be where we are now. You'd have died a swift and painless death and I'd be elsewhere, pursuing some no doubt infinitely more productive goal.'
'I'm sure we'd both have been much happier,' I hazarded.
'I hope that wasn't sarcasm. You can sit up, you know.'
As Synza had evidently noticed, my good arm was quivering like a reed under my weight. Gratefully, I levered myself forward and shifted into a crouch.
'You look as though you're in considerable pain. Let me know when it becomes unduly bothersome.' Synza gave the dagger another experimental tap. This time I thought I could hear the faintest chime, like a finger dragged round the rim of a glass. 'For once, I have no particularly timescale in mind. Within realistic bounds, I see no reason why you shouldn't have a say.'
'Thanks,' I said, 'I think I'm managing for the moment. I still have a few questions I'd like answers to.'
Truth be told, I didn't have even one. However, I'd never lacked for imagination. Surely my fertile subconscious wouldn't fail me now? Except that it felt as though a hundred scurrying rats were ringing bells in my head, and that wasn't a sensation conducive to making up questions, even to keep insane assassins from slitting my throat.
It occurred to me that the details of our journey through the Castoval and then Ans Pasaeda were of importance to Synza. Perhaps the only way he'd been able to justify his repeated failure was to reimagine it as a cat and mouse chase of dramatic and unlikely twists and turns. To me, it had rarely been more than a nuisance. How could I explain that in recent weeks, people trying to kill me had practically become an accepted frustration of life? How could I say that these days I was generally terrified of something, and he'd just happened to be the most frequently recurring source of alarm?
I couldn't. If it was important to Synza that our runins gain the proportions of some mythic duel of wits, then all I could do was play along.
'You were unlucky in Paen Acha,' I said, striving for a tone of professional indifference.
'There's no such thing as luck,' snarled Synza. 'As I said, I was careless. Please don't imagine you can pander to my ego.'
I strove to keep my voice steady — and not to point out how he'd just contradicted himself. 'I'm just offering my opinion. It was a chance in a thousand that Alvantes startled me at that precise moment.'
'A chance I should have accounted for. Do you really imagine such factors can't be predicted, with sufficient care? How did you ever manage as a thief?'
'Not so well,' I admitted.
'Hmm. At least you admit your failings.' Synza mastered his irritation with a visible effort. 'Anyway. Before we go further, don't you think you ought to thank me?'
I'd just started to get to grips with inventing questions, and now here was a fresh conundrum. What could Synza possibly believe I had to thank him for? He'd been trying to kill me for days, and he certainly hadn't failed through a lack of effort. He'd killed Stone, but that had hardly been for my benefit. Even letting me live while he rambled psychotically didn't seem enough to warrant gratitude.
I dredged my mind to think what else had happened recently that might hint at a professional killer interfering in my affairs.
Yet the instant I realised, it seemed obvious. 'You killed the guard in the palace,' I said.
'Of course I did.'
'Thank you,' I added, remembering how we'd arrived at the subject. 'That can't have been easy.'
'Penetrating the most protected building in the land? Disposing of a guard unseen whilst inside its environs? It certainly wasn't.'
It was clear he was itching to tell me the details. Was this really the same composed and silent killer I'd once found so unnerving? He was no longer composed, and he certainly wasn't silent. Nor did he seem to be on anything approaching the right side of sane.
'I'm curious,' I said. 'What were you doing there?'
As I'd predicted, Synza began to reply almost before the question was out of my mouth. 'Rumour in the city was that the guard-captain of Altapasaeda and a companion had been imprisoned, pending their execution. What a maddening twist! Getting into the palace was a chore, even for me. Fortunately, the guard was good enough to let me know where they were keeping you before I relieved him of his duties. I waited in a nearby passage to calculate my next move… and before I knew it, your friend Alvantes was blundering past. After I'd checked your cell and found that you'd also vanished, what could I do but follow and hope he'd lead me to you?'
If I'd had any thoughts of trying to keep him talking, I was wondering now if I'd ever get him to shut up. It was as though a dam that had been in place for years, perhaps his entire life, had suddenly and irrevocably ruptured.
I decided it might be better if he didn't know he'd crept past me not once but twice in the prison corridors. I went for ambiguity instead. 'You must have been close.'
'If I hadn't had to work my way round the outside of the courtyard, I'd have had you at the stables. By the time I realised you'd blundered within my reach, you'd blundered out of it again. It took me time to pick up your trail once you'd fled the palace. Again, I was near. But who could have imagined Alvantes's fool of a father had been careless enough that the King would send out Stick and Stone? Saved from the attentions of one assassin by the intervention of two others!' Synza chuckled hideously. 'As I suggested at the opening of our conversation, you are an impossibly lucky man. And as I further intimated, your luck has finally run out.'
So that was it? He was happy to keep me breathing so long as I was listening to his rambling exploits, but now he had them off his chest, my services were no longer required? 'Wait,' I said. 'Are you really telling me you broke into the dungeon to kill me so nobody else could kill me first?'
'Of course. How else could I possibly fulfil my orders?'
'I think Mounteban might have let that one slide, under the circumstances.'
'This isn't about Mounteban!' Synza roared.
I tumbled back. My rucksack ground hard against my spine, but I barely noticed. Suddenly my heart was thumping in my ears. The rage in his face, normally so expressionless, made me want to crawl off the cliff just to avoid him. He was trembling with fury, head to toe. I couldn't tear my eyes from the slender-bladed knife in his hand, shaking now like a ship's mast in a storm.
Synza took a step towards me.
Then, more slowly, he dragged the knife down to his side, as though he were only partly in control of his own body. He exhaled, scrunched his eyes and clenched his fists, held like that for a long moment.
Synza opened his eyes. 'This isn't about Mounteban,' he repeated, softly. 'This is about professionalism. Something I pride myself on, and in which I've inexcusably failed. What is there to do but put right what I can?'
'I can appreciate that,' I said distractedly. Now that I wasn't in immediate fear for my life, I was fully aware of how excruciating was the pain in my back. Something was digging there, a sharp-edged circle pressed into my flesh. And I'd remembered what it was. That knowledge sent a flush of heat through my whole body, a sensation precariously balanced between hope and panic. All this time, I'd been thinking I was helpless…
'Frankly,' said Synza, 'you exhausted my patience. Who knew such a thing was possible? I grew indiscreet. Though I take some comfort from the fact that Alvantes and yourself will certainly be blamed for my more careless deeds, the fact remains that I've failed my master — failed for the first time in thirty years.' He smiled — and the knife in his clenched fist came up once more. 'But I tell you this… it will be worth it all to hear you scream.'
'Well, that's something, I suppose.'
I could see that my cheerfulness threw him. 'Shall we to business then?' he said.
'I agree. Absolutely.'
This time, Synza eyed me with undisguised curiosity. 'I confess I wasn't expecting such enthusiasm.'
'To business. And our first order of business should be the extremely good reason you have not to kill me.'
'Oh, Damasco. I hope you don't intend to spoil the moment by begging.' Synza looked genuinely dejected. 'Hasn't this exchange been amicable so far? What a pity to shame yourself now. You can't outbid Castilio Mounteban. Even if you could, you couldn't. You have nothing that could interest me. You never have had and you never will.'
