Night fell and Deaf Sam’s sense that all was not right with the new Sharli had gone from a puzzlement, to an anxiety, to a certainty, to a plan. He was quick like that, his thoughts never needing to achieve a verbal definitiveness before his intuitions told him all he needed to know. This was a useful thing in an assassin, this efficiency of mind, and as he watched the moon coming from behind a wind-sped cloud to light the curves of Sharli’s nose, and then the pinna of her ear, he knew that he would have to kill her.
We are not, probably, assassins, and we are assuredly not Deaf Sam, so we will need our hands held if we are to understand how he came to this conclusion.
He knew, earlier in the day, when they hit the earth of this new place, that there was something wrong with her. He was very attuned to her expressions, Deaf Sam, finding something so beautiful in their perfectly formed confidence and then, sometimes, their heart-rending lack of confidence, two sides of her that, combined, he had come to love. These expressions had come along when whoever was masquerading as the Sharli he had not loved in the past had arrived. He knew this as a less sensitive man would know if his friend was wearing a false nose; it was very plain to him, as it would be to us in that latter situation. The thing that he knew was wrong, was that, though he watched her closely all day, it was only the confident expression that he could see, even though there had been something bothering her, and never the other one.
It is difficult to understand this, so imagine Sharli, to him, was wearing a false nose.
He had been signing his love to her on the road up to the Cave of the Matriarch, and he had determined that he would tell her that he knew she was an imposter, that they should win Padge’s fortune, and then that they should leave Mordew together and never return, to follow whatever life was authentic to her. He was not ignorant of the Assembly – he could think of no other organisation that would employ Sharli as a spy – and he wanted to tell her that he would gladly join her in the life she lived there, if she would have him. Perhaps he was overexcited, perhaps she was distracted, but she seemed not to understand him. Eventually, he stopped trying to explain and did what he often did, which was to substitute action for communication, taking her to the Mother so that they might both leave Mordew and then have more time to converse.
Sharli had seemed reluctant then, but that is often the case when a person is attempting to make you do something without first explaining why, so Deaf Sam had let himself be more assertive than he might otherwise allow, and they eventually came to the Mother, who took them both and made them do as she wished, as is the way with gods.
During this whole time, she had been the Sharli he loved. He knew this very simply, but once they arrived in the Island of the White Hills, she was different.
Still, he did not immediately want to believe this fact, since he loved her. He told himself, at first, that he was mistaken, but by mid-afternoon he was sure of it. This was not the replacement of Sharli, that he loved, this was the original Sharli, for whom he had no feeling.
Why did he plan to kill her? Partially it was because she represented the loss of his love to him, but mostly for a man who is used to killing as a solution to his problems, then it is often the easiest way to resolve a difficult situation.
Then there was the matter of Padge’s fortune, and the natural increase in his share if she was dead.
He watched her, making sure of his certainty, for the rest of that day.
Now, in the moonlight, his hand rested on the pommel of his dagger, and he wondered if it was time to do the deed that needed to be done.