Converging on Kalexo
The client was meant to pay Nina Silverhand at a cemetery eight Lights hence. Nina had performed the assassination of Patrician Lorent quicker than expected, but didn’t notify anyone of her success; she took the extra time to stake out the meeting point. She picked a spot on the roof of a shroud singer’s shop where she was shaded by the eaves. She could see out to the hooks hanging recently dead as easily as she could see the memorial gardens below.
Nina made herself a statue observing the cemetery through Light and Night and storm.
She watched visitors weeping below the hanging shrouds. She observed garden Affinites making bushes bloom. She saw mourners hurry away when the rain fell, droplets shivering on the tips of her chin and nose, and she saw nobody preparing any traps.
“It’s a trap,” said Vinbor. He only joined her three Nights before they were due to meet the client. He had taken longer to reach Kalexo by evading all patrols, ensuring nobody spotted him, and concealing every mark he left upon passing. It was paranoia of the highest order.
“What suggests a trap to you?” asked Nina. They were the first words she had spoken in over a week; her jaw creaked like bending wood.
“It’s so concealed from the xilcadis,” said Vinbor.
“Yes. They usually meet in sin?ose.”
“But we’re not even under mujan!” The cemetery was servicing dead Low families who could not afford services in the xilcadis Church. Their bodies didn’t hang as high as even the lowest mujan, the edge of which was a span away. There was nowhere to climb higher than the shroud singer’s roof. No quick escape. “It’s a trap.”
Nina said, “I have seen nothing suspicious.”
“Even you can’t see everything,” said Vinbor.
“You don’t have to get paid, if you don’t want.”
“They should pay us the normal way. Just leave an offering where Guild eyes watch.”
But the Assassin’s Guild had accepted a policy where regular clients could meet the assassins to pay them. It was a matter of mutual trust. àlvare lived long lives; identifying themselves in the interests of leverage could foment strong bonds. Occasionally, it led to quick deaths. Nina never met a client without extensive surveillance wherever they meant to exchange payment in crowns.
Vinbor sweated beside her. He wasn’t posing as a kerotera anymore and wore only scant, torn leggings with toeless boots and a leather vest. He could not afford to decline the payment, yet he seemed to be pushed toward the precipice of refusal. He wiped the sweat off his face only to remain glistening as he sweated harder. His hand was actually shaking.
“Look at you,” Nina said disdainfully. “You worked yourself into such a froth leaving S?xe, you have broken your own willpower.”
“You weren’t as careful,” he said. “It makes it easier for them to track you. Prepare for you.”
Nina didn’t need to be as careful. She knew how to melt into crowds of travelers and leave behind only traces that an ordinary traveler would leave. She chose invisibility in numbers instead of attempting to achieve actual invisibility, which would one day fail Vinbor. “Perhaps you are right to be nervous,” she said.
“I’m not taking the payment,” Vinbor said. “You’re too reckless, Nina. It’s too much. We shouldn’t have taken that job. Do you think—would you maybe—the fee that the Guild takes—?”
“No,” said Nina, growing irritated. “I won’t pay your Guild commission.”
“Hexes. Bogrenders. I’m not taking it anyway. I’ll find another way to pay off the Guild.”
Thankfully, Vinbor left after that. He wasn’t any good at invisibility. His boots scraped on the shingle roof of the shop with every step, his hands clutching ropes made a telltale scraping sound, and the very scent of him lingered when he was gone.
Nina remained, noiseless and motionless. Emptiness gnawed at her gut. She was hungry, but would not need to eat for Lights yet, so long as she remained a statue. She rested her chin upon her folded knees. Her hands hung loose at her sides, empty of blades, prepared to draw.
She watched the cemetery.
***
Vinbor fled.
Kalexo’s sin?os was enormous compared to the xilcadis; the tallest palace trees quickly flowed out into low-lying ?msive, rows of rickety sheds sung in quantity for public housing. Docks edged a river that flowed brown. Vinbor remained on the roofs, where there was less traffic. He swung from tree to tree on dangling ropes and seldom landed until he reached the Night Market.
