The Taste of Waterfruit and Other Stories (Story Portals)

by Richard Lee Byers

  “I never discuss another client’s business,” Katya said.

  “My point,” Misbah said, “is that if you killed the mother, you can kill the children, and that’s what my friends and I require.”

  “Kill all three chieftains—well, deputy chieftains—of a notorious brotherhood of thieves. You understand, it won’t be easy.”

  “We’re prepared to pay well, and while it may not be easy, it should at least be possible. Numair, Manal, and Zaki distrust one another. When they meet, they leave their bodyguards behind and gather on neutral ground. I know when and where it’s going to happen next.”

  Katya smiled. “Interesting.”

  * * *

  To Othman, the moment felt dreamlike. “You can’t have known from the very start.”

  “I killed your wife,” Katya said. “I thought that if you ever found out who did it, you might seek revenge, so it seemed prudent to keep track of the membership of your organization, ‘Misbah the merchant’ included.” She waved to the chair opposite Othman’s. “May I?”

  “If you knew it was a trap,” he said, “then you didn’t go.”

  Katya sat down. The fire gilded highlights into her raven hair. “Ordinarily, I would never let any client tell me when, where, or how to execute a contract. But you offered me a challenge, which is to say, a chance to excel at my particular art.”

  * * *

  Its battlements and minarets gapped and broken like the teeth in an old, rotting skull, the Castle of Whispers stood on its rock against a backdrop of thunderheads with lightning flickering in their bellies. Numair had allowed ample time to reach the ruin but still felt the urge to hurry. The surging tide battering the pylons and flinging cold spray into the air was rising to swallow the causeway, and that made him uneasy.

  Besides, he was eager to reach the fortress and start hunting. It appeared that, as planned, he was ahead of his brother and sister, and he wanted to make the most of the advantage.

  Still, it was better to proceed with caution and keep an eye on the wall-walks and towers. Because Katya was hunting him as well, and if she was as deadly as she was supposed to be, she could conceivably hit him with a bowshot even in the dark.

  But he and his men—fifteen of the deadliest crossbowmen in his faction of the Red Tigers—reached the fallen gate and the courtyard beyond without incident. Halting, they looked around, at doorways leading into blackness and stairways running up to the battlements. Outside, the sea boomed and hissed. Numair supposed that constant sound had given the fortress its name.

  “All right,” Numair said, “we need two men here at the gate to keep the assassin from slipping out. The rest of us will split up into search parties. If we sweep the place properly, we can drive her into a corner.”

  “If she’s still here,” Ubayy said. “If she was watching the causeway, she knows you didn’t come alone.”

  Of all the cutthroats, Ubayy was likely the only one who would have dared to express any reservations about Numair’s plan. For only he stood almost as tall—which made him the second biggest man in Wenshi—only he had killed as many foes, and only he had once saved his superior’s life, in a vicious fight aboard a smuggler’s dhow two years back.

  “If she’d tried to leave,” Numair said, “we would have met her on the causeway. There’s no other way to come or go. You can’t swim or even row a boat away from here, not with the currents and rocks.”

  “All right,” Ubayy said, forefinger and thumb picking at a tuft of his gray-black beard, “but what if this ‘Lady Kat’ didn’t come alone, either? What if—“

  Numair punched him in the face.

  The blow flattened Ubayy’s nose and rocked him back, but it didn’t finish him. He roared and rushed in. Numair shifted out of the way, grabbed him as he lunged by, and slammed him down onto the flags, uneven slabs with weeds pushing up between them.

  Ubayy tried to scramble back up, but a kick in the stones prevented that. Numair kept on kicking until Ubayy simply curled up into a ball and covered his head, his attitude if not his voice pleading for mercy.

  “The plan,” Numair panted, shaking the ache out of his bruised knuckles, “is to kill Lady Kat here tonight. Because she killed my mother, and because this is the way my father wants it. Does anyone object?”

  Apparently no one did.

