merchant wives tend to be a bit behind on things." She folded the dress up. "I'll pay you one hundred pressed copper for it," she said.

  "Two hundred."

  "One fifty."

  "One seventy."

  She paused. Her lips curled up into a faint smile. "That's fair," she said. "One seventy."

  Kaol, I wanted out of that store. The haggling went way too easy, and that smile chilled me to the bone. It was like a shark's smile, mean and cold.

  She glided off to the back of the store, carrying the dress with her. When she came back out she handed me a bag filled with thin sheets of pressed copper. I slid the bag into the hidden pocket in my dress and turned to leave. Didn't bother to count. Felt heavy enough.

  "Wait," said the shopkeeper.

  I stopped.

  "Be careful," she said. "I don't normally do this for free, but I like the look of you. They're coming. Well, one of them. Him."

  I stared at her. She said him like it was the proper name of somebody she hated.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Oh, you know. Your dream last night."

  All the air just whooshed out of my body like I'd been in a drunkard's fight.

  "I ain't had no dream last night."

  She laughed. "Fine, you didn't have a dream. But you know the stories. I can tell. I can smell them on you."

  "The stories," I said. "What stories?" All I could see was the gray in her eyes, looming in close around me. And then something flickered in the room, like a candle winking out. And I knew. The assassins. That bogeyman story Papa used to tell me whenever I didn't mind him or Mama.

  "Ah, I see you've remembered." The shark's smile came out again. I took a step backwards toward the door. "You're going to need my help. I live above the shop. When the time comes, don't delay."

  I tried to smirk at her like I thought she was full of it, but in truth my whole body was shaking, and I was thinking about Tarrin yelling at me yesterday afternoon, trying to get me to come back. My father isn't afraid to send the assassins after his enemies. But men'll say anything to get you to do what they want. If Tarrin couldn't charm me onto his ship, he'd try to scare me. Well, it wasn't gonna work.

  The shopkeeper tilted her head at me and then turned around, back toward the curtains. I darted out into the sunny street and took a deep breath. The eeriness of the shop faded into the background; out here there was just heat and sand and sun. Normal, comforting. Plus I had money hanging heavy in my pocket. I reached down to pat it. Enough to pay for a room at a cheap inn.

  Fear still niggled at the back of my head, though. I hadn't thought about the assassins in years and years.

  Papa talked about them like they were ghouls or ghosts, monsters come
to take me away in the night. The stories always ended in the death of the intended victim. "They're relentless," he had said, one night when I was ten or eleven, my face red and itchy with anger. I'd sassed him or Mama or both, and probably spent some time down in the brig for it too, but by then we were in the captain's quarters. The lanterns swung back and forth above our heads, the lights sliding across the rough features of Papa's face. "You can't escape an assassin." He leaned forward, shadows swallowing his eyes. "Hangings, bumbling bureaucrats, dishonest crewman, jail – those you can talk your way out of, you try hard enough. But this kind of death is the only kind of death."

  He always said that when he told me assassin stories – the only kind of death. It was this refrain I'd get in my head whenever I did something bad, like playing tricks on the navigator or trying to read one of Mama's spellbooks without permission. The assassins were blood magicians in addition to skilled fighters. They lived in dark lairs hidden in plain sight, like crocodiles. They were the last refuge of a coward, of a man too afraid to fight you himself – and that was why they were so dangerous. They gave power to cowards.