A little shiver ran through him at the memory of the spirit hissing and spitting with anger at the stink of the butchered goat, restrained by powerful symbols painted red on the ground; burning entrails filling the chamber with thick, choking smoke. The slight motion of his discomfort made the leather chair underneath him squeak in protest, and the Warden put down his pen.
“I can put my tasks on hold if you’re impatient,” the Warden said.
“I’m sorry, sir. Please take no account of me.”
“You have made me lose my thought,” the Warden replied, pushing the paper away slightly. “Has the girl arrived yet?”
“Yes, sir. I spoke with her this evening. I think she will go see Bartolo tomorrow.”
“Good. That will be the perfect opportunity for you.”
“For me to do what, sir?”
“To get rid of her,” the Warden said, as if it was obvious.
“I’m sorry, sir? I’m not sure I follow.”
“I don’t want her to see Bartolo. If the two of them come together, my plans will be in jeopardy. I want you to kill her and put an end to it.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be easy,” Jairus said slowly. “She has protection.”
“Who?”
“Leofric Gunhilde. And a neneckt I’m not familiar with. He calls himself Nikko.”
“Gunhilde is nothing,” the Warden said dismissively. “Malveisin’s pet with a pin in his hand. He will not be a challenge for you, I’m sure.”
“Perhaps not, sir, but the Prinsthorpe girl is a member of the Guild,” Jairus tried. “Is it wise to upset them further when the city is already on edge?”
“Are you questioning my wisdom?” the Warden asked, his chair creaking as he leaned forward.
“I would never, sir. Forgive me. I am just too ignorant to understand.”
“What is your objection?” the Warden asked, ignoring the false apology. “You have killed for me before. Is this woman special to you, perhaps?”
“I only met her for a moment,” Jairus said, hoping he was keeping his voice steady enough for the tightness to escape the Warden’s hearing. “She is nothing to me. I simply believe that the city would erupt at the news of it.”
“And what makes you think that isn’t my plan?”
“I don’t claim to know your plans, sir,” he said. “If it is what you wish, then I will do it.”
“Good. I expect you back here with the news by noon tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“And Jairus,” the Warden called when he had stood up to leave, a hint of taunting in his voice. “I will be watching you.”
It took a great deal of self-control not to slam the door on his way out, but he managed to keep his fury locked inside until he was a long way away. He almost went back to his room, where he could give a sound thrashing to his pillow, already worn thin at the seams from such treatment. He didn’t know how many more setbacks it could take before he was on his hands and knees scooping feathers off the floor.
Instead, he ended up in the cavern that served as a training ground, where he spent an hour pointlessly scowling at anyone who came near him while he threw daggers at the heart of a straw man.
The Warden should not have brought up the fact that he was a killer. It was the truth, but it was one he hated. He had been nearly as surprised and dismayed as the woman in question to find his blade buried in her ribs and her lifeblood boiling over his hands as he held her wilting corpse, unable to give her the satisfaction of looking her murderer in the eye.
She had been a traitor, a thief, and a menace to the people of Niheba, and in her own right she had been very dangerous. The Warden had asked Jairus to find her, much like he was now asking him to find Megrithe. It was one of the first times the cult had tested his commitment to their cause, and he had intended to pass. He had not planned to kill her, only to capture her and turn her over to whomever the Warden wished, but the altercation had simply escalated out of his control. He had been required to defend himself.
No one else in the world had mourned her passing. In fact, many people had rejoiced. But even though he had left that encounter with enough wounds of his own to justify the action, the few dreams he could ever remember were filled with the sound of her last breath and the feel of her blood dripping from his shaking fingers.
It made him feel foolish to be so shy of killing when all of his highly honed skills were intended for that very purpose. He enjoyed a good fight – he enjoyed it more than nearly anything else – but it had always been practice, or friendly sparring, or wagered contests that were not supposed to end in death. He may be a spy, but he was no soldier, and the wars he wished to fight were ultimately matters of the mind, not the body.
The Warden didn’t see the difference. He had not drawn those careful lines between life and death, because he had never done anything other than give the orders. He was a scholar by origin, and a politician. He had the luxury of using his pawns as he saw fit instead of getting dirty himself.
The Warden trusted Jairus to be one of those pawns, and that trust was vital for his larger mission. He had to keep up the illusion of faithfulness if he was to continue to have access to Bartolo, and eventually, hopefully, to the cache of counterfeit iron that was surely hidden somewhere within the unsavory fellow’s purview. Jairus was nearly convinced that Faidal was just a phantom invented by Bartolo to hide his own involvement in the counterfeiting ring, but he didn’t have proof yet.
He needed to follow it through. He needed to what he was told. Megrithe had been trained by the Guild, and she would likely do the same thing herself if she was required. She would have encountered hidden agents in her work before, and she would know what they sometimes had to do in order to remain undetected.
She would understand the need, he told himself. At least, she probably would, if he gave her a chance to realize what was happening. But he wouldn’t. He would be quick, and it would be painless, and it had to be done. He knew that it did.