  * * *

  “This,” Katya said, “is the part I don’t understand.”

  Othman hesitated. It still felt unreal to converse calmly with the woman he’d hated for so long. A part of him screamed that he ought to hurl himself at her or at least cry for help. But he suspected either action would be futile if not suicidal, and besides, he needed to hear what had happened in the castle.

  So he simply replied, “What part is that?”

  “Why hire me to kill your children? I’m sure you could think of other ploys to lure me into a trap.”

  He sighed. “It’s complicated. I need an heir, and none of the three is clearly better than the others. So I gave them the chance to demonstrate their worth by killing you at some risk to their own lives. I suspected one or two might indeed die in the attempt, and that would be a good thing. It would make the victor’s position all the stronger.”

  Katya lifted an eyebrow. “You ‘suspected’ it even though each of the three showed up at the head of a band of ruffians? Thank you for the compliment.”

  Othman grunted.

  “Still,” Katya continued, “I don’t think the poets are likely to celebrate your act as a shining example of paternal love.”

  He scowled. “I’ve only ever loved one person, and you took her away from me. My children are simply the means to an end. You talked about your murders as your art. Well, the Red Tigers are the thing I created. I mean for it to live after me, strong and united, and it can’t do that if three claimants to my position pull it apart.”

  “So you devised a way to prevent that and avenge your wife at the same time. To accomplish everything you still hoped to achieve here in the twilight of your life.”

  * * *

  Footsteps creaked on the rickety stairs leading to the lower levels of the tower. As Katya stood silent and motionless, she considered her options.

  She could pounce out of the dark and meet the man at the head of the search party with a dagger cast or a thrust of her short, straight sword. The corpse would fall back into the Red Tigers behind it, hindering them while she beat a hasty retreat.

  Or, she could draw stored power from the sapphire-and-silver amulet hidden beneath her tunic, cast a spell to create the raw essence of a blow or violent shove, and aim it at the rotten staircase itself. With a certain amount of luck, the whole structure would collapse, and the cutthroats caught on the risers would fall right along with it.

  She frowned. Both attacks had points to recommend them. But neither was a part of the plan she’d conceived before coming to the castle, and, thus, either would detract from the elegance of the design she was attempting to articulate.

  So, for now, she’d continue sneaking and hiding. She tiptoed to the window.

  It afforded her a glimpse of the mainland, the lights of the port, and the black mass of the bluffs rising behind it. Othman’s mansion sat on the heights, and she wondered for a moment if her true enemy was peering down at her as she was looking up at him. Then she turned her attention to practical matters.

  The masons who’d built the tower had done good work, but time and the wet salt air were undoing the precision with which they’d fitted and mortared the sandstone blocks as surely as they were rubbing away the painted designs that had once adorned them. There were cracks and protrusions to serve a climber’s needs.

  Katya slipped out backwards, found her first handholds, and headed downward. Remembering Numair’s confidence that he and his men could corner her, she smiled. As long as she could negotiate the walls and rooftops, she should be able to slip out of any box.

  Something cracked into the wall just to the right of her head. Bits of
broken stone stung her face and made her eyes snap shut for an instant. Still, she caught a glimpse of the offending object as it tumbled away. It was a crossbow bolt.

  She looked over her shoulder. She could just make out the crossbowman in the window of an adjacent tower. He was reloading but likely wouldn’t get a second shot, because there was movement behind him. His fellow searchers were hurrying up to push him aside and take their turns.

  Katya looked around. There was no place of safety to which she could climb before the next quarrel flew, or the one after that. But there was a cornice several feet below. As best she could judge in the dark, it didn’t stick out far, but she dropped anyway.

  She snatched hold of the decorative ridge, and the resulting jerk stabbed pain through her fingers. The cornice shifted and made a little crunching sound as it took her weight. But she managed to hang on to it, and it, to the stonework underneath it.

