by C. R. Daems
SEE ME TONIGHT. HAVE FOOD AND WORK FOR YOU. 100 BITS.
I hope she understood. See me tonight—an order. Have work for you—the Intermediate's house. And—100 bits—100 paces away. I wanted anyone else seeing the note to think it was work for bits. A hundred bits was a lot for a beggar, but a Shadow could make up a good story if necessary.
Since it was late, I stayed near the Intermediate's house, not knowing when she would arrive. I changed and waited with Anil on guard and Kasi waiting at the shack for Fayza to return and see the note. Several hours after dark, Kasi showed me Fayza and her cat, Zara, leaving. She hurried into the forest well to the north of the house, changed, and made her way toward me.
I sat quietly, waiting as she ghosted toward me, with Zara staying well to her left. When she was twenty paces away, I could not have seen her without Anil and Kasi. She was perfection.
"Welcome, Sister," I said quietly.
"You summoned me?"
"Yes. Please sit. What I have to say will take some time."
She moved forward slowly, reminding me of Sister Hajna. She moved like a cat, relaxed and easy, yet ready to strike. She sat down a couple of hands' widths from me.
She wants to be close enough to strike.
I existed only for the moment as I waited. She looked at me for a long time.
"Interesting. That's a very good disguise. You look and sound like a mature woman. You're not. You're a girl…woman, who hasn't yet fully developed. I know all the senior Assassins and Assassin/Spies, and you're not one of them. You must, therefore, be either a fake or an apprentice. But you're without a senior Sister. I would say fake except you sit ready to strike, as do I, and I see no fear of death, winning, or losing—only the moment. Now I have to wonder how an apprentice orders a senior Assassin/Spy to do anything. Yet you're certain you can and I'll obey."
"Give me your hand." I extended my left hand. She surprised me.
"You're the Shadow of Death, aren't you?"
She moved her right hand from near her body and weapon and turned it palm up to show she had no weapon in it. She reached out and I grasped her hand.
"Yes. Our senior sister has given you much responsibility, child."
I could feel her senior Assassin/Spy sigil.
"Why?" she asked.
"It started…" I detailed everything that had happened since I left Ahasha.
"You seem to have destroyed our nice, comfortable view of a Shadow. We're taught to use logic against our enemies, yet you use intuition. We're taught that we can't kill Wizards, yet you ignored your teachers and killed three. We're taught not to form close relationships, yet you separate personal relationships from your responsibilities. You live in two worlds. Ironically, against all logic, Morag also used intuition when she sent you. The two of you are much alike." Fayza paused as Zara joined her. "Our enemies have learned to fear you as you move through the provinces and have devoted more and more resources to find you. They're frustrated. You have them chasing ghosts. You've outmaneuvered an army desperate to catch and kill you. I know it hurts, Sister, but our enemies have named you well. Ironically, it makes them fear you more."
Fayza nodded. "I'll tell you what I have learned. What you do with it is up to you. A religious sect called the Eyes of God is trying to seize power from wu'Lichak. They have taken control of the assassins' guild. Those two I killed were priests sent to kill the three nobles."
"You were hired to protect them?" I had to wonder if this were part of my assignment or none of my business. "Who?"
"Boyan, the first lady's secretary. She trusts him when something needs doing in secret. Do you want my help, Sister?'
"No. I want you to go to Tarion. The king will need our support, and you need to get word back to our senior Sister. Send the Senior Spy and her apprentice back to Ahasha." Sanda was here mentoring Jelena.
"You don't believe you'll live to see Tarion, do you?"
"No. Our enemies are desperate to stop me and, unlike before, they know I'm going to Tarion and will be waiting. I can no longer send them off to chase ghosts." Logic tells me I've accomplished everything Sister Morag asked and should return to Ahasha. But my intuition tells me there is more to learn, so I can't stop. I hoped Fayza could make it there if I couldn't. "I expect you to be gone tomorrow."
