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Summer, 352 M.E.
“Kay, there are soldiers in the back room.”
Kishori could hear the tremor of suppressed fear in the girl’s voice. She wiped her hands, straightened her apron, and asked, “How many?”
“Three.”
“I’ll look after them. You go out front.”
The girl—whose name Kishori had already forgotten—gave her a look of pathetic gratitude. She was plump and blonde, with dimples and a brilliant smile. She looked like the sort of person who could be pressured into doing things without complaint. Kishori had never had that problem.
She walked down the narrow back corridor of the inn, ducking a few drunken farmers who wanted everyone to join in their hilarity. The last parlor was quiet, and she looked in to find three scruffy men huddled around one half of the table in the dim, yellow lamplight. Despite the benches and eight chairs in the room, they had all taken seats facing the door.
Their faces and hands were dirty. Their clothes were stiff with dried mud. Or it might have been blood. Kishori had seen plenty of blood—dried and otherwise—in her life, so this barely raised an eyebrow from her. They had no swords or pikes or spears. Just long daggers shoved haphazardly into their belts. Their surcoats still had bits of stitching where some emblem had been torn away. With all the stains, she couldn’t tell what color the surcoats had been originally.
“Can I help you gentlemen?”
“Yes. We want food,” one of them growled. He had dense stubble on his chin and deep furrows in his forehead. Probably their self-appointed leader. “Food, and ale, and a way south.”
“I see. How about....” Kishori searched her memory for a second, trying to recall the specials for this evening. Some parts of the job were still hard for her. “How about lamb stew?”
“Yes, fine, whatever,” said Mr. Stubbly-chin. “Hurry up.” His eyes narrowed, and he rose halfway from his seat. “And if anyone asks, you didn’t see us back here.”
“Of course.” She curtsied poorly—another thing she hadn’t gotten used to—and went to place their order at the kitchen. Then she went out to the taproom to draw them three mugs of ale.
“Look at you,” said the innkeeper’s wife. Tonya? Tamara? Holy Vidhi, Kishori was bad with Myrcian names. “You’re awfully brave.”
“Did they bother you?” asked the dimpled blonde girl.
“No. Not at all.”
She knew, in an abstract sense, why the girls were scared of the men. For her part, though, she had never been scared of soldiers. She understood the way they thought. After her experiences in Loshadnarod, she knew what they had been through. Whatever those three men back there had done, or were planning to do, she knew they shared one important thing with her. They had all seen the very worst of humanity, and of themselves, and had no illusions anymore.
Clearly the soldiers had deserted after one of those big battles up around Formacaster. She didn’t know which side they had been on, though. Someone had told Kishori which side had won, but she had promptly put it out of her mind. Was it the bastard, Lord Gramiren, who was the king now? Yes, that sounded right. But Kishori didn’t care about politics. Sometimes she heard the innkeeper debating politics with his guests, cheerfully and loudly. Kishori thought the man was a fool. Best to keep one’s head down and not attract the wrong sort of attention.
She brought the drinks to the men and asked if they needed anything else before their food came.
“We need a boat to go south,” said Mr. Stubbly-chin. “Do you know anyone with a boat to hire?”
“No,” she answered honestly. “I can ask, though.”
“You could come with us,” said one of the other men. His face was rounder and softer than the others, and his dirty hair rose in a sharp cowlick at the back. “We’d like some...company. Wouldn’t we?”
Stubbly-chin and the other fellow gave him a look that clearly said, “No,” but Mr. Loverboy persisted.
“I...I could pay you,” he went on. “Hey, what’s your name? Are you Odelandic?”
“Maybe. Or maybe not.” She gave them a mysterious smile that she had practiced many times over the past few years. “People here call me ‘Kay.’”
Myrcians found that easier to say than “Kishori,” and it didn’t sound Sahasran, either. She didn’t care if people mistook her for an Odelander. The less that people knew about her, the better.
