“I THOUGHT FENNIS said not to go see Baseema?”
Eveen pushed through drunken revelers reciting literature to Sky. Maybe that Golden Bounty outfit wasn’t the best idea.
“He did,” she responded, quickening her strides. “But I’m not leaving things up to obscure passages in godling contractual law. Not what Asheel the Maniac Hunter would do.”
“This Baseema, she’s the head of your guild?” Sky asked.
Eveen looked to her, and for about the tenth time since leaving the thaumaturgist found herself mesmerized—at the impossible face made possible, her own face. Sky seemed to be doing the same, in reverse. Their gazes lingered, then hastily broke away, like staring at your own reflection too long.
“Yeah, our guild boss,” Eveen answered.
“She’s the one who … brought you back?” Sky asked.
“Resurrected. Easier if you just say it. But no. There are these priestesses of Aeril and they do the reanimation. Then you get chosen by She of the Fiery Tits to work wherever.”
“As an assassin,” Sky said. Her voice tried to contain the revulsion—and failed.
“Actually, lots are cooks.”
Sky raised an eyebrow. “Cooks?”
“Cooks.” Eveen took them across a stone bridge, leaving behind the revelers to enter a row of shops, their doors and windows shuttered. “Aeril’s name translates in some moldy old tongue as Lady of Knives. Maybe because you also use knives for cooking? She supposedly has a whole other persona as a deity of fiery kitchens who forces hapless souls to grind bones for her bread. There’s a god in Aruth named Cerin that’s probably her in disguise.”
“Aruth, that city on the southern continent with like umpteen gods?”
“Yeah, real zealots, I hear. Anyway, lots of those resurrected by Aeril’s priestesses go into the culinary services. Most of the best chefs in Tal Abisi are her undead thralls. Have their own guild too. Was them that pressed for rights for the undead.”
“And they—you—got it?”
“Yup. Everyone likes to keep the cooks happy. That’s why Fennis ended up working for the Dead Cat Tails, I think. Trying to finagle his way up the social ladder to food critic.”
“Or down,” Sky muttered.
Eveen snorted. “Right. Food critics. Who needs them?”
There was a pause before Sky spoke again.
“So why are you an assassin? Were you trained … before?”
Eveen shook her head. “Nope. Woke up like this. With a head full of hands-on murdering instead of whipping up savory dishes and souffles. Aeril only knows how we’re sorted out.”
“Can’t recall if I saw that when we…” Sky tapped her temple. “It’s fading.”
She meant the memories. It was happening to Eveen too. She could barely remember most of what she’d seen when they’d almost … merged. Nothing but glimpses now. Like flipping pages of a book in a blur.
“This is it,” she said.
They stopped at the mouth of an alleyway across from a set of white stone buildings. Each was three stories with red-tiled terracotta roofs, all closed in by a black wrought iron fence topped with golden spikes. The Fortunate Widow’s Row wasn’t the wealthiest district in Tal Abisi. Not by half. But it was popular with those seeking escape from the Old City’s cramped quarters—if you could afford it.
“Nice,” Sky commented.
“Baseema has a taste for fine things,” Eveen replied.
“You think she’ll help?”
“Help is a stretch. But she might have answers.”
“Like who did this to me? To … us?”
Eveen looked into those dark eyes—as questioning as her own. For a second time tonight, she came out of her cloak. “Take this.”
“You won’t need it?”
“Won’t work. Baseema’s place is warded tighter than a bank. If I don’t make it back within the hour—”
“You think you won’t come back?” Sky asked in alarm.
“Just covering our bases. If I don’t make it back within the hour, find Fennis. He’ll be at the Great Library—think you can get there alone?” That was a lie. If Eveen didn’t make it out, the girl would be dead before even getting back over the bridge—cloak or no cloak. But what was the point in telling her that?
“Maybe.” Sky looked about. “Everything’s all turned around.”
“Well, backtrack. Just get to the river.” If you can even make it to the river.
She turned to go, then felt a touch at her arm. Sky’s face was sober as she anointed her chin and cheeks with a forefinger. “Be careful and Kori’s fortune.”
Eveen nodded uncertainly. She didn’t invoke any gods other than Aeril. Immortals were too needy. Light a candle for me. Burn this incense in my name. Sacrifice three goats. Blah, blah blah. Serving one was more than enough. But she allowed the girl’s touch, if only for the head-trippy feeling of being anointed by … yourself.
“Thanks, but I’ve got my own luck.” Pulling out the figurine of the Pirate Princess she’d managed to hold on to since earlier tonight, she kissed it before bounding for the fence—scaling it easily and soaring over the gold-plated spikes to land on the other side.
