“We’re prepared to compensate you.”
Adam slid a purse across the table. Izachar hefted it, listened to the clatter of metal and stones. He loosened the ties and pulled out a coin. Silver gleamed smooth, unstamped.
“I’ll keep the
Isyllt nodded. She’d expected no better. “A pleasure doing business with you, Captain.”
“The pleasure’s mine, Lady.” The money vanished off the table.
The door swung open and a dark, scar-faced man leaned in. “Time to go,” he said. His hand moved against his thigh, a sign Isyllt didn’t recognize. Then he was gone.
Izachar cursed softly. “A raid’s coming. Business is booming a little too well.” He pushed off his chair and crossed the room, quick enough for his short legs. “We’ll use the back door,” he said, motioning them on. “It’ll be clear for a few more minutes-Desh pays his bribes on time.”
Isyllt and Adam exchanged a quick glance and followed the dwarf down the hall. From the main room she heard a door slam, then a flurry of curses and shouting and the clatter of an overturned table. They stepped outside into a dark alley, as empty as Izachar had promised; the last light caught his grin before the door shut behind them.
“Welcome to Symir,” he called after them as they escaped into the sticky night.
Xinai moved through her exercises by the light of one guttering lamp. The flame gleamed on her knives, shattered on their razored edges. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth as she thrust and spun and stretched. Normally she flowed like water from one stance to the next, but tonight tension trembled her limbs, made her movements too quick and jerky.
The smell of the canals breathed across the casement: water and waste, eucalyptus and brine and citrus- sweet champa flowers. Beneath it her own sour salt sweat clogged her nose.
She’d thought she could do it. She’d thought she could come home after twelve years gone. On the voyage she’d told herself that the city would have changed, that time would have made her memories bearable.
She’d almost believed it.
The exercise wasn’t calming her. She stopped, stretched, and put her blades away. Adam watched her from the shadows of the bed as she stripped off her vest and trousers. He’d asked if she could take the job, one of the rare times he acknowledged all the things she’d never told him about her past. In Erisin, spending the wizard’s money on food and wine, she’d said yes. Even the necromancer hadn’t deterred her, for all the woman’s magic made her skin crawl.
She could do this. She didn’t have a choice.
She threw herself down beside Adam and buried her face in a cushion. His familiar scent was a comfort-oil and leather, musk and iron. Nothing that reminded her of home.
He propped himself up on one elbow. “Is it so bad?”
“It’s-” Pillows muffled her sigh. “It’s the same. Things have changed, but it’s still the same.”
He knelt over her, running his hands over her shoulders. She grunted softly as he pressed against knotted muscles.
“They think they’re lions,” she muttered, thinking of the customs inspector with her expensive coat and hennaed hands, her perfect Assari. The Sivahri soldiers in their red-trimmed uniforms. “Only dogs licking their masters’ boots.” She gasped as Adam dug his thumbs into her back.
He worked down, calloused hands strong and steady. She forced herself not to stiffen as he brushed the scars on her back. It had been a long time, even after they were lovers, before she let him touch them. Not until the nightmares faded and she didn’t wake up gasping, expecting to find her skin slick with blood.
Years of partnership had left his touch as familiar as her own. By the time he reached the small of her back she could breathe easily again, the angry stiffness gone from her limbs.
“It’s only a job.” He leaned down to kiss her shoulder. “When it’s over we’ll go somewhere else. Anywhere you like.” He caressed the unmarked skin on her sides and she shivered. “You want to be a pirate?”
She chuckled and rolled over, stretching out the last of her tension. “You might be able to talk me into it.” But she pulled him down and kissed him before he could try.
Chapter 2
Isyllt and Adam crossed onto the mainland north of the Mir early the next morning and rented horses to carry them up the foothills to the Kurun Tam. Mount Haroun loomed above them, its shadow casting a false twilight over the western hills.
The sun burned away the dawn mist, embroidered the mountain’s green skirts in gold and amber. Summer heat left leaves curled and drooping, baked the roads cracked and dusty and withered the ferns that grew in the shade.
Ward-posts lined the road, simple charms to keep predators away and something else, a spell to hold the stones steady if the earth shook. Isyllt wasn’t sure she understood the intricacies of it, but the implication was unsettling. Far above the canopy, white smoke leaked from Haroun’s summit. Liquid fire still bubbled in the mountain, but it hadn’t erupted in the hundred and fifty years of Assari occupation. The mages of the Kurun Tam expressed nothing but confidence in their ability to keep the mountain quiet-since they’d be the first to burn if Haroun stirred, Isyllt tried to take comfort in their assurances.
The trail turned sharply and she saw the sluggish waters of the Mir below them, and the broader, gentler slope of Mount Ashaya on the far side of the river. The South Bank was home to politicians and merchant moguls, mansions and plantations. Whatever native families had lived there were long gone, driven out or bought off and their lands divided up for gifts to those who pleased the Emperor. The North Bank was poorer, home to Sivahri who couldn’t afford to live in the city proper. From the ferry she’d seen clay and brick buildings, thatched roofs and packed-earth roads.
And between the two banks and the bay, Symir shone in the morning light, all colorful roofs and gardens and glittering webs of water.
Isyllt swallowed bitter dust and the smell of horse. This assignment was one others would have vied for, exotic and expensive. And important.
They’d lost three agents in Assar-clever, well-trained spies. Two had simply vanished from their posts, and the body of the third was found dumped near the Selafain embassy in Ta’ashlan. And in Erisin, Kiril had caught two Assari agents already-one trying to seduce a Selafain inventor whose clever designs would make wonderful instruments of war, and the other worming his way into the palace bureaucracy. The latter had fallen on a blade before Kiril could question him, but his presence was story enough-the Emperor was growing bolder.
In the five hundred years since refugees fleeing the al Sund dynasty’s armies had crossed the sea and founded Selafai, several Assari emperors had tried to take the younger kingdom. Assar had never established a solid presence on the northern continent, and every other generation some general-prince with dreams of fortune and glory thought to be the first to do so. And now Rahal al Seth sat the Lion Throne, young and greedy and itching to match his grandfather’s conquests-and backed by generals canny and greedy enough to give him a chance.
She pressed the tip of her tongue between her teeth and tried not to scowl. What Kiril said was true-she was his best student, his most trusted agent. And what he didn’t say was true as well, that given a job as important as this she’d die before she disappointed him. He needed her here. But he’d sent her away, and it gnawed.
She tried to relax, but the jolt of hooves stiffened her back and shoulders. Adam rode more easily beside her, his eyes on the trees. The jungle clamored around them, screeching and chirping and rustling. Jewel-bright lizards and long-tailed monkeys watched them from tree branches, calmer than the birds that took flight whenever the clatter of hooves grew close. The trees hid all manner of exotic beasts.
And bands of desperate men as well. She just had to find them. Trade gold and weapons for warriors to wield them. To die for them. Thousands of Sivahri lives in exchange for Selafain ones.
She looked up and caught Adam watching her, pale eyes narrowed. She schooled her face and smiled at him. Then she shivered as they passed through a tingling web of wards. The trees fell away and they rode into the