"I'll leave tonight. May you walk in the shadow of our Sisters."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Scio—Araby Province
What were the priests to the Shadow Sisters or me? Were they part of my assignment? If not, should they be? Logically, they were the first lady's problem and not the Shadow Sisters', and therefore not mine. I wondered what Morag would expect me to do. I laughed. She had been very specific: "The only advice I can give you, although I'm loath to say it, is to trust no one. Place your trust in your intuition and don't linger on things you can't change. Stay focused. Don't look backward. What you should have or could have done can't be changed. You can affect the future not the past."
The priests of the Eyes of God threaten wu'Lichak and the future of Araby. She will support the king. The priest won't. They seek a province of their own to rule and will support our enemies to gain it. And Araby could decide whether the plot succeeds or fails. But if I stay in Araby, I'll lose my cover. Stay… Go? I had a splitting headache as I made my way back to the wagon.
As I neared, Marku and Stela sat talking, heads together, on a fallen tree trunk. I could easily avoid them, but something told me they were waiting for me. Besides, I had to let them know that I would be staying—intuition had won.
"You two are out late," I said.
Stela jerked her head in my direction. Marku jumped up, knife in his hand. He lowered it when he saw me.
"Good evening, daughter," Stela said. "You walk like your feet never touch the ground."
"A necessary habit. My teachers would have told me that they could hear me a hundred paces away. That I would need bells to be any louder." I smiled at the thought of Sister Rong. I missed her.
"You need bells so we can hear you," Marku said as he put his knife away.
"I see you've no cuts or bruises. You must not have found any Wizards to fight today." Stela looked at me with sad eyes.
"We missed you. I wondered if you'd left," Marku said. "We had hoped you would share your plans with us."
"My plans have changed. I had intended to go with you to Tarion. A reasonable story why I had decided to stay with you would have been easy to make up. But I must stay in Scio for a while. A local cult is hatching a plot to take control of Araby. Hesland stands on the verge of chaos, and Araby could tip the balance of power."
"Make up a story and we'll stay. We gypsies have a stake in Hesland, too," Marku said. Stela nodded agreement. I leaned over and hugged her.
"You've helped the Shadows more than you can ever know. I'm no longer important. Go without me." It felt like I had nothing to look forward to.
Stela returned the hug, and I felt a tear against my cheek. "Don't say that, Ryana. You're clan whether you want to be or not—whether you stay with us or not."
"Give us one of your stories. I know you could make up ten on the spur of the moment. You've had enough practice this trip." Marku laughed.
I couldn't help the tears that my visual and traitorous shadow selves shed. I closed my eyes.
"You've been informed by First Lady wu'Lichak that the king has requested a performance but haven't been told when. The first lady's providing you with protection while you stay in Araby. You plan to stay to work up new routines while you wait. I'm staying with you until we meet the Tobar clan again. I want to see Luka to see if he and I still feel the same. If so, we may want to get married." My story surprised me. My life was complicated enough without Luka, yet I obviously had feelings I had repressed. Now they were out in the open.
"Wow!" Marku shook his head. "May I ask how you plan to get wu'Lichak's support and the king's invitation?"
Stela gave me a motherly smile for some reason I didn't under
stand.
"Didn't you see wu'Lichak's soldiers at the performance? If I'm not mistaken, we're under her protection. If the king isn't dead by then, I see it in your future."
"I believe you, my daughter. Judging by your recent clients, you seem to know the future. Is it something they teach you at Ahasha?"
"No. They teach us that only the present exists, neither the past nor the future."
* * *
Marku decided to give a performance every three nights to try out new acts and keep everyone busy. They couldn't stay forever, so I had to do something. I had Anil watching the Intermediate's house out of habit. That night, three men entered the house and quickly came out again. Anil followed them back to the cult's temple—three buildings in Slum Alley.
Everyone was excited that I planned on staying and the possibility that I might be interested in Luka, especially Alida and Ilka.
"He'll be waiting, Ryana. You've stolen his heart," Alida said.
