abandoned as one might think this deep into the night. Most of the stalls are closed, but that doesn’t stop city guards from patrolling, drunkards from creating scenes, and dirty urchins from begging. Eshe has a small bag of dried fish on her hip, and as we progress deeper into the city, she tosses tiny chunks to the feral cats that rub against her ankles.
“You shouldn’t feed them,” I say. “They’re pests.”
“They’re sweet peas.”
“You’re making the overpopulation worse.”
“Yes, I will single-handedly make the population of cats in Risya explode by giving one bite of fish to half a dozen cats.”
I roll my eyes but stop arguing with her. Only a minute later, she pulls out the last strip of dried fish, and, instead of breaking it and feeding it to the boney orange tabby at her heels, tosses it to a little boy leaning against the wall of an alley. A little girl sleeps with her head in his lap.
It hardly lands in his hands before three more children appear from nowhere and begin wrestling for it until it’s nothing but crumbs and the sleeping girl is awake and crying.
Eshe’s brow darkens. She turns away, her pouch empty. We are several streets beyond the scene before she speaks. “It’s gotten worse. We rarely were desperate enough that we destroyed food like that.”
“You had a good leader who didn’t tolerate that, and who made sure everything was shared,” I reply. “Most of these urchins don’t have a gang to protect them. They’re just fighting to survive.”
“It’s not just the gangs, Nadira. All of it is worse. Jabir has you locked up so often you don’t see much of it. Food prices keep going up. Just today I saw a sack of dates going for a copper fal. It’s insanity.”
It is rare that Eshe gives vent to these sentiments. We each have enough to focus on ensuring our own survival that there isn’t much time for us to pity the orphans and stray cats. Perhaps it is the weight of a bejeweled egg in her pocket that makes her speak now. She could feed all the urchins in this quarter of the city for weeks if she didn’t owe the egg to Jabir, who will deliver it to whoever hired us.
“I’m still wondering where the money goes from my assassinations,” I say dryly. “If my rations were any indication, I’d think cutthroats could be hired for five or six fals apiece.”
“And Jabir doesn’t drink?”
“I wish he would.” Then maybe I could take advantage of his inebriated state.
Eshe let out a humorless burst of laughter. “Since he doesn’t live much finer than you, that leaves only one option: he’s eating the money. Perhaps gold and silver soothe his digestion. Is he still angry about the Neverseen King?”
“Still?” I scoff darkly. As we turn down an abandoned alleyway, one that leads to our destination, my stomach sinks a little lower. My legs become heavier, my shoulders slouching. “He’s been furious with our sultan for as long as I can remember. He likes to rant about the export taxes, as though our sultan’s preference for hiding during the day is to blame for other kingdom’s decisions. Sands, he’d blame the Neverseen King for the weather.”
The instant the words are out, I regret them. I toss a covert glance around us, trying to ensure someone isn’t watching us or listening. Jabir has his own mysterious ways of learning each of my treacherous words and actions.
It’s not as if I have any reason to defend the Neverseen King, beyond wanting to defy Jabir.
Eshe seems to have the same thoughts, for she immediately launches into a stream of consciousness. “Speaking of the weather, is it just me or has it been especially hot these last few days? Maybe that’s part of the reason dates are so expensive—”
“Definitely not,” I interject.
“—and actually, did I tell you why I was at the bazaar in the first place? Kolb’s little sister has been so sick this past fortnight. The poor boy is getting desperate, and you know they have nothing. I took on an extra job to earn enough coin to get them a few things. She needs medicine, though. I cannot afford that and wouldn’t have the slightest notion what type to get her anyway.”
At the mention of Kolb and his sister, my chest tightens. “I haven’t seen Kolb in weeks. I was hoping they were alright. Apparently not.”
“The little girl will pull through. She’s tough, and Kolb takes such good care of her.”
I very much hope so, as much for Kolb’s sake as for the girl.
We reach my least favorite street in all of Risya. Dust and sand coat the uneven cobblestone, and in the darkness a single lantern shines from a rickety pole. Illuminating a heavy, scratched wooden door.