Fortunately, there were no guards. The fence was enough to announce that any interlopers would be hunted down and hauled before a magistrate. Of course, Eveen wasn’t just anyone. Shadows favored the dead, and clung to her, even without the cloak. She slipped around one of the buildings to a set of back stairs and made her way up, working out in her head what she might say once she got inside.
“Hey Baseema, you won’t believe the night I’m having!”
“Hey Baseema, things got a little crazy!”
“Hey Baseema, you want to hear the weird news or the really weird news?”
She was still trying them out when she came to the back window she wanted. It was partially opened, and she quickly shimmied herself inside. Passing through the wards protecting the place was like being dunked in fiery ice water—freezing cold with searing prickly needles all at once. But she didn’t burn to ash or turn inside out, so that was lucky.
She stood in a kitchen, where half-sampled foods sat on platters. Remembering she hadn’t eaten since the boat ride, she scooped up some oysters on the half shell topped with pungent onions, sucking them down before tearing off strips of fried pork slathered in jelly. Biting into a leg of roasted hen, she took quiet steps toward a curtain of beads—some wood, others colorful stone or glass. On the other side, in a large—no, freakishly huge—room lit by dimmed glow lanterns that hung from a vaulted ceiling, two voices danced in conversation.
A man, slurring in an accent decidedly not Tal Abisi. “Bassie. Tell me the story.”
A familiar woman’s throaty reply. “You know the story.”
“I want to hear it again.”
“I’m sure young lips have whispered it in your ear.”
“Your lips are sweeter than any whisper.”
“A tongue dipped in silver. Very well. The Clockwork King—”
“No, no! You must start with the Pirate Princess!”
“You telling this story or am I?”
“But you yourself were once a pirate, yes?”
“That, beautiful boy, was a lifetime ago.”
Tick-Tick
Eveen peeked from between the beads to the woman in question—Baseema, guild boss of the Dead Cat Tails. She sat reclined in a chair of lacquered blackwood with inlaid ivory. Large playing cards stood stacked into a house atop a desk of similar make. She turned one about in a tattooed hand, face drawn tight in wistful thought—so that the constellation of freckles dotting her light brown skin hurtled together.
“The Pirate Princess was not true royalty,” she began. “But she had earned the sobriquet, for her deeds and the many curiosities she had seen—having sailed between the five known continents and beyond, some say even past the Tempest Sea.”
“None have gone beyond the Tempest Sea,” the man interjected. Eveen could make him out on one edge of the room, sprawled amid a bed of turquoise and orange pillows. His bare chest rose as he pulled from a long mahogany pipe near dark as his skin, exhaling pungent smoke in curling streams. “The winds rend all to pieces. Nothing lives in those cursed waters but monsters who could swallow men whole and drag down a fleet of treasure ships.”
Baseema shrugged beneath the gold-leaf embroidered red kaftan that draped her ample shoulders. She added the card in her hand to the flimsy house, smirking when it didn’t fall, and pulled another from the deck. “Either the Pirate Princess did all that is reputed to her legend, or she didn’t, and there’s no need to sing her tales at all. So which is it?”
The man laughed, exhaling more smoke.
Tick-Tick
Baseema went on. “As I was saying, the Pirate Princess sailed her ship far and wide, and was celebrated for her deeds. Many said if ever pirates were to carve a throne, she would be crowned their princess.”
“Why a princess?” the man asked. “Why not a queen?”
Baseema’s full, crimson-painted lips quirked into a crooked smile. “This world has only ever known one pirate queen, Xasha-Ro of the Golden Fleet, who I sailed with upon Sea Lords’ Bay. There have been none like her, and there shall never be again.” Another card was added to the house. “Now will you let me tell this story?”
The man twirled slender figures in apology and acquiescence.
“The Pirate Princess had become bored,” Baseema continued, “lamenting there were no more great escapades. Until she learned of the Clockwork King. An inventor, from Kons—either expelled or in self-exile on a remote island, where he built great wonders. And none was as fantastic as the Golden Bounty.”
“Ah!” the man gasped. “The maiden of gold!”
“A clockwork maiden constructed of gold,” Baseema corrected, wagging a card held between two fingers. “Every bit of her, down to the smallest cog, with an ever-ticking heart imbued with magic that bestowed the spark of life. People claimed her very voice was golden, so that when she hummed birds flocked to hear, when she read beasts knelt to listen, and when she sang the sky opened to weep.”
“What men would not give to hear such a voice,” the man remarked.
“So the Pirate Princess thought. Many had attempted to steal the Golden Bounty. But the Clockwork King held guardians for his isle, who smashed any ships that came near.”
