by Tanya Huff
Even in that short time, it had pulled closer—close enough to see that all exposed timber had been painted a deep matte black.
*That’s conceit,* Gyhard growled. *All that black paint must’ve cost her a fortune. No wonder she turned pirate.*
Conceit. Vree frowned.
She felt Gyhard stir uneasily within the boundaries of her mind. *What are you thinking?* he demanded. *Vree …*
*I’m thinking that there may be an alternative to going over the side with a pirate’s ax splitting my skull.*
*What alternative?*
She turned from the rail. *The usual one.* Ignoring the chaos growing around her, she made her way past frantic men and women fighting to get the last bit of speed out of the Fancy to the arms locker where the armsmaster was methodically setting out bundles of barbed arrows. As he’d spent some years in the Empire and spoke fluent Imperial, they’d not have to waste any of their rapidly decreasing time on translations. “Tell me,” she demanded without preamble, “about Edite i’Oceania.”
“Good at what she does,” he grunted, not bothering to look up. “Almost as good as she thinks she is. Shkoden navy controls most of the sea-lanes through the Broken Islands, but they can’t catch her. And the Circle knows they’ve tried. From what I’ve heard, her crew adores her. They should. She’s made them rich. They’d die for her.” He pulled oilskin-wrapped packets of bowstrings out of the locker. “And some of them are going to.”
“What about her? Would she die for them?”
The armsmaster laughed, but the sound held little humor. “Her type thinks they’re immortal.”
“How would she respond to a knife at her throat?” The tone of Vree’s voice lifted the armsmaster out of his crouch and turned him toward her. “Would this pirate call off an attack in exchange for her life? Would her crew listen if she did?”
“Aye, the crew would likely listen,” he said slowly, studying her face, a slow realization dawning. “But i’Oceania wouldn’t give that order. If she’s taken alive, she’ll die ashore and she knows it. You kill her, though, and her crew becomes the stinking rabble it was before she forced order on it. Captain Edite’s the only thing holding that murdering bunch of cutthroats together. If she dies, they’d fall apart. If they fall apart …” His eyes still on her face, he closed his fist around the hilt of his short sword. “I can beat them.”
Vree nodded and spun about on one bare heel.
“Assassin.”
She paused.
“Do it quickly or there’ll be no point in doing it at all.”
* * * *
Down in the forecastle, ignoring the fire crew readying its station, Vree unrolled her pack and began buckling on the wrist sheaths that held her throwing daggers. Up above, she could hear the armsmaster shouting orders. As she understood it, the captain—a thin and hairy man she’d barely seen—commanded all nautical situations and the armsmaster commanded defense. It would never have worked in the Imperial Army, but it seemed to work at sea.
If the armsmaster commanded, then the Raven was close.
*You’re very quiet,* she said a moment later as she regained the main deck.
*I thought we’d agreed that it would be best if you told no one what you were.*
*I didn’t tell him.*
*You gave him enough for him to figure it out. He must’ve been suspicious ever since you won that knife fight …*
Teeth clenched, Vree cut him off. *Look, you can jump into the nearest slaughtering pirate if this body dies. I can’t. So shut up and stay out of my way.*
*I can’t talk you out of this?*
*No.*
She had a mental image of Gyhard spreading his hands—Bannon’s hands, because those were the only ones she’d ever seen him wear. *Then I guess I’m along for the ride. Wait a minute! Where are you going?*
Surefooted despite the constant movement of the ship, Vree started up the rigging by the stern mast. *You know that long thing sticking out from the front of the Raven?*
*The bowsprit.*
*Whatever.* Swinging up onto the bottom spar, she moved out to the end. The armsmaster had obviously said something to his bowmen, for the three she passed stared at her wide-eyed and twisted out of her way as much as their position some fifteen feet above the deck allowed. *I’m going to jump from the end of this crosspiece thing down onto it.*
*You’re going to what?* Each word was carefully and separately enunciated. He sounded impossibly calm.