"I'll bet he can't wait for us to meet up again. He'd be a fool not to marry you," Ilka said. "You're just right for him. He needs a strong woman like you to keep him in line." They both laughed. I wasn't sure why.
The next day the clan began unpacking and preparing for an extended stay. When the clan gathered each night, they excitedly planned which acts to use in the upcoming performance for the king. The days were filled with practicing and testing new acts. Yoan and I experimented with new ideas for our latest skit. If we were ever going to leave Scio, I needed time to myself to figure out how to get rid of the priests.
"Yoan, I need time each day while we're in Scio. I want to spend time with my parents to prepare them for me leaving again. Realistically, they won't see me again for a cycle or more, and they need time to get used to the idea I might marry a gypsy."
Yoan nodded agreement, but I knew he worried about the upcoming performance with the king. He would have liked to spend more time each day practicing and having me attend the evening gathering.
Using Fayza's idea, I dressed like a beggar for my visit to Slum Alley and the church of God's Eyes. The cult's priests and the houses they used were easy to pick out. They made no secret of their presence, but they masked the fact they were recruiting an army. They were having no difficulty in finding recruits. The slums and adjoining neighborhood provided fruitful ground for attracting the poor with the promise of power and wealth.
The next night, I attended their church service along with a crowd of shabbily dressed men and women. A priest in a yellow robe and gold mask preached about how the rich preyed on the poor. How that wasn't right in the eyes of God, who saw the injustice and would help the poor to get their share of the wealth… After the service, food and drinks were provided. On the side, collectors and junior priests were being recruited into the inner circle with the promise of money and power.
The senior priests were clearly local assassins. The junior priests were assassins in training, which I suspected was little more than a few weeks killing dummies. Perhaps the middle-level priests were practicing on real people such as those nobles Fayza had saved or merchants who refused to pay a tithe to the church for the priests' prayers of safety.
By the third night, I worked out the priests' rank system. Collectors took tithes from the merchants and general population for the priests' prayers. They wore headbands of white, yellow, and red—white was the lowest and red the highest rank. Junior priests, assassins in training, wore sashes colored to designate their rank. It seemed silly to identify yourself as an assassin and to wear something that could be seen from twenty paces away. The upper-level priests wore white, yellow, or red robes with a sword-like cross running down the middle. They appeared to be the instructors.
The next night I dressed in my blacks, deciding it was time to shake up their nice, comfortable world. Groups went out each night into a different district to collect money for the church. I picked a side alley that stank of rotting garbage, and waited. Three hours later, a group of three collectors walked pass. Since they were feared and left unchallenged, they passed me without so much as a glance in my direction.
I had agonized for days over how to neutralize the Eyes of God's threat. The solution was easy; rationalizing it wasn't. The priests were building an army, which would eventually attack wu'Lichak's forces, killing everyone that stood in their way. To stop them, it required an Assassin, not a Spy. It would leave scars I could never erase. But if I were right, the Eyes of God could destroy Hesland and the Sisterhood. I had said I would die for the Sisterhood. Perhaps there was more than one way to die.
Three rocktail-tipped darts took them without a sound. I dragged them into the alley, confiscated their night's collection, and made it look like several persons, using a variety of weapons, had killed them.
Avoiding people with my darlings' help, I made it to wu'Lichak's castle. Two guards stood outside the gates. When I stepped out of the shadows, the closest guard jumped and tried to draw his sword, but I caught his arm before he could. When he saw I was a Shadow, he relaxed. Shadows weren't only dangerous but worked for influential people. It could be disastrous to provoke one.
"Yess, Ssshadow," the young guard stuttered. The other guard stayed where he stood. I handed him a sack with the money I'd taken from the collectors.
"Give this to Lord Boyan." I turned and walked away.
The next night I killed another team with two collectors with yellow headbands and a junior priest with a yellow sash. When I reached the castle, Lord Boyan stood off to the side of the gate.
"Good evening, Shadow. Why the money?"