“So, Kay, will you come with us?” Loverboy gave her a sweetly hopeful look, but then he spoiled the effect by jangling the coins in his purse.
“Thank you, but no,” she said.
Actually, she had been thinking of going south for a while, but she certainly wouldn’t be going with these three. They didn’t scare her, exactly, but she didn’t trust them, either. The third one—the quiet one—kept reaching for his knife to make sure it was there. And he kept fiddling with his mug, adjusting it one way, then back the other way. His foot kept tapping constantly against one of the table legs, too.
Kishori recognized those jitters. She remembered them vividly. She remembered the way it felt when panic sat close to the surface all day long, only to come up at night. It took a long time to lose that sense of panic. Sometimes it never went away. She knew that all too well.
She went to the kitchen, got their lamb stew, and brought it back. Then she curtsied—a little better this time—and hurried away to check on other guests.
Out in the taproom, her cute little blonde coworker waved to her over the heads of a party of elderly spinsters, beckoning her to the bar. “Look what Jon brought us!” she called out.
Kishori slipped deftly through the crowd to join her. Seated at the bar was Jon Weller, a young local fisherman who was everyone’s favorite customer. He was tall with wide shoulders and long legs and a broad, friendly smile. With one of his big hands, he gestured to several large blocks of cheese on a board, surrounded with slices of dark red sausage.
“The cheesemonger gave me a deal,” he said, in his big, booming voice. “I couldn’t say, ‘no,’ but it’s far too much for one man to eat.” With a little cheese knife, he tipped a generous slice onto a plate and held it out to Kishori.
She took it and tried a bite. It tasted amazing. She didn’t know why Keneshire cheese tasted so much better than the cheese she had grown up with in Sahasra Deva, but it did. It was thick and creamy with enough salt to bring out all the complex flavors. She closed her eyes, savoring it. When she opened them, she saw Jon had given her a few slices of sausage. That was tasty, as well, but not as good as the cheese.
The blonde girl popped a little piece into her mouth. With her mouth still full, she said, “I’ll go see if anyone needs more drinks.” Then she gave Kishori a very obvious wink and a cheesy grin as she left.
Kishori didn’t know why she got winks and grins like that from the other girls when Jon was around. He liked everyone, and everyone liked him. He bought presents for everyone who worked at the inn, because that was the sort of person he was. He hadn’t done anything to single Kishori out. Not directly, anyway. She was the newest girl at the inn, so she assumed that was why he made a special effort to get to know her.
“Busy night?” asked Jon.
“A bit, yes.” She took another bite of the wonderful cheese. “This is very good.”
“I remembered that you liked this kind.”
“Well, um, thank you.” She couldn’t look at him directly anymore. The room had gotten suddenly hotter, and she mopped her brow with the end of her apron. “I should probably—”
“Wait. Listen, you wouldn’t like to join me for dinner sometime, would you?”
She ventured a glance back at him, and his smile made her cheeks burn. “Dinner?”
“Yes, it’s this meal I sometimes have in the evening. But it’s awfully expensive to cook for one.” He gestured at the cheese. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
“I suppose....” She fanned herself with her hands. “I suppose I could, yes.”
“Good.” He tipped another slice of cheese on her plate. “Have some more. Oh, by the way, Amy said some fellows in the back want to hire a boat. Is that true?”
“Amy?” When Kishori said it out loud, she remembered that was the name of her little blonde coworker. “Oh, yes. Amy is right. Three men. Army deserters, most likely. I’d be careful.”
Jon shrugged his shoulders, cracked his neck, and flexed his big arms. In another man, it would have been insufferable, but he managed to do it in an ironic, self-mocking way. “I think I can handle myself.” He rose to his feet, towering over her. “Besides, a little risk is worth it. I want to take you someplace really nice for dinner.”
