“Yes, I told you, my cousin lives there. Ah! Here we are.” And we are. The shop is bigger than I expected; it looks like someone took the merchant’s quarter from the city below, shoved it into one end of the ship, and then decorated it with crystals and rainbow ribbons. I enjoyed all the colors in Hinshalla but this much color in a smaller space is hurting my eyes.
The largest room holds clothes of all kinds; the smaller rooms are filled with conveniences, travel-sacks and hygiene kits and giant furs and bottles of liquor and travel snacks and things I don’t even know.
Zair has that look on his face again, the one like he’s stepped in lizard spoor. “This will do, I suppose. We’ll just have to make the best of it.”
He sweeps through the shops, piling my arms with furs and hose and tunics and jackets. My feet are still bare; my leather slippers are back in the room, covered in sticky goo, and I don’t have the special oil that dissolves it. He looks at my feet and shakes his head, then grabs a set of fur lined boots for me and one for him. I don’t like the look of them; how can I feel the ground or grip a wall with my toes in those?
It’s as if he can read my mind. “You’ll need this soon, little peasant. Where we’re going you’d lose toes without boots.” I get it but I don’t like it. I look around for real shoes to wear on the ship but I don’t see anything like what I’m looking for. The closest thing I find is a type of sock with a leather bottom. I hold them up and he nods, already moving on to the next section.
Fortunately he lets me choose my own underthings while he chooses his, then it’s back to grabbing something from every table and shelf; travel sacks, bottles of jewel-colored drinks, a jar of purple smoke, tooth-cleaning chews, so much stuff that I’m staggering from the weight. Last of all he grabs two fur-lined hats.
He haggles with the shopkeeper while I try not to faint from the heat. Finally they settle on a number and the shopkeeper takes everything and offers to have it delivered to our room. Zair takes some of the clothes and then nods at the rest..
“At least let me wrap them,” the man says, eyeing the clothes Zair is rumpling in his arms.
“No need,” Zair says dismissively, and then we rush back to our rooms to change for dinner.
◆◆◆
Zair wasn’t kidding about being hungry. He’s shoveling stew and roasted chicken and hunks of buttered bread in his mouth while I try not to fidget in my new, very stiff, and very colorful clothes. I feel like a peacock in turquoise and yellow. My hair is down and unwrapped for the first time since I left the guild to kill the Prince of the Air and it feels strange sweeping around my bare shoulders. This shirt is ridiculous, covering my arms and chest but leaving my shoulders out and baring my stomach. I long for my assassin’s clothes.
We are at the captain’s table and there is so much food. Everyone is talking about the Winter City but I am afraid to speak, afraid to reveal how little I know. I’ll look like a fool if I mention how much I hope to see the bears in their armor and it turns out that the city is real but the bears are not. I try to listen and not scratch and I eat the roasted peppers and the candied melon fruit and the heaping mounds of fragrant rice, spiced with saffron and crisped on the bottom.
I’m crunching on an animal bone of some kind and wondering what the jellied dishes are when I hear the word assassin. The captain is talking, telling a story about the men who talked to him right before the ship set sail.
“They was on official business, they said, but I didna recognize them, being as how I only deal with the port officials in the cities. So they shows me these badges, says they are from the palace, see, and they are looking for a girl.”
“We’ve heard this part, Cap’n”, one of his men protests.
The captain gestures around the table. “Aye, but not all our fine guests were listening, were they? So I’m starting over. Anyway,” he continues, glaring at the interruptor, “they were lookin for a girl, an assassin, who killed the Prince of the Air in his bed last night. They were saying it was an ‘unsanctioned kill’, which makes it murder.”
Zair’s hand shoots out and grips mine under the table. I don’t know what he’s thinking, acting like that; I’ve been trained not to react, no matter how much I want to. We catch each other’s eyes and I shake my head.
The captain finishes taking a drink of his wine and sets it down with a bang. “I’d know an assassin just like that, and there’s none of them kind on my ship. Besides, sanctioned or not, that assassin got up there somehow, and I’d expect she’d leave the same way. She’d be a fool to get on this ship, eh?”