“But she found a way, yes?”
A card went gingerly atop the house. “Of course. She was the Pirate Princess, after all.”
Tick-Tick
“And she stole away the Clockwork King’s creation—who they say he crafted as a wife.”
Baseema shrugged again. “Wife. Consort. Daughter. He kept her like a bird in a cage all the same.”
“He was furious to see her go, yes?”
“Like a man who thought himself a god. He vowed to hunt down his treasure. But…”
“Oh! I like this part!”
“The Pirate Princess had done as she set out to do. The Golden Bounty was a prize she could sell to rulers on the far side of the world. What she had not expected was to fall in love. And for the golden maiden to love her back in turn.”
The man sat up lazily, his whip-lean body glimmering under the glow lights. Eveen took in the youthfulness of his pretty face, obscured by a cascade of black curly tresses. Her eyes traveled down to his waist, where a red-jeweled knife sat fitted into loose white trousers. Baseema dallying with men half her age was hardly news. But a Banari with a marriage knife? That was asking for trouble, from a set of husbands and wives—all with knives of their own.
“This is why Tal Abisi recite and sing poetry to each other during Festival, yes?” he asked.
“Or literature,” Baseema replied. “How the maiden won a pirate’s heart.”
“But how does one love a machine?”
“Love is love, silly boy. Anyway, when the Clockwork King learned his maiden had been brought here, he laid siege to the city to steal her back—with his terrible machines.”
“And the result was the loss of an entire district,” the Banari noted. “The Shimmer, you call it, yes? I can feel its magic on me. Do you know I almost had three duels tonight?”
Baseema’s nostrils flared. “You Banari don’t need Shimmer Fever for a knife fight.”
“True,” he chuckled. “But my point stands. Your city faced destruction over this mechanical girl. Why not give her up?”
Baseema put down the card she had been aiming and lifted a finger. “One, this was the home of the Pirate Princess—who was much admired.” Another finger. “Two, when he brought his army here, the Clockwork King united the city in outrage.” A third finger, and a smile. “Three, shrewd merchants, traders, and scoundrels all here may be—but Tal Abisi’s own heart was won over by the unlikely love of a pirate and a golden maiden.”
Tick-Tick
The Banari grinned. “For love, then. Will you read to me, like the golden maiden?”
“I thought you wanted to hear this story?”
“Yes. But now, you have put me in another mood.”
“You must be the most spoiled member of your household,” Baseema snarked.
His laugh came in a wreath of smoke. “Spoil me now, and I promise to spoil you later.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Choose a book, while I see to my company.” Adding another card to her carefully constructed house, she straightened, glancing up to peer through the veil of beads. “Are you going to stand there all night like some peeking pervert or step into the light?”
Eveen winced. The woman had known she was there the whole time? She stepped through the curtain with a rattle, feeling less the agile assassin and more the delinquent child. “I wasn’t peeking. Just … waiting for a good moment.”
Baseema’s dark eyes studied her, that round face unyielding as stone. “The ward you slipped through—it tells me not only when someone has entered my home, but precisely who.” She tapped one of the many rings on her fingers: some gold, others brass or copper, plain bands or with gems, engraved or with carvings—every last one a charm. The same for the four earrings in each ear, and the small jade loop clinching her nose septum. Eveen suspected the silver hair comb pinning up her graying curls was also an amulet, that could melt your brain or something.
“Is this another one of your dead things?” the Banari asked. He stood now on his tiptoes, scanning a shelf of books.
“Someone in my employ. The goddess’s employ. Who has some explaining to do.” She pointed to a chair on the other side of the desk, her meaning obvious.
Eveen wasn’t too surprised that the woman already knew. You didn’t become a guild boss by not being in the know. Besides, Eveen was counting on that to help her figure out what in the many hells was going on. Accepting the invitation—or summons—she straightened and crossed the room toward the one person who might be able to provide some answers.
Baseema had been born in Tal Abisi but left, as she liked to tell it, a skinny waif of a girl to serve on a trading dhow. She returned decades later, also as she liked to tell it, with flesh on her bones and pockets fat with wealth—enough to invest in several ventures, including the Dead Cat Tails. Get her drunk and she’d recount harrowing stories: from surviving the fighting pits of Mura, wherever that was, to hauling blocks of fire salt, whatever that was, across treacherous straits. Her days now were settled, and she vowed never to return to the sea. But mementos of her exploits decorated her spacious home—each telling its own story, and reputedly worth a fortune among those like Baseema who dabbled in rare goods.
