The Assassin's Curse

  Incense means a temple, and the temples are always open for prayers and sanctuary. Figured the priestess wouldn't mind giving me directions, neither.

  I followed the incense for a few minutes, losing it on the wind and then finding it again, until I came across a little temple wedged up between a key-maker's shop and the office of a court magician. The lamps over the door burned golden with magic, and when I stepped inside, the light had a gilded quality that reminded me of the evening sun. There wasn't nobody praying at any of the portraits, but a priestess stepped out of the archway, her sacred jewelry chiming as she moved.

  "You look like you belong to the sea," she said, slipping languidly into the light. Priestesses always talk like that, like everything they say has got to be poetry.

  "That's right," I told her. "And I need to get back to it. Can you tell me the way to the docks?"

  She gave me a disapproving smile. "You mean the night market?"

  "No, I mean the docks. I gotta meet someone there."

  "Why don't you ask the gods for help?"

  Hell and sea salt. Figured I'd get a priestess who took her duties seriously.

  "The gods like to take their time answering, and I need to get back straightaway."

  She looked almost amused, but she handed me an incense stick and swept her arm out over the temple. I sighed and followed the line of portraits till I came to one of Kaol, the goddess of tides and typhoons, and the one who's said to watch over pirates. I lit the incense with the little white candle burning beneath her portrait, knelt down, breathed in the smoky sweetness, muttered something about having lost my way, and then stood up and looked expectantly at the priestess.

  "Kaol doesn't usually answer requests," the priestess said. "You'd have done better to pray to E'mko." She pointed at the portrait hanging beside Kaol's, and where Kaol's ocean was darkness and chaos, a gray spitting storm and jagged scars of lightning, E'mko's was calm, flat, and dull, his benevolent eyes gazing down on his petitioners.

  "Ain't a sailor," I said. "E'mko's for sailors."

  The priestess tilted her head at me. "Are you a pirate?"

  I shrugged. "I told you, I just need to be down at the docks."

  "So you did. Kaol will help pirates." She smiled. "When the prayer finishes, we'll see if she answers."

  I sighed again and knelt down beside Kaol's portrait to wait for the incense to burn away – for the prayer to finish, as the priestess had said. I wasn't sure about the gods, since they didn't do much to make themselves known, but Papa used to swear that Kaol always looked out for her children, and that was why a pirate ship could sail through a typhoon unharmed when a navy boat couldn't.

  When the last of the incense burned up, I found myself holding my breath, half-expecting to hear a voice like thunder telling me the way back to the docks. Instead the priest took me by the hand and pulled me to my feet and said, "Follow the street until it deadends, then turn right. You'll be able to hear the sea."

  I scowled at her. "You couldn't have just told me that?"

  "I didn't," she said. "Kaol did."

  I didn't believe that for a second, but I thanked her anyway and then rushed out onto the street. I'd one more thing to buy – swamp yirrus – and no idea where to find it. Maybe I shoulda prayed to Kaol to help me find that, as well.

  The priestess's directions were good, at any rate, and soon as I heard the sea at the dead-end I followed the sound of it to the docks, and then I made way back to the night market. At the first vendor I came across, I asked after the swamp yirrus, but she shook her head.

  "Don't got anything like that, I'm afraid," she said. I must've looked disappointed, cause she leaned in close to me and whispered, "There's a new stall down near Lady Sea Salt's brothel. He might have it." She straightened up and tilted her head back toward the city. "He's set up next to a lemon tree, and he usually has a gray horse tied up with his things."

  I thanked her and set off. The crowds thinned out some, and a wind blew in from the desert, cold and dry as dust. Everybody seemed to huddle up inside of themselves, even the vendors. But then I spotted the lemon tree, twisted and bent with the direction of the wind. And the gray horse, just like the lady had said. It snorted at me as I walked up.

  The vendor had his back turned. The wind toyed with the fabric of his cloak, and even after I cleared my throat a few time, he didn't look up. Eventually, I said, "Excuse me!" I felt like I had to shout to be heard over the wind.

  "Yes, my dear?" He glanced at me over his shoulder. "You look a long way from home."

  He said it kindly, but it still left me unnerved. How could some street vendor at a Lisirran night market know my home from anyone else on the street?

  "Uh, I'm looking for swamp yirrus," I said. "Lady on the docks said you'd have it."

  The vendor turned around, and my whole body froze up immediately. He had the same gray-stone eyes the woman at the dress shop had had. I might've chalked it up to a coincidence except looking at his eyes got me dizzy, like all I could see was that gray.

  "Got one left," he said. He gave me a big dazzling smile. "I'll knock the price down some, too. Looks like you've amassed quite a collection of supplies there." He nodded at my sacks filled with Naji's stuff.

  I didn't say anything. I couldn't stop shaking. There was nothing sinister about him, none of the warning signs Papa always told me to look out for. Except for those damn eyes.

  "This is awfully advanced for someone like you, though," he added. "Someone so young."

  "I'm an apprentice," I spat out.