Some of the passengers look frightened. “Captain, how can you be sure? What if she’s here to kill all of us? What if she’s gone mad?”
Zair has been calling me a peasant for being ignorant of so many things but this is infuriating. Assassins don’t just go rogue. We don’t just kill whoever we want. Everyone should know that about the guild, even these fools from the city above. There is no way the eldest Master spread this lie; he would never shame the Guild this way, and he would never use guards to find me. He’d find me himself.
“Aye, no need to fear. They said she’d be travelling all on her own, see, and we didna pick up any young females on their own. So you’re safe; she’s not on this ship, and even if she was, she’d be crazy to start summat. Oi’ve got my sword and a pack a wizards protecting everyone on board, so na need ta fear.” He wags his dinner knife for emphasis and looks me in the eye. “She wouldna start nothing.” I notice his accent keeps getting thicker as his sense of drama increases with his story.
I incline my head at the captain since he’s not looking away. Finally he claps and calls out “dessert!” I look over at Zair and notice he still has food on his plate.
“What about the prince?” he asks the captain.
The captain shrugs. “What of him? I heard he was a right git. I’m sure he deserved it.”
Conversation resumes as the servants clear our plates and set down new ones, along with platters of candied fruits and more of the tiny cakes and chocolates shaped like woodland creatures, treecats and owls and the like. Our plates are small and so delicate you can see through them and they are rimmed with gold. I try all the desserts, even some I don’t know the names of, cool and creamy on the tongue with a burnt sugar crust, and pastries that are puffy and filled with cream and honey and chopped nuts.
The food is heavy and rich and I think of the meals in the guild, austere and portioned only to fuel our bodies, sometimes seasoned, never dessert. The other passengers at our table are talking about the supposedly dead prince and how they’d met him, and hated him, and how they always knew he’d be killed. Zair barely eats dessert, just picks at a pastry I hand to him so he won’t be so obvious. He sips the heavy dessert wine until his eyes glaze over and I know I need to get him back to the room before he starts causing problems.
We claim fatigue and thank the captain for seating us at his table and we stumble back to our room, Zair leaning on my shoulder while I try to keep us from banging into walls or anything breakable. He keeps repeating “I’m not dead, I’m not dead,” and by the time we get to our room he’s crying.
I don’t know what to do. They taught me many things at the guild but there were no classes that covered how to comfort a mark that you failed to kill but everyone thinks is dead. They taught us how to compartmentalize our own feelings, to shove them aside, which I’m realizing leaves me ill-prepared to relate to this crying prince in any real way.
So I hold him and agree that he’s not dead and I smooth down his hair like my mother once did with mine in a memory that I’d long ago closed away along with my feelings. Eventually he stops crying and falls asleep.
I try to imagine what it would feel like if my own mother wanted me dead. And they know he isn’t dead - but they want to pretend that he is. Then the magnitude of what the captain said hits me. Someone does want me dead. They know it was a sanctioned kill and they know I didn’t finish it. Whoever came up with
this lie and sent palace officials to look for me at the docks wants me dead - for that is the penalty for the crime of an unsanctioned kill. Death. The same as the penalty for failing my commission.
Someone wants me dead. Possibly multiple someones.
I quickly change into my assassin’s clothes but I leave my feet bare as I head up to the deck. The room is closing in on me and I need some air. I feel trapped inside this ship. The steps are worn smooth under my feet and I can smell the crisp air as I go topside.
As soon as I see the sky I feel better. The view is incomparable; the three moons are up but Liriel, the largest, is behind her little sisters and without her brightness I can see the stars. There are so many of them out here, out in the middle of nowhere on a giant wooden ship flying through the air. They look like glitter suspended in the night sky. At home we never see such things; the city hanging above us, surrounded by clouds, blots out the sky. We’re lucky to see the moons and the occasional star through the clouds, and only when we are at the edge of the city. No one likes to go to the edge.
