by Tanya Huff
The crowd released a collective, satisfied sigh and Vree thought she saw Tomas wince as he said, “Witnessed.”
* * * *
“Of course she’s dangerous. She just put an end to the most vicious crew of mass murderers we’ve had in these waters since my grandfather’s time.” Ilka nodded in satisfaction as the seventh pirate was hoisted kicking and writhing into the air at the other end of the beach, then turned her attention again to the pair of Imperial merchants. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Honored Councillor, you don’t understand.” Although he spoke Shkoden fluently, the merchant’s accent put strange inflections on the words. “Assassins are trained only to kill or be killed, for them there is no middle ground and they are never away from the army. For this one to be as she is, deciding to kill as she has, is wrong.”
“Very wrong,” affirmed his companion. “It is as though a sword moved through the world, striking and killing with no hand wielding it.”
The elderly councillor studied them, weighing their fear. “How do you know there’s no hand wielding her?” she asked at last. “Perhaps she’s been sent to kill someone in Shkoder, no one saw fit to tell the two of you, and you’ve just blown her cover to the other side. That’s treason, isn’t it?”
The young man paled. Frowning, the woman shook her head. “Assassins travel only as part of an army. They are targeted and released by the army. The Empire is not at war with Shkoder, nor do we wish them to be. War is very bad for trade.”
“It is that.” Hand disappearing into her robe, Ilka scratched at the white line of an old scar, received the day Pitesti fell. “So what do you want me to do about this wild sword of yours? If she’s too dangerous for Shkoder, she’s an unenclosed sight too dangerous to hold here. Even if we had a reason to hold her. Which we don’t. And besides, she spent the morning with the bard and if she was any kind of a threat, he’d have told me.”
“We know nothing of bards, Honored Councillor, we merely thought that someone should be told what we know of assassins.”
“Well, someone’s been told. In fact …” The sudden shrieking of a pirate brought face-to-face with his own imminent death cut her off. She waited until the noise stopped before continuing. “In fact, from the whispering I’ve been hearing, hasn’t just about everyone been told? Didn’t it occur to you that she could get annoyed about that and, if she’s as dangerous as you say, maybe you’d be better off not attracting her attention? You think on that, and I’ll think on what you’ve told me. Ass-kissing bottom feeders,” she added after the two recognized a dismissal, bowed, and scurried away.
“Still,” she sighed, a pair of pirates later, “personal admiration probably shouldn’t stand in the way of national security. Kaspar!”
A balding fisherman hurried over to her chair. “Yes, Grandmother?”
“Wasn’t there a Shkoden diplomat of some kind on the Fancy?”
“I think so, Grandmother.”
“Go find him, and tell him I want to talk to him.”
* * * *
Imrich i’Iduska a’Krisus, diplomatic courier between the Shkoden ambassador to the Empire and King Theron, stroked the point of his beard and frowned. “We’ve been on the same ship for nine days; I wonder why they didn’t bring this information directly to me.”
“Because you’re an officer of the Shkoden court, and I’m a sweet, approachable old lady.” She threw up her hands. “How in the Circle should I know? The point is, you have the information now. Forget it or pass it on, it’s all the same to me.”
* * * *
Vree stood out on the bard’s deck and watched the dark silhouettes of the hanged pirate crew swinging in the night. Although the air was warm, she shuddered.
Tomas, who’d been about to ask if she wanted something to eat before Adamec started in on her again, saw the movement and asked instead, “It bothers you?”
She shrugged without turning. “It is a slow, painful, messy way to kill.”
“You’re saying you could’ve done it better?” He couldn’t stop the incredulous question, recognized how insulting it sounded, and hoped Karlene’s assessment of the assassin’s temperament was correct.
“I am not … an executioner. I say, it is a slow, painful, messy way to die. And, yes, it bothers me.”
The bard swallowed and risked touching her gently on one shoulder. “It bothers me, too.”
When Vree turned to face him, her face was carefully expressionless and her tone matter-of-fact. “But they expect it to bother you. Please tell Adamec I will be in … soon.”
He could possibly have Sung his way past the barriers, but he suspected he wouldn’t have known what to do with what he found, so he merely nodded and went back inside.
*Vree? What’s wrong?*
*I’m in a strange country, speaking a language I barely understand, and I want to go home.*
*We can.*
*No.* She stared at the harbor without really seeing it. *I miss the army.* Her fingers dug into the soft wood of the railing. *I miss Bannon. I have no one around me I can trust.*
He didn’t so much understand her pain, as share in it. *You can trust me.*
The sound of the rope rubbing against wooden cross beams drifted up clearly from the beach.
*Vree?*
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