The barbed harpoon on a wall, she claimed, was used to hunt giant sand squid that dwelt in a desert sea. The black feathered helmet and shirt of chainmail, fitted onto a faceless mannequin, were purportedly the raiment of a warrior monk who died in a quest to become a paladin—hoping to fight beside his gods in a war for the Third Heaven. Or was it the Fourth Heaven? One of the Heavens.
Then, there was her prize—Tick-Tick.
Eveen warily eyed the towering construction of bones held together by nails and wires: the bleached skeleton of a Titan Dread bird, distant cousin to the flightless steppers, with a broad beak that could swallow a goat whole. Baseema boasted of having helped bring down the monster herself, though it killed two of her crew. Now its remains decorated her home.
Well, they did more than that.
Eveen watched the dread bird’s hollow gaze track her movement, the neck creaking as the massive skull slowly turned. Was it surprising that the head of a guild of undead assassins kept the reanimated bones of a man-eating bird like some pet? Or guard dog? Probably not. But the thing still unnerved her, and she kept her distance from the oversized curved talon protruding from one bony toe—sharp enough to slice her to pieces. It twitched restlessly on the stone floor, making the sound that was the monster’s namesake: Tick-Tick.
She pulled her eyes from the giant bird, trying to judge how much of a run she’d need to reach any of the three balconies. And how to do so before Tick-Tick was on her. Assassin rule #480: guild bosses are inherently shady. Assassin rule #481: never enter a room you can’t get out of. Reaching the desk, she eased into the waiting chair—which sat lower, naturally. Baseema peered down with an imperious glare: commendable, given that she was dressed in a sleeping kaftan and house sandals.
“When word reached me that one of mine failed to complete a job, I thought it had to be a mistake,” she began. “I threatened to cut out the messenger’s tongue for a liar. Turns out, it was true.”
“Got to keep his tongue, then,” Eveen quipped. “His wife will be happy.”
The joke slid off Baseema like water off a canal eel.
“Instead of fulfilling your contract you made off with your job.”
“That’s absolutely not what happened!… Okay. That’s what happened, but—”
“Dozens of guards were injured.”
“Pfft. More like … scores.”
“Twenty-six.”
“Fine, two dozen. When did we start caring about injured guards?”
Baseema slapped the table hard enough to topple her house of cards.
“When you injure them fleeing an unfinished job!” she shouted.
The guild boss’s unflappable demeanor had become a roiling storm. Eveen had that effect on people. From somewhere behind, Tick-Tick’s bones rattled uneasily with the change in his mistress’s mood. So she chose her next words carefully.
“I know how it looks. But I can explain.”
Baseema crossed her arms, face reforming into stone. And Eveen explained.
She told of infiltrating the tower and that first memory, even the trip to the thaumaturgist. The only things she left out were arriving here, and that the girl in question was tucked into a nearby alley. When she finished there was quiet, only broken when the Banari sauntered up, extending an arm over Eveen’s shoulder to drop a book onto the desk.
“That is a wild story, dead thing,” he slurred.
She glanced past his taut torso to his pretty face, where red-rimmed eyes stared down. High as a bird. She glanced to Tick-Tick. Present company excluded.
“I believe her,” he announced, before wandering back to the pillows and his pipe.
Baseema remained silent, looking past Eveen toward a balcony. She had taken to restacking her cards, and now traced lazy lines across one with a manicured fingernail—the suit of ravens depicting the bald, bespectacled, bearded Clockwork King, cape and all, with iron giants trailing in his wake.
“Damn,” she spoke at last.
“You believe me then?”
Her dark eyes narrowed. “No one would dare tell me a lie that big.”
“I keep my lies manageable. How’d they do it then? Thought the reanimation spell would prevent something like this.”
“It godsdamned should! No memories. No past. No life.”
Eveen knew the scripture. She’d been drilled with that from the moment of her resurrection—opening her eyes as one of the undead, all ties to her past cut like a snipped thread. Meticulous steps were taken to assure complete disassociation. Some of it was common sense: resurrect you well after your death, so that your close connections had either died or moved on. But there was also magic: rendering you unrecognizable to any who might still know you. A person with no past has no weaknesses, the priestess who assisted in her resurrection had whispered. Aeril’s will.
“Someone found a way to undo Aeril’s will,” she said.
Baseema huffed. Her face was scrunched up in thought, the freckles colliding into each other again. She stayed like that for a while before her features relaxed. The look of someone who had come to a decision.
“Where’s the girl?” she asked. Silence. “Well, wherever you put her, go find her. Then slit her throat. Only way to set things right.”
