The Assassin's Curse (7 page)

  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 stalked 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.

  Naji gathered up my dresses and my knife and handed them to me. "Come," he said, yanking on my shoulder, pulling me away from the scene.

  The crowd let us go.

  "What did you do to that man?" I asked. I tried to pull away from his grip but he wouldn't let go. "Did you suck the soul of his body? Why didn't you just kill him normal?"

  "I didn't kill him at all," Naji snapped. "He'll wake up in an hour."

  We walked the rest of the way in silence. My neck was still bleeding a little from where the knife had pricked it, and I kept wiping at it and looking up at Naji and thinking about the drunk's blood staining his fingers.

  When we arrived at the inn, its main room was mostly empty save for a couple of bedraggled-looking whores and a man I pegged as another pirate by the way he was dressed up in aristocrat's clothes. When Naji walked in, all three of them got to their feet and filed out without saying a word. And the innkeeper got the shakes when Naji told him he wanted a room. He kept glancing over at me, eyes all wide with fear. I wondered if it was cause he'd heard about the fight or cause the innkeep was just terrified of assassins generally.

  "And… and the lady?" he said, stammering. "Will she have her own room?" I wanted to laugh, him calling me a lady when I had blood on my arms and my dress.

  "No," Naji said. "She'll stay with me."

  The innkeeper went pale, like Naji had just produced the ghost of his dead mother or something. He tried to hand over the key to the room and dropped it on the counter instead. I didn't want to laugh anymore. It occurred to me that if this was how people were gonna act every time me and Naji came into a place – well, I could see that getting to be a problem. Maybe Tarrin would meet some pretty Saelini girl and the Hariris would just forget the whole thing and I could slip off when Naji was in one of his trances. Not that I thought any of that would happen.

  Naji finished the transaction and glided over to the stairs. I went up to the counter, leaned over it, and said to the innkeep, "Don't worry, you'll see me again."

  The innkeep's eyes twitched from me to Naji, who was leaning against the doorway and looking annoyed.

  "He won't do nothing," I said, but the innkeeper shook his head.

  "Run," he said, in a hoarse whisper. "Get away. I've seen what his type are capable of – what they'll do to an innocent like you."

  I wondered why the guy thought I was an innocent. Cause I ain't pretty? I decided to give it up then. I obviously wasn't going to sell the poor guy on my safety.

  "Don't feel the need to defend my good reputation," Naji said as we made our way up the stairs to the room, out of earshot of the innkeep. "I don't have one."

  "Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "Did you want me to act like your prisoner or something? Slip him a note to send for help?"

  "Please don't do that."

  "What'd he think you were going to do to me anyway?"

  Naji opened up the door to the room. It was smaller than the room I'd had on the edge of the city, and not nearly as clean. I thought of all the Confederation scummies that had passed through here and shuddered.

  Besides which, there was only one bed.

  "Blood magic, probably," Naji said, and I shut my trap at that, because I'd just seen how that part of the assassin stories was true and blood magic ain't nothing to mess with. Even Mama had warned me off it, before it became apparent my talents lie elsewhere.

  "You can sleep on the bed," Naji said. "And you should sleep." He gave me a look like he expected me to sass him. When I didn't, he said, "And no, it's not because of the, ah, the oath. It's because I need you alert tomorrow night."

  "What for?"

  "I have some things I'll need you to fetch for me, so I can determine what we should do next."

  He didn't expand on that, and I figured tomorrow I could make a case for our next step to involve convincing the Hariris not to kill me. I was awful tired, to be sure. I'd hardly realized it until we got to the room. Likely still running on the energy from the fight, the way you do during those sea-battles that go on for days and days. I collapsed down on top of the bed, not even giving any thought to the last time the sheets might have been washed. And, like any good pirate, I fell asleep immediately.