  She swung herself into a window just below the cornice. Now the cutthroats in the neighboring tower no longer had a shot at her, and the searchers in her own minaret were above her. She was safe for the moment it would take to catch her breath.

  As she picked away a broken fingernail, she scowled at her previous cockiness and cautioned herself not to underestimate her foes. It had taken good eyes to spot her clinging to the side of the tower in the dark. The kind of eyes that had ended the career of many an assassin.

  * * *

  Othman shook his head. “Why were you just hiding and sneaking around? What were you waiting for?”

  Katya smiled. “For the rest of your guests to arrive.”

  * * *

  It had been a long time since Manal and Zaki had worked together at anything. But it was necessary now.

  They’d met at the start of the causeway, and, since neither was willing to lose any more time, had perforce headed across together. And then had to cooperate to maintain order among their followers who were growing increasingly edgy as the tide rose, and the first sheets of black water washed across the cobbles to lap at their feet.

  “Steady!” they called. And: “There’s time!” And: “I’ll castrate the first man who shoves another into the sea!”

  To Manal’s irritation, her men seemed more jittery than Zaki’s. But that was the orchid gum for you. It deadened the conscience and rendered a man prone to a kind of violent frenzy, qualities she found useful. But it also made its devotees high-strung.

  They reached the point where the causeway climbed above the high-tide line without anyone falling off or a fight breaking out. Numair had left two men to watch the castle gate, one on the parapet above it and one in the courtyard, and they glowered at the newcomers.

  Manal reciprocated their hostility in full measure. She and her brother—lanky as a locust, armed with a coiled whip and a belt of scalpels—strode up to the crossbowman at ground level.

  “Where is Manal?” Manal demanded.

  The rogue’s truculence melted away now that he was actually eye to eye with her and had Zaki looking on as well. He swallowed and said, “Uh, searching, ya fendim.”

  “Fetch him,” she said.

  The crossbowman hesitated. “He told Harith and me to stay here.”

  Manal smiled, rested her hand on his shoulder, and tensed her arm twice. Yasirah, her cobra, came sliding out of her sleeve with forked tongue flickering. Numair’s man froze.

  “What did you say to me?” Manal asked. “Because it sounded like you refused an order from Othman’s daughter herself.”

  “I see you made it,” boomed a voice from the far side of the courtyard, “and brought your pet with you.”

  She turned to see Numair and four more crossbowmen on the far side of the courtyard. He’d returned on his own, perhaps because he’d looked out from some elevated position and seen her and Zaki coming up the causeway.

  She lifted Yasirah off the guard’s shoulder and cradled and fondled the snake as she stalked across the open space. Once again, Zaki walked right beside her. If it bothered him to be within striking distance of Yasirah, she couldn’t tell it. But then, she’d never been able to tell what he was thinking or feeling except when he was taking someone apart with his lash and knives. On those occasions, he smiled and hummed.

  Manal glared at Numair. “You piece of dung! You had someone set fire to the warehouse to delay me coming here!”

  Stinking of sweat as usual, Numair smirked down at her. “You shouldn’t accuse your own brother without proof.”

  “Do you know how much those goods were worth?”

  “No, but I know you were responsible for them and will have to answer to Father for their loss.”

  She drew a breath to retort, but Zaki raised a finger to forestall her. She assumed he wanted to berate their brother for whatever he’d done to delay him. But instead, he simply observed, “You haven’t killed the assassin yet. Otherwise, you’d be gloating more than you are.”

  Seemingly surprised by his brother’s lack of overt emotion—although after a lifetime together, he shouldn’t have been—Numair blinked. “Well, no. We haven’t. We saw her once, but she ducked back undercover before anyone could put a bolt in her.”

  Zaki nodded. “It’s a sizable ruin. It will take all of us searching to pin her down.” He turned toward his underlings, men dressed in the somber colors he himself preferred and armed with the blowpipes and garrotes he taught them to use.

