The Assassin's Curse (12 page)

  Then one of the machines opened up, its top peeling away like a lemon. More smoke poured into the air. I promptly forgot about Naji.

  I used his sword to cut my dress away above the knee so I wouldn't trip on the skirt. Then I held the sword up the way Papa'd taught me a long time ago.

  A figure dropped down to the sand.

  A man.

  Tarrin of the Hariri.

  I gasped and faltered, stepping back without meaning to, but I didn't lower my sword. My thoughts felt like poison, turning me to stone out there in the light and smoke of those horrible machines. The Hariris. How long had they been tracking us across the desert? How long had they had this kind of magic at their disposal?

  Tarrin was all decked out like a Qilari noble, the long coat and the knee-high boots and everything. He slipped off his hat as he walked up to me, clutching it next to his heart. His handsome face didn't fit the backdrop, all that dark smoke.

  "We don't have to fight," he said.

  "You sent an assassin to kill me!"

  Tarrin's expression darkened. "No, I didn't. My parents did. I warned you."

  My heart pounded hard and fast inside my chest. Sweat rolled down my back. I hardly noticed the heat, though. I didn't allow myself to. Part of me wanted to attack Tarrin then and there, just lay into him, even though it wasn't the nicest thing in the world to attack a man not holding out a weapon, but then I remembered Naji told me not to do nothing foolish. Laying into Tarrin, what with those machines backing him up? I wouldn't call it foolish, but I knew Naji would.

  "Besides, he hasn't killed you yet," Tarrin said.

  "Trust me, I noticed."

  Tarrin frowned. "Mistress Tanarau, my parents are willing to give you one more chance. I talked them into it. Father lent me his landships and everything."

  "That's what those are?" I squinted up at them, gleaming bright in the sun. Landships? Of all the abominable things.

  "Please, just come back with me to Lisirra. We can get married on my ship – the wedding sails are still up – and if you come back as my betrothed, Father will let me fly his colors." He smiled at me, as dazzling as the machines behind him.

  I thought about it. I really did. Marriage was still the furthest thing from what I wanted, and I didn't even know what I wanted. But it would have made things easier, to climb aboard one of those creaking monsters and let Tarrin whisk me back to sea, away from the sand and the dry desert heat. There was an appeal to it, is what I'm saying.

  I lowered the sword, and let it hang at my side. My arms ached from holding it up over my head, and besides, I wanted to seem as unthreatening as possible when I asked what I had to ask.

  "Could Naji come with us?"

  Tarrin scrunched up his face. It made him look prissy. "Who's Naji?"

  "My traveling companion."

  Tarrin got this look liked I'd suggested we share a bowl of scorpions. "What? The assassin? Why would he come with us?"

  "Look, I ain't too happy about it neither, but I can't just leave him."

  "Of course you can."

  I frowned. I thought about Naji screaming in pain when I tried to walk out of the Snake Shade Inn. What would've happened if I kept going? That scream was the scream of a dying man.

  "It won't be forever," I said. "Just until we can get him cured."

  "Cured? What are you talking about?"

  "He got this curse on account of me, and until he finds the cure I pretty much have to stay around him. It won't be that big a deal. Just lock him in the brig."

  "Are you insane? Do you have any idea what he does?"

  "Kill people for money? Come on, you'd do it too if the price was high enough."

  Tarrin scowled. "That's not what I was talking about." He lowered his voice. "You haven't dealt with the assassins the way my family has. They're dark. The magic they use – it isn't right. Isn't natural."

  "Haven't dealt with them? What do you call walking across the desert for two weeks with one? He wouldn't use magic on your boat, I'm sure of it. Just as long we helped him cure his curse–"

  Tarrin crossed his arms over his chest and puffed himself up, like I was some recalcitrant crewman he needed to order down. "I can't have something like that on my ship. The brig wouldn't contain him, not with his magic. We spill one drop of blood up on deck and he'd be commandeering the boat–"

  "Yeah, to get a cure for his curse."

  "Please, mistress!" He threw his hands up in the air. "Just leave the assassin in the desert."

