The Assassin's Curse

  "If you insist on fighting, take this." And he slipped something into my hand, something rough and dry and so powerful that even I recognized the magic in it, before bounding off to face down the woman.

  "Assassin," she hissed, drawing out the word, and Naji reached into his armor, pulled out the same satchel he'd almost used on me. He didn't throw it at her, though, just reached in and pulled out some dark dust, which he blew across the desert, cutting out all the light from the woman's incandescent sand. The desert plunged back into night. The woman's scream echoed through the darkness, and then her silhouette attacked his silhouette, and I blinked a couple times, willing my eyes to adjust.

  When they did, Naji had drawn his sword, the blade flashing in the moonlight. And the woman had a sword of her own.

  I held up the charm he had slipped me. It was a necklace, a ball of dusty dried-out vines and flower petals hanging off a piece of narrow leather. I slipped it over my neck and immediately I felt protected, impenetrable. Safe.

  Damn him! He was sticking to that idiotic oath to protect me. Which meant he was in the middle of a magic-and-sword fight without protection. The charm must have stopped the magic from before, the magic intended to suck him through the portal – now if she tried anything, it would actually work.

  I knew better than to jump into the middle of the fight, much as I wanted to. Instead, I looped around behind the woman, keeping myself low to the sand. The woman knocked Naji back with a burst of magic, and as she regrouped herself, I attacked. I shoved my knife into her shoulder blade. She howled, whirled around. Light seeped out of the wound, and a few droplets flung across my face. It was hot on my skin, and for a moment I faltered, not sure what to do about a beautiful lady who bleeds light.

  But then she did that flicking motion with her hand again, only this time I stayed put, protected, and in the few seconds before she could realize the secret hanging around my neck, I stuck the knife into her belly. More light spurted out, landing on the sand, on the fabric of my dress.

  There were hands on my shoulders, pulling me backward. Naji. He sang something in his language, and the sky ripped open, the stars streaming in the blackness. He wound one arm over my chest and pulled me close to him, close enough that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. All the wind in the world blew into that gash in the sky. The woman screamed, and her feet lifted up off the earth, light pouring out of her wounds and turning into stars in the darkness, and then she tumbled head over feet through the air and was gone.

  The gash sewed itself back up.

  Naji let me go. I dropped down to the sand, exhausted, and rolled over onto my back to look up at the sky. The light from the stars was dazzling.

  "Who was she?" I asked.

  "Stand up," said Naji. "We shouldn't stay here. It's not safe."

  "You didn't answer my question." But I got back up to my feet, shaking as I did. The woman's light was still on my clothes and skin and knife, although the glow was beginning to fade. Naji reached over and plucked the charm from my neck, and I felt his touch long after he'd slipped the charm back into his cloak.

  "Well?" I said.

  "She's from the Otherworld," said Naji. "She's been chasing after me for some time."

  I stared at him. "Another world?" I asked. "What, like the ice-islands?"

  Naji's head turned in the darkness. He still had on his mask.

  "No," he said. "Not like the ice-islands."

  I waited for an explanation.

  He sighed. "It's a world layered on top of our world. Some call it the Mists."

  "Oh, well that clears everything up." But I remembered the woman refusing to tell me where the green-light portal would send Naji. Elsewhere.

  "I'll explain it to you later. We need to get out of the desert before the fallout takes effect."

  I took fallout to mean the magic-sickness, since even I could feel that prickle in the air that always comes when you use too much magic at once. Mama'd told me stories about how it changes you, since that's all magic is anyway, pure change – she said she knew a dirt-witch who got turned into a pomegranate tree after trying to resurrect her dead husband. And I'd seen clams and ripples of sea-bone sprout out of the side of the Tanarau after Mama used magic in battle.

  Naji turned, cloak swirling around him, and walked in the direction of the city. And cause the air was choking with magic, the sand twisting into figures in the darkness, my own skin crawling over my bones, I followed him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We walked for a long time, the city growing brighter and more distinct on the horizon. Naji didn't talk. I kept trying to think of things to say, and I kept coming up short. Fortunately all that walking warmed me up against the chill of the dusty night wind.

  Naji stopped right outside the desert wall, his cloak rippling and casting slinky shadows across the sand. He pulled his mask away and then turned toward me. He looked like he had been in a fight: blood on his face, ragged cuts on his clothing, scratches in his armor. I realized I probably didn't look much better.

  "Did you have any belongings in your room at the inn?" he said.

  "What?"

  "The Desert Light Inn." He jerked his chin toward the city. "Where you were staying."

  "How did you… Oh." I frowned, wondering if he had ever watched me through the open window without me knowing. "Some spare clothes." I knew better than to tell him about the money. "Why?"