The dawning sun meant nothing to him except that it was time to damn his soul to one of the less pleasant hells. He had spent more of the night than he should have at the training grounds. After tiring of his target practice, he had been more than willing to try to leech the anger from his thoughts by beating on his fellows with padded wooden swords. It hadn’t been much of a challenge, but the sweat and action, followed by a good measure of wine, had helped him catch a bit of sleep.
But now it was the morning, and he had to make a decision. As far as he knew, Megrithe had done nothing wrong since her arrival on the island. He didn’t quite like the fact that she had indirectly linked him to the Guild by identifying him as a friend of Agnise, but he didn’t think she would betray him to anyone who could do him harm.
He kept thinking about their meeting. Her voice had sounded tired, maybe even a bit brittle, as if she was determined to keep her emotions stowed away but was struggling to do so. All women seemed taught from birth how to confuse men with their feelings, and those in the Guild were given additional training that made them absolutely inscrutable, in his experience. If such a studied and sturdy façade was cracking, she must be under a truly enormous amount of pressure. He was familiar with the feeling.
It didn’t take him long to find her when he reached the Spearman. There were few people about so early in the morning, and none of them were quite as tense as Megrithe and her companions. He could feel their trepidation from across the common room, like a hawk sensing out the minute shuffling of a frightened mouse hiding in the leaf litter. He put the notion out of his mind immediately. He didn’t want to think of her as his prey.
“Good morning, Miss Prinsthorpe,” he said. “Sirs. May I assume you will be joining us?”
“Yes,” Leofric said.
“Very well. I suppose there is no point to insisting that you leave your weapons here.”
“Not in the least,” said Leofric. “Besides, Nikko doesn’t need any.”
“I am quite aware,” Jairus said. Even the young or the infirm among the sea people could overwhelm an average human, and the neneckt could rarely be killed by anything except the special coral glass weaponry produced by their own priests.
Nikko was neither a child nor a weakling, and Jairus was only armed with ordinary blades. He was not looking forward to testing the neneckt’s loyalty to his friends. He would need to catch Megrithe when Nikko was off his guard.
“Where are we going?” Megrithe asked, oblivious to his thoughts.
“The harbor side,” Jairus said as cheerfully as he could. “And a lovely day for it, too. It’s very warm.”
“This is not a jaunt in the park for pleasure, sir,” she replied with a sharp edge to her words.
“No, miss,” he acknowledged. “It certainly isn’t.”
He usually tried to render himself as agreeable as possible when he was with new people, as a general rule. But this time, he could hardly think of a thing to say to any of them. They didn’t seem to mind the silence as he led them down Cherry Street and through one of the nicer market squares, though no one stopped to admire the stalls of jewelry and glasswork attended by bustling artisans primping and preparing their wares for the day.
He could do it at any moment. Leofric was hovering by her side, and Nikko was walking in front of her, so it might be tricky to get around him, but there was a sharp, slim knife up his cuff that could slip into his hand and through the air at a moment’s notice. He wouldn’t miss. Her protectors might bring him down, eventually, but the job would be done. A simple job. A stupid one. A test that he couldn’t fail.
“This way, please,” he said, turning a corner that would give him the perfect opportunity to catch her unawares. He could feel the shoulder of his throwing arm tensing, but the knife stayed hidden in its place until they reached the last turning before the tall brick construction that served as Bartolo’s lair.
“I don’t suppose I could speak to Miss Prinsthorpe privately for a moment, could I?” he asked her bodyguards before they started down the lane.
“Whatever you want to say to me, you can say in front of them,” Megrithe told him.
“If that were true, miss, I wouldn’t have asked to speak to you alone.”
Megrithe hesitated, and even if Jairus couldn’t see the looks that passed between them, he was sure the men were warning her against granting the request. He didn’t blame them.
“Very well,” she said eventually. “They will take a few steps back.”
“Thank you.” Jairus said, then waited until he heard the reluctant shuffle of boots. “What I’m about to say will alarm you,” he continued in a quieter voice, “but I would be much obliged if you didn’t make a scene until you hear me out.”
“I’m not sure I can promise that. But I will try.”
“Well, the fact of the matter is, Miss Prinsthorpe, that if I had any courage whatsoever, you would be dead right now.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have been asked to kill you.”
She fell silent, clearly taken aback, but he was pleased that she didn’t scream or run or try to hit him. She was thinking calmly about his words, assessing the impact of them, and that raised his opinion of her so much that he knew that there was nothing in the world that could now change his mind about what he had just done.
“Who asked you?” she said. “Was it Bartolo?”
“No, miss. He really does want to see you. I serve many masters at the moment, and he is actually the least of my concerns.”
“You are one of the Divided.”
“In a manner of speaking. But in truth, I am working for the Guild. Like you.”
“Then I’m sure you are familiar with the statue in the Guild House,” she said suspiciously.