Eveen started. “Did you not hear what I just said? The girl—”
“Is you. I heard. Someone, somehow, got through the anonymity magic, pulled your younger self from the past, then contracted you to take her out.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Hells yes! It’s a godsdamned disaster! But not as much as that girl being alive.”
“Someone set me up!”
“No shit!” Baseema snapped. “Set you up to break a contract—and you fall for it. You take one look at that face, your dead brain farts out a memory, and then you can’t do your job. Just like they intended. Did you think of that?”
Eveen would have blinked, if she blinked. “They knew I wouldn’t do it,” she murmured.
“They counted on it.” Baseema jabbed a finger. “Counted on you to break the third unbreakable vow. You think you’re the only one set up here? We’re all at risk. Or don’t you understand that?”
Eveen touched the back of her neck, tracing the inked jackal-eared hound. The third unbreakable vow on an undead assassin was the simplest and most significant: once you accepted a job, you carried it out. Period. End. Dot. You didn’t, and you not only cheated death, you cheated Aeril. And for that, there was hell to pay. Literally.
“You know there were once five undead assassin guilds in Tal Abisi,” Baseema said, slipping into the storyteller. “The fifth, one of their assassins went and fell for a job. Claimed she made him feel alive again. He tried to cover it up, fake her death. But you can’t fool Aeril. They say the night her hounds came a wind blew through the city, reeking of brimstone and embers. People shut themselves inside, unwilling to venture out. And that night, the hounds hunted. They found the two lovers. Tore them apart. Then they went after every member of the guild—including their boss. After that their investors, the clerks handling their books, creditors, people who owed them money. All those souls, dragged before Aeril. And the guild—liquidated.”
A low whistle from the Banari pierced the silence.
Tick-Tick
Baseema leaned forward. “That’s what waits for us if you don’t finish this job.”
Eveen knew the story. Every undead assassin did. Told to you the way children were warned of shadow men lurking under their beds. Ship your job, or Aeril’s hounds will come for you. No one messed around with the third unbreakable vow. But no one faced what she was facing either.
“She’s me! What if I ship her and then go … poof?”
She’d been thinking on that. If she killed her younger self, would she then cease to be? And how could she kill herself if she never became herself in the first place? It was enough to tie her brain into knots.
“If you don’t, it’s the hounds,” Baseema retorted. “I know you like breaking rules—”
“That was one time.”
“And you’re still paying for it. Now you want us all to pay for your choices?”
Eveen was quiet before edging forward. “Who contracted the job?”
Baseema shook her head. “It was anonymous.”
Now Eveen huffed. “As if you don’t peek at the contracts. Come off it!”
Both women turned at the Banari’s laughter. “She has you there!”
“Grown folks are talking, precious,” Baseema chided sweetly. “Let me handle business.”
“Give me the name,” Eveen pressed.
“No.”
She scowled. “If I was pretty boy over there you’d give me anything.”
Baseema arched an eyebrow. “I’m sorry. Are we fucking?”
Eveen arched an eyebrow back. “Would that help? I do like the husky ones.”
That actually elicited a smile from the woman, displaying a bottom row of white silver teeth and molars studded with fire jewels—a damned fortune in her mouth alone.
“Give me the name,” Eveen urged. “And I’ll find who did this to me. To us!” Baseema eyed her long and hard. Then with a heavy sigh, fell back into her chair.
“You know if you won’t do your job, I can’t let you leave.”
Eveen sat back as well. “Yeah. Figured. So what you got planned? Tick-Tick?”
Baseema lifted a hand, turning a thick gold band on her thumb.
A prickling at her skin was the first sign Eveen got as new undead entered the room. They stepped from globs of shadows. Four women—in black assassin leathers, down to the breeches. Nice trick.
The Banari clapped. “More dead things!”
Eveen groaned. “The quads? You’re setting the quads on me?”
Baseema answered by lifting a finger and turning another ring. Eveen’s knives slid from their scabbards, hurtling into Baseema’s waiting hands.
“And you’re taking my knives?”
“What was gifted, can be retracted.”
“Oh, so it’s like that?”
Baseema set the knives onto her desk. “That’s how you made it.”
“Hey girlfriend,” one of the women called. “We’re not interrupting, are we?”
Eveen gave Baseema her strongest “you wrong for this” stare before standing and turning about. The four women had moved into a semicircle, their menacing poise and sharp smiles giving them the look of feral street cats—which wasn’t far off.
“Hear you’re having some problems,” the one who had called out said. Black painted lips pressed into a mock pout under a black cat’s mask that covered the top half of her face. “Wanna talk about it? Just us girls?” She balanced a slate gray war hammer over one shoulder, twirling the iron handle idly.
