Chapter 5

  The River and the Graves

  Rivor left with the chartered swoop at sunset. She had never traveled in a vessel that didn’t float above the water before. The flat, narrow shape of the boat left them bobbing with the slightest wave. Unfamiliar motion left her green. Even Hollow was afflicted; he lurked in silence to pretend he wasn’t miserable.

  She tried to meditate on the deck to distract herself from the queasiness.

  A figure crossed into her line of fading Light.

  She opened her eyes to see an overweight buck with the height and breadth of shoulders to make him look bearish more than portly. Muscle and fat meant he was twice Rivor’s circumference and capable of hiding the sun.

  “Pardon me,” said Rivor. She didn’t appreciate having the last Light obscured by some slab of meat.

  “I’m Maeral,” said the big àlvar.

  She was annoyed until her eyes focused and she realized he was wearing a College belt. He also wore a signet ring on his thumb, which would allow him to seal letters with the stamp of House Vulasir. Rivor was wearing the same ring. Idan had given it to her. “You’re the weather Affinite helping me travel briskly,” she said. “Am I correct?”

  “I’m responsible for the weather, yes,” he said.

  She got to her feet. “Well met, Maeral.” She felt diminutive in front of him, though she was well-built for a doe. “I am Rivoras an Danoras.” And Hollow. “I’m grateful for your assistance.”

  Maeral offered a small bow. “I’m happy to be of service. What sends you flying to Kalexo?”

  Rivor felt too sickly to be anything but blunt. “I’m a kerotera. Nina Silverhand killed the lady under my protection; she penetrated my defenses and disabled me with barely a fight. Now I must kill her killer or die in the effort.”

  “Then we are companions. Thirty years ago, Nina Silverhand assassinated my septa, Aru?n,” said Maeral. “I’ve been trying to catch up with her since. She needs to face justice.”

  The hairs on the back of Rivor’s neck stood on end. “You’re not a mere wind Affinite, are you?”

  “I’m not.” He lifted the hem of his tunic. A thick scar encircled half his torso. The closing stitches were like a lightning bolt. “I’m a Magus. Maeral of Brynulf.” That meant he had been chosen by one of the great wizards as an apprentice. Only a few dozen appeared in any given century. They tended to become minor celebrities, dreaded and admired anywhere they traveled.

  Rivor hadn’t heard of Maeral, but she’d heard stories about Aru?n of Brynulf. She had famously died on a diplomatic mission in the Orkar Federation, and rumors always said the Ork killed her.

  “Does the College train Mager?” asked Rivor, gesturing to the belt. It was a wide strip of gold-trimmed black fabric.

  “I’m a professor,” said Maeral. “I teach Affinites a year each decade. I just finished my latest tenure.”

  “Did Idan hire you, too?” asked Rivor.

  Maeral nodded. “Hired me before you, in fact. I approached Idan about hunting Silverhand as soon as I arrived in S?xe.” His eyes flicked up and down Rivor, scrutinizing her with unnerving intensity. “You must be something if we’ve been paired.”

  “I’m going to be Nina Silverhand’s killer. I swore an oath.” Two oaths, now. The worse of the oaths was gnawing on the back of her throat and kicking its ugly little feet against her trachea.

  “Idan must have high confidence in your fighting abilities,” said Maeral.

  “I don’t know why. He hasn’t seen me fight.” Despite his master’s best efforts.

  “You survived Silverhand once, though,” said the Magus.

  Rivor wasn’t sure why.

  It certainly wasn’t because she had won a fight.

  It will be different this time, said Hollow. He shot burning ropes through each of her limbs, which made her feel strong. She felt like she could have lifted the burly Magus over her head.

  “I’ll survive again,” said Rivor. “I’ll be ready this time.”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Maeral.

  * * *

  They sailed through the Night. Rivor fell asleep while meditating and awoke to a changed coastline.

  Kalexo was in the same si?e as S?xe, but they were vastly different in climate. S?xe’s brushy golden desert turned into pine forest nearer the foothills in rural Kalexo. The river was segmented by locks to carry vessels to higher elevations, but it took huge teams of Dokàlvare the entire Light to pump the water necessary to reach the upper canals. She was a dog gnawing at her lead, aching to bolt after a rabbit. Holding still for hours was impossible when she could see prey was around the next few turns.

  She ran drills against nonexistent enemies across the deck of the vessel. She had ample space to move through fighting exercises she hadn’t been practicing as often. Her muscles ached in protest.

  It’s your fault Lady Enura died, said Hollow. You hadn’t been training. You weren’t ready.

