She read it all in his face, the game suddenly gone beyond the board, his little scams and takes overshadowed without warning by this Lowlander intrusion: an intrusion that was suddenly not just two clumsy agents but had roots somewhere in the heart of Solarno’s dark side.
He turned abruptly, putting Odyssa at arm’s length. ‘You’re going to have to carry a message for me,’ he declared, obviously regretting the words. Imperial priorities overrode even Havel’s own profiteering, though, and he had to act fast now to prevent an even bigger mess that he might be judged by. ‘Take a message for me back to Araketka Camp. They’d better know as soon as possible that the stakes have just gone up.’
After she had saluted like a good Rekef officer, she slung her pack and left. She travelled north through sufficient streets to check that she was not being followed, then doubled back towards the water, after reversing her coat, raising the hood, even changing her walk. This was all done without really thinking about it, letting the natural deception in her training and her bloodline take the reins.
She reached the low waterfront dive where she would wait for her man. Not my man, she chided herself. Thinking like that will only get me killed.
She consequently made her approach very cautiously, because it was quite true what they said: Cesta had killed potential patrons before, if he believed that they were trying to buy his political allegiance, rather than simply commission him to kill an enemy. By the time Odyssa saw him arrive and sit down at his customary table there it was already dusk. After the earlier downpour, when the wind had driven curtains of rain sweeping across its surface, the Exalsee was now a veritable mirror, a looking-glass for the moon and stars.
He sat alone at a table that gave him a good view of anyone coming in, and offered a swift leap into the water if he needed to escape. That same table had been conspicuously empty before, whether by the landlord’s instructions or simply because other customers knew that the assassin favoured it. She made sure he would see her as she approached. His instincts were, she was sure, like a bow drawn back. No sense in loosing them.
‘You,’ he began, as she approached, ‘are playing a very complicated game.’ Despite her careful measures to evade the spies of Captain Havel, Cesta had recognized her at once.
She sat down, looking out across that beautiful dark expanse of water, seeing a lone galley struggle out from the shore, oars labouring in the utter lack of wind. ‘I thought it was assassin etiquette not to question one’s employers,’ she said.
‘I never learnt many manners.’
She studied him then. His features seemed young, then old, as he tilted his head, shifting readily as the light caught them. Cesta was over forty, from her sources, but whatever his kinden, they aged as gracefully as her own. ‘You were late,’ she pointed out.
‘On the contrary, I was in the nick of time. I always am.’
‘They nearly got killed,’ she said.
‘Yes. Nearly.’
‘Isn’t such drama counterproductive in your profession?’
He stared at her for a moment and Odyssa wondered if she had overstepped the mark.
‘Drama is all,’ he said softly. ‘Drama is the why of it. I would have thought a Spider-kinden would understand, you who live your lives just for show. I do not kill because I love killing. I do not kill because it makes me rich. I do not kill because I have some cause or ideology to propagate. I kill for the same reason an actor steps onto the stage, or a good athlete runs his race. Because, in the fleeting second of the execution, I am excellent. I am complete.’
She took her life in her hands with, ‘So why not become an actor, assassin?’
‘Because I am very bad at acting, and no other reason. I have only one talent in life. My heritage has left me just that, and no more.’
She dipped into her belt-pouch, seeing a minute buildup of tension in him that was instantly gone when all she came out with was a roll of coins.
‘You’re owed this, I believe, and I’m sure you’re a man who has few living debtors.’
‘Because of the insult,’ he said. ‘Not because of the money.’
‘Of course not.’ She slid the coins across the table top and without warning he pounced on her hand, pinning her to the wood with a pincer-like grip.
‘Do you think I live in a palace, Spider girl?’ he asked her. His voice was so soft she could barely hear it over the hammering of her own heart. ‘Do you think I eat off jewelled plates, or have a host of slaves to tend to me? Do you think that I, with who and what I am, could simply retire one day, to live like a Spider lord amid all the luxuries of the world?’
His grip was hurting her but she refused to show it, looking him directly in the eye.
‘I cannot risk sleeping in the same place two nights running,’ he said. ‘And, when I sleep, I keep one ear open for the footstep on the stair, the hand at the shutter. I eat when I can. I have no friends, nor any trust to spare for them. I have a thousand enemies who have good reason to want me dead, a thousand clients who would rather I was silenced. What I own, Spider girl, is what you see: the tools of my trade. I have no use for anything I cannot carry. I cannot be tied down, neither to people nor to property. I have these garments, these weapons, and my reputation. That, then, is the life of a great assassin.’
‘But you are a hero to the people,’ she got out.
‘To the people in general, perhaps, but I am an enemy to each individual one of them. Not one of them has so much as bought me a drink, and even if they did, I could not trust them far enough to drink it.’
‘But all that money – the amounts you ask?’
He smiled, and let go her hand, his fingers leaving stark white marks where they had gripped. ‘Perhaps I bury it. Perhaps I give it to beggars. Perhaps I invest in the spice trade. Perhaps I throw it into the Exalsee. When I am gone, no one will ever know.’ He regarded her doubtfully. ‘So much for me,’ he said, ‘but if I were an informed Solarnese, I would be more concerned about a Spider woman who is working with the Wasps, and yet attempting to preserve their enemies. What can be going on?’
‘Well that will have to be my secret,’ she told him, rising.
He made no move to stop her but, as she turned, he said, ‘I feel that Solarno may become a very crowded place in the near future. Why do I think that, I wonder?’
‘Perhaps you should take up travelling and spread that reputation of yours wider,’ she said.
‘Oh, I rather think that my skills will still be needed here,’ he said. His look at her, in that moment, was entirely predatory. ‘You are very elegant, Spider girl, very clever and complex. Do not slip in your web-making. I would not like to hear some other give me your name some day soon.’
Eight
Balkus leant back along the raked seats of the Prowess Forum, watching as the Dragonfly-woman danced through the air. The sunlight that broke from the chamber’s four doorways glittered on her armour so that she seemed to be clad in rainbows. The long-handled, short-bladed sword was a blur, passed from hand to hand, or sometimes held in both, but never still.
Felise Mienn was at her daily practice.
‘He set you on her, did he not?’
Balkus looked over at the Spider-kinden, Destrachis, seated a few rows further up. He was a mystery, and that was something Balkus had no time for.
‘He being who?’ the Ant asked.
‘He being Master Maker,’ Destrachis said. He was old, or at least looked it, for his long hair was greying. Instead of the easy grace his kinden usually moved with, he had retreated to a delicate, measured patience. Of course, as he was a Spider, it could all be an act, to put those around him off their guard.
When Balkus made no reply, the Spider-kinden continued, ‘Because he’s going away.’