69
Megs counted to one hundred twenty again after Linna left, then climbed into the fresh night air above. Sailors stood scattered across the deck like forgotten toys, motionless, faces as blank as corpses. Megs walked past them without looking, doing her best to keep her own expression dull and her eyes cold. She’d had years of practice numbing her heart against the loss of countless friends and lovers; hopefully the bitter training of grief would make her look as corpse-like as the sailors.
Who had these men been, before they became tools of the Kingdom of Persopos? Imperial? Certainly not all of them; she recognized Adessian-style tattoos on more than one face.
Megs walked down the steep ramp from the ship to the dock, careful to keep her footing on boards slick from ocean spray. There were rope railings on either side of the ramp, but she didn’t dare use them. The shadow infected never did. She tightened the muscles of her jaws, willing herself not to stumble. An Order of Targhan assassin stood on the dock below, about halfway between the ship and the shore, and although her gaze faced the city, Megs was sure she’d whip around in an instant if Megs missed a single step.
Megs made it to the dock without stumbling, thank Mother Moon. But her skin tingled as she walked past the Order woman, and suddenly Megs was hyper-aware of the sensation of the rune-marked blade hidden beneath her tunic.
It would be so easy to draw.
Megs might not be as graceful a fighter as Linna, but she could probably pull out the dagger from its hiding space, spin, and land a cut before the witch could react. While killing one witch wasn’t payment enough by far for losing her entire family, or her second “family” of ragtag refugees, it would be something, wouldn’t it?
But then the witch was behind her, and Megs’s feet were on the wet cobblestones beyond the seawall. Another hundred yards ahead of her, Linna climbed the hill towards the open gate of Persopos, passing beneath the ornately carved archway and disappearing into the city. The witch standing guard didn’t so much as look at her. Megs picked up her pace – but only by a little. She didn’t want to lose sight of Linna, but she also didn’t want to attract unwanted attention.
A shadow-infected slave moving in the opposite direction passed by Megs, carrying a crate. Her stomach twisted with anger, because she knew what the crate contained: instruments of death. Until about two and a half years before the Battle of the Empress’s Last Stand, no mountain men had steel-tipped arrows. They didn’t have steel spearheads, either, or helms that matched the quality of an Imperial soldier’s. But gradually those items began appearing within their arsenal. The shadow infections began at the same time, transforming first enemies, then fellow soldiers, from ordinary men and women into something almost superhuman.
Soldiers like her brother Milton.
“Do it quickly,”he’d said, and then the irises and pupils of his eyes were swallowed by flames.
The urge to plunge the rune-marked dagger into the witch was even stronger this time, but Megs walked past the guard at the gate and into the white city with a steady pace and blank face. The white stones and white walls took on a ghostly glow in the moonlight. She was just in time to see Linna disappear down an alley to her left.
Every large city Megs had ever been in, even during wartime, was perpetually abuzz with the sounds of humans and beasts. But no voices filled the streets of Persopos. No arguing, laughing, or crying. No horses whinnied; no chickens clucked. Beyond the sound of her own footfalls, all Megs could hear was the distant tink-tink, tink-tink of multiple hammers ringing against multiple anvils.
Megs suppressed a shiver and turned left down the alley Linna had taken. Moonlight glinted off the white-grey cobblestones, but the far end of the alleyway, which curved slightly to the right, was drenched in shadow. Linna’s outline was there, and beside her, leaning down so that her lips were next to Linna’s ear, was a second.
The passage of time didn’t seem to matter; Megs recognized the long, lanky lines of Akella’s body in the darkness as if they had only parted yesterday. How had she gotten ahead of Megs?
Something surged in her chest, reacting to the sight of Akella as instinctively as a flower opening for the sun. But Megs forced the feeling away, reminding herself that she’d only known Akella mere months, and that had been nearly five years ago. Even then, Megs had known her attraction to Akella couldn’t possibly develop into anything beyond a wartime fling – a ne’er-do-well Adessian pirate with a First Sergeant of the Imperial Army? Even then she knew better. Even then, she couldn’t stop herself from falling for Akella anyway.
“She’ll die again,”Milton’s ghost whispered in her ear. “She will because that’s what happens to everyone you love, sooner or later.”
If she hadn’t been so distracted with thoughts of Akella, she might have felt the presence of the woman behind her. If she hadn’t been so distracted, she might have heard the hiss of cloth on cloth before the arm snaked around her throat and yanked her backwards.
But as it was, by the time Megs let out a strangled yelp of surprise, cold steel already pressed against the side of her neck. Akella and Linna’s heads both jerked up as one. They drew and raced forward, but they were too far away to help – by the time they reached Megs, the assassin would slit her throat.
Megs feigned helpless surprise, gasping, whimpering, clawing at the assassin’s arm with one hand, while carefully pulling the rune-marked dagger from its hiding place beneath her tunic with the other. The fact that Megs wasn’t already dead likely meant that the assassin planned to use her to force Akella and Linna to surrender. That was good; Megs needed a few extra seconds.
Megs drove the dagger backwards into the woman’s leg.
The arm around her throat loosened. Megs drove her elbow into the woman’s ribcage and twisted, brandishing the dagger before her for a killing blow. But she hesitated. The black-cloaked Order of Targhan assassin transformed before Megs’s eyes, changing from a healthy young woman of twenty-something into a woman easily three times that age.
