And my voice turning into light… Ain't no way that was me. That sort of protection spell was basic magic, and I couldn't even get the hang of basic magic back when Mama was trying to teach me.
I shuffled toward the inn, working things over in my head, clutching the knife to my breasts like I was some scared merchant's wife who had no clue how to use the damn thing. Everything was so dark. It took me a minute to realize none of the magic-cast lanterns were burning, and that sent another quake of chills vibrating through my spine.
It wasn't until I was dragging past the empty day market that I remembered the shopkeeper. The woman who bought my dress.
You're going to need my help. Don't delay.
I stopped. The night was quiet and still. I couldn't even hear the night market anymore.
I don't trust beautiful people. But Papa always told me you sometimes got to trust the one person you don't want to trust. "Just be smart about it," he'd say.
Well. I'd managed to avoid the only kind of death. I figured I could be smart about the woman at the dress shop, too.
Mama tried to teach me magic, meeting with me down in the belly of the ship after my first menses showed up, but it turned out that I took more after Papa, who's completely untouched: better adept at stealing and sneaking and charming and fighting, all talents borne of the natural world. But unlike Papa, I can at least recognize magic when I see it and when I feel it, and I know better than to mess around with it.
I went to the woman's dress shop straight away, climbing over the day market fence and skittering through the empty streets till I found the sign with the arrow. The woman sat outside the shop eating a honey pastry, a lantern illuminating the lines of her face. She looked tired.
"Good," she said when she saw me. "You didn't delay."
"It was you, right? That's my thinking right now and I want to know for sure." I paused, rubbed at my dry eyes. The woman took a bite of pastry. "Earlier tonight," I said. "When the assassin attacked me."
The woman set her pastry in her lap. "You know that by all rights you should be dead."
"I know it. But you helped me."
She blinked at me.
"Though I can't figure out why."
The woman shrugged. She plucked the pastry out of her lap and finished it off. "Why don't you come inside?" she said. "I can prepare some coffee. I think we both need it."
She stood up and went into the shop. I hesitated. It still seemed too easy to me, her helping me with the assassin. Easy the way it had with the haggling. The woman stuck her head back out into the street.
"You come from pirate stock, don't you?"
I frowned. "How do you know that?"
"Because I looked at you. Don't worry, I won't hand you over to whoever it is you're running from."
"I ain't running from nothing."
"A pirate in the desert? You're obviously running from something." She smiled. "The reason I asked is because the pirates I deal with are so wary, but always over the wrong things. You look at my shop door like it's boobytrapped, but you go traipsing through the night market when you've got an assassin tracking you."
I didn't have nothing to say to that, cause I knew she had a point.
"Come inside," the woman said. "And I'll help you."
She took me to the back of the store, behind the curtains, and set some water to boiling in the hearth. Steam curled up into the dusty moonlight. I sat down at a low table in the corner and watched her. She didn't spend a lot of time getting the coffee all perfect, the way they do in drink houses, and she didn't ask me how sweet I wanted it neither.
She sat down at the table across from me. I waited until she drank from her own cup before drinking from mine.
"What do you know about them?" she said.
I looked down at the little swirls of foam in my coffee. "They're hired," I said. "They know blood magic." I closed my eyes. "They're the only kind of death." I felt weirdly safe in this small back room. I wanted to fall asleep.
"Ananna," she said, and at the sound of my name my eyes flew open. My hands turned to fists. The woman gazed at me with heavy-lidded eyes.
"How'd you know my name?"
The woman smiled. "How'd I know you were targeted? I know things."
"Yeah, I wouldn't mind knowing how you knew the assassin was after me, too."
She gave me a demure smile.
I scowled, took another sip of coffee, and glanced around the room, trying to find something that I could use to get the woman to talk to me. But there were just dresses and bangles and bolts of fabric. The shop could have belonged to anyone.
"I've fought one of them before," she said. "I won."
That got my attention. I stared at her, trying to figure out if she was lying or not, if she really was a woman who had escaped the only kind of death.
"Don't look so impressed," she said. "Contrary to what you may have heard, they are human."
"What happened?" I asked. "Why would anyone try to kill you?"
"Why would anyone try to kill you?" she shot back. "It doesn't matter, really. All that matters is one of them is after you."
"You ain't gonna tell me anything, are you?"
"Of course not. That sort of knowledge is more precious than gold. But I will help you. I'm not going to risk my life to save yours, mind, but I can offer aid."
I hadn't quite decided if I trusted this offer or not when she pushed her coffee cup aside and slid her hands over the tabletop. Figures rose out of the wood. A little man in a long robe, a girl in a courtier's dress.
"I'm no good at magic," I said. "So don't think I'm facing him down alone."
"But you already did face him down alone." The woman didn't look at me. "And besides, you've got enough magic," she said. "I can see it in you."
"You sure about that? Cause believe me, I've tried–"
She lifted her eyes to mine, and I got swallowed up by gray and couldn't talk no more. My ears buzzed and my lungs closed up.