Tamas was where I had left him, eyes wide, mouth empty. In his hand was a folded piece of parchment. On the parchment were a seal and a ribbon.
We stayed like that, staring at each other, for a good ten heartbeats. Tamas broke the standoff.
“I-I’m-I’m to wait for a reply.”
“No reply at present.”
“Very good.” And he ran out the door and down the stairs. The parchment floated through the air to land where Tamas had stood.
I don’t think I stopped laughing for five minutes.
The first assassin ever to come after me was a tall fellow who smelled of fish and cheap wine. I was eighteen at the time and stabbed him more out of luck than skill as he tried to garrote me in an alley.
The second Blade had a name: Gray Lark. She had mixed a measure of ground glass into one of my meals. Ironically, it was during a particularly low point in my life, when I was using the smoke. The drug had been more important than food that night, and I ended up giving my plate to another addict. I watched him scream and cough up blood for hours. The next day, I hunted down Gray Lark and force-fed her the same meal. It was the only good the smoke ever did me, and I haven’t touched it since.
The third try was three years ago. His name was Hyrnos, and he tried to put a knife in my back in a dark alley-a traditionalist. The only thing that had saved me was my catching him out of the corner of my eye with my night vision. The running fight we carried out across the ice-slicked roofs of Ildrecca that winter’s eve nearly did us both in. In the end, I stayed on the roofs while he ended up on the street four stories down, but it had been a close thing.
Three months after Hyrnos tried and failed, Alden came after me. It’s strange, having a knife fight in your bedroom with a woman you’ve known for years. I’d always known she was a professional, though, so I couldn’t really hold it against her, even if she was trying to dust me.
Of the four Blades who have come after me, I know one was hired by my sister, and I suspect a second. Both times, I have taken the assassin’s weapons and left them in her bed. Needless to say, this has done nothing to make amends between us.
The reasons behind both attempts were different, but the underlying motive was the same: fear. Christiana fears I will reveal myself and the favors I have done for her in the past and thus ruin her at court. That she is a former courtesan and the widow of a baron means nothing in that world-or rather, if anything, they help her. Status and political influence are measured differently in the Imperial Court, and I don’t pretend to understand the games involved in determining that pecking order. But I do know that, of the many things that can ruin you, bringing in outside influences, especially criminal ones, is tantamount to cutting your political throat. Assuming you get caught at it, of course. But if you do, and your brother is a member of the Kin as well?
Well…
The thing is, despite all our differences and history, I wouldn’t undercut her like that. Family is family. But Christiana can’t understand that, and so we’ve had our differences in the past, the worst being punctuated by my killing someone and delivering the weapons to her chambers.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so vindictive. After all, my first display only made her hire a better assassin the next time around. If I keep this up, she may finally find one good enough to finish the job.
But I do so enjoy teasing my little sister.
I sat on the stoop beside the entrance to the apothecary’s shop and sipped my tea. It was my third cup, and by then the brew had become lukewarm, dark, and bitter despite the honey I had added. It fit my mood.
I set the tea down and took out the message Tamas had brought me.
The paper of Christiana’s letter was of good quality-dry and heavy to the touch. I knew I could sell it to Baldezar, who would happily scrape it down and reuse the sheet-could, but would not. This letter would be put away with all her others, both the pleasant and the vicious, in the hidden compartment at the bottom of my clothes chest.
I read its contents again, then watched the paper as it shivered in the breeze.
A meeting. This evening. She needed to talk to me. Important matters. Her safety at stake.
The usual.
In other words, she needed a favor from her brother, the former burglar. Either that, or she was getting impatient for the forgery I was having done for her.
I ran my finger over the hard wax of the seal on the back of the letter and felt the raised image of her widow’s chop. Audacity there, to display her mark so openly, so proudly, after what she had done to get it. She called me dark, but at least I only killed when it was business. I had liked her husband, Nestor, too.
A body shifted in the doorway behind me. I turned around, found Cosima looking down at me.
“Bad news?” she asked. Then, more mischievously, “Lose your sweetheart?”
I smiled up at the small woman even as I folded Christiana’s letter and slipped it up an unlaced sleeve.
“Left me for a baron. What could he offer her that I can’t?”
“Peace and quiet?” said the apothecary’s wife as she sat down beside me. “Emperor forgive me, I sometimes wish Eppyris would drug those two girls so I could have half a day to myself.”
“I hardly notice them,” I said, just as Renna and Sophia came rushing around the corner and bolted into the house. Renna, the six-year-old, was laughing, but eight-year-old Sophia looked far less amused. The door slammed, followed by shrieks and the sound of feet thumping on wooden floors.
“Liar,” said Cosima. She watched the door until the noises quieted; then she relaxed.
Cosima, with her raven hair, her deep brown eyes, and a face that was a near-perfect mixture of clean planes and sculpted curves, must have been stunning when Eppyris had first married her. Even after two children and years of caring for them and her husband, she still drew looks from men on the street, me included. How Eppyris won her, I have no idea, but her presence in their home has earned the apothecary a fair measure of respect in my eyes. My respect for Cosima herself is without measure.
Today, her hair was tied back, her face flushed, and the front of her apron damp-wash day, then.
“So, was it bad news?” she asked, pointing at the sleeve where I had secreted the letter.
“No more than usual.”
“Who from?”
I met her eyes, but kept silent.
“Fine,” she said. “Be that way.”
“I explained things to you and Eppyris when I moved in.”
“And I didn’t like it then.”
I smiled. This was an old battle between us. Cosima didn’t believe in secrets; I didn’t believe in not keeping them.
“My building, my rules,” I said.
“Humph.”
I’d acquired the two-story brick and timber building a couple of years ago from a Kin named Clyther, along with the note to a loan he held on Eppyris. Clyther hadn’t exactly wanted to sell, but the property and arrangement appealed to me, and I had enough on Clyther to change his mind. Once in, I had forgiven the apothecary’s debt in exchange for a silent partnership in his business and had moved into the rooms upstairs. My plan had been to live here just long enough to ensure I was getting my fair cut of the profits, but, somewhere along the way, things had changed. The three rooms above the shop had become a haven from the street, and Eppyris and his family had become a welcome relief from my gritty nights. My smart investment had managed to become my home.
So much for plans.
Cosima changed tact. “Your washerwoman stopped by earlier with your clothes,” she said.
“I saw them at the foot of the stairs. Thanks.”
“The least you could do is let me bring them up, seeing how you refuse to let me wash them for you.”