Orkar caravans camped in front of locals’ shops. Their sickly green lanterns cast the entire ward in a poisonous glow that sucked the warmth from àlvar flesh. Everyone shopping looked like they may well have been dead, tattered as they were, muddy on the legs like Men, ears drooping from malnourishment. They argued pennies and talons over vegetables that had gotten moldy because the villagers wanted to buy the bags for clothes. On one end of the street was a cart selling remedies meant to alleviate any illness from rickets to Wasting. On the other end, a toymaker sold sharp-toothed models of monsters that could claw the air with a switch wiggled on their backs.
To the toymaker went Vinbor, smoothing his sweaty hands over his leggings. He feigned interest in the vicious little clockwork spidren. “Have you any great roc?” he asked, trying to sound calmer than he felt. A vibrato still found its way into his voice.
The Ork behind the cart lifted her hood to survey him. She was furry-faced with a narrow nose and frowning pink lips. “I have what you see on the shelves.” Her Interlingual was so guttural, she nearly sounded like a dwarf.
“I seek a great roc with fish scale feathers,” said Vinbor.
Recognition lit in her eyes. “My master has been working on such a thing.” She lifted the blankets hanging on the end of the cart to reveal its innards, which was just big enough for two to stand inside. “He works yonder. You may ask him yourself.”
Vinbor climbed inside over the yoke. She let the blankets fall shut behind him.
The cart’s innards were dim and cluttered. Tools hung from a net on the ceiling and broken toys piled in a crate for repurposing. An àlvar crouched over a narrow work bench, ratty hair veiling whatever was in his hands. His candle had burned past the half-mark and threatened to eat the quarter. “I almost stopped waiting for you,” said Hailin. He wore magnifying lenses over one eye, which caught the firelight when he looked up at Vinbor. “Did you do it?”
“I did it,” Vinbor said. “You have to get me out of here before she realizes.”
Once Nina Silverhand noticed that Vinbor had placed a tracker on her, she would kill him. And she would not let him die quickly.
“You’ll only need evade notice a little longer,” said Hailin. “And then you’ll only need to evade the Assassin’s Guild for the rest of your natural life.”
“Better the Guild than Nina,” said Vinbor.
Hailin set down his work. It was not a toy roc, but a wood carved figurine of an àlvar. The exacting details looked perfectly realistic. He had picked out facial features that looked too distinctive to be fabricated, and the thoughtful but angry expression was eerily realistic, as if the scowl might suddenly turn to bared teeth. “You can’t tell me you’d rather be on the unfriendly end of a hundred daggers than confront a single assassin.”
“You don’t know this assassin,” said Vinbor.
* * *
“She must be the cruelest monster to walk Disunam?,” said Rivoras an Danoras. “I have never seen bodies displayed the way my family was displayed.” The kerotera kneeled before Patrician Lorent, head bowed as she detailed once again the death of the entire manse.
They were meeting in Lorent’s private garden, which was central to a ring of rooms comprising his suite. He had several Fruitful Trees around the edges where they would only get partial exposure to the harsh Light of midday, and under their petite canopies grew plants that loved shade, like basket plants and ferns. The center of the garden had a fountain flanked by a pair of weapon racks, both of which held several staves, training swords, and axes.
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“Your family,” echoed Lorent thoughtfully. “You were quite attached to them, were you?”
“I served them for years,” said Rivor.
Attached would have been too strong a word, though. They had fed and housed Rivor; she depended on them.
After all, Lady Enura had known Rivor’s secret.
Enura had liked having a doe as kerotera, and didn’t mind Rivor’s desire to keep her sex a secret. Enura hadn’t been an especially pleasant client, but her ill temper had been formed in the forge of the borderlands; she knew what does risked on the edge of the Orkar Republic. “You can’t keep me safe without keeping yourself safe first,” Enura had said.
Enura had also hung that secret over Rivor’s head to ensure she never stepped out of line.
“They didn’t deserve to die like that,” added Rivor, if only to remind herself. “Nobody does.”
“Did you see who did it?” asked Patrician Lorent.
“Briefly,” said Rivor. “I could not describe her to you.”
“Bested by a doe,” said Lorent. “Embarrassing for you.”
Rivor agreed, although she would have been embarrassed to be bested by anyone. “It will not happen again.”
It couldn’t, now that she was filled with something evil and hungry.
Hollow had made it clear Rivor was trading her heart for power, but he hadn’t specified that meant Hollow would stay with her. She could feel him inside her chest. He was prickly, hot, unpleasant—and that heat had kept her alive on the ride from Liverwort Manor to S?xe.