“Ooni,” Eveen said. “Or is it … Mimi?”
“She’s Mimi,” another one replied, jerking a square jaw at a third. “I’m Ooni.”
“Sorry. Then you must be Ini?”
“Ipi,” the hammer-wielder corrected. She gestured to a smaller woman. “That’s Ini.”
“Right. Always get you four confused.” Actually, Eveen didn’t. But she knew it irked them.
“Thinks she’s funny,” Ooni remarked, flexing broad shoulders.
“Cut her some slack,” Ipi purred. “Didn’t you hear? Poor ting ting’s had a rough night.”
“Went and had you a memory,” Mimi said, thumbing the jagged teeth of a giant cleaver.
Ipi shook her head. “Now she’s all … discombobulated.”
“Yeah,” Ooni drawled. “Breaking my fucking heart.”
Mimi gasped, eyes rounding in mock fright. “What if I go poof?”
The four laughed. Well, three. Ini, who never spoke, just looked on blankly.
“Do they always talk this long before fighting?” the Banari sighed.
“They like to draw it out,” Eveen said.
The quads were sisters. How they all ended up serving Aeril was anybody’s guess. Eveen liked to imagine their hapless parents had sold the terrors off. Baseema used them for the guild’s dirtiest work—wholesale massacres and the like. And they reveled in it.
Ipi grinned. “Drawing it out makes the end sweeter. Should try it.”
“I’ll pass on watching flesh worms burrow out eyeballs,” Eveen said.
Ooni huffed. “Thinks she’s better than us.”
“Like her shit don’t stink,” Mimi sneered.
“Oh we know it stinks,” Ipi added, tilting back the war hammer. “Eviscerator.”
Ooni chuckled. “That’s right. Almost forgot.”
“Hear you opened that job up like a fish,” Mimi said, biting her tongue between a smile.
“Bet you enjoyed it a little, right?” Ipi winked. “Just between us girls?”
“It was only the once,” Eveen replied evenly.
“Bleeding heart.” Mimi hefted the big cleaver. “Maybe we’ll try it out on you.”
“See if we can rip out your insides faster than you can heal,” Ooni nodded.
“No.” Ipi’s grin curled vicious. “Her we break. Then stuff what’s left in a coffin.”
“Undead and hungry in a box,” Ooni taunted. “Nothing to eat but your tongue.”
Mimi snickered. “Hear you go insane that way. Turn full zombie.”
“Don’t worry,” Ipi said. “We’ll let you out from time to time, to chase down our jobs for a nice meal. Now the girl, when we find her—”
Eveen cut the woman off with a wide and loud yawn. “I’m sorry. I zoned out there for a minute. Are you all planning to just talk me into a second death? Is that the torture? Is it happening, like, right now?”
From the other side of the room, the Banari guffawed. “Bassie, I think I would like that story now.”
Baseema, who sat quiet, picked up the book he’d dropped. “The Seven Sons of the Golem Lord?”
“I like fairy tales,” he said. “It will be a beautiful contrast amid the violence to come.”
“Spoiled boy,” she tsked, and opened the book to begin. “The first son of the Golem Lord was carved from a boulder rolled down from a mountain. Rainwater coursed through his veins and he was bound together with draughts of captured wind, the holy name of the Wandering One chiseled onto his stony skin…”
Ooni came for Eveen first.
The biggest of the quads was on her in moments, fists swinging. Ooni didn’t use weapons. Just brute force. And a mean pair of brass death’s head knuckledusters. Eveen pulled back, reaching for her knives before remembering they were gone. She dodged a second swing meant for her head and another for her chest—but couldn’t avoid the one to her middle. It hit like a cannon. She went hurtling, sliding across the floor and rolling to clutch her injury. Dulled pain or no, that hurt like the many hells. Trying to get her bearings she attempted to stand but Ooni was fast, kicking her hard enough to send her sprawling again. Then the big woman grabbed her by the hair, lifting her off her feet before slamming her to the ground with force enough to make a living person black out. As it was, Eveen felt like she’d been under a stampede. From nearby, the other quads laughed.
“Not going to leave much for us, Ooni!” Mimi complained.
“Don’t break her too bad!” Ipi added. “We need to know about the girl!”
Ooni snorted. “So much for the Eviscerator.”
Eveen was picking herself up, limping backward. Her gaze went past Ooni and out through the open balcony to the alley—and the shadow she’d left hidden there.
“Hey, I’m over here!” Ooni shouted. “That’s it. Stay with me. Thought you were supposed to be tough shit. I ain’t impressed.”