He disappeared down the hall, emerging only a few minutes later with a big smile on his face. “Easy money,” he chuckled, giving her a wink. “A straight run down to Severn. I’ll be back in a week or ten days. Thank Amy for the tip. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go get the boat ready. They want to leave tonight.”
“Tonight?” Kishori’s stomach clenched.
“Yes. Go ahead and keep as much of the cheese as you like.” He blew her a kiss. “I’ll see you soon.”
She watched him leave, then ate another slice of cheese before heading down the hall again. At the door to the parlor, she heard low, frantic voices muttering together, and she paused, straining to hear.
“What are we going to do once we get to Annenstruk?” asked one man.
“Whatever we like,” came the answer. Kishori recognized Stubbly’s voice.
“Yes, but what do we do with him?” another of the men said. Kishori thought it sounded like Loverboy.
“It’s a river,” said Stubbly. “Things fall in it all the time.”
For a few seconds, Kishori could hardly catch her breath. She wanted to run after Jon, to warn him. But it was already too late. She heard the chairs scrape against the slate floor, and then footsteps.
Quickly, she got ahold of herself and stepped boldly into the doorway, almost colliding with Stubbly. “Are you gentlemen leaving already?” she asked brightly. “Don’t you want another round?”
“No,” snapped Stubbly. “Your money is on the table.” He looked back at the other two. “Come on. Let’s go up and get our things.”
They pushed past her, and she almost lost her balance. Quickly, she ran into the parlor and collected the money. Then she found Amy and pushed the coins into her hands. “Take care of this for me,” she said. “I’ve got something I need to do.”
On her way out the back door by the kitchen, she saw the innkeeper’s wife—Tonya or Tiffany or whatever she was called. “I need to step out for a bit,” Kishori said, stripping off her apron and tossing it over a coat hook. “I’ll be back.”
“What? Wait....”
Kishori didn’t hear the rest of what the woman said, because she was already running down the dusty cobblestone street toward the docks. She could see the wide River Trahern through gaps between shops and warehouses, velvety black except where the lights of distant farms on the far bank flickered and danced in the rippling water.
Halfway down the street, she realized she had no idea where Jon Weller kept his boat. The waterfront of Montgomery was nearly half a mile long, and hundreds of boats docked there. She might spend hours running up and down, asking around for him. She might miss him entirely, and then he would be out on the dark river alone with those three men.
Even if she found him, what would she say? He might not believe her. He might think she was exaggerating. He might think she was easily frightened, because he didn’t know what she had done before coming to Myrcia. No one here knew.
She turned on her heel and ran back to the inn. She used the narrow back stairs—the ones only employees knew about, and went up to the third floor, where she had a tiny garret room overlooking the High Street. Dropping to her knees, she pulled out her little trunk from under the bed. She lifted her clothes out, pulled up the first false bottom—the one that hid her money—and shifted aside her little purse of gold Sovereigns.
Her heart raced as she lifted the second little hidden panel. Then she let it drop and sat back, eyes closed, taking in long gulps of air.
“I was never going to do this,” she said to herself. “I was never going to be that person again. Never.”
But if that were true, then why hadn’t she thrown them away? Why did she still have the blasted things hidden in the bottom of her trunk?
She had always assumed that if she needed to use them, then it would be for her own sake. She couldn’t believe the Vizierate of Magy would let her go. Not when she was so highly-trained. Not when she’d absconded with highly valuable weapons. In the back of her mind, she had always assumed that someday another Yotha would show up and try to bring her back to Roshan for trial. Or maybe one of the Srotas, like Lord Maninder or that blasted Ratnam woman. Then Kishori would have to fight for her life, and she knew her chances weren’t very good.
For that reason, she had measured her life only in months. A few months here, a few months there, earning a living at inns and taverns and—occasionally—much less savory places.
“I could leave,” she thought. “I can walk down the alley and down Water Street, and no one will ever know where I went.”