Megs watched, transfixed and horrified, as her attacker changed: hair whitened, face sagged, skin thinned and crinkled, knuckle joints swelled with arthritis. But she didn’t turn to dust like the shadow infected in the ship had. She wasn’t quite elderly. She was … grandmotherly.
The assassin slumped back against the wall, one wrinkled hand pressing against the fresh wound in her leg while she stared up at Megs with a rheumy expression that was both startled and frightened.
The whole encounter, from the assassin grabbing her to gazing up at Megs like a dotty old washerwoman, was over in less than six seconds.
Linna and Akella pulled up alongside Megs, panting from their sprint.
Akella pushed around Megs and kicked the witch’s blade aside. “Ah. Preyla must’ve sent you to help us,” she told the old woman brightly.
“I’ll die before I help you,” the woman rasped. She spoke in the same accent that all the witches had, harsh and gravelly, but now her voice was creaky with age.
“Aye, I agree that you’ll die.” Akella seized the front of the woman’s cloak and slammed her against the wall. The old woman’s head bounced against the the building, and she winced. “But you’ll tell us what we need to know before you do.”
“I will tell you noth–”
Akella grabbed one of the woman’s hands and pinned it to the wall. Akella clamped one hand over the witch’s mouth, and with her other, she drove her dagger into the palm of the woman’s hand. The dagger went straight through, lodging into the wall behind her.
“Akella, what are you doing?” Linna hissed.
Megs answered for her. “She’s getting information.”
“She’s unarmed,” Linna said. “This isn’t right.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Megs said harshly. “She’d do the same to you, if your situations were reversed.”
“That doesn’t excuse torture.”
“Do you have a better way to find out where Akella’s crew is?” Megs demanded.
Linna pressed her lips together.
Akella watched the exchange, keeping her hand clamped over the old woman’s mouth the whole time. Tears streamed down the woman’s face as blood leaked from her palm, and the hand Akella had placed over her mouth muffled her wail of pain.
Akella’s grin had disappeared; her eyes had gone cold. She didn’t take them off the decrepit old witch.
“See that?” Akella whispered in the woman’s ear, hand still over her mouth to stifle the moans of pain. “My friend here has always been the very embodiment of honor. But me? Well, one of the best parts about being nothing but an Adessian criminal is my lack of honor. Some hold to a code against hurting unarmed prisoners. But I’ve got no qualms about it. You might even say I enjoy it.”
The woman’s eyes rolled like a panicked horse’s.
“Speaking of criminals. I’m looking for some – ones who look a bit like me,” Akella said, nodding at the tattoo on her hand. “Adessians. Sailors who came into your harbor… well, either two years ago or six, depending on whose version of time we’re going by.” She paused. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth. If you speak any louder than a whisper, you will rue the day you were born.”
Slowly, Akella took her hand from the assassin’s mouth.
“Sailors … sailors maroon themselves on our shores every f-few years.” The old woman’s every word was a gasp. “I don’t know wh-where your particular s-sailors are. Even if… even if I did, I w-wouldn’t t-tell you.”
Akella narrowed her eyes. “I think you know. Not only that, I think you’re going to tell me.” She clapped her hand back over the woman’s mouth and twisted the knife that pinned her hand’s to the wall. The old woman screamed into Akella’s palm. “Sailors. Adessian sailors with the tattoos that mark them as pirates. Where. Are. They.”
Tears streamed down the old woman’s cheeks, but her dark eyes shone with defiance. “M-many former sailors who s-serve the … deathless king match that desc-description.”
“In case I wasn’t clear before,” Akella said, “you’re not leaving this alleyway alive. You have a choice to make: a death that’s quick and clean, or a death that’s long and hard.” She took in the old woman’s white hair and crinkled skin. “I’m guessing that without a shadow inside you, you’re just an ordinary old lady. I’m also guessing you haven’t had to feel real pain in – what? A few decades?”
The woman didn’t answer.
“Still don’t know the sailors I speak of? Let me help,” Akella said. “The ship’s first mate, Adriel ock Pus’an, he had tattoos just like this one –” Akella held up the back of her hand to show the woman the eye tattooed there “– which is uncommon even amongst Adessians. Distinctive. But his has a long, white scar crossing it this way.” She traced her finger across the tattoo’s iris and pupil. “His name is Adriel.”
Fast as a striking snake, Akella ripped the knife free from the woman’s hand and severed her pinky finger. The woman let out another muffled scream.
“That’s enough!” Linna said as loudly as she dared. “We cannot become like them. She may not even know anyway. We’re wasting time here.”
Akella studied the old woman’s eyes. “Oh, she knows. She knows.” She turned back to the assassin. “The girl would grant you that clean and quick death I mentioned earlier. Me? I told you already, I’m nothing but a criminal. And I’m an angry criminal at that, so I’m quite content with drawing your death out. Fortunately for you, I have a soft spot for that girl. I’ll let her talk me into quick and clean… if you answer my questions.” She placed the knife’s edge against the woman’s blood soaked ring finger. “Which will it be?”
The old woman’s eyes flitted from Akella’s face to the knife. She hesitated but then spoke. “D-dead,” she breathed. “The one called Adriel is dead. But the others still live. You think you’ll s-save them. But where they are… you can’t. Y-you’ll serve the d-deathless king b-before this n-night is through.”
Akella’s grin spread across her face, showing the gap between her two front teeth. “Is that so? In that case, I suppose there’s no harm in telling me where they are, is there?”