*There’s enough rope coming off it that it shouldn’t matter if I miss a little.*
*Are you out of your mind!* The calm had disappeared so completely it might never have existed. *That is not possible!*
Rolling her shoulders, Vree squinted back at the Raven, now close enough to make out the individual pirates crowding the rail. She could almost see the single line that held them together. The line she was about to cut. *It’s not impossible, just very difficult. In fact, I’ll aim for that rope between the whatever-you-called-it and the front mast and not worry about my footing. I can swing straight from there to the deck.*
*No you can’t. No one could do that.*
Vree merely shrugged and watched with interest as a flaming ball of pitch landed with an angry hiss and a gout of steam just short of the Raven. Familiar with the huge siege engines the Imperial Army used, she’d been fascinated to discover, upon exploring the ship, a much smaller catapult on the carved stern of the Gilded Fancy.
The Raven’s answer was a canister of metal fragments. The Raven’s armsmaster was a better shot. Vree heard the impact; heard wood splinter; heard someone scream; could smell smoke.
What happened on the Fancy was no longer her concern.
All her attention shifted to the enemy.
*Vree! Listen to me! You can’t do this! I don’t care how much training Imperial assassins go through; you can’t jump from a moving ship to a moving ship!*
Concentration broken, she snapped, *How do the pirates intend to board us?*
*That’s different!*
*Only in degree.*
*They’ll wait until they’ve dropped sail and grappled!*
*I haven’t time to wait, and I know what I’m capable of. You don’t. So shut up. And if you try to take over even an eyebrow, I’ll push you right out of my head! Do you understand me, Gyhard?*
*I don’t want to die,* he said softly, ignoring the threat neither of them wanted to explore.
*Good. That makes two of us.* But as his concern was in her head, she had to feel it. And the feeling was a distraction. Because assassins couldn’t feel. Not while they were working. *Gyhard …*
*At least they won’t be expecting it,* he sighed, surrendered, and drew back until he was barely a whisper in the depths of her mind. Vree suspected the whisper would remain even if Gyhard’s kigh should find another body.
She forced her attention back to the Raven. Looked through the arrow fire. Ignored the howls of both pain and fury. Found a wild-haired woman in a scarlet shirt and boiled leather armor conducting the attack, a sword in one hand, and a basket-hilted dagger in the other. She marked the defenses and defenders she’d have to pass and found two of the pirate ship’s other officers.
Compressing her focus, she shifted her gaze to the bowsprit.
The world became a rope, two sets of movement, and the distance between them.
The distance narrowed.
A grappling iron clanged against the side of the Fancy, only a hand’s span short.
Vree jumped.
She was holding the rope but still falling when the Raven’s reinforced bow rammed into the Fancy’s side. The rope took up most of the shock, her arms the rest. Her right hand lost its grip, gained it again as the rough hemp burned a line across her palm, but the dagger in her wrist sheath twisted out and into the sea.
Shit!
She let her weight on the rope swing her in over the deck. As the ship rose, cresting a wave, she dropped, rolled, and sprinted for the stern.
; Survive to reach the target. She’d been seven when she’d started training. Bannon had been six. They’d survived the training—two out of three didn’t. She couldn’t remember how many targets they’d survived to reach.
The world became a scarlet shirt and the pale column of throat above it.
In the confusion of boarding, few of the pirates noticed her. Those that did, she avoided although one took a wild swing and slashed a shallow cut diagonally across her back.
When Vree reached the sterncastle, a narrow three steps above the main deck, she leaped, without pausing, up and over the railing, landing directly in front of her target.
The captain broke off bellowing orders and began to laugh. A large woman, carrying very little of her weight as fat, she towered over the short, slender Southerner. “Have you come to challenge me, little sprat?” her voice cut through the bedlam and heads began to turn on both ships. “I think not.”