  His face got all intense and he said, "I have to protect you. But I'm afraid you shouldn't stay at that inn any longer. We can find somewhere in the pleasure district."

  I saw where he was going with this. We could rent a room in the pleasure district and the innkeeper would probably take me for a whore or a mistress and not think anything of it. Not that I look like anybody's mistress, but you know – there wouldn't be any questions. If I were just some runaway it'd be the perfect place to hide, because nobody ever looks anybody in the face down there. Unfortunately, the pleasure district was exactly the part of town I might expect to find my parents – or worse, a gang of Hariri crewman.

  Assuming my parents were still in the city at all.

  That thought made me sad. I turned away from Naji so he couldn't see that sadness washing across my face.

  "Collect your things," he said. "I'll wait for you in the alley outside the inn." And he started to dissolve, turning into shadows like the ones I'd seen the first time he attacked me. Just like in the stories. He was halfway disappeared when he turned solid again.

  "What do you want?" I snapped.

  "A word of warning. Don't think you can slip out the back of the inn. I will know."

  "What! I wasn't gonna slip out."

  "I can track you," he said. "And I can bind you to me if necessary."

  "Oh yeah?" I was a little pissed, cause I ain't done nothing to make him think I had any intention of sneaking off. Not while the Hariris were still after me, at any rate. "Why didn't you just do that straightaway? Bind me to you?"

  "Because it's cruel," he said.

  That stunned me, ain't gonna lie. I dug the heel of my left foot into the ground, kicking up a spray of sand, and he gave me a look halfway between a glare and an eye-roll and took to dissolving again. I walked through the desert gate alone, although every now and then I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye, as though he was gliding along beside me.

  My room was just how I left it, my spare dresses draped over the back of the divan, my money still shoved beneath the loose floorboard under the bed. It was like I'd only been out at the night market, not battling some creature from the Mists and picking up an assassin-protector for my trouble.

  Naji was waiting for me in the alley like he said, not as a shadow but as a man, although he'd covered his face again. He looked sinister. At least his eyes weren't glowing.

  "You're too conspicuous," I told him. I handed him one of my dresses, folded up to look like a package. "Here, take this."

  He didn't. "I've been doing this much long
er than you have–"

  "I doubt it. Besides, I bet you always worked alone, didn't you? You could slink around in the shadows, no problem. But now that you got me you have to act like a normal person." I pressed the package against his stomach, and this time he touched his hands gingerly against its sides.

  "What are you giving me?"

  "It's one of my dresses. I don't want to carry it all the way to the pleasure district. Now take off your mask and act like you have a right to be here."

  He stared at me. The glow from the street illuminated the little burst of scarring that peeked up from the top of his mask. Then he handed the dress back and turned into shadow.

  I cursed under my breath. He had disappeared completely from the alley; all the surrounding shadows lay flat and still and unremarkable. I spent a few minutes juggling my dresses, finally tucking two under one arm and one under the other, before stepping out onto the street. Hardly anybody was out, just a few shopkeepers getting everything ready for the start of the day. I nodded at them like it was totally normal for me to be traipsing through the streets in the dark hours before dawn, heading in the direction of the ocean, alone.

  I got to the pleasure district as the sky was turning gray with the day's new light. I ducked into an alley and waited.

  Naji materialized a few moments later.

  "Now what?" I said. "By the way, I should tell you, my parents might be down here. Wouldn't be up at this hour, but you know."

  "Your parents?" He pulled the mask away from his face.

  "Yeah, my parents. Kaol, don't you know?"

  "I obviously don't."

  "I mean, don't you know why you were hired – why the Hariris–"

  "I'm not told the particulars," he said, interrupting me. "Only what's needed for my tracking spells. We need to find a place to stay before the sun comes up. You really should rest."

  "Is that part of your protection deal? Making sure I get enough sleep?"

  He didn't answer, just stepped out onto the street. I hoped he'd pay for the room and I could save my coins for later. That's what Papa would've told me.

  Naji stuck his head back into the alley, looking all angry and put-upon, like I was some little kid he got saddled with. I shuffled out to join him. The pleasure district was mostly full of drunks stumbling home for the night. Nobody paid us any mind.

  We'd been walking for about ten minutes when Naji spoke.

  "Why would your parents be here?"

  I glanced over at him. He had his eyes fixed straight ahead. It was like he didn't want anyone to know we were having a proper conversation.

  "They're pirates," I said. "I told you."

  "You said you were."

  We were close enough to the waterfront that I could smell the salt in the sea, and my stomach twisted up with homesickness, not just for Papa's boat but for the ocean itself.

  "I grew up on a pirate ship," I said. "Looting and pillaging's all I know."

  "How charming. Would your parents take you back if they found you?"