  "Why don't you just let him onboard? He ain't as dangerous as you're saying. If anything he'll keep the boat safe."

  "You don't really believe that, do you?"

  "Course I believe it. Why won't you believe me?"

  Tarrin sighed. "It's not that I don't believe you, it's that you're wrong, because you simply don't know what the assassins are like."

  "Oh, just stop!" I snapped. "Why would I want to marry someone who won't even listen to me?"

  Tarrin's face went pale. "Are you telling me no?"

  "I guess I am. Maybe you could take this as a lesson, and treat your next lady with more respect."

  "No, no, you don't understand." Tarrin shook his head wildly. "I have to come back with you as my betrothed, or as a corpse. It's the only way I'll get the colors…"

  I stared at him, ice curling around my spine.

  "I have my crew waiting," he said, jerking his head back toward the machines. "Our crew, if you'd just come back with me."

  "And if I don't?"

  Tarrin's face twisted up. "I want those colors, Mistress Tanarau."

  "Well, I want a ship of my own, not yours. So I guess we're at an impasse here." I lifted the sword again.

  Tarrin glared at me and reached for his own sword. I never did fight him, though, because light exploded out of the black smoke, a great blinding sphere of it, strong enough that it knocked me back into the sand and momentarily blinded me. Knocked over Tarrin, too, and he stretched out beside me, blood seeping out from a cut on his head – he'd hit a rock when he went down.

  "Shit!" I scrabbled over to him, dragging my sword. He turned his head toward me, blinked his eyes a few times.

  "As my betrothed," he choked out, and I saw the movement in his arms that meant he wasn't as hurt as he seemed, that he'd figured me soft enough to come coo over him while he went for a knife. "Or as a corpse."

  It happened fast. He jumped to his feet and yanked the knife out from under his coat. But I knew it was coming – it was one of the oldest tricks in the Confederation, and one Papa had warned me against when I was a kid. I plunged the sword into Tarrin's belly. Blood poured out over the sand, and he gave me this expression of shock and dismay and for a moment I just stared at him, shaking. I'd been in sea-battles before, but this felt different somehow. It was too close, and Tarrin was someone that I knew.

  "I had to," I told him, but it was too late.

  I gathered up my courage and whirled around to face the machine, cause I knew that, by killing Tarrin, I'd changed everything. And I was right.

  First thing I saw was the crew clambering down a sleek metal folding ladder, brandishing their swords and their pistols – cause of course a fancy clan like the Hariris would have gotten their greedy hands on some hand cannons. Shit.

  Second thing I saw was Naji, screaming words I didn't understand, his eyes like two stars.

  Third thing was Naji's twin, a man in a cloak and carved armor, galloping through the smoke on a horse as black as night.

  Those three things, they were all I needed to see. I lifted up my sword and screamed words of my own, all my rage and fear and shame at having killed Tarrin.

  Then I ran into the fight.

 
 
 

The Hariri crew were terrible shots with the pistols – it helped that the black smoke crowded in around us, blurring the fight and making everything hard to see. I angled myself toward one of the shooting men, running fast as I could, dodging sword swipes. One man came barreling up to me and I stuck out my foot and tripped him. They never expect that.

  A bullet whizzed past my head, close enough I could feel its heat, and I spun to face my attacker. Spotted her just as she was shoving in powder for another shot, and I dove forward, slicing across her leg. She screamed, dropped the pistol. I grabbed it and crouched down in the sand to finish packing off the shot. Stupid things ain't worth the trouble in this sort of fight, honestly.

  There was another boom across the desert, another flash of light: a pillar this time, shooting up toward the sky. Everyone hit the ground but me since I was already there, giving me enough of an advantage that I was able to jump to my feet a few seconds faster. I tucked the pistol into the sash of my dress and ran toward Naji cause I didn't know what else to do, now that I was matched in my weapons.

  A couple of shots fired out but none of 'em hit me. Naji was crouched on the ground next to that black horse. Its rider was gone, and the horse chuffed at the sand. When I got up next to Naji he looked like he wanted to tell me to get away, but I spoke up first.

  "We need a plan," I said.

  "What?"

