back to the hideout, Akstyr slipped into Juiced.
Warmth rolled from a furnace in the back where a boiler powered an engine driving a maze of moving pipes, gears, and levers that stretched along the walls and even across the ceiling. The complex apparatus smashed fruit and muddled the cafe’s “special blend of energizing herbs” before pouring the contents into giant glass carboys that filled shelves behind tables full of patrons. Some carboys were fermenting their concoctions, emitting a yeasty smell that competed with the fruity scents in the air, while other jars had spigots and simply held fresh juice.
While Akstyr watched, a woman wearing a grass skirt filled a glass with a greenish liquid and delivered it to a table where a slender, fit man dressed in dark green sat alone. He handed the server a couple of coins and sipped his beverage. Couples and groups occupied the other tables, so Akstyr figured this lone figure was his contact. The bounty hunter lacked a Sicarius-like knife collection, but he did have a pair of long blades in a torso harness that he’d draped over the back of his chair. If he carried a pistol, it wasn’t visible-not surprising since firearms were outlawed in the city. A few scars chipped at his weathered features, giving him the experienced visage of a veteran, and Akstyr vowed to be careful dealing with him.
The man nodded in his direction, and Akstyr joined him. The bounty hunter had taken a chair that put his back to a corner, and Akstyr grimaced at the only other option, a seat on the opposite side. After seeing that person darting out of his path, he didn’t want his back to the door either.
He dragged the free chair about so that the back faced a clanking, hissing tangle of pipes and sat down. He promptly felt silly since the position put him less than a foot away from the man’s arm.
“Khaalid.” The bounty hunter inclined his head in a nod, all business, but then a smirk teased his lips. “Do you find me attractive, or do you always sit this close to people you’ve just met?”
Akstyr’s instinct was to scowl and scoot the chair away, but it might be better to act as if the comment didn’t bother him. He wasn’t some young rube. He was calm and unflappable. “Enh, you’re decent.”
“Quite true, yes.” Khaalid eyed him up and down, and Akstyr struggled not to panic. He hadn’t offered some sort of flirtation, had he? “You’re either fearless or stupid to want a meeting with me,” Khaalid said. “Care to opine on which it might be?”
Relief washed over Akstyr when the bounty hunter switched to business, but he stiffened as soon as the man finished speaking. “Why do you say that?” Akstyr asked, figuring that sounded better than confessing to either of the two options.
Khaalid slipped a hand into his pocket. Akstyr tensed, thinking the man might pull out a weapon, but he removed a piece of paper. Rather leisurely, he unfolded it and held it up for Akstyr’s perusal.
On the paper was a clumsy sketch of himself. He wouldn’t have recognized it except for the spiky hair and an inset image of an oversized hand with a Black Arrow brand clearly displayed. Words under the drawing read, “Wanted dead: Akstyr, former Black Arrow and wizard. 5,000 ranmyas. To be paid upon proof of death by Trevast the Terror, the Madcats.”
It was the first Akstyr had heard of the bounty. It probably should have scared him, but mostly it irritated the piss out of him. Trevast was buddies with Tuskar, the Black Arrows’ leader and Akstyr’s old boss. Amaranthe had sweet-talked Tuskar into leaving Akstyr alone-there’d been an implied threat that Sicarius wouldn’t stand for an attack on Akstyr-but Tuskar was afraid of magic and had never liked Akstyr, so he’d probably talked Trevast into putting the bounty out. Too much of a coward to do it himself and risk Sicarius’s ire.
“Fresh news to you?” Khaalid returned the poster to his pocket.
Akstyr shrugged. “Only bounties put out by enforcers are legal. As far as I know, they don’t particularly want me.” Only because they didn’t know that he practiced the mental sciences, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. “From what I hear, you kill gangsters and are on good terms with the enforcers. You won’t turn me over to some street thug.”
“But you run with people who the enforcers do want. The emperor too for that matter.”
“Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I’m listening,” Khaalid said.
“They say you’re good, but you’re not nearly as well known as Sicarius.”
“Irrelevant,” Khaalid said, his eyebrows descending. “I hunt villains. I don’t assassinate honorable citizens.”
“He’s a villain, right? Why don’t you hunt him?”
Khaalid’s lips thinned.
“The villains you’re hunting would fear you more if you could say you’d taken him down,” Akstyr pointed out. “Think what it would do for your reputation. Think of the prices you could command then.”
Khaalid leaned back in his chair. “I’ve decided. You’re fearless and stupid. You’d betray someone you run with, someone exceedingly dangerous, and for what? You want me to kill him and give you a cut of the money?”
“Look, he’s as mean and cruel as they get.” Not really, Akstyr thought, but he did catch himself rubbing his neck and remembering the time Sicarius had threatened him if he didn’t do what Amaranthe said. “Somebody’s got to rid the world of him.”
“And you want it to be somebody else, somebody who will take the risk and share the bounty with you.”
“I don’t want a share of the bounty, and I wouldn’t openly go against him. But someone like you… If you’re as good as they say, maybe you could do it. All I’m asking is a finder’s fee for pointing you in the right direction. I’ll tell you where he is and what I know about him. Including… his one weakness.”
Khaalid drank some of his green juice, though he took longer consuming and contemplating the beverage than normal. Akstyr hoped he was thinking things over. As far as Akstyr knew, Sicarius had no weaknesses, but he could make something up to entice this man. All he had to do was capture Khaalid’s interest, arrange to collect the finder’s fee, and send him off in the wrong direction. A part of him couldn’t help but think that he’d never have to worry about Sicarius again if he sent Khaalid in the right direction, but this man probably couldn’t do the job. And if Sicarius found out Akstyr had been behind the setup…
“How much of a finder’s fee are you looking for?” Khaalid asked.
Akstyr leaned back and crossed his leg over his knee, trying to appear indifferent over the conversation’s outcome, but inside he was jumping up and down and clenching his fist. Khaalid was interested.
“Fifty thousand ranmyas,” Akstyr said, expecting to negotiate. Twenty-five thousand ought to get him out of the empire and into a good school.
“You don’t want much, do you?” Khaalid asked.
“I want to make sure the only people who try are serious and honestly believe they can succeed. It’s a big risk for me. If you fall at Sicarius’s feet, and he questions you before he kills you…” Akstyr twitched a shoulder. “I want that ugly lizard out of the world, but I’m not looking to die in the process.”
“Hence why you’re trying to get someone else to risk dying.”
“Someone else who’s capable of killing Sicarius. I know I lack the skills.”
“You flatter me, but I imagine you flatter everyone you’re trying to talk to their deaths.”
“You’re supposed to be good.”
“What’s Sicarius’s one weakness?” Khaalid asked. From the abrupt way he shifted the topic, Akstyr guessed the man was trying to catch him off guard so he’d let the information slip.
“I’ll need to see your payment before I give you such a key detail.”
“Uh huh.” Khaalid finished his juice, left a coin on the table, and stood. “I am good. And intelligent. That’s why I’m not touching your offer.” He buckled on his sword harness.
Akstyr cursed to himself. He’d thought he had enticed the man. “I’ll tell you everything I know for twenty- five-thousand ranmyas.”
Khaalid tossed the folded wanted poster onto the table. “No, and if I were you, I’d get out of town unless Sicarius likes you enough to protect you from the money-hungry gangsters who are going to be wrestling with each other for a chance to get your head first. Given what you’re trying to do to him, I doubt that’s the case.”
Khaalid strode out of the juice cafe without a backward glance. Not tempted by the offer after all. Maybe Khaalid had been stringing Akstyr along to get more information. Information he might send along to someone else?
A clank sounded on the wall above the chair the bounty hunter had vacated. A bunch of grapes had rolled