I’m not the only one who slows my steps just a fraction. Eshe tosses such a bright grin my way, it’s obvious that it is overcompensating for her own fear. “Well, this has been fun! I suppose I won’t see you again for another four months, now will I? Maybe if we’re lucky, it’ll only be two or three months this time.”
Lucky.
“We’ll have to see,” is all I can manage around the lump in my throat. Then, because I’m afraid of what I might do the longer I delay, I step up to the door and knock. It’s a coded knock. Eshe steps up and knocks her own code on the door. The lantern rocks slightly, sending light and darkness skittering like rodents around the narrow street.
Nothing.
I frown. Jabir should be—
Hurried footsteps coming up the alleyway make me spin around and lay my hands on the hilts of my hidden blades. Eshe and I move by instinct to the shadows, each of us finding a different small spot to melt into.
A cloaked figure appears in the lantern light, his tread unmistakably furious.
Dread sinks into me like a stone.
He has been out. That is never a good sign.
He reaches the door, unlocks it with shocking disregard for keeping silent. Then, without a single glance my way, he growls, “Come inside, Nadira.”
He’s always had a sixth sense for where I am. I slide out from behind a fallen stack of crates without a sound.
“Give it to me, bint-Kinid,” he demands with little patience, holding out his hand toward Eshe’s hiding spot.
She materializes and slinks forward, a linen pouch in her fist. “Payment first.”
“I’m only paying you half.”
“Half?” Eshe demands, immediately retracting the egg.
“I’m not negotiating with you when it’s your fault, your carelessness, that has the city guard combing all of Risya for you two. No one was supposed to know until dawn. Hand the artifact over, bint-Kinid.”
Iron enters Eshe’s gaze, her mouth setting in a stubborn line. But then she looks past Jabir to me as I step over the threshold of my prison. She knows I’ll pay for whatever fight she puts up. Without a word, she throws the egg at Jabir’s face with unnecessary force. He catches it easily and tosses her another sack in return—one that is pitifully light as it flies through the air.
Eshe shoots me a look of mingled fury and concern. She wears her emotions so plainly that sometimes it shocks me.
Then the door is shut, and I have no choice but to walk further down the claustrophobic hallway if I want any distance between me and the man who now tosses his cloak to the floor and stomps toward me.
I turn my back on him and try to ignore the prickling down my spine as I march into my room and brace myself for another multi-month imprisonment. It shouldn’t matter at this point: the sight of the gloomy room with only a single flickering candle to light the space. Behind me, Jabir loudly fiddles with a lantern before storming after me.
I don’t care that he’s angry, I tell myself in the privacy of my own thoughts, and quickly take refuge behind the bowl of water and small brazier I set on the floor before I left. I sit cross-legged and blow on the coals, bringing them back to life just as Jabir fills the doorway. Which, unfortunately, is only a pace from where I sit due to the smallness of the room.
“What a mess!” he all but shouts into my face. His beard shakes with the force of his voice, catching droplets of foamy spittle that would have otherwise landed on me.
I ignore him, sprinkling incense over the coals and breathing in its sharp, earthy aroma. Unfortunately, though my work earns Jabir a fortune, he doesn’t allow me to choose my own incense. Instead, he gives me what I’m certain is the cheapest thing at the bazaar, and instead of smelling sweet, it’s almost repugnant. As though it’s mostly dirt, with only the barest hint of saffron and myrrh.
“Look at me!” he growls.
When I ignore him still further, he reaches out and snatches my jaw, the tiny spikes in his gloves piercing my skin. My blood drips over the leather, but I’m used to this pain. I can bear the feeling that he’s about to puncture bone and yank my jawbone right out of my face.
I lift my eyes to his, unflinching. There’s a curl of satisfaction in my stomach when his small, beady gaze shifts just barely away from making contact with mine, like he’s fixated on my eyelashes instead of my pupils.
“We succeeded,” I say at last.
“You failed!”
“The lord is dead, and the artifact retrieved.”