She surged forward in a burst of speed. This time, however, Eveen caught one of her wrists and reached up to dig fingers under the leather facemask, gripping tight. Spinning her about, she used the bigger woman’s momentum to propel her through the curtains and onto the balcony. Ooni caught the stone railing and might have prevented her fall—if Eveen hadn’t grabbed her unsteady legs and with a heave pitched her over the edge.
Turning around she stood straight, losing the limp. From outside Ooni’s startled yelp had become a cry that cut off at a sudden squelch—turning finally into howling curses. Likely, impaled on the gate. That had to hurt.
“Think she’s impressed now?” Eveen asked.
“I’m impressed!” the Banari shouted.
Baseema paused her reading, then started again. “The second son of the Golem Lord was molded from earth, under the light of a waxing moon…”
The other quads stared momentarily—before Ipi screamed.
“Fucking bitch!”
“That’s more like it,” Eveen muttered. Forget the fake smiles and clever taunts, Ipi was all poorly managed explosive anger. She came at a run, the war hammer singing. No, the thing was screaming! Eveen bent back as a hammer swing came inches from her face, the open mouth on the slate gray head shrieking in rage. She’d figured the weapon was enchanted. How else could Ipi even lift it? But screaming?
“Where’d you get that?” She avoided another swing. “You walk into some shop and say, ‘I’d like to see your finest screaming war hammers—extra shrieky?’”
Ipi growled, aiming the hammer for her midsection. Eveen jumped to one side, almost running into a swipe from Mimi’s giant cleaver. The weapon’s jagged teeth vibrated through some magic, buzzing loudly. She weaved away from the broad blade, barely avoiding the hammer again, which impacted with a patterned vase—shattering it to pieces.
A quiet descended as everyone realized Baseema had stopped reading. She was looking at her broken vase, then at them. “Sorry,” they all mumbled. Her scolding gaze lingered a moment more before returning to the book.
“The third son of the Golem Lord was forged in fire, with hammer and anvil, his body cast from bronze, his blood molten silver, and his heart crafted from gold…”
They started up again. Hammer to crush, cleaver to hack, and Eveen between. Neither of them could actually kill her. Everyone in this fight was already dead. But they could incapacitate her. Then, like they’d promised, they’d throw her into a box and leave her to rot in living torment. Hells to the no. That wasn’t an option. Needed to even these odds.
Faking a stumble, she goaded Mimi into an excessively eager swing. The cleaver came down in an overhand chop, striking the floor as Eveen slid from its path. Mimi tried to lift her weapon for another try, but the jagged teeth had cut into the stone, lodging there.
Finally. Breathing room. Reaching into her boot as Ipi came rushing with the hammer, Eveen pulled the dagger she’d been saving, and threw with perfect aim. The woman screamed, stumbling from her charge as the hurtling blade buried itself in one eye. Clutching the hilt, she pulled the dagger free and flung it away—leaving behind an empty hole.
“You fucking bitch! You fucking—!”
“You called me that already,” Eveen pointed out.
Ipi glared through one ruined eye, snarling like something inhuman. “I’m going to bash your fucking face in! Then let it heal and bash it in again!”
She charged, swinging her hammer. The thing screamed so close to Eveen’s face, she wondered if it might bite. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of Mimi, cleaver freed and running to the fight. “If you’re looking for something to bash…” Just as the two sisters closed her in, she leapt—imagining herself soaring over Tal Abisi’s rooftops—to somersault away as the hammer shrieked through empty air toward an unprepared target.
“No! Wait!” Mimi cried.
Too late. The steel head slammed into undead flesh, spinning her ass over shoulders. Her cleaver flew to clang across the floor, just before she smacked down face first—both legs now bent wrongly.
Eveen stood from a crouch, tapping a right eye at Ipi. “How’s that depth perception?”
That took the woman completely over the edge. She came in a fury, mouth and hammer both screaming incoherence. Her swings grew wild and Eveen easily dodged them, leading her on. Just a bit farther. Farther …
“The fourth son of the Golem Lord was forged from blown glass,” Baseema read, “infused with brilliance stolen from star jewels that shone with the secret name of the Lord of Light. His beauty—” She stopped, eyes widening as she caught on to what Eveen was doing.
Tick-Tick
Ipi’s hammer struck one of Tick-Tick’s leg bones a resounding blow, sending fractures running along its length and chips flying. The Titan Dread bird staggered before righting itself. Its hollow gaze fixed on Ipi, who had a moment to glance up before that massive beak clamped down like a vise, plucking her off her feet. The hammer slid from her grip, its heavy impact lost amid her screeching as Tick-Tick shook her ferociously.