I watch them for a while, enjoying the quiet after an evening with so many people and so much time with Zair. Normally I have training, exercises, meals and studying almost entirely on my own. I miss the solitude but part of me is excited to be going somewhere, a place I thought was only a myth. The Winter City! I wonder if it looks anything like what I’ve imagined. I wonder what snow feels like.
Driven by a need to move, I start jogging, barefoot, around the perimeter of the ship. As I pass the wizard we nod at each other. At night, without my scarf and hood, my assassins clothes just look dark. They are soft and comfortable and made to move with me as I stretch my legs and breathe in the cold clear air and run until my heart is pounding and my feet feel every inch of wood on the deck and I run like someone who is free.
CHAPTER 7
Zair is awake when I get back to the room, his face puffy again from drink and poor sleep and maybe a little from crying. I know not to look into his eyes but I want to make sure he’s ok. I grab a towel from the small washroom and rub my face and neck with it. The soft, pillowy towel smells like lemon and mint. Everything on this ship feels and smells and tastes like luxury.
“I thought maybe you fell over the side,” he says nastily. Great.
“I’m not an idiot, Zair. I can keep myself safe.” I don’t want to fight with him but I can tell he’d like to.
“You don’t even know what’s real,” he sneers. “You believe in gods but not cities and ships and things that are actually real. You’re just an ignorant peasant, grubbing in the dirt.”
“We are only ignorant because you keep us that way! And of course I believe in gods, my guild - “
“Shut UP about your stupid guild! You couldn’t even kill one prince, could you? And now they are coming after you too! You’re too stupid to know your guild is a lie, and you can’t even do the one thing you were trained to do. You’re more useless than I am!”
Without thinking about it I lay him out flat on his back with my hand around this throat and a knife pointed at his groin.
“Say that again, prince,” I hiss. “Tell me again how useless I am.” I’m choking him now and I look at his mouth, not his eyes, and I think about taking his life. Finishing the job. Going home.
“Please,” he whispers, “please don’t.” Then he seems to remember his own power. “Stop, Alinya, STOP,” he tries to command me. I barely feel the tug of his control. Enough time has passed and, as I hoped, it has worn off.
“That doesn’t work on me anymore. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t take your life now and port back to the guild and collect my reward.” I loosen my hand slightly to give him more air.
“You’ll die if you go back, Alinya. They will kill you; I don’t know why but someone has decided that you must die. And if you port from this ship you’ll die; the wizards’ transport spells don’t work when you’re in motion. And third - if you kill me and stay on this ship you’ll die as soon as you get to the Winter City; I sent a message to my cousin that we are coming. If you step one foot off this ship without me they will kill you right there. So you need me.”
I debate killing him anyway and taking my chances, but he’s probably right. I don’t know what is going on, what I’m caught up in, and the Joker’s note said to bring him with me. He rubs his throat as soon as I let go and I’m back on my bed, cross-legged and knife sheathed and watching his every move as he sits up. Part of me wants to finish the kill but I know I need to wait. I stretch my neck and flex my hands and get my temper back under control. Shame tries to creep in but I push it aside.
“Fine.” I say at last. “But stop with the insults. If we have to travel together we need to at least try to look normal. No more drunk crying at dinner, no more picking fights because you feel ashamed. Keep it together.”
He shrugs nonchalantly, as if I hadn’t just been about to strangle him and emasculate him at the same time. “I can’t promise anything but I’ll try.”
I start twirling my knife and he quickly says “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be cruel. Just get me to the Winter City safely and I promise I’ll take you to the transport platforms there. You can go wherever you want, or you can stay in the City if you like.” His voice is pleading with me and I sigh and put my knife away. “We’re in the same boat now, Alinya. The same people want us dead. We should stick together until we’re safe.”
We shake hands but I’m already off in my head, thinking. If the guild is truly after us we’ll never be safe. The guild gets its commissions - the prince-killing kind of commissions - directly from the Priestess of the Sky. And if the Priestess of the Sky wants you dead, you’re dead, even if you don’t know it yet.