He scoffs, loosening his grip and stepping away to pace the length of my small room. He bumps into my cot, his heel twisting into the faded, threadbare rug. His boot makes a familiar clang whenever he steps on the drain in my room. Because my room isn’t really a room—it’s more like a cell, with high walls and a narrow grate just below the ceiling instead of a window. There’s nothing but my cot, ground space for laying out my floor plans, a small chest for my spare changes of clothes, my incense, and the tools I use for my knife care.
“And the entire city knows about it already!”
I glare at him, barely keeping my eyebrow from arching.
“I’ve told you once, and I will keep telling you,” Jabir seethes. “Do a good job and you won’t end up like your parents. But this job would make my mother and her mother roll in their graves! And mountains of Ildrid, stop burning that incense! Your prayers make my eyes water.”
I say nothing, staring at the door and wishing he would take his watery eyes and remove them from the premises. The cuts on my jaw sting, but I ignore the pain, which is easier than ignoring the slide of blood down my neck.
Jabir lets out a long-suffering sigh and shakes his head briskly. “It is done. I will be lenient this once, but I expect a more careful plan for this next job. Here are the blueprints. I expect you to start on it first thing in the morning. We’ve only got a month for this one.”
I don’t even look at the rolled parchments he hands me before I say, “Only a month? I need more time than that!”
“You’ll do it.”
I hold my breath as I unroll the parchment, hoping against hope that it’s a simple layout. It is most definitely not. My mouth angles down with my brows as I peel back the top layer to reveal two more sheets of parchment. “Three floors? And that’s not including—is this a six-story tower? I need more time. I can’t—” I cut myself off abruptly, frowning even harder. Then I look up at Jabir’s beady gaze and thick beard. “Where’s the rest of it? This isn’t the full building.”
It is made to appear a full building, with walls sketched where there definitely aren’t any. Now that I’ve realized it, the whole thing looks absolutely ridiculous. A building of this size—with a tower? Where is the rest of the wall? There must be more towers. And this hallway ends suddenly, even though there are no passageways that branch off it or rooms to justify it.
Jabir sniffs, his nostrils flaring slightly. “The rest of the plans are coming. They are still in progress.”
“I can finish them,” I say, latching onto the hope of being allowed to scout and forgetting for the moment that he tried to fool me with this.
“No, I will bring them to you.”
Frustration burns in my lungs. “I cannot work with incomplete plans—especially on this timeline. You must give me more time.”
Jabir’s sudden outburst slaps me in the face. “I must give you nothing of the sort! You will come up with a plan. You have a month. When the rest of the floor plan is ready, I will give it to you. Until then, find a way to get in and out without getting caught. I want a plan for night, and a plan for daylight.”
My jaw drops open in shock. It’s shock that loosens my tongue further, despite his crackling temper. “A daylight assassination?”
“I didn’t say it was an assassination. All you need to know for now is that the client just wants a plan for entry and exit. And—”
“Without any of the servant patterns? The guard rotations?” I flip through the parchments with increasing horror. “And you won’t let me scout it? Jabir, I cannot—”
I shut my mouth and don’t let myself dodge when he backhands me across the face. I stay where I am, not moving, just breathing through my nose as the sting blooms across my cheek and slowly ebbs.
We’re both well aware that I can easily avoid his fist.
We’re both also well aware that it would be so much worse for me if I did.
“You’ll do it,” is all Jabir says in the silence that follows his blow.
I don’t reply.
“Oh, and you will not be working with bint-Kinid anymore.”
The words hit me harder than any slap. Ice fills my belly.
“You work better on your own,” Jabir continues. “Her carelessness makes you careless. Our clients don’t pay for sloppy work, and after tonight they might find another assassin who can cause less of a scene.”
I wish they would. My limbs are cold as I try to process this revelation, this realization that I’ll likely never see Eshe again. Never have her beam of sunlight shining on my face again.
Anger flares hotter than grief, but I know better than to fight Jabir over this. It’s a miracle I’ve been allowed to work with her this long. Why couldn’t she have just followed the plan tonight? If things had gone smoothly, Jabir wouldn’t be in this foul mood. He would leave me alone to my incense and prayers, and he wouldn’t have taken her from me.
