"Do you care to prove it?"
"Your Excellency, I humbly entreat only the opportunity." Morveer swept out another bow. It was his considered opinion that one could never bow too much to men of Orso's stamp, though he did reflect that persons of huge ego were a great drain on the patience of bystanders.
"Then here it is. Kill Monzcarro Murcatto. Kill Nicomo Cosca. Kill Countess Cotarda of Affoia. Kill Duke Lirozio of Puranti. Kill First Citizen Patine of Nicante. Kill Chancellor Sotorius of Sipani. Kill Grand Duke Rogont, before he can be crowned. Perhaps I will not have Styria, but I will have revenge. On that you can depend."
Morveer had been warmly smiling as the list began. By its end he was smiling no longer, unless one could count the fixed rictus he maintained across his trembling face only by the very greatest of efforts. It appeared his bold gambit had spectacularly oversucceeded. He was forcibly reminded of his attempt to discomfort four of his tormentors at the orphanage by placing Lankam salts in the water, which had ended, of course, with the untimely deaths of all the establishment's staff and most of the children too.
"Your Excellency," he croaked, "that is a significant quantity of murder."
"And some fine names for your little list, no? The rewards will be equally significant, on that you can rely, will they not, Master Sulfur?"
"They will." Sulfur's eyes moved from his fingernails to Morveer's face. Different-coloured eyes, Morveer now noticed, one green, one blue. "I represent, you see, the Banking House of Valint and Balk."
"Ah." Suddenly, and with profound discomfort, Morveer placed the man. He had seen him talking with Mauthis in the banking hall in Westport but a few short days before he had filled the place with corpses. "Ah. I really had not the slightest notion, you understand…" How he wished now that he had not killed Day. Then he could have noisily denounced her as the culprit and had something tangible with which to furnish the duke's dungeons. Fortunately, it seemed Master Sulfur was not seeking scapegoats. Yet.
"Oh, you were but the weapon, as you say. If you can cut as sharply on our behalf you have nothing to worry about. And besides, Mauthis was a terrible bore. Shall we say, if you are successful, the sum of one million scales?"
"One… million?" muttered Morveer.
"There is nothing that lives that cannot be deprived of life." Orso leaned forwards, eyes fixed on Morveer's face. "Now get about it!"
Night was falling when they came to the place, lamps lit in the grimy windows, stars spilled out across the soft night sky like diamonds on a jeweller's cloth. Shenkt had never liked Affoia. He had studied there, as a young man, before he ever knelt to his master and before he swore never to kneel again. He had fallen in love there, with a woman too rich, too old and far too beautiful for him, and been made a whining fool of. The streets were lined not only with old pillars and thirsty palms, but with the bitter remnants of his childish shame, jealousy, weeping injustice. Strange, that however tough one's skin becomes in later life, the wounds of youth never close.
Shenkt did not like Affoia, but the trail had led him here. It would take more than ugly memories to make him leave a job half-done.
"That is the house?" It was buried in the twisting backstreets of the city's oldest quarter, far from the thoroughfares where the names of men seeking public office were daubed on the walls along with their great qualities and other, less complimentary words and pictures. A small building, with slumping lintels and a slumping roof, squeezed between a warehouse and a leaning shed.
"That's the house." The beggar's voice was soft and stinking as rotten fruit.
"Good." Shenkt pressed five scales into his scabby palm. "This is for you." He closed the man's fist around the money then held it with his own. "Never come back here." He leaned closer, squeezed harder. "Not ever."
He slipped across the cobbled street, over the wall before the house. His heart was beating unusually fast, sweat prickling his scalp. He crept across the overgrown front garden, old boots finding the silent spaces between the weeds, and to the lighted window. Reluctant, almost afraid, he peered through. Three children sat on a worn red carpet beside a small fire. Two girls and a boy, all with the same orange hair. They were playing with a brightly painted wooden horse on wheels. Clambering onto it, pushing each other around on it, pushing each other off it, to faint squeals of amusement. He squatted there, fascinated, and watched them.
Innocent. Unformed. Full of possibilities. Before they began to make their choices, or had their choices made for them. Before the doors began to close, and sent them down the only remaining path. Before they knelt. Now, for this briefest spell, they could be anything.
"Well, well. What have we here?"
She was crouching above him on the low roof of the shed, her head on one side, a line of light from a window across the way cutting hard down her face, strip of spiky red hair, red eyebrow, narrowed eye, freckled skin, corner of a frowning mouth. A chain hung gleaming down from one fist, cross of sharpened metal swinging gently on the end of it.
Shenkt sighed. "It seems you have the better of me."
She slid from the wall, dropped to the dirt and thumped smoothly down on her haunches, chain rattling. She stood, tall and lean, and took a step towards him, raising her hand.
He breathed in, slow, slow.
He saw every detail of her face: lines, freckles, faint hairs on her top lip, sandy eyelashes crawling down as she blinked.
He could hear her heart beating, heavy as a ram at a gate.
Thump… thump… thump…
She slid her hand around his head, and they kissed. He wrapped his arms about her, pressed her thin body tight against him, she tangled her fingers in his hair, chain brushing against his shoulders, dangling metal knocking lightly against the backs of his legs. A long, gentle, lingering kiss that made his body tingle from his lips to his toes.
She broke away. "It's been a while, Cas."
"I know."
"Too long."
"I know."
She nodded towards the window. "They miss you."
"Can I…"
"You know you can."
She led him to the door, into the narrow hallway, unbuckling the chain from her wrist and slinging it over a hook, cross-shaped knife dangling. The oldest girl dashed out from the room, stopped dead when she saw him.
"It's me." He edged slowly towards her, his voice strangled. "It's me." The other two children came out from the room, peering around their sister. Shenkt feared no man, but before these children, he was a coward. "I have something for you." He reached into his coat with trembling fingers.
"Cas." He held out the carved dog, and the little boy with his name snatched it from his hand, grinning. "Kande." He put the bird in the cupped hands of the littlest girl, and she stared dumbly at it. "For you, Tee," and he offered the cat to the oldest girl.
She took it. "No one calls me that anymore."
"I'm sorry it's been so long." He touched the girl's hair and she flinched away, he jerked his hand back, awkward. He felt the weight of the butcher's sickle in his coat as he moved, and he stood sharply, took a step back. The three of them stared up at him, carved animals clutched in their hands.
"To bed now," said Shylo. "He'll still be here tomorrow." Her eyes were on him, hard lines across the freckled bridge of her nose. "Won't you, Cas?"
"Yes."
She brushed their complaints away, pointed to the stairs. "To bed." They filed up slowly, step by step, the boy yawning, the younger girl hanging her head, the other complaining that she wasn't tired. "I'll come sing to you later. If you're quiet until then, maybe your father will even hum the low parts." The youngest of the two girls smiled at him, between the banisters at the top of the stairs, until Shylo pushed him into the living room and shut the door.