  Manal realized he had the right idea. There’d be time to punish Numair’s perfidy—and Zaki’s many treacheries, too—when Father had proclaimed her heir. But for that to happen, she needed to accomplish the task at hand. She spat at Numair’s feet and strode back to her own followers, who stood sucking and chewing their purple-stained fingertips. Users smoked orchid gum, but a bit of the stuff always stuck to their hands, and between sessions with the pipe or hookah, they sometimes went after the residue for want of anything better.

  Manal gave them their instructions. Then Latif cleared his throat. He was her favorite, the youngest, brightest, and prettiest, because the gum had only started to work on him. So far, it had merely burned every trace of fat off his frame, put a feverish light in his eyes, and darkened the hollows beneath them.

  “Yes?” she said.

  He swallowed like he knew he was about to say something he shouldn’t. “We’re all jumpy,” he said. “We haven’t had any smoke since yesterday, and I know you brought some. I saw you slip it in your sash.”

  “Did you?”

  “If we could all just have a puff, it would clear our heads and help us search.”

  She smiled. “Nonsense. A touch of the craving is just what you need to keep you sharp. Besides, I brought the gum to celebrate our success. So let’s hope we are successful. Otherwise, I suppose I might just as well toss the packet in the bay.”

  He shivered, and for a moment she saw hatred in his eyes. It made her smile stretch wider because it was so utterly impotent. Neither he nor any of his fellows could ever turn on her; they needed her like babies needed their mother and her milk. Importing the gum from the jungles far to the west and requiring her underlings to partake was as clever a thing as she’d ever done.

  Though perhaps not as clever as what she was about to do.

  * * *

  “Did you realize Manal was a sorceress?” Othman asked, and then felt angry that he’d spoken of her in the past tense. He didn’t know what had ultimately transpired in the castle. Although the fact that none of his children had yet reported to him was disquieting.

  “I told you,” Katya replied, “I made it my business to learn everything about you and the Red Tigers. So I was counting on her to hunt me as she did.”

  * * *

  Keeping low, Katya moved along the wall-walk that linked one minaret with another. She’d just watched the siblings confer in the courtyard behind the gate, and although she hadn’t tried to get close enough to catch every word, she’d absorbed the gist of their conversation. It pleased her that Manal and Zaki were already angry
with Numair.

  Now she just had to wait until the three groups of Red Tigers dispersed through the castle to hunt her. She couldn’t move on to the next phase of her plan while they were bunched together.

  Meanwhile, with the number of searchers tripled, she absolutely had to remain alert. She looked in all directions, peering from the corner of her eye to see more clearly in the dark, and took care lest the hunters’ torches and lanterns dazzle her. She listened, straining to catch any sounds masked by the crashing and sighing of the surf.

  But despite her vigilance, the next threat appeared without warning a mere pace in front of her. It was a black cobra that simply congealed out of the darkness. Its eyes shining with blue phosphorescence, it reared and struck.

  Reflex made Katya leap backwards. But it was pure instinct that immediately warned that by avoiding one threat, she’d placed herself within easy reach of another.

  She whirled. A second glowing-eyed cobra came swirling toward her.

  She sprang onto one of the merlons that made up the parapet. She didn’t like doing it. It made her too visible. But there was nowhere else to go.

  The cobras reared, and she could almost read their wordless thoughts: They could reach her on her perch. It would just be a little awkward for them.

  Before they could try, she clapped her hand onto the amulet beneath her tunic, opened herself to it, and reached out with the power she had drawn from it. The snakes froze as her magic twisted the spell that had created them to bring them under her control.

  She hopped down from the parapet and picked up one cobra. Not wanting to expend as much power as it would take to maintain control of both of them, she released the other when she reached the doorway into the next minaret.

  She spied a third serpent as she slipped through the doorway, although, fortunately, it didn’t see her. Katya’s eyebrow shot up at that; she had known Manal was a sorceress, but it had taken a lot of power, and a lot of planning, to create and control so many of the creatures.