He gives another of his long-suffering sighs, the one that makes it sound like he’s being so patient with me, the unruly child. “Get some sleep. I want you working on this first thing tomorrow. Now, up and give me a goodnight kiss.”
With my cheek throbbing, I stand obediently but slowly, cross the distance between us, and meet his gaze. I’m very tall for a woman, but Jabir still has at least five inches on me. I stand on my toes and press a kiss to his bearded cheek. I pull back, meeting those hateful eyes with the force of my own.
He doesn’t shrink from me, and I don’t from him.
“Goodnight,” he says, and shuts the door behind him.
The familiar click of a key in the lock rings through the air, and heavy footsteps tread away. Boards creak under his boots, and I wait until the last bit of sound fades to nothing. Then I take a deep breath, survey my cell-room, and kneel before my incense and bowl of water again, disregarding the horrible floor plans for the moment.
I take my black towel and slowly wipe away the blood from my face, knowing the little cuts will stop bleeding soon enough. They will heal, but leave scars to join my collection. I think that’s why Jabir keeps the spikes on his gloves—not because of the pain, not because he can wield his power over me, but because they leave a mark.
A reminder that I am not, and never will be, my own.
Finished with my wounds, I remove my gloves, tugging on each finger carefully as I ease them off. Smooth, bronze skin glistens in the candlelight, but all I can see is red. I swallow and, with one deep, fortifying breath, I plunge them into the water.
The wetness seems to crawl up my arms, slide down my spine. I shudder, but I force myself to continue washing. I keep my eyes wide open, to prove to myself that it’s just water I’m touching, but my vision clouds, and for a second, I’m sitting in the midst of a graveyard with unburied corpses strewn beside me, lying in their own blood.
I blink, and I’m back in my room, smelling the incense and washing my hands with water. Once my hands are dry, my attention trails back to the floor plans. What is this building that Jabir wouldn’t let me scout—and wouldn’t want me to even know which building it is? Why did he try to fool me by giving me these partial plans? I study them as if they have an answer, but even though the arrangement of passageways, staircases, rooms, windows and doors sink into my memory, I’m no closer to understanding Jabir than I was before.
Finally, I set the plans aside and continue my ritual. My mouth moves, and the names flow off my tongue with the ease of a well-oiled hinge swinging back and forth.
“Seyyid, Urwah, Yakub—”
“Back already?”
The voice wrenches me from the darkness, and I nearly knock over my bag of incense in my haste to turn around.
It’s Kolb. He winces as he wiggles his way out of the drain in my room, and I watch as his tall, slender body seems to keep coming and coming, until he’s finally squatting beside it, head tilted and mouth spread in a stupid grin. His hair is a rat’s nest of much-too-long curls that frame a boyishly handsome face. He’s older than me, but a stranger would easily take him for younger. His clothes are torn and patched, hanging off his frame like a pet monkey’s might after it had escaped into the wild.
Part of me wants to crumple into tears at the sight of his familiar face after so long. I didn’t want to confess to Eshe how much I’d worried about him, how many nights I’d lain awake hoping he would rescue me from my nightmares with his sweet smile.
“Already?” I say in a casual tone that belies my own relief at seeing him. I remove my cloak and arrange my gloves and special shoes beside them. Separator follows, and Kolb watches as I unstrap all my weapons and lay them out for cleaning and sharpening.
“Well,” he replies, standing and turning toward the wall with the grate window. With a leap, he swings his way up like a chimpanzee to the grate. “I heard it was quite exciting tonight. Yet you’re back on time. Early, even.”
“You ought to remind Jabir of that for me.”
“I’m not reminding Jabir of anything.”
Kolb hooks his ankles around the bars on the window and slowly lowers himself backwards, so he hangs upside down, hands crossed beneath his head, looking yet again uncannily ape-like. Albeit extra boney and lanky.