Assassin rule #183: never piss off the guard dog.
Eveen turned to Baseema. “Gotta admit. That was—”
She hadn’t finished when something landed on her back, hissing and biting. No, not biting, stabbing. Ini. She’d forgotten the fourth quad sister. The small woman used thin knives to pepper her with wounds. Like being attacked by a crazed hummingbird.
“Enough of this shit,” she growled.
Grabbing onto Ini, she flung her to the ground. Then, hefting the abandoned hammer, brought it down twice in quick succession to pulverize both knife hands. Grabbing one leg, Eveen dragged the small woman across the marble floor—only pausing to snatch the harpoon from the wall. When she reached Baseema’s desk, she hauled Ini atop it and drove the hunting spear down, impaling her on the wood. The Banari clapped.
“Are we done here?” Eveen asked briskly.
Baseema didn’t answer at first. Then looking past Eveen, she whistled to Tick-Tick. “Drop her.” The Titan Dread bird promptly released Ipi, who fell unceremoniously to the floor. She looked like a beaten-up one-eyed corpse, her skin in some places hanging by strips. But she grabbed up her hammer, screeching curses and ready to pick up from where she’d left off, only to have Baseema stop her with a wave.
“Enough.” When Ipi made to keep coming, the guild boss’s voice grew sharp. “I said enough! You had your chance. Now go get Ooni off my fence before the neighbors complain about her caterwauling. Then you two come back and”—she gestured widely—“clean all this up.” Ipi gritted her teeth, shaking with rage. But she didn’t argue and turned to limp out of the room, dragging her hammer behind.
Baseema shook her head. Then she pushed several items across her desk, around Ini who had gone still—as ordered. Eveen looked down to find her knives and a folded slip of paper.
“What’s this?”
“Your weapons. You’ll need them.”
“But you just—”
“I just attempted to have you apprehended,” Baseema cut in. “It wasn’t successful. Then you forced me to procure the name of the contractor for tonight’s job. Under extraordinary duress, I relented.”
Eveen’s eyes thinned. “You knew I wasn’t going to be bested by the quads.”
“Would’ve been disappointed if you had.”
“And you let all this happen?” She indicated the skewered Ini.
“Body parts are replaceable. And it’s evidence.”
“That you tried to stop me.”
Baseema crossed her arms. “Proof of my due diligence.”
“But why are you even helping me?” Eveen huffed. “Never figured you for sentimental.”
Baseema huffed back. “Figured right. As I’ve already said, this is bigger than you. This risks taking down my guild. That I built with my own hands. And I don’t like that shit one bit. So I’m going to give you a chance to figure out how to clean up this mess.” Her eyes flickered back to the table. “You going to open that?”
Eveen looked at the paper now under her palm. Hesitantly, she unfolded it and stared. Then stared some more. Her eyes roamed back up to Baseema who returned an impassive look. “This doesn’t make sense.” She read the name written on the sheet again. Pol Oranus. “But he’s…”
“A Patriarch,” Baseema finished.
Eveen’s mind reeled. She’d been contracted by a Patriarch? The highest echelons of Tal Abisi society? “Aeril’s fiery tits!” she squawked.
Baseema nodded. “Exactly.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“It’s all I can offer.” She paused. “You understand by the contract he’s untouchable? Harm as much as a hair on his head and Aeril herself might come to collect.”
Eveen nodded in annoyance. She wasn’t daft. “So what now?”
“Now you have the night. Or what’s left of it. You got until morning to sort this mess out. But as of this moment, you are in threat of a contractual breach. And it’s my job to get you sorted out.”
“You’re sending the others after me,” Eveen said, deciphering her meaning.
“Due diligence,” Baseema repeated.
Eveen did a check of who was left after the quads and stilled. “The old man. Is he…?”
“If the old man was here it’d already be over for you.” Baseema stood up.
True enough, Eveen thought. Though she couldn’t help peeking about.
“Consider this my last favor,” Baseema said. “A head start. You should take it. And get that girl out of that alley.”
Eveen started. She knew that too? “You’re scary.”
There was a flash of bright silver teeth. “As fuck.”
She had turned to go when Baseema called at her back.
“One more thing. I have a man coming in from out of town. A last resort. You get me?”
Eveen grimaced at the emphasis in the woman’s tone. She got her. Making as if to go again, she stopped, took a calling card from her pocket, and tucked it behind Ini’s ear. With her knives back at her side, she walked across the room—this time opting for the front door. On his bed of pillows the Banari stood perched, his own knife held up in salute.
“May the gods favor you this night, dead thing!”
Eveen returned a nod. She sure as hell hoped so.