  He didn't sound hopeful when he asked it.

  "What if they did?" I asked. "What would happen to you? Are you seriously telling me you'd have to tag along, just cause of some stupid oath–"

  The expression on his face stopped me cold.

  "You talk too much about things you don't understand," he told me, his voice low and dark. "Come along, the Snake Shade Inn's this way."

  I knew the Snake Shade Inn, but I didn't say nothing. No place in the pleasure district's exactly high class, but the Snake Shade was lower than most of the places there, and my parents generally avoided it when I was in tow. I'd heard stories from the crew, though, mostly about whores they'd met up with there.

  So I probably wasn't going to run into my parents, but if Captain Hariri had dispatched any of his men – maybe. A little shiver of fear eked up my spine, and I snuck a glance at Naji, with his mask and his armor and his black clothes, and wondered if I was gonna need his protection again.

  All around us, the food vendors were opening up their carts for breakfast. Cause it was the pleasure district, there were still drunks dragging themselves around, trying to find a place to sleep off the drinkingsickness. Most of 'em shied away from us, crossing the street and turning their faces away, but I could still hear 'em whispering as me and Naji walked by. It was an uneasy feeling, the way their fear followed us down the street.

  Abruptly, Naji reached up and yanked his mask over his face. He didn't falter or stop walking, but the suddenness of his movement set me on guard.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "We're almost there."

  "That don't answer my question."

  "You're not in danger."

  "Why'd you put your mask on?"

  His eyes darkened and he turned away from me and started walking more quickly, his strides long and brisk. I sighed with irritation and then lagged a little behind him, ambling along, taking my time. He glared at me over his shoulder.

  "What?" I asked. "You said I wasn't in any danger."

  A peal of laughter broke out from the shadows of one of those narrow Lisirran alleys that run like glasscracks between the buildings. A man spilled out of the alley, an old Empire sailor from the looks of the rags he wore. He leaned up against the building and guffawed and then said, "Now this is something I never thought I'd see. A little girl hassling an assassin." He laughed again, snorting like a camel, and then took a long drink from a rum bottle.

  "I ain't a little girl," I said. Naji just glanced at him and kept walking, although I noticed he stuck his hand on the hilt of his sword. I followed after Naji, though I wasn't too worried – it was just some drunk. What else do you expect down here?

  "Why you wearing the mask?" The man tottered forward. "You know you ain't in the desert."

  Naji didn't answer, just stared straight ahead. I found myself hanging back a little, watching the whole thing with interest. You live your whole life with pirates, you start smelling when a fight's brewing.

  "You don't got an answer for me?" the man called out, stumbling after Naji. "Or are them stories true, that they cut out your tongues?" And then the man grabbed Naji by the upper arm. In one clean movement, Naji had the man laid out on the ground, his foot on the man's chest, the point of his sword at the man's throat. I was pretty impressed in spite of myself.

  "No," Naji said, "They don't."

  By this point a crowd had gathered, drunks and sailors and sleepy-looking whores. A few of 'em tittered nervously at that, and Naji looked up at 'em, his dark eyes glittering. They looked away.

  Then the drunk rolled out from under Naji's foot, grabbed him by the ankle, and yanked hard. Naji stumbled a little but managed to catch himself at the last moment. Even though it was a good sight more elegant than most men could do, I was still surprised by that reminder that he really was just a man.

  And then I felt something cold against the side of my neck.

  "Oh, hell," I said, dropping my dresses to the ground.

  "I'll cut your little friend's throat," the man said.

  "How do you like that?" His hands were shaking and his breath stank, and I stood extremely still, my heart pounding. The giddiness of watching a fight got washed out by the fear of actually being in one. I wasn't aware of the gathered crowd no more – the only things I knew were Naji glowering at me and the coldness of the knife and the drunk pressing his body up against me

  Naji took a step forward. The knife dug deeper into my skin.

  "Don't move!" I shrieked. "Please, you'll get me killed!" I tried to make my voice sound as hysterical as I could so the drunk wouldn't notice my hand slipping into the sash of my dress.

  "Aw, you ain't gonna help her?" the man said. "Hoping to find someone prettier?"

  I jabbed my knife into his side. The man howled and fell away from me and I raced over to Naji.

  "Told you I don't need your help."

  Naji glared at me. Then he stalk
ed over to the drunk, who was curled up on the street, one hand pressed against his stomach, redness seeping through his fingers. The crowd was whispering again. Naji reached down and dipped his fingers in the man's blood. The man let out a low, frightened moan.

  Naji started chanting.

  The crowd lurched away, their whispers turning into a terrified babble. Naji's eyes gleamed blue. The man gasped and keened and then his head dropped back and the entire street was full of silence.