But what about Jon? She couldn’t let him die, could she? Part of her mind—the part that had kept her alive since deserting from the Vizierate—said that she had no duty to help the man. “Better him than me.” But another part of her mind thought of how he had looked at her when asking her to dinner.
Almost without conscious thought, she reached down and started pulling up the little panel. “I shouldn’t do this,” she thought. “It’s dangerous. And I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve him after everything I’ve done.”
But then the other side of her mind said, “It’s not about what you deserve, you idiot. It’s about what Jon deserves. And he deserves a lot better than being murdered and dumped in the river.”
She set aside the second panel and felt the rings. At first, she recoiled, but after a moment to catch her breath, she pulled one out—a gold ring with a little red stone. The metal felt warm to the touch, and it slid easily onto her finger, like it had been made especially for her. It hadn’t been, of course. She had been only the latest in a long line of Yothas who had been issued this particular weapon. But it had come to feel like it belonged to her—like a part of her. She felt strangely complete with it on, and she knew she had to fight against that feeling.
The ring made her powerful, but it also unleashed all her worst instincts. She closed her eyes and shuddered, hearing the screams, smelling the seared flesh.
“I won’t become that person again,” she told herself. “It’s just this once, and then I’ll put it away forever.”
She took out a gray woolen cloak and pulled the hood low to cover her face. Then she went down to the second floor, where she found the soldiers’ room empty. The wax in the bedside candle still hadn’t cooled and hardened completely, however. They hadn’t been gone long. Looking out the window, she spotted the three of them in the alley, hurrying toward Water Street.
Turning the ring on her finger, she pressed the stone to her thumb and whispered the spell. For half a second, she felt the old, familiar, awkward sensation of being stretched and pulled through darkness. And then she was standing ten feet behind them, hidden out of the moonlight in the deep shade of a crumbling old brick wall.
“Wait a minute, gentlemen,” she said. Her voice was low and steady, with a hint of a cruel smile in it. She hadn’t used that voice in a long time now.
They spun around, hands on the hilts of their daggers. They looked surprised, but not guilty. Men like them didn’t suffer from guilt. Kishori knew what that felt like, the cold, stark absence of conscience. It was so comfortable and seductive, that feeling of complete satisfaction with one’s actions, like a snow drift in winter, begging a lost traveler to lie down and accept her fate. Part of her wished she could feel that way again. It would have made what she was about to do a lot easier.
Stubbly drew his dagger. “Who in the Void are you?”
“Someone who cares about Jon Weller,” she answered, running her thumb over the little red stone on her ring.
“Who’s Jon Weller?” asked Loverboy.
“The man you’re planning to murder so you can steal his boat.”
Stubbly and the third man moved almost as one, rushing at her with knives raised. She whispered a spell, and both of them were thrown sideways into the brick wall. It cracked and tumbled on top of them. The third man lay still, dazed or dead, but Stubbly tried to get up again.
Blood ran down his face from cuts in his scalp. He glared at Kishori and said, “You’re the bitch from the tavern. How did you—?”
He didn’t get to finish the question. She used a pressure spell to smash his face in. His eyes were pushed back into his skull, his jaw snapped back, and his brains spurted over the dusty pavement of the alleyway.
To her right, she heard a quavering wail, and she turned to see Loverboy holding out his knife in a shaky hand. “You...you...you killed them!” he cried. “I’m going to tell—”
“No one,” she said, finishing his sentence as a cutting spell sliced his neck open, leaving him mute as he bled out on the ground.
She watched him die, watched his face go gray and his eyes go dull. Then she checked on the third man, the one covered in bricks. He was still breathing, though his neck was broken. In her earlier life, when she was a different person, she might have laughed and left him that way, so he could die slowly. But she was not that person anymore. For the sake of mercy, she cut his throat with his own knife.