"For your safe keeping." I gave him the bag with my latest collection and left.
The next night there were two teams of five. Each consisted of two collectors accompanied by two yellow- and one red-belted priest. The junior priests were amateurs, the yellow-belts beginners with some training, and the red-belts supposedly trained assassins. Sister Hajna would have considered them more dangerous to themselves than to an opponent. I smiled at the thought. This time I followed one of the teams. At the second house they visited, they dragged a merchant and his young daughter into the street, shouting to get attention and make sure the neighbors knew what would happen if they chose to resist.
"Merchant Peadone no longer wishes to help the Eyes of God correct the injustices of the rich. Why? Because he's one of the rich who prey on the poor." The red-belt had a rope around the man's neck and was dragging him around as he talked. "Look at his clothes and his daughter's. They wear silks while the poor wander the streets in rags."
While he talked, a yellow-belt man's hand roamed the child's body, his hands inside her shirt and up her flared skirt.
"I pity them if they lose the protection of the Eyes of God."
I sought the moment and waited. I wanted the leaders to think it was another gang, not a Shadow. I blended into the shadows and waited for them to reach the end of the row of houses. By then everyone had retreated into their homes for fear of antagonizing them. The collectors never knew what happened as two rocktail darts took them in the neck. As the collectors fell, the priests spun around with knives in hand, scanning the area. They never saw the knives that killed them, although I stood less than five steps away.
I then made the bodies look like they had been attacked and robbed. I didn't bother looking for the other team and made my way back to the castle. My intention was not to kill all the followers of the Eyes of God, just to stop the threat to Araby.
"Evening, Shadow. Is there a reason for the money you've been giving the guards and me?" Boyan tested the two bags in his hands. "This is rather a lot of money."
"For your safe keeping, Lord Boyan." I smiled at his blank expression, although he couldn't see it because of my head wrap. He watched as I walked away.
The next night, I encountered a group of six. They were getting desperate. This group had two red-belts and two white-robed priests who lagged behind. Probably intending to surprise the attackers. With their white robes, Sister Ro
ng would have told them the only way to be more conspicuous would be to carry candles and beat drums. I let the group go by and waited for the priests. I darted them and rearranged their bodies. When I caught up with the others, they were just leaving a merchant's doorway. I darted the two collectors. As they fell, the two red-belts crouched, scanning the area. One saw me come out of the shadows.
"Thoma, a Shadow. There are rewards for her." He smiled and drew two knives. Thoma didn't look quite as happy but joined the other one.
"Garret, spread out. We'll trap her between us." They moved apart as they started toward me, swinging their knives back and forth. They weren't assassins. They were killers who thought in terms of face-to-face contests to determine the best man. Two knives took them while they were still ten paces away.
When I arrived at the castle, Boyan again waited for me.
"Shadow, please tell me why."
"It's a donation from the Eyes of God. Keep it safe. First Lady wu'Lichak can decide what to do with it." I turned and left.
The next night, one group of collectors went out. It consisted of one collector, four junior priests, and two yellow-robed priests. Except for the collector, they all carried swords. They were probably having trouble finding volunteer collectors and were determined to kill the priest killer.
I ignored the group and ghosted through the shadows to the side of the high priest's house, avoiding the two guards out front. I opened a poorly locked window and listened. Hearing nothing, I slipped in along with Kasi, leaving Anil outside to watch. Kasi found no one in the room. From the dim light and Kasi's echoes, the room looked like a small dining room. In the hallway, I carefully opened door after door and found each of the rooms empty, until the last door. A man sat in a chair sleeping. In the corner sat a steel box chained to the floor. I used a garrote as a weapon to keep the priests confused. The steel box was easy to open; I had spent a great deal of time at Ahasha learning how to steal. The locked box held several bags, totaling twenty-five toras. I assumed the money was used to pay daily operating expenses. I liberated the bags. The head priest would have more money stashed somewhere. But for now, I wanted to make them mad. Anger made men do foolish things. I left by the same window.
