— and the only way I'd be continuing in that direction was if I didn't mind being in pieces at the bottom.
Instead, I lay still. Consciousness slipped and slid. The sky seemed to darken and flush with brightness, as though days were spinning by. In the dark, I almost accepted my impending fate. Under the brilliance, I was helpless and terrified. Neither could quite give me the will to move. I doubted anything could. Better to lie still and wait — for death would arrive soon enough, whether I liked it or not.
And there he was. Perhaps I'd been unconscious, because one moment I was staring at the grass-tufted edge of the decline, the next he was standing above me, gazing down. The distorted patterning of his costume made my eyes cross. There was a knife in his hand.
I wanted to say something. It didn't seem right to die without some suitably Damascoesque last words.
He raised his hand, tipping the knife hilt skywards.
If nothing else, I wanted to ask him who the mysterious stranger was. The one who'd pursued us from Pasaeda, the one I'd mistaken for his partner when I'd looked back earlier — the one standing behind him now. I raised my good arm, tried my best to point. He ignored me in favour of sighting carefully along the flat of his blade.
When he flicked his hand, it was quick as any adder striking.
The blade spun away — turned a perfect half-circle, neatly impaled a clot of grass. Stick, Stone, whichever he might be, took a drunken step forward. He tumbled, flipped three times, landed with a crisp crack like breaking ice that could only have been his neck. He came to rest just to my right, laying along the very edge of the outcrop.
Finally, I persuaded my throat to produce sounds. Surely, it could manage two brief words, at least. I addressed them to the second figure, now staring down in place of the one he'd just so casually killed.
'Hello, Synza,' I mumbled.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Even for a master-assassin like Synza, descending to my level took some time.
While he worked his way down, I concentrated on sitting up. All the while, I tried to ignore the body beside me. I didn't doubt he was dead; no one could fall like that, make a sound like that, and not be. But while having a dead killer next to me might be better than having a live one there, his presence still made my skin creep.
Sitting proved as difficult as anything I'd ever tried to do. My injured right arm was worse than useless. The faintest tremor became a seismic shock of pain. Since all of me was hurting already, that just made me want to pass out or to vomit. Passing out was actually a promising option, but vomiting certainly wasn't. The possibility of doing both together was enough to keep me grasping to consciousness.
By the time Synza reached me I was half sitting, half laying, propped on my one good arm. If I kept still, the pain was bearable. I couldn't possibly defend myself — but then, I was facing a professional murderer, unarmed, with one arm likely broken, on a ledge above a sheer cliff face. Under the circumstances, dying with a shred of dignity would be a laudable achievement.
Given how powerfully I wanted to soil my trousers, I suspected even that might prove beyond me.
Synza dusted himself casually with one hand, as though climbing down cliffs was the kind of petty inconvenience he encountered on a daily basis. He covered the distance between us in two neat strides, stopping before the body that until recently had been either Stick or Stone. Synza observed the still form at his feet carefully for a few seconds, before nudging it gently with his foot. When it didn't stir, he gave a slight nod, as a teacher might respond to a bright student. He looked at me.
'You're an impossibly lucky man, Easie Damasco,' Synza said.
'You obviously don't know me very well.' I hadn't been sure I could stretch to an entire sentence. That small success made me unreasonably proud.
'But then, no man ever considers himself lucky, does he?'
Synza drew a short, thin-bladed knife. I knew without doubt it was the one he'd just killed with, yet there was no spot of blood on it now. It returned the morning sunlight in a flash of shimmering silver. Synza looked at it with something resembling curiosity. With his free hand, he flicked the tip of the blade, sending a shudder down it like a breeze over water.
'No one has ever survived my attentions before,' he said. 'To do so not once but three times is beyond absurd. If I hadn't been going to kill you anyway, I'd have to do so simply to make a point.'
'Which would be?' I managed.
'That some things are inescapable. And that I'm one of them.'
Synza didn't sheathe the knife. Nor did he look as though he was about to use it. In fact, it was as if he'd momentarily forgotten he was holding it. His eyes were flitting between the body at his feet and me. A small, convulsive smile played over his lips. 'I shouldn't have done that, you know,' he said. 'There will definitely be consequences. But oh, what a pleasure! The great Stone, finest killer in all the lands. Not so, it seems.'
Well, that cleared up whom the body at my feet belonged to, at least. Slowly, delicately, Synza tipped the prone figure over with the tip of one boot. On its back, splayed limbs cocooned in complex motley, it looked more grotesque and less human than ever. Synza knelt down, put his knife to Stone's throat, and with his other hand began to peel back the chequered mask. He wasn't looking at me, yet I had no doubt he could register my slightest movement. I tried hard not to make any, though my good arm was starting to shudder under my weight.
The mask seemed to resist a little before coming off. It revealed a thin, sharp-contoured face, more yellow than the bronzed brown typical of Ans Pasaedans. The eyes were so narrow that even open they'd have been little more than slots in that sallow flesh. Those facts aside, it was a visage that made no great impression. In death, unmasked, the royal assassin looked more pathetic than terrifying.
'Not that I'd ever brag,' Synza said. 'Only you and I will know. Which means, of course, that very soon only I will know.'
He stood and, with gentle pressure from his foot, tipped Stone's corpse towards the edge. It didn't take much effort before the body gained its own momentum. I heard small stones skitter, heralds of the larger object in their wake. The body sagged, and then fell from view with sudden, alarming speed. Dirt burst from the edge like a cloud of angry wasps.
Synza looked at me once more. There was amusement in his eyes.
'I suppose you'll have some questions.'
In fact, at that precise moment, my mind had been frantically calculating the possibilities for survival if I were to throw myself off the cliff. If Synza wanted questions, however, it seemed wise to come up with some. Every moment he was talking was a moment he wasn't killing me. Yet my mind was blank. My natural verbosity had vanished like dew under a midday sun.
I'd never imagined there'd come a time when not talking would place my life in jeopardy.
I hunted frenziedly through my memories of our previous encounters, desperate for anything that might have piqued my curiosity. There was only one thing I could remember wondering over, and it was so obvious and mundane that I couldn't imagine it being what Synza was after. I could find nothing better though, and moment by moment, the humour in Synza's eyes was shifting towards impatience.
I picked my words carefully. 'What order did Mounteban give you, back in Altapasaeda?' I tried to sound genuinely curious rather than merely petrified. 'You could have killed me a thousand times over between there and here. You could have done it easily in Aspira Nero or at the ferry port.'
'Yes, there it is. The crux of our unfortunate relationship. There are venues no good assassin would ever consider, of course; knifings in bars or busy streets are the province of cutpurses and petty thugs. However, in this instance, it's fair to say the instruction was unfortunate, not to mention counterproductive. My master's dictum was: Kill him. But make sure no one sees you do it.'
An order that would have made perfect sense in a room crowded with people Mounteban didn't want to alarm, none at all once I'd made a run for it. 'Easier said than done,' I ventured. Actually, it didn't sound hard at all. It sounded like something that would only be difficult if you were the kind of person who purposefully made their career difficult — if, for example, you took satisfaction from seeing your victim's face in their very last moments. But if ever humouring someone had seemed like a sensible idea it was then.
'I was incautious, I admit. Had I not revealed my presence to you on the walls of Altapasaeda, we wouldn't