Her heavy sword slammed down into the deck, splintering the wood, but Vree had begun to move before she’d finished speaking. Virtually too fast to follow, the point of her long dagger slipped in under Edite’s left ear, drew a graceful line across the captain’s throat, and slid out from under the right ear. She finished the motion by flicking her remaining wrist dagger down into her hand and sending it hilt deep into one of the brilliant blue eyes of the sailor on the tiller.
Edite scowled and began to choke, covering the immediate area with a crimson spray. Sword and dagger fell from fingers that curved to clutch futilely at life. With her windpipe and all major blood vessels severed, she didn’t live long. As she slammed into the deck, still twitching, a roar went up from her crew. As one, their prize forgotten, they turned on Vree and, screaming with rage, they rushed for the stern. A few, already on board the Fancy, returned to join the enraged mass. A high-pitched voice, shouting for them to continue the attack, was ignored.
An ax splintered the deck at Vree’s feet and a javelin cut through the place she’d been an instant before. Fortunately, most of the howling pack forgot the missile weapons they held in the desire to personally rip their captain’s killer limb from limb. Backing rapidly into a corner of the stern, Vree’s hips hit the rail. The first half-dozen crew members charged toward her past their captain’s body, faces twisted in identical masks of hate.
*Vree!*
She hit the water in a clean dive some distance from the Raven’s ebony hull and stayed deep as long as she could.
*I didn’t know you could swim.*
The relief in Gyhard’s mental voice was so great that Vree very nearly laughed aloud. *The Sixth Army’s garrison was at Harack, on the coast. When I was eleven, we had to swim about five miles back to shore in the middle of the night.*
*When you were eleven?*
*Bannon was ten. The swim wasn’t so bad, but the sharks were annoying.*
*Sharks!*
This time she did laugh as her head broke the surface, the water pulling her dripping hair back off her face. *I’m kidding about the sharks.* Bobbing up and down the swells, salt burning in the cut across her back, she turned until she could see the battle raging on the two ships. Although she thought she could hear the Fancy’s armsmaster yelling orders, she had no way of knowing who was winning.
*If the garrison was by the ocean, why didn’t you know what a bowsprit was called?*
*Because it wasn’t important; we had too many other things to learn, and a ship has no throat to slit. I guess we should go back and …*
Large hands closed around Vree’s waist and dragged her under. Released her, grabbed her shoulders, and pushed her deeper. As the water closed over her head, she fought a heartbeat’s panic, then pointed her toes and pushed up against the water, trying to go deeper still. It almost worked. Her attacker lost his grip on her shoulders but caught a painful handful of her hair.
Taken by surprise, her lungs were nearly empty. She needed to breathe.
Most assassins died after taking out their targets, success having made them careless.
Her chest burned. A primal panic clawed at the inside of her mouth and throat.
The sea closed around her ribs and squeezed, trying to force her to inhale.
Through slitted eyes, she could see a huge, dark shape in the water above her.
Facing her.
Throwing the strength of arms and shoulders into a backstroke, she drew her legs up and, knees touching her own forehead, drove both feet past his arm and slammed them up under his jaw. Pulling herself over and around, she sucked in great lungfuls of air as her face broke the surface and finished the circle, coughing, gasping, with an unnecessary dagger in her hand.
*I think you crushed his throat.*
Forcing her breathing to slow, Vree sheathed the dagger and started swimming for the ships, ignoring the choking, thrashing pirate just over an arm’s length away.
*Aren’t you going to finish him?*
*He’s finished. And I’d rather not put more blood into the water.* Arms and legs growing heavier with every heartbeat, all she wanted to do was get back on board the Fancy before the last of her energy gave out.