  Stubbornly, she ignored Hollow and proved she was still capable of doing every single maneuver expected of keroterase. There was a book of one hundred twenty attacks, defenses, and guidelines she memorized like everyone else. These were called tusarte. She had performed the tusarte in front of a licensing board before they allowed her into the qualifying competition, and Rivor had been the first to climb the world tree in her graduation group.

  But she wasn’t as quick as she used to be.

  Not that it mattered. Nina Silverhand hadn’t given Rivor opportunity to fight.

  “Can I make some suggestions for your exercises?” asked Maeral, again interrupting Rivor’s peace. They were at the second-to-last lock, which left them in the amazing position of looking down at a lower segment of river from the side of a foothill.

  “Try me,” said Rivor.

  “You’re favoring your left. An old wound, I think. Yes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The left tusarte are always harder.”

  The Magus gave detailed instructions on shifting her weight through the tusarte, both right and left sides. He knew what every position was called. “If you can keep loose, you will be intimidatingly quick.”

  “Do you have kerotera training?”

  “I went through the program once when I was bored,” he said.

  She followed his suggestions, and she found it was a little easier to move with his modified tusarte. Marked improvement made her feel that familiar heat again. The hole inside her was filling with fire at the idea she would be able to kill.

  Kill, sang Hollow.

  “Not until we find Silverhand,” muttered Rivor.

  “What’s that?” asked Maeral.

  “I can’t wait to find Silverhand,” she said louder, naturally, as though she had not been speaking to herself.

  It was going to be different this time. She was going to kill the killer. Her oaths would be fulfilled, and that bloodthirsty voice inside her would never come back.

  * * *

  Vinbor didn’t show up to meet the client. Nina was unsurprised. She imagined him fleeing to his mother’s house so that he could sleep in his childhood bed, engulfing himself in a sense of safety, pretending that his choices wouldn’t catch up with him if he just walked away.

  Ridiculous.

  She would find him later.

  In the meantime, Nina remained at the cemetery.

  The time was easy to wait. She admired the work of shroud singers and others who provided services to the dead. She had been listening to songs inside the workshop all week, and she’d heard one or two unfamiliar tunes. Nina so rarely heard new music. She committed these ones to memory in the idle times she spent crouched on their roof.

  Nina liked it best when everyone was outside working. The choir would shroud cadavers in the garden; the Church’s pallbearers were obligated to get the cadaver from table to the yard across the road. In this impoverished side of the sin?os, they couldn’t afford to do anything better than using the shrouds to hang the bodies on the highest hooks on the tallest trees. Nina was impressed to see how committed they were to such futile gestures. The humblest High would spend death far nearer to the Everhalls than the most accomplished Low. The reality of Empire life pantomimed in death.

  She watched the services from curiosity as much as caution. She catalogued every worker and visitor, memorizing faces so she would know when strangers arrived. She learned the ordinary sounds of the neighborhood so that she would also recognize a disruption: the river running three spans away, the chatter of Dokàlvare on their way to and from work, the squeaky-wheeled carts which transported nearly everything.

  Late on the Light Nina was due to meet her client, strangers appeared.

  Everyone who ordinarily occupied the cemetery was inside working. These bucks had no legitimate reason to search every cranny of the open park as though they would find Nina waiting with a small army inside a bush. One of the entourage, a nervous little Affinite in a gray College belt, performed elaborate gestures and announced no magick had been cast in the cemetery.

  It was a standard security search. Reasonable to protect someone rich enough to be able to afford Nina.

  When the time to meet approached, she finally unfolded herself from a crouch on the roof. She felt barely a twinge at holding the same position for well over a week. Only her left knee disliked the effort. The rest of her body felt as energetic as though she had been sleeping and eating well the whole time.

  From her pack, she unfolded a simple dress that she threw over her more flexible—and wildly inappropriate—body suit so that nobody would faint from being able to see the shapes of her knees. It was little more than a silk shift, but once she added a cloak, she passed for a maid.

  Nina tied back the longer portions of her hair. She always wore beads midway through the long braids; they clicked together at the back of her skull. Then she wrapped a scarf around her head, tucked the hair inside of it, and ensured there were no stray hairs by running her fingers along the hem. No strange hair, no strange beads, no ears long enough for Levusàlvar.

  Skirt bunched at her side, she dropped onto a street where the guards were not looking. She walked into the cemetery like a civilized àlvar and studied it anew from that position.