“The king cloaked in blue?” he asked, playing along with the standard series of questions and answers that would separate him from an impostor. The color of the fictional cloak and other items included in the code changed according to a complicated cycle of Guild-related holidays and other secret dates that were hardly common knowledge.
“Yes. But I can’t remember the inscription.”
“For the glory of the light out of the darkness,” he recited, picking the right words carefully, “and the call of day to the old red crow.”
“You worked with Agnise,” she said after a moment, and he breathed a sigh of relief at getting the sequence correct. “You were her informant.”
“Yes, Inspector. The Guild Master – well, my physician Doctor Cloche, really – thought that my situation might help investigate the Divided. There was some thought, originally, that the stream of counterfeit coming from Niheba was related to them.”
“And is it?” she asked innocently.
“No. Not at all. But I know for certain that Bartolo is involved, and I have more than a guess that Tiaraku himself is behind it all. I am doing Bartolo’s bidding so he will lead me closer.”
“There’s no point in that. I’ve seen the iron works, but the counterfeit is hardly the most dangerous thing Bartolo and Tiaraku are doing. Why do the Divided want me dead?”
“I don’t rightly know. The Warden said you must not work with Bartolo if his plans were to succeed. That’s all he told me.”
“I don’t plan to work with Bartolo at all,” she said. “I plan to leave him begging to tell me everything he knows about Arran, and then I plan to slit his bloody throat.”
“I’m afraid I cannot allow that, miss,” he said, trying not to smile at her stern conviction. “But I confess that he’s a bit of an arrogant prick, if you’ll excuse my language.”
“Indeed,” she replied. “If you wish me to trust you, Mister Lanque, I suggest you tell the Gunhildes exactly what you told me.”
“If you will vouch for me, then I would be glad to.”
“I am well acquainted with Doctor Cloche,” she said. “He is a goodly soul and was kind to me when I was a child. I remember a blind boy he used to read to when he had finished his duties. Was that you?”
“Yes, Inspector. It was.”
“Then on his name you will swear to Leofric and Nikko that you mean us no harm.”
“Very well. I swear it.”
Megrithe nodded and beckoned her friends forward, trying to explain the new development to them. Jairus could tell that the two men did not trust him an inch, even after Megrithe endorsed him. But neither of them tried to make a move against him, which was acceptance enough for the moment. There would be time later, he hoped, to convince them. There would be time enough for many things, if the Warden didn’t discover his disobedience first.
***
Despite Megrithe’s generally strong sense of will, she was not entirely immune to the shock of being told that the person standing inches from her face had been asked to take her life. He had responded correctly to her inqueries, and his inaction during a fine opportunity to execute his duty was certainly welcome proof that he meant what he had said to her.
Nonetheless, it was with a buzzing lightness in her head that she climbed the steps to Bartolo’s apartments, keeping her face half-turned towards her would-be assassin, every movement that he made sparking a jerking contraction of her muscles as her brain wrestled with the urge to flee.
Leofric and Nikko hadn’t believed a word of it. She didn’t blame them. Guild passcodes meant nothing to them, and even she had to admit that they were not a foolproof way of securing trust in someone’s intentions.
If the name of Doctor Cloche hadn’t triggered a memory that had been meaningless at the time – a cut on her finger during a visit with her father that had sent her to the infirmary, where a frail, pasty child who looked destined to die was lying rigidly in bed, his whole body straining to take in, to greedily remember, to live through the words that the kindly physician slowly read out – she would not have thought twice about running for her life.
The man in front of her seemed in no danger of losing himself to ill health, and the sol
id breadth of his shoulders spoke of anything but frailty. But there was something about his expression, curiously muted by the blank, directionless stare, which reminded her exactly of the eagerness and attentiveness of that studious child, desperate to be taken seriously in a world too quick to dismiss him, and immediately helped her identify the face as belonging to the same person.
But Nikko and Leofric didn’t have the benefit of half-stirred childhood experience to anchor a passing thought, and they had only grudgingly accepted the situation. They had closed ranks around her as if she was some high royal at risk of harm from an angry peasantry, frowning at Jairus like he carried some deadly plague.
“This is an even worse idea than it was ten minutes ago,” Leofric said under his breath as Jairus fumbled momentarily with which way the key should go in the door. “This is foolish. We can’t trust him. He could be leading us into a trap.”
“If he wanted me dead, he could have killed me the instant you stepped away,” Megrithe whispered back. “He didn’t.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t.”
“Maybe, but that’s not the most important thing right now,” she replied as Jairus opened the door just as Bartolo’s serving man came to do the same. Her fingernails pressed angry crescents into the soft skin of her palm as she found her fists clenched at her side without her knowledge.
They did not stay there when Bartolo showed his pinched and scheming face as he wandered in from the other room. Before Leofric or Jairus or even Nikko could stop her, she had crossed the floor, drawn back her arm, and let Bartolo feel the full force of her fury with a blow so powerful that her own father would have been proud to have delivered it.
Bartolo flew backwards with an unmanly shriek, a fountain of bright blood spurting from his broken nose as he sprawled on the floor.
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