  He nodded and turned back to his jars and tins. "Give me just one moment…"

  I didn't. I turned and hauled off down the windy street fast as I could, my dress flying out behind me, my hair whipping into my face. The bags of plants banged up against my hip.

  I ran till I felt safe, and that meant getting out of the night market completely. I collapsed on a curb outside a drinkhouse, the scent of smoke and strong coffee drifting out into the night. Men laughed over some jangly music. A woman sang an old song I half-recognized. I figured Naji would let me have it for not getting everything on his list, but at least I hadn't spent all his money, and I had good reason.

  Those gray eyes. I couldn't stop thinking about them, looming clear and steady in front of me, drawing me in. To the Otherworld. The Mists. I couldn't picture it, a world layered on top of ours, but something about the woman at the dress shop and the man at the stall wasn't human. Naji was a bit spooky, but I could see how he was a man. Those two – it wasn't just the eyes. It was the way looking at 'em made me feel like a mouse surrounded by snakes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It took some time for my nerves to smooth over, but I dragged myself up to standing and worked my way back to the inn. The innkeep from the night before was at the counter, and his eyes widened when he saw me, and he ducked into the room behind the counter. I was too shaken up to take any joy from it.

  Naji was sitting on the bed when I walked in, scrawling out something on a piece of thin-pressed paper. He had his thumb and forefinger pinched against his nose, but once I closed the door he dropped his hand to the table and let out this weird, contented sigh, like he was finally sitting down after a long day's journey. I didn't much know what to make of it.

  His tattoos glowed, almost enough to cast light of their own. He went back to writing.

  "Did you find everything? You were gone longer than I expected."

  "Everything but the swamp yirrus." My throat felt strange when I said it, dry and scratchy.

  He didn't stop writing. "Why not? The waterfront night market here is supposed to be indefatigable in its supply of nefarious properties."

  It took me a second to realize he was making a joke, but I wasn't in much of a joking mood.

  "Well?" He lifted his head and squinted at me. "Why didn't you get the swamp yirrus?"

  "I brought you your money." I reached into my pocket and pulled out the last of the pressed gold pieces and tossed them
on the bed. Naji stared at them. They glimmered in the light of the lamp flickering on the bedside table. Then he looked back up at me, and I could feel him studying my face, trying to get an answer out of me that way.

  I realized there wasn't no reason to lie to him. Not about this.

  "The one vendor selling it had gray eyes," I said. Naji didn't react at all, just listened to me. "The same as the woman from before. The one who–"

  "So you didn't want to buy from him."

  I shook my head. "Gave me the creeping shivers. I'm real sorry. But if a girl don't have her intuition, she don't got anything. That's what my Papa taught me."

  "Sounds like a wise man, even if he was a pirate." Naji sighed. "Did the vendor… react to you in anyway? Mutter anything? Hum?"

  "Act like he was casting a spell, you mean? No." I shrugged. "He did say I seemed a long way from home, which worried me a bit. That was before I saw his eyes. In every other way he seemed normal, like I was just some customer."

  Naji nodded. "You did the right thing. They certainly sent him to try to find us." He paused. "I'm glad to see you didn't take off my charm just to spite me. He would have recognized you otherwise."

  My hand went up to my neck, to the strip of worn leather. I'd forgotten I was even wearing it.

  "I'll take that back now, by the way," Naji said. "I'm going to make you one of your own, so you can stop borrowing mine."

  I slipped the charm off my neck and the air in the room felt different, darker, like the lamp magic had started to run out. Naji slipped the charm back into his robe and went back to writing. I hated to see it disappear.

  "What did you need the swamp yirrus for?" I asked. "Was it important?"

  "Everything on that list was important," Naji said. His pitch quill scratched across the paper. "But I can make do."

  I wanted to sit down, but it seemed weird to sit on the bed next to Naji. So I made a place for myself on the floor and watched him write. When he finished he tucked the quill back into his robes and read over the sheet one last time. Then he started rifling through the bags, pulling out the wisteria vines and the rose petals.

  "You don't have to watch me do this," he said, laying everything out on the bed.

  Ain't no way I was ditching the inn after the run-in with Gray Eyes at the market, and downstairs there wasn't nothing but drunks and whores, and I wasn't of a mind to deal with either.

  "I'd rather stay, if it's no trouble to you," I said.

  He glanced at me. The scars made his face unreal, like a mask, but I didn't mind looking at him.

  "You might find this unsettling."

  I shrugged. Naji picked up the wisteria vine and started braiding the pieces together, threading in the rose petals and strips of acacia leaves. He chanted in that language of his while he worked. The room got darker and darker and his tattoos glowed brighter and brighter. I recognized some of what he was doing as dirt magic – the chanting over dead leaves and the like – but those tattoos and the darkness weren't like nothing Mama ever taught me.

  Naji set the charm down on the bed. He reached into his cloak and pulled out that mean-looking knife from earlier, and then, so quick I hardly had time to realize what he was doing, he drew the knife over the palm of his hand. Blood pooled up in a line across his skin. He tilted his hand over the charm and dropped the blood a bit at a time into the twist of wisteria vines.