  Everything felt oversized. She had spent many Lights observing it from an elevation that left plants and statues looking like toys. Nina always enjoyed that perspective. Once she stood on the same scale, she started feeling like everything was real, and that was when she stopped having fun.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  A wealthy buck approached from the other end of the cemetery. He was wide in every measure except his eyes, which seemed just a bit too close together. Nina noted his nonathletic stride. His hunched shoulders implied much time sitting over a desk. His robes were clearly from the north. They only made such dense dye on the other side of Tuxnus Strait.

  At the sight of Nina, he flashed a hand gesture.

  She returned with another gesture. Both were signals from the Assassin’s Guild.

  They met by the fountain and stood opposite its basin. He had many guards lurking in the bushes. Nina had only Nina.

  “I’m Hailin,” he said, bowing shallowly.

  “Nina Silverhand,” she said, returning the bow at the exact same depth. She never let her eyes fall from his face. Using other visible reference points, she estimated the size of his eyes, nose, and mouth, and she committed those figures to memory. She would always recognize the scar under his left eye, where it looked like a projectile had once torn through his cheek.

  She didn’t often see her clients, but she never forgot the ones she did.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” said Hailin.

  “It’s my pleasure,” she lied. She would have been forfeiting all payment if she hadn’t met him, not to mention threatening her Guild membership. Clients had a right to transparency. Nina didn’t have to like it. “I don’t get to meet such a skillful sculptor every day.”

  Surprise lifted Hailin’s brows. “How do I give myself away?”

  “Your hands, primarily.” The muscling and scarring suggested such work. She suspected that he worked over small statues in particular. Such aesthetic junk was popular among the L?sàlvare in the north; he could make more than enough coin to afford Nina. It still didn’t explain his motive.

  “Good eye,” he said. “What do you see secondarily?”

  “You travel by wagon. A small space where you sit on a bench, stooped over. Your weak legs imply that you do not travel by foot. Your strength is limited to your hands and forearms, so you are not working with heavy materials, either.”

  Hailin seemed impressed again. “A shame. You could be doing something much more constructive with that skill.”

  “You are kind to consider my prospects,” she said. “Perhaps I will finally be able to afford the College of Ralen after a few more jobs. Then I can be free of this dreadful work.”

  Guilt flashed briefly across Hailin’s face.

  The glimpse of that one emotion was enough for Nina to realize Vinbor had been right. This was a trap. Hailin thought he was about to betray a much younger, more foolish doe, and he felt guilty for it.

  On the bright side, Nina knew his options for betrayal were few. She had a count of every guard. She knew the surroundings better than the shroud singers. She was facing a game of numbers, and she bet she could scare off most of the guards if she killed the first couple of them in a particularly brutal fashion. It worked more often than it didn’t.

  She continued playing ignorant. “Unless you would like to request another job, I will take my payment and be on my way.”

  He produced a satchel. Given the effort it took him to hold it, Nina believed he had enough coin. He didn’t look to be in any hurry to pass it over, though. “Where is your associate?” asked Hailin.

  “He is recovering from unrelated injuries,” she said.

  Hailin stepped back. “Then I will need to divide the coins.”

  “I can take them all,” said Nina. “I will see my associate later.” And then she could beat him unconscious with his earnings.

  Hailin’s guards were shifting. She tracked their changing positions by listening closely, while she remained patiently smiling for Hailin.

  Nina felt the attack coming from her rear.

  Two came at her simultaneously.

  With a flash of her right hand, she cut Hailin’s wrist. He dropped the heavy satchel and cried out.

  Then Nina evaded the guards’ reach by dropping to the ground and throwing herself backward between their legs. There were advantages to being small for an àlvar. She kept rolling straight into a large bush.

  Shouts filled the air. Boots stomped toward her.

  Nina came out with a dagger in one hand and an arrow in the other.

  She was precise enough to plant them into the breasts of the nearest bucks. There was a very small point where the bone notched together that was easier to split. A proper angle ensured she sent the points of her weapons straight into their hearts.

  There was no time to watch them fall. Hailin’s archers unleashed and she had to leap behind a wooden carving of the Eternal Cross. Arrows shattered against the plinth, only an arm’s length from the back of her skull. She took a moment to arrange four throwing knives in each of her hands.

  She darted across the cemetery, hanging low to the foliage. She emerged again to the right flank of Hailin’s guards.

  Methodically, she flung the throwing knives at their throats.

  If she had knifed a hundred bucks, then she had knifed thousands. She felt confidence in the warmth of her muscles as she flicked one blade after another. The impact sounds were exactly what she expected; their strangled noises meant they were dying. Nina loved the satisfaction of blossoming blood.

  The guards went so quickly, their client shouldn’t have had time to react.

  But Hailin was gone.