She could feel the swamp’s deathly rage boiling inside her breast at that very moment.
“Are you a good fighter, Rivoras?” asked Lorent.
“Yes,” said Rivor without ego.
Lorent rose from his stool to draw a stave. “Show me your skills,” he said, swinging his weapon in a figure eight.
“My lord?”
“Come now, grab another stave,” said Lorent. “We shall duel!”
When Rivor had arrived in S?xe, she’d heard the Patrician was comatose. The fact he was awake to question her was shocking enough without starting a duel. “My lord,” said Rivor again, in a more cautious tone, “I—I just arrived from travels, and—”
“I won’t hurt you,” Lorent said boldly. “Fight me!”
She couldn’t defy a L?sàlvar. Especially not this one. Rivor rose cautiously. “If it pleases you, my liege.”
Rivor chose the simplest stave with fewest engravings on the weapon rack, and when she wrapped her hand around its shaft, her heart leaped with someone else’s excitement.
Fight, sang some inner voice.
Ever since making a deal with Hollow, Rivor had been hearing that voice constantly. He grew impatient in idle moments. He criticized Rivor’s desire to sleep every few Lights. He thought about dying, often, and delighted over the presence of blood, always.
He would have been fine if Rivor killed the Patrician.
You know he’s like the rest of them, said Hollow. He deserves to die. They all do.
Rivor took a few deep breaths as she tested the stave’s weight and put distance between herself and the Patrician.
“Shall we wear padding?” asked Rivor. By “we,” she mostly meant “my liege.” The idea of deliberately swinging at a Patrician left her feeling hyper-aware of some invisible noose around her neck, like the shadow of the death she would suffer for his inj8ury.
“I’m not made of glass,” said Lorent. “Don’t hold back on your strikes. I won’t let you hit me easily. Come now, show me your form!”
Fight! roared the inner voice.
Rivor took a good look at Lorent: his height, a full hand’s width taller than Rivor; his stance, which was well-balanced despite his recent injuries; his grip, which was confident and experienced. Her vision narrowed around him.
She may have once cared that he was a striking figure. He was as masculine as Rivor pretended to be, with a strong neck and square jaw she could never possess. He should have looked foolish with hair colored like aster, and pale gold eyes like the button in the flower’s center, but the faded pastels of his coloring only exaggerated the brutal angularity of his facial features. His physique suited a battlefield warrior, growing oversize arms with every swing of his blade. The very plumes of his coiled hair evoked the noble walnut tree.
Striking. But Rivor’s breast was empty of ill-fated hope and meaningless attraction. Hollow’s interest was analysis, seeking visual hints about Lorent’s condition. He’s injured, said Hollow. We can exploit that. He was particularly focused on a wound in the Patrician’s side.
“I’ll give you first blow,” said Lorent.
They were spared by the Captain of the Drakalban bursting into the garden.
The Captain looked between them and said, “What in Detavel’s underrobes do you think you’re doing?”
Lorent dropped the stave like it was suddenly burning-hot. <> He said, boldly, “Idan, this is Rivoras an Danoras. The kerotera who should have accompanied Lady Enura to our fête.”
“We’ve met,” said Idan. This was true, but he had been wearing a hood in a dimly lit tactical meeting room; this was the first time Rivor could see his face and realize how young he was.
Rivor put down the staff, which made the Hollow in her chest snarl disappointment.
“She’s been telling me every detail about the attack on Liverwort Manor,” said Lorent.
<> said Idan. <
Then again, Enura’s father also hadn’t tried to fight Rivor the first time they met.
Fight, said the voice. Teeth gnawed at the inside of her ribs. She pressed her palm to her side, but didn’t feel anything.
“What brings you here, Captain?” asked Patrician Lorent.
Idan paused as if to brace himself for a battle. The inner fight was lovely played across his high brow, and Rivor studied him as she had studied his master. He is in love. Hollow made this remark in the same tone that he had reported on Patrician Lorent’s injury. Love was a vulnerability.
Idan said, “I just received a tip about the assassin’s location.”
“Which one? The false kerotera or the false lady?” Lorent asked.
For no reason Rivor could discern, the captain seemed even more reluctant to respond. “The lady.”
“Setar’s blessings, what great news!” Patrician Lorent jumped to his feet again. “Where is she? Tell me!”