A dog started barking somewhere nearby. A light flickered in a darkened window overlooking the alley. Kishori realized someone would find these three men soon, possibly even before the end of the night. One quick glance around reassured her that she hadn’t left any clues that could tie her to the crime. Her training at the Vizierate had served her well, even if she was a bit rusty. Anyone who happened upon this scene would assume there had been some kind of drunken brawl. They might think there had been some fourth person who had escaped after the fight. But when they looked at Stubbly’s crushed skull, they would never guess the person responsible had been a thin, wiry little barmaid.
Quickly, she pressed the stone to her thumb again, and she used a transport spell to take herself into the next street. Her first impulse was to go straight back to the inn and return to work. But would that simply call attention to her sudden absence? Everyone would remember that she had waited on those three soldiers and had disappeared after they left. She needed a better alibi than that.
She started walking down to the docks again, remembering to move slowly and not call attention to herself. Later, when news of the triple murder scandalized the town of Montgomery, people would remember anything that had seemed out of the ordinary, like a cloaked figure running frantically through the darkened streets. But there was nothing suspicious about a young woman out for a lazy stroll after supper.
Or maybe a young woman visiting her lover. That made an even better alibi. Myrcians were so precious like that. They assumed a woman would never “shame” herself by admitting to sexual impropriety unless she were telling the absolute truth. As if sex was the worst thing Kishori had ever done.
And now that she thought of it, would it really be so bad if it were true? What if she spent the night with Jon Weller on his boat? Wouldn’t that be the best alibi of all?
She was struck with a sudden and crushing sense of guilt, almost making her stagger in her tracks. “Why am I dragging Jon into all this?” she thought. “What did he ever do to deserve this?” Did he deserve getting tangled up with an assassin, a torturer, a spy? A war criminal on the run?
Her footsteps slowed as she approached the docks, and a sense of utter fatigue, both moral and physical, weighed her down. If she had her trunk with her, she would have left town. She could have found some hedgerow or bridge to sleep under. She had done it before, plenty of times.
Was there really anything in her trunk she couldn’t replace? No, not really. She could start fresh with the coins in her pocket. Maybe hire a boat and go up to Formacaster, where it would be easier to blend in with the crowds.
A voice hailed her from the docks, and she nearly died of fright. To her shock, it was Jon, coming up the embankment with his long, loping strides.
“You’re out late, Kay,” he said amiably. “Taking a walk?”
“Needed some fresh air,” she said, pasting on a smile. “And you?”
He gestured back toward one of the fishing boats bobbing in the dark water of the Trahern. “I’ve got my boat ready. I’m heading back to your inn to tell those fellows I can leave whenever they want.”
“Ah.” She made sure to keep looking him in the eye. Turning away would be a sign of guilt. “They already left. They paid their tab and cleared out their room. I thought they would be down here already.”
He frowned. “Well, that’s odd. I suppose I should go sit and wait for them. I told them where I was docked. No doubt they had some business to finish up before they left.”
“No doubt.”
“I suppose you have to go back to the inn soon.” The way he said it, she could tell he wished she didn’t have to.
“I’m taking the night off, as it happens,” she answered. Her smile became genuine now.
“Oh. I see.” He crossed his arms and looked over the river, then scanned the warehouses along the street. “Listen, I don’t want to presume, but would you like to come wait with me? The time would sure pass faster if I had someone to talk to.” He pointed down toward his boat again. “I’ve got the rest of that cheese. And some wine, too.”
In her mind, the newer softer side of Kishori was saying, “He doesn’t deserve this. You can’t do this to him.” But the older, more selfish part of her replied, “Maybe he doesn’t deserve it. But maybe I do.” Maybe, just once, she deserved to be happy.
Aloud, she said, “I think that would be lovely, Mr. Weller. You can tell me all about your travels on the river.”
“And you can tell me about yourself,” he said. “You always seem a bit mysterious, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Nonsense,” she laughed, as they started walking down the embankment together. “My life has been entirely dull. There’s nothing to know about me. Nothing at all.”