  Nina leaped to the nearest bodies to retrieve her knives. She only searched the first two guards before the next arrived from the south—another handful of archers, and a dozen bucks with swords. She simply didn’t have that many knives. The fight sounded onerous. And Hailin still wasn’t with them.

  Hailin and Vinbor, she thought. Her list now had two names on it.

  Nina hated needing a list.

  Instead of wasting her time on the guards, Nina grabbed the satchel Hailin dropped and ran.

  She exploded out the gates with payment clutched to her chest. The satchel didn’t jangle with coins inside. Either they had packed her payment strangely, or she had just run away with bricks. If it were the latter, Nina would have to find a necromancer to resurrect Hailin so she could kill him again. She tucked the satchel under her arm and scaled the nearest tree one-handed.

  Across the canopies of anemic olive trees, Nina flew toward the xilcadis. She shed her hair scarf. She allowed the cloak to fall. She dropped the dress so that she wore only dark fabrics and leather plates again, keeping her blended with the shadows. Her grip never faltered on the payment.

  Nina doubled back near the mujan and hid out in a guard tower. Guards were always patrolling the higher levels, but the ground-level chambers were often neglected as storage. She wedged herself between crates that stunk like a cargo vessel and opened the satchel.

  Instead of crowns or bricks, she found plates of gold stamped with a treasurer’s seal. It was only enough to pay one assassin. He had come ready to kill Nina. Why would he only intend to pay Vinbor? What would Vinbor hope to get out of betraying me?

  Things they could discuss when Nina caught up with Vinbor.

  She heard approaching footsteps and snapped the satchel shut. Nina stuffed it into her own bag. She drew a couple of throwing knives, stuck their hilts in her mouth, and leaped up to grab the next floor of the guard tower.

  Nina had already slipped out of view when someone reached the storage room. She peered through a crack in the floor panels.

  It was Rivoras an Danoras, though Nina didn’t recognize him at first. She took time to consider the top of his head—a view she had not previously contemplated—as well as the fabrics he wore and his stance moving through the storage room. She tried to decide why he looked so familiar.

  He looked up.

  Their eyes met through the floorboards.

  The kerotera, she realized.

  Nina had surveilled Lady Enura, and by extension Rivor, for weeks before performing the kills. She knew those sharp-clove eyes and razor-straight hair the color of burned chestnut bark. From a distance, she had grown fond of his defined jawline and rounded brow. He was hard-working. Constantly at the call of a demanding noble family.

  It had not been so long since she gave this kerotera reason to hunt revenge.

  Nina spit the knives into her hand and threw them in quick succession.

  Thwip, thwip, thwip.

  They punched the hem of Rivor’s cloak into the ground behind him. He leaped and swiped for the edge of the floor, but couldn’t jump up. He was momentarily pinned.

  She leaped out of the tower’s second floor window and slipped into the bushes across the path. She never rose above a crouch. Instead, Nina spider-crawled into the next group of bushes, continued around the corner, and snagged a new dress that was drying on a fence by the river. Still lowered, she pulled on the dress and tied the waist.

  Then she ducked into the doorway of the next ?msiv. The lock was easily snapped in one hand. Nina rolled inside to find a cold hearth and empty mats. Nobody was home.

  Nina lingered in the rear of the ?msiv, away from the windows. It was busy near the entrance to the xilcadis. Shouting guards were screening entrants, merchants were hawking wares on the sin?os side of the wall, and many Dokàlvare were moving through the area. It would be difficult to hear anyone approaching.

  She slid out the back door—more like a gap, really—and hurried down the narrow alley between ?msive toward flow of traffic.

  Rivoras an Danoras appeared at the end of the alley, blocking her path.

  He was imposing in his anger, clutching a pike in both hands hard enough that his fists shook. His eyes seemed to glow with more than emotion. Nina didn’t think the sweat slicking his collarbone was the result of chasing her; he simply looked overheated.

  Specifically, he looked like he might catch fire.

  “Hello again,” said Nina.

  He swung the pike forward and charged.

  Nina was ready for it. She leaped out of the way, tapped a foot on the shaft of his oncoming pike, and flipped herself onto the roof of the unlocked ?msiv.

  But she was not ready for blood to burst out of Rivor’s eyes and slap her like twelve whips at once.

  Nina flew off the roof. She crashed through the wall of another ?msiv, and a pair of children screamed. Their family was home. She rolled across the cinders of their pit-fire, swearing in every language she’d ever known.

  What the hexes was that?

  Body aching, head spinning, feet scrabbling, Nina excavated millennia of memories for a creature that made blood whips out of its eyes. It was blood, she was certain—the whips had wetly slapped against her stolen dress to leave stains.