  The other assassin appeared out of the cloud of smoke, limping a little, and the Hariri crew had recovered from the blast and were all aiming right for me, so I pushed myself away and fired the gun into the crowd. Somebody screamed. I threw the gun as far away from the fight as I could, since I didn't have no bullets and I didn't want one of the Hariri crew to reload it and shoot me with it. I lunged forward, whirling the sword, knocking at people rather than cutting if I could, and tripping 'em too, and praying to every god and goddess of the sea that not one of those bullets would make contact.

  Another blast of light, and we all got flung to the ground again, even me. It knocked my wits out for a few seconds, and when I managed to get back up, some burly scoundrel was on me with a big twohanded sword, and I had to fight him off, plus another lady with a pair of knives. Got myself cut a couple of times, on the arm and in the side, nothing major. But I did wonder about Naji, if that hurt him, if it was hurting him worse than it hurt me.

  I managed to get another pistol, same way as the last – by sneaking up and slicing and stealing. But I was getting real tired, every muscle in my body aching, and the crewmen kept coming, mean and devoted, and I kept thinking about Tarrin bleeding out on the sand.

  Naji screamed my name.

  The sound of it chilled me to the bone, despite the heat from the sun and the battle. I froze in the middle of the melee, sword halfway to some guy's gut, and it took the pop of a pistol a few feet away to get me moving.

  He sounded like he was dying.

  I pushed off through the crowd, ducking low into the smoke. Naji was sprawled out on the ground, white as death, face all wrenched up in agony. I crouched next to him, pistol drawn. The smoke swirled around us, cloaking us, which was a relief even if it set me to coughing.

  "I can't…" He gasped, pulling in a long breath. "Help…" Blood bubbled up out of his lips.

  "Ain't enough time for you to say what you've got to say," I told him and immediately set to looking for the wound. "Where's the other guy? Keep it short."

  "Dead."

  "That's something." He was bleeding from his chest, from underneath his otherwise untouched armor. A magic-wound. Shit.

  A figure pushed through the smoke, sword glinting. I fired off the pistol before he could get close to us. The figure dropped to the sand.

  I knew we couldn't stay here, Naji and me. All the magic he'd been using had drained him dry, and me trying to stave off an entire ship's worth of crew just sent him spiraling into more pain.

  Think like a pirate, I told myself. Think like Papa.

  Ain't no shame in running from a losing battle, he told me once. Better that than dead.

  "You have to get up," I said to Naji, tugging on him as I did. "You have to get up and get on that horse."

  He nodded and pushed himself up about halfway.

  The smoke had begun to clear, webbing out, revealing patches of white sky. Revealing more Hariri crew.

  "Hurry!" I said. "I got to fight 'em off and if that hurts you–"

  He wasn't standing. He'd dipped his fingers into the blood in his chest and was drawing a symbol in the sand.

  "Get on the horse, Naji!"

  "Protection," he croaked, and then he started muttering, and his eyes glowed sickly and pale, and the crew was descending on us, and I knew I had to fight. So I jumped to my feet and dove in, ignoring the pain in my body and the ache in the back of my throat that meant I needed water. And most of all I ignored the groans from Naji, cause I knew I was hurting him, but what choice did I have?

  And then he said my name again. And he was on the horse.

  I knew it was stupid, me right in the middle of battle like that, but I could've wept, seeing Naji slumped over that horse's back. I raced over and scrambled up to join him, wedging myself in front of Naji so I could take the horse's reins. Naji snaked his arms around my waist, pressed his head into my shoulder, and I dug my feet in the horse's side.

  The horse galloped over the sand. Every part of my body hurt. Naji's breath was hot and moist against the back of my neck, even through the fabric of his mask, and it reassured me, it let me know he was still alive.

  I rode the horse out of the smoke and craned my neck back up at the sky. The sun was nestled over in the western corner. Naji moaned something. I twisted the reins, sent the horse running off to the southeast.

  Naji moaned into my neck for about five or ten minutes, and when he stopped I realized no one was following us. I halted the horse and turned him around. The desert was empty save for us. The cloud of black smoke stretched out over the horizon, a long ways a way.