On the fourth night, I woke up the way I always did, after the sun set, but my head felt heavy and thick, like someone'd filled it up with rose jam. I skipped eating and walked down to the night market, thinking the cool air would clear my thoughts. It didn't. The lights at the night market blurred and trembled. The calls and chatter of the vendors amplified and faded and then thrummed like a struck chord.
I'd barely made it through the entrance gate when out of nowhere I got stuck. I couldn't move. I stood at the entrance to the market, and my feet seemed screwed to the ground. My arms hung useless at my sides. I smelled a whiff of scent on the air, sharp and medicinal, like spider mint. It burned the back of my throat.
And then, quick as that, I was released.
The whole world solidified like nothing'd happened, and I collapsed to the ground in a cloud of dry dust, coughing, my eyes streaming. I could hear whispers, people telling one another to keep a wide berth and muttering about curses and ill omens. I pushed myself up to sitting. Onlookers stared at me from out of the shadows, and I did my best to ignore 'em.
This wasn't Mama's magic, sent out to bring me home: that I knew. Her magic had too much of the ocean in it, all rough and tumble, crashing and falling. You plunged into her magic. This – this was calculated.
I stood up. A nearby vendor had one eye on me like he thought me about to steal his vials of love potion. I stumbled backward a little, coughed, wiped at my mouth. My hand left a streak of mud across my face.
"Hey," said the vendor. He leaned over the side of his cart. I didn't meet his eye. "Hey, you. Don't even try it."
My head was still thick. I stared at him, blinking.
"Go on," he said. "You think I've never seen this trick before? Whoever your little partner is, he's gonna get blasted with my protection spell."
"I don't have a–"
The vendor glared at me. I gave up trying to explain. Besides, I kept thinking the word assassin over and over again in spite of myself. The vendor turned toward a customer, his face breaking into a smile, but he kept glancing over his shoulder as he filled the order. Keeping his eye out for thieves, like any vendor.
I coughed again, turned, wanting to get back to the inn, with its coating of dust and its view of the desert. The street leading away from the night market was emptier than it should've been, and quiet too. Halfway down I stopped and eased my knife out of my boot, and then I hobbled along, wishing I could walk faster, or run – but something had my joints stiff and creaking as an old woman's.
The shadows moved.
I froze.
So did the shadows.
I stood there for a few seconds listening to my heart beat and to the distant strains of music floating out of the night market. Papa's old assassin stories worked their way into my head – that old detail about how they moved through darkness and shadows the way a fish moved through water. I loosened my grip on the knife, holding it proper, the way you're supposed to, and dreaded the moment when the shadows would move again.
Nothing.
I slid forward, just a couple of steps in the direction of the inn. That stirred the shadows up. They slid along the buildings like snakes. My body ached worse and worse or else I would've taken off running; instead, all I could do was creep along, my heart hammering and my breath short and my skin cold and hot all at once.
My head cleared.
It happened real sudden, as if a latch had been sprung, and I saw the whole world as clear and crystalline as if I were still at sea beneath a shining blue sky. A man was following me. I whirled around and caught sight of his robes, dyed the color of the night sky, fluttering back into the liquid shadows. I'd no idea what had broken the spell, but I was grateful for it.
"You want to fight me? Come out and fight me!"
My voice bounced off the buildings. Eyes glowed pale blue in the darkness.
My head started going thick and fogged again. The magic crept in. The eyes burned on and on. My fear was a thick coil in the pit of my stomach holding me in place.
It was an assassin.
"Fight me!" I shrieked, and I could feel the hysteria in my voice, like my words were splintering into pieces.
The assassin glided forward, black on black except for the strip of silver at his side. He didn't seem to be in much of a hurry. I forced myself forward, through the magic, and it gave me a pain in my spine that set me screaming, and my scream amplified up out into the starry night, rising up over the buildings, transforming into an explosion of white light that showered sparks and brightness down upon us both.
No one was as surprised as me.
I collapsed onto the ground, but for a second I saw the assassin like it was daytime: the grain in the fabric of his robes, the bump of his nose beneath his dark desert mask, the carvings etched into his armor. He was glaring at me.
"You're from the Mists?" he hissed. The bastard spoke perfect Empire.
"The what?"
The assassin jerked his head around like he was looking for somebody. I wanted to see where he was looking but I also didn't dare take my eyes off him.
"Who are you?" he said, though before I could answer he spat out a word in a language like dead flowers, beautiful and terrible all at once. Then he darted out of the glow of the light and melted into the shadows, all too quick for me to see.
For a few minutes I waited to die.
It didn't happen. The light I'd somehow screamed into existence burned away. I sat there in the street and remembered Papa's stories: they always kill their victims. But he hadn't killed me. He'd just melted into the shadows.
I didn't let myself get too cocky about that, though. Cockiness is useful to fake on occasion, but it'll only get you killed if you believe it. Maybe the man hadn't been an assassin assassin, just some hired knife sent by Captain Hariri. But then what about the moving shadows and the fog in my head and his eyes? Ain't no crewman on the Hariri able to pull off that trick with the eyes.