  She could not recall another such monster.

  Nina leaped out the tilting remains of the front door and straight into the next ?msiv across the street. In the next heartbeat, she swung out the opposite door, climbed onto the roof, and doubled back at an angle. One of her long locks didn’t swing freely anymore. It had been wetted by blood and stuck against her neck.

  She was striding for the mujan’s edge again when a roof vanished under her feet.

  Kaboom.

  The ?msiv pulverized into twigs and she hit the peat foundation face-first.

  There was Rivor again, his hands extended, the wind still swirling through his shredded cloak. Bloody tears streaked his cheeks. He panted with heavy breath, and it smoked, like he was holding a pipe at the back of his mouth. The veins bulging from his arms looked like they might explode at any moment.

  “Oh, you’re proper cursed,” said Nina. “You made a deal with an aelxir, didn’t you?”

  He said, “I was angry.” His voice sounded as if it came from a thousand miles away.

  “You’re a fool,” she said.

  This time, she saw the blood whips coming; she leaped off the rubble and flipped high over Rivor’s head. She landed just behind him.

  Nina wrapped her arm around his throat, pinning him tightly. “Do you know what it means to make a deal with an aelxir? To let the rage of the wilderness consume you?”

  “I know it means you will die,” he ground out, punching at her arm.

  “And you will be devoured by it,” she said. “I try not to kill keroterase. You could make this easy and run away. I will not follow.”

  “Why not keroterase?” asked Rivor in that horrible voice. The blood streaking down his face dripped on her forearm. He smeared it when he struggled against her.

  “I like when keroterase avenge their dead clients,” said Nina. “So few can walk away from revenge.” She leaned in so close that her arm choked the air out of Rivor and her lips brushed his ear. “You could be one of the sensible ones.”

  In response, Rivor exploded.

  A wall of air pulsed out of his flesh, throwing Nina back into the air, across several streets, and into the nearest pond.

  She came up from the muck with an angry shriek. “Kerotera!” Algae clung to her hair.

  Her scream was echoed by other screams of fright, carried by the breeze from dock to xilcadis. The sounds of her fight echoed across the sin?os. Witnesses had seen the blood-whips and epxlosions of air. Dokàlvare were already fleeing.

  Rivor moved swiftly to leap at Nina again. He crashed into the pond without hesitation.

  He seized her shoulders and pushed her head under the surface. He followed her down.

  They plunged together.

  For an instant, Nina thought she might actually die.

  She faced Rivor with a sense of hollow peace. He was boiling the water around them. The bubbles pouring out his mouth and nose were still smoky. His eyes had lost every hint of resigned patience that Nina had observed at Liverwort Manor; now they were murderous.

  If he is to be my death, at least he is very handsome, she thought in a detached sort of way.

  Suddenly, misty-black fists of air clutched both Nina and Rivor around their midsections, pinning their arms to their sides.

  They were jerked out of the pond. Water streamed from their hair and clothes as they were lifted over the surface. Rivor thrashed, snarling, but Nina went patiently limp. Pondwater dribbled out of her mouth.

  Maeral emerged from the trees, his lifted hands in the same position as those that held Nina and Rivor. “You can’t kill the assassin,” said Maeral. “She needs to meet justice.”

  “She was about to meet justice, believe me,” snarled Rivor.

  “I know Idan sent you to kill her, but Patrician Lorent gets to decide justice,” said Maeral. “That’s how àlvar law works.”

  Rivor, who had nearly killed Nina, was enraged. He thrashed helplessly in the magicked hands of the Magus.

  Nina only laughed and laughed.

  Levusàlvar: This is an ethnicity fabricated by the political ruling class to differentiate those with the "most ancient blood" from most nobles.

  Magus (plural Mager): A close disciple of one of the twelve immortal wizards. They contain a surgically implanted crystal called a cachel, which gives them access to a wizard's power; otherwise, most creatures generally can't perform magick.

  septa: The word for a Magus who was raised in the same class as you. Like a coworker/classmate/sibling all in one.

  shroud singers: Remember how choirs can do all sorts of non-magick things via song? The shroud singers are in choirs responsible for creating the accouterments of death. Elf bodies are hung on hooks as high as reasonably possible for a while, covered in a shroud, to help their souls reach the Everhalls. Then they tend to have their hearts removed and bodies burned. Hence a shroud singer usually fulfills the myriad roles demanded of an undertaker.

  si?e: It's sort of like a state in America - a largely independent geographic area containing cities, villages, and the like. The ruler of a si?e is a Lord Mayor (like a governor) and cities have Patricians (mayors).