I can’t help my smile. His response is another grin, and then a series of quick movements I can’t follow. In a flash, he twists, loosens his ankles, and flips back down to the ground. Then he’s got an arm around my waist, his other hand pulling back my hood so it can tangle in my hair. He pulls me into a kiss and I don’t stop him, even though everything inside me tells me what a horrible person I am to murder one minute, and then accept comfort for it the next.
Kolb pulls back, his face serious for a rare moment. “Sometimes, I wish . . .”
“Don’t wish,” I say, smiling ruefully. Then I tilt my head, letting my smile twist into a frown. “Eshe told me about your sister. Is she alright?” He seems shockingly chipper for someone who Eshe had described as desperate.
“You don’t know?” Kolb asks, grabbing hold of my shoulders as a grin breaks across his face. We’re almost exactly the same height. “Jabir took her in and told me he’d get her proper medicine and care. Oh Nadira, I was so worried for her. Now I could fly!”
I blink at him, not comprehending. “Jabir?”
“I’m beginning to think I’ve judged him too harshly these years. It’s hard not to, when he keeps you here like a prisoner and . . . are those cuts fresh?” He winces at my jaw, and I’m only glad he doesn’t notice the swelling of my cheek. “Anyway, contrary to what evidence might suggest, I think it’s possible he has a heart.”
“What did he ask for in return?” I ask warily. Kolb may fancy Jabir to have a heart, but I’ve known for years that is utterly impossible.
“He just asked me to run a few errands for him when he needed them. Oh, come now! You look as though I’ve sold my soul to the devil. They’re errands, Nadira. I would give so much more for my sister’s life.”
My unease doesn’t leave me, but I manage to say a placating, “I hope she gets better soon.”
“Me too.” He sighs, glancing at my incense and the bowl of water. “I suppose I ought to let you finish your rituals and get some sleep. You look . . .”
I purse my lips, waiting for him to finish that sentence. Daring him with my glare.
His mouth splits into a slow, sheepish grin in response. “. . . Ravishing.”
I roll my eyes.
He hesitates, then hauls me in for another kiss. Part of me breaks at that bit of physical contact, at the disbelief that anyone would want to kiss me after what I’ve done tonight. I tighten my lips, signaling the kiss is over, and Kolb pulls back. He salutes me, flashes another grin, and begins the arduous and painful-to-watch process of squeezing back into the drain to get out. I’m not sure how much longer Jabir will allow him to “sneak” in to see me. For all I know, this is the last time I’ll ever see my only other friend again.
The moment he’s gone, I feel a shift in the air.
My breath whistles through my teeth as I turn, looking over my shoulder like the paranoid girl I am, and though the room is as empty as always, the hair on my neck rises. Apparently, I’m still rattled enough to imagine nonexistent threats.
I’ve dealt so much death that I can’t free myself from the sense that mine is next, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The only question is: shall I die a slow, agonizing death, or will I be dispatched how I dispatch my victims—too fast for thought? Will I even realize the end has come before it’s over? Do I want to realize it? Or do I wish that the grave would swallow me whole before I have a chance to be afraid?
I climb into bed, the smell of incense somehow stronger and yet more muted than it was a moment before. I swallow, gripping the covers, and the silence unnerves me so much I nearly wrench back the blankets and lurch to my feet. Instead, I slip my fingers under my head cushion, feel the solid comfort of a knife hilt, and I force myself to breathe, to count, to recite. “Murtadi, Shawar, Tibon.”
The air grows thicker, thicker, my panic mounting. My denial, my insistence of my own paranoia vanishes in an instant.
I know without a doubt that I’m not alone.
I lick my lips but force myself to keep whispering names. My awareness sharpens, and each breath becomes so painful I fear my own knife is shoved between my ribs.
As my mouth keeps moving, my voice soft and lilting in the dark, my mind is reeling, trying to think of every enemy I’ve accumulated, trying to guess if this is some trick of Jabir’s, or if one of my two friends have betrayed me. After all, I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to break into my room except for Kolb, and that’s only because Jabir allows it for whatever evil purposes he’s devised.
How can silence feel so empty and yet so full?
Then—a whisper of sound. Of movement. Coming toward me.