I use the washroom to clean up after my long day of trying to assassinate a prince, jumping on an airship for the first time, and then taking a nighttime run after a very rich and heavy dinner. The accommodations may be luxurious but the tiny washroom has me banging my elbows everywhere while I try to get clean. I can hear Zair chuckling in the room.
After changing into the soft nightshirt Zair bought me I crawl into my bed. The nightshirt is black, which is funny. Does Zair think assassins wear black ALL the time? But I appreciate the gesture; I’m not sure I’ll see another kindness from him.
My bed is softer than any I’ve ever slept in, although Zair doesn’t seem to appreciate it. He is complaining a few feet away from me. Princes really are spoiled. I try to fall asleep before him so I don’t have to listen to him snore.
◆◆◆
It’s three days later and I’ve finally settled into the routine of the ship. When I wake our window is covered in frost and there is a chill in the air. I hop out of bed with the blanket around me and grab one of the fur coats. Everything from the shop had been delivered during dinner and was in our rooms waiting for us. I’m glad Zair knew enough to get us warmer clothes; I feel unprepared on my own. I’d be freezing if he hadn’t insisted on going shopping the first night.
He’s still sleeping. While I’m cleaning my teeth the captain’s voice startles me. “Happy morning to you all, passengers and crew. We’ve crossed into the winter zone and the wizards will be turnin on the heat to keep ya warm in yer rooms. When you go up on deck make sure to wear your winter gear or you might freeze yer bits off. Cheers!” I look around to see where his voice came from but I don’t see anything. I wonder how much he pays his wizards; they seem to do everything.
I’m grateful for the fur boots and warmer clothes as I head up for breakfast; I can’t feel my feet or bend my ankles in the boots but when I get on deck the chilly air hits my face and the wood floor is slick with sheets of ice and the rubbery soles have the grip I need to not slide. There are guards stationed all around the ship, keeping people away from the rails. I realize I haven’t looked over the side of the airship yet but this probably isn’t the time to try. Something in me wants to and it feels like a moth flying into a candle flame.
“Breakfast is moved d
own below, miss,” the nearest guard tells me. Of course, I don’t know what I was thinking. “Bottom level if you have the stomach for it.” He chuckles as if he’s made a joke that I don’t get. I thank him and head back down, and down, and down. The lower levels are warmer and warmer and soon I’m sweating in my furs, so I take off my boots and coat and carry them down to the bottom-most level and as soon as I get there I almost throw up.
The floor is clear. The entire bottom of the ship is glass or crystal or something else that is absolutely, perfectly, horrifyingly clear. I can’t make myself step on it; I can’t look at it. Every instinct screams at me to get back, to go up, to get to safety. I can’t believe people are sitting at tables set on this clear floor, surrounded by clear walls, eating breakfast as if everything is normal. It looks like they are floating on nothing.
I’m stuck on the steps, gripping the hand rail so hard my knuckles are white, when a man walks up to me and asks me if I need help. I shake my head and try not to look at him; my fear is shameful. He takes a half step closer to me and I notice his eyes, a warm amber with long dark lashes, and wavy brown hair down to his shoulders.
“It’s ok if you don’t want to eat down here,” he whispers. “Most people really can’t do it. You can have breakfast sent to your room. Just flag down a steward or use the communication spell in your room and they’ll bring you whatever you want.”
My face flushes; I hate knowing he can tell how afraid I am. “Thank you,” I grit out. I try to pull myself back up the steps but my eyes are fixed on the clear floor again and I’m watching clouds stream by below us and we are up so high there aren’t even birds and what if the magic fails? What if we fall? Why would anyone come here on purpose?
He moves closer to block my view. “Hey,” he says in that low voice. “It’s ok. Stop looking at it. It’s just vertigo. Close your eyes - that’s it. Keep them closed and take a deep breath. Now turn around,” he pauses as I turn, and I can feel his warm hand at the small of my back guiding me up the steps. “There you go. Open your eyes now.”
Empire of Sky Page 4