  His tattoos glowed so bright the whole room was blue.

  He stopped speaking and squeezed his palm shut. His tattoos went back to normal. Then the whole room went back to normal, though I could still smell blood, steely and sharp, hanging on the air.

  He dabbed at his palm with a handkerchief, not looking at me.

  The sight of blood ain't anything to get me worked up, but the idea of using blood in magic – Mama had told me it was a dark thing to do, and dangerous, though she'd made it sound like blood-magic always used someone else's blood, not the magician's. She always said it was the magic of violence.

  "I want to apologize," Naji said. He slid off the bed, the charm resting in the palm of his hand. "I didn't want to bring ack'mora into this–"

  "What's ack'mora?"

  He looked down at the charm. "What you would call blood magic. I didn't want to use it, but without the swamp yirrus…" His voice trailed off. He shoved the charm at me. "This is for you. Please wear it at all times."

  He sounded more formal than usual, like he was nervous. Weird that he should be more nervous than me. But I took the charm from him anyway and ripped a strip of fabric off one of my scarves so I could tie it around my neck. The sense of protection that wrapped around me was warm and thick, like blood.

  "I've never seen anyone mix 'em up like that," I said. Naji had walked back over to the bed and was cleaning off the space. He looked over at me when I spoke. His face was pale, drawn, in a way it hadn't been a few minutes ago.

  "Mix them up?" he said.

  "Yeah, dirt magic and blood magic. Uh, ack'mora."

  "Yes," he said. "I do combine them sometimes. I learned some – what did you call it? Dirt magic? – from my mother."

  "You have a mother!" I didn't mean to blurt it out like that, but the idea of him coming from somewhere was too bizarre.

  "Of course I had a mother." He scowled and yanked the uman flower out of the bag.

  It took me a minute to realize he'd switched into the past tense. "I'm sorry," I said, and I really did feel bad about it. "It's just – you're an assassin, and I didn't think–"

  "I had a mother before I went to the Order," he said stiffly. He obviously didn't want to talk about it. "I thought you'd prefer a charm born of the earth and not me, but, well, I had to make do."

  I thought that a weird way for him to say it, a charm born of me, like he'd hacked off part of himself and handed it over.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "You're welcome," he said, and he actually bowed at me a little. Not a full bow, just a tilt of the head, but I got real warm and looked down at my hands. I was very much aware of that charm pressing against my skin, soft as a lover's touch.

  "This next spell is a bit more involved, I'm afraid." He was laying out the rest of the stuff I'd bought for him, the powders and the uman flower. "I'll be stepping out of myself for some time. I have questions that need answering." A long pause, like he expected me to say something. "You really don't have to stay. It's… Well, I'm doing something very rare, full ack'mora – I wouldn't expect…" He straightened up, ran one hand through his tangled-up hair. "Though I ask that you stay in the hotel. My… oath. I'm not sure what would happen to me if you got caught up in danger while I'm away."

  All that talking, and the only thing I could say in response was, "Away?"

  He nodded.

  "The Mists?"

  "Curses, no." He shook his head. "We call it Kajjil – there's no translation."

  "But it's a place?"

  He stopped messing with the powder vials on the bed and looked me hard in the eye. "I'm not allowed to discuss it with outsiders," he said, and I understood that well enough, being a daughter of the Pirates' Confederation and all.

  I used the language of pirates to tell him I understood, which was a joke, because I knew there wasn't no way for him to know what it meant. But he kind of half-smiled at me, not with his mouth but with the skin around his eyes, and got to work.

  This one was a lot weirder to watch, cause it wasn't nothing like the bits of magic I'd dabbled in before. Most of it centered on the uman flower. He spent awhile mixing up pinches and shakes of the powders I'd brought him, in some big clay bowl that looked like it'd come from the inn's kitchen. Then he set the uman flower on the floor and cast a big circle around it with the powders. The knife came out again, only this time he cut along one of the tattoos on his arm, and he splashed the blood onto the circle, right on the floor like we weren't in an inn.

  He said some words and then he sung some words and then he stepped inside the circle, and everything got real screw
y.

  The room fell dark, first off, even though the lamp was still flickering over in the corner. It just didn't cast no light. Neither did Naji's tattoos, which had taken to glowing as well. It was like the darkness was so thick it swallowed up any kind of brightness.

  So all I could see of Naji were the swirls of blue on his arms, and the two blue dots of his eyes. And his singing got louder, and I smelled blood again, so strong it was like I had it running down my face, and I actually wiped at my cheeks, trying to get it off. But there wasn't nothing there, and after that I only got the medicine scent of Naji's magic, the one like a physician about to do you wrong.

  Then the uman flower lit up, too, and it started writhing around, and another voice added itself to Naji's, one that was not human. Raspy and animalistic, more like. And the uman flower kept swaying and twisting, dancing like Princess Luni in that old story, the one where she dances herself to death.