“Kalexo,” said Idan, even more reluctantly, after a much longer pause.
That was all the information Rivor needed. She had been born in Kalexo. She had disreputable family in the xilcadis. She could find the assassin. “If I am no longer needed, I will be in my chambers,” said Rivor softly. She bowed again, twice, aimed at the Patrician first and Captain second.
Lorent was too excited to care. “Yes, of course. You’re dismissed.”
She left the garden wrapped in her thoughts.
How to get between cities?
The roads between xilcadise were in terrible conditions. Chaos had claimed some parts of the road entirely; detours were frequent and unprotected from bandits by the Magistrate’s army. Other parts of the road had washed away in bad weather. She might have been faster avoiding roads entirely, but Rivor would need another elk—and she didn’t have any money.
We can run it, said Hollow. We are quick.
“Nobody’s that quick,” she muttered at him.
She was halfway back to her chamber when she heard someone calling. “Wait, lad!” It was the young Captain, Idan. He had run to catch up with her. “I’ve need of your time.” Idan was much more serious away from Lorent, his face composed into a mask of hard professionalism.
“Yes, sir?” asked Rivor. She spoke in an even lower register than usual, shoulders squared. She found that bucks postured at one another upon meeting; a failure to intimidate would have marked her as more feminine than any physical feature.
Idan was even taller than Lorent. Even with a straight spine, Rivor was making eye contact with his collarbones. The Captain had long straight hair the color of almond cream. A thin band wrapped across his forehead and tied in the back, leaving leather thong loose with beads on its end. His narrow features were jarringly friendly for someone of his position. He would command at least a thousand Drakalban protecting xilcadis S?xe—a task that demanded a certain ruthlessness that seemed in conflict with friendliness.
“Have you recovered from your injuries at Liverwort Mansion?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. The S?xe healers are of the highest quality,” said Rivor.
“Do you have a primary contract?”
“I was hired directly by Lady Enura’s father.” She wasn’t one of those keroterase who had been raised in a monastery to fight; she had nowhere to return now that her employers were dead.
“Would you be interested in a contract with the Drakalban? Not as an officer, mind. This would be a temporary assignment.”
“You want me to arrest the assassin,” guessed Rivor. “You’re afraid the Patrician will do it himself.”
Idan gave a stiff nod. “Our liege has strange ideas about the assassin. Even in peak physical condition, he might not try to fight her very hard.”
Rivor didn’t understand, but she didn’t need to. “Why me?”
“I need my Drakalban in the xilcadis. And none of them would be as motivated to find her as you are.”
Her blood was growing hotter by the moment as Hollow stirred. “Then you would pay me to capture the assassin?”
“Kill her,” said Idan.
Kill her, echoed Hollow.
“She’s too dangerous to let live,” continued Idan. “It would be a problem if our liege got to Kalexo first and issued a pardon for her crimes. I have chartered a swoop and sought a weather Affinite to turn the wind. You will arrive in Kalexo late tomorrow Night.”
Kill her. Kill her, killer, killer, killer...
This was the solitary issue where Rivor and Hollow were in agreement, and she tried not to show Hollow’s excitement in her expression. She did her best to mimic the Captain’s stiff features. Rivor bowed deeply. “I will see it done.”
Affinites: Elves with an Affinity for a craft, element, or trade. Usually trained at the College, an Affinite can compel behavior from whatever they have an Affinity for--like a weather Affinite calling for wind. As with singing, Affinity is not considered magick.
?msiv: A shack that has a sloped roof with a central peak and a floor elevated above the dirt. Because Elves have holy associations with nearness to the Everhalls in the sky, even being a little bit up from the ground is considered good. These ?msive are grown en masse in rows for impoverished Low Elves. Families may occupy multiple ?msive with the walls between removed.
Detavel: One of the Spirits of Aspiration. A holy figure akin to a demigod. Where Setar honors celebration, Detavel celebrates passion.
Disunam?: The continent these characters live upon. There are other continents, but you can't really get there because the ocean can't be traversed.
Interlingual: It's a lot like the Elf language, but simplified so that beings who don't sing like High Elves can still use it. The Elf empire is dominant all around the world, so most everyone speaks Interlingual.
L?sàlvar: High Elf. It's a caste, not a race; Low Elf families can become L?sàlvare by paying off several generations of bond debt and moving into xilcadise.