 
 
 

I slept straight on through till nightfall, and when I woke up my entire body ached so bad I could hardly push myself off the bed. Naji was sitting over in the corner, his eyes glowing. I waved my hands in front of him a couple of times and when he didn't so much as twitch I went ahead and peeled off my dress, stiff with sweat and blood and sand, and put on a fresh one. I transferred the bag of coins into my new dress. Just cause he was protecting me didn't mean he wouldn't steal from me.

  Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for a few minutes. He didn't come out of his trance.

  "Hey," I shouted. "Sure would be easy for me to sneak out on you right now."

  That did it. The glow went out of his eyes and he stood up, unfolding himself gracefully like the fight hadn't affected him at all.

  "Not as easy as you would think." He had taken off his armor and his cloak while I slept, and his arms were covered in strange, snaky tattoos the same iceglacier blue his eyes got whenever he settled into a trance. He didn't say nothing, though I know he saw me looking at them.

  He walked across the narrow width of the room, to the rickety old table where he'd draped his cloak, and began to rummage through it.

  "I'm hungry."

  "I'm sure you can get something downstairs."

  "I don't have no money," I said, trying my hand.

  "Nonsense." He peered over his shoulder at me. His hair fell in dark ribbons over his forehead, and I felt silly for noticing. "You have a pouch of pressed metal in your pocket."

  Immediately, I forgot his hair. "How do you know that?"

  He smiled, touched one hand to his chest in the manner of the desertlands, that gesture that's supposed to stand in for an answer you don't want to give. Then he said, "I would like you to go to the night market for me. I'll give you money for that, but I expect you to return with everything I request. And I will bind you to me if I feel it's necessary."

  I scowled at him. "You can't go to the night market yourself?"

  "No vendor would sell to me." He didn't look at me when he spoke. I got a weird feeling in my stomach, thinking about the innkeep from the night before, and blood magic I'd seen Naji perform out on the street. The threat of Naji tying me to him.

  "What exactly are you going to do?" I said. "With the, ah, the things from the–"

  "Nothing that'll hurt you." He pulled out a stack of pressed metal, gold and silver both and worth much more than what I had in my pouch. I took a more or less involuntary step forward, trying to see where he'd yanked them from. One glare stopped me.

  "And what about the Mists lady?" I asked. "Don't you think she might come back after me?"

  "No." But there was a gap in his voice, some information he was leaving out.

  "You don't think she's going to try again?"

  "Not her, no."

  "But someone."

  Naji rubbed his head. "They won't come after you," he said.

  "They came after me before."

  "No, you happened to stumble across them. It's not the same thing."

  I watched him, trying to decide if I wanted to tell him that I didn't get the sense that I'd stumbled across anything. I'd almost made the decision to say something when he turned away from me and said, "Run downstairs and ask the innkeeper to borrow some paper and ink."

  "You don't need to write it down. I'll remember." I tapped the side of my head. My stomach rumbled.

  When I didn't move he glared at me again, and I did as he asked. It was a different innkeep from the one who tried to convince me I was about to die. Too bad. I kind of wanted to reassure the poor bastard, or at least see the expression on his face when he saw I wasn't dead.

  The new innkeep gave me the paper and the ink without too much fuss, though he said he'd charge me if I didn't bring the ink down after I finished with it. I waved him off and then bounded back upstairs. The smell of food rolling in from the kitchen, spicy and warm and rich, made my mouth water. That didn't incline me toward screwing around with Naji just cause it would annoy him. The sooner he got me his list, the sooner I got to eat.

  Unfortunately, he took his time writing it out. He had this special quill that he produced from out of his robes, long and thin and the kind of black that sucks the color out of everything. I sat down on the bed while he puzzled over his list, scratching things out, shaking his head, muttering to himself.

  "I'm hungry," I said.

  "So am I," he said. "But this is far more important than either of our appetites at the moment." He held the list at arm's length, squinting a little in the lamplight. Then he pressed it up against the wall and wrote one more thing.

  "There," he said. "That should be it."

  I jumped off the bed and snatched it out of his hand and scanned over his sharp, spiny handwriting. It was all in Empire, and most of the items were plants. Rose petals, rue, dried wisteria vines. Soil-magic stuff.