* * * *
*I don’t understand why they’re carrying on like this.*
Through Vree’s eyes, Gyhard watched as the crew of the Gilded Fancy celebrated by lantern light. The captain’d had two casks of sweet Imperial wine brought up on deck and most of the toasts drunk had been to Vireyda Magaly, the savior of the ship. Gyhard could feel her confusion and recognized its source. While any of the Seven Armies might rejoice at the removal of an enemy commander—for the lack of a battle no lives were lost—they’d been trained to make no fuss over the assassin who, after all, had only been doing her job. But Vree was no longer in the Imperial Army and she’d just done the impossible. *You’ve never worked with an audience before. Usually, the people who see you don’t survive the experience.*
She shifted uneasily. *So?*
*So, you do impressive work.* He remembered the first time he’d seen her kill; by the time he’d thought she should start moving, it was all over. Her concentration, he’d just discovered, was as complete as it appeared—nothing got in her way. Fueled by that concentration, her speed was terrifying. If he ever took control of her body, the difference would be night and day, her deadly grace lost. If he ever took control of her body … He buried the thought as deeply as possible, lest she feel it.
He’d wanted to remind her, back when she’d been worrying over how assassins couldn’t feel, that she wasn’t an assassin any more. Except that only an Imperial assassin with years of brutal training both mental and physical behind her could hope to make that jump, and as she obviously intended to make it and he had no choice but to go along …
In the corner of her vision, he caught sight of the two Imperial merchants and felt the memory of hair rising off the back of his neck. Although both merchants held heavy metal goblets, their expressions were anything but celebratory and when one of them, believing herself unobserved, glanced at Vree, she was scowling.
In the Havakeen Empire, assassins were named the blades of Jiir, the goddess of battles, and their terrifying, deadly skills were controlled by the army. The citizens of the Empire were constantly assured that assassins were not only rare but safely sheathed, killing only on order of their commanders. Trained from early childhood that the army was their only family, assassins never left … home.
As an added reassurance to a nervous population, it was well known that if, in spite of incredible odds, they should desert, they would be targeted and quickly killed.
But Vree had been trained with her brother and that attachment had been strong enough to break all the rest. She’d killed the man sent to kill her and had bought her freedom from His Imperial Majesty with the life of his youngest son.
Gyhard, though born in Shkoder, had lived most of his hundred and thirty-six years—most of his lives—in the Empire and could understand the fear on the merchant’s face. This assassin was not sheathed by the army
and she’d just made her own decision to kill—without orders. If that were possible, how could anyone be safe?
How indeed, Gyhard wondered. When the celebration was over, it would only take a couple of voices to turn the admiration to fear. “Listen to me, I come from the Empire, I know …” She was too fast. Too deadly. Too impossible to stop. And they had all seen what she was capable of. Assassinating both merchants before the warnings could start seemed a bit extreme even if he could convince Vree to do it. Besides, after the afternoon’s exhibition of her abilities, the authorities wouldn’t need a bard to discover who’d wielded the knife—Vree was deadly but hardly subtle.
As Vree turned slightly to watch a sailor juggling three torches, an ax, and a dead chicken, Gyhard took a better look at the merchants. There was nothing obviously wrong with the male of the pair: young enough, reasonably good-looking. Suppose he could convince Vree to push him into the male merchant? Once there he could easily silence the rumors by arranging an accident … except that even should Vree prove willing—which she wouldn’t—Gabris and Karlene had made it clear what the bards would do if he acquired a body by taking a life.
“As we can neither remove you nor bring you to justice for the lives you’ve so callously ended as long as you remain in Vree’s body, you have, for the moment, found sanctuary. You’d best not forget what you owe her for that.” Karlene’s voice had made it a warning, not a reminder. “But this is where we draw the line. If anyone else dies because of you, anyone, the bards will see to it that your kigh goes back into the Circle so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
That Karlene and Gabris were a very long distance away in the Empire meant little when they both Sang air and distance meant nothing at all to the kigh.
He felt Vree’s foot tapping in time to the music as a battered squeeze-box, a fiddle, and a pair of pipes began to play. The army had gone to a great deal of trouble to present the assassins as weapons; perhaps it would help if Vree were seen as flesh and blood. *Why don’t you dance?*
