flying by underfoot. At least she knew the target’s name, the whole name. Jedira Amadi. But she didn’t have an address. Yet.
She pounded up block after block through the fifth district, darting around corners, narrowly avoiding two collisions with young couples walking arm in arm in the dark. As she crossed the avenue that marked the edge of the third district, Kella bent her course east, angling not toward the prosthetics shop but toward the police station. She burst through the heavy doors, drawing stares from the handful of officers still leaning over the papers on their desks, and ran to the records room. The narrow room was little more than a long path for walking between two rows of massive filing cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling. The detective scanned the drawer labels, then yanked open the city directory. Amadi, Amadi… Jedira Amadi. The address. Five blocks away.
Kella strode back into the main room and pointed at the officers at their desks. “You over there, get down to High Street in the fifth district. You’ll find a man shackled to a lamppost near Carter’s Square. Bring him in. Attempted murder with a firearm. The rest of you need to sweep the streets right now for a lone killer, female, possibly armed with a revolver. Stop and search anyone you find out there. Usem, you’re with me.”
The room leapt to life as officers grabbed their jackets and clubs and lanterns and rushed out into the street. The one officer loped away to the right and Kella led the others to the left into the third district. They jogged through the darkness and puddles of light around the lampposts, crossing streets and squares and alleys. In ones and twos, the officers dashed away in every direction until only Usem was still with her. Finally, Kella pointed out the small door next to a bakery bearing Amadi’s address. The door was locked.
“Jedira Amadi!” Kella pounded on the door. “This is Detective Massi, from earlier. Jedira! Miss Amadi! Open up! Hello? Hello!”
The detective paused as a distant strain of music caught her ear. Someone was whistling a single clear melody echoing faintly down the street. She turned and saw a figure in a white coat in the middle of the road sauntering toward them. A woman, she guessed by the way she walked, and as the seconds passed she saw that the woman was staring at them. The tune warbling out of her pursed lips was a nursery rhyme, a lullaby that had the oddly disturbing sort of lyrics typical of all lullabies, softly bribing the child to be quiet and go to sleep, or else a monster might appear. Kella hated lullabies. She knocked on the door again, but kept her eyes on the woman in white.
The stranger angled toward them. Her whistling grew louder, rising and falling in time with her footsteps, and her hands remained in her pockets.
Kella beat on the door again. “Miss Amadi?”
The whistling broke off, and the detective saw that the woman was smiling, her gait suddenly breaking into a swinging sort of swagger, a lazy swaying accompanied by a cruel grin. “Thank you, for that. The name. It’s always good to confirm the target’s identity through a third party.”
Kella pulled the gun from her pocket and pointed it at the stranger. “Stop right there. Hands where I can see them. Right now, hands up.” Usem pulled out his club.
The woman, still grinning, slowly raised her empty hands. “Hm. The gray coat says police, but the gun says not-police. So one of them must not be yours, and I’m betting it’s the gun. Where’d you get it? Hm? It doesn’t look like standard army-issue. Did you swipe it from a crime scene?”
“Something like that.”
The woman laughed a husky, condescending laugh. She had an enormous hawk-beak nose set between eyes and lips that seemed sculpted to convey only cruel amusement. A thick mass of limp black hair disappeared beneath the collar of her white coat. “That’s Merin’s revolver, isn’t it? The idiot. Using a gun. I told him not to be taken in by all the flashy toys you people have, to stick to the old ways, but no, he had to go and steal a gun. Stupid, even for a Persian. I always knew he’d die young.”
“He’s not dead.”
“Then you’re as stupid as he is.” The woman’s hands drooped below shoulder level. “Very important, very powerful, people have hired me. These people like things done and done properly. On time, as instructed. Merin understands that, so as long as he’s alive, he’s a danger to you.”
Kella heard soft, uneven footsteps behind the apartment door. “And I suppose as long you’re alive, you’re also a danger to me?”
The woman’s hands fell a bit farther and she resumed walking forward. “Very much so, but only for the next few moments.”
“I said don’t move.” Kella strode away from the door into the street. “No one listens to me, no one ever listens to me.” She pointed the gun at the woman’s feet and pulled the trigger.
The cylinder rotated slightly, then clicked back again.
The stranger smiled. “I told Merin not to carry a gun. I also broke the stupid thing when he wasn’t looking to teach him a little lesson. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to actually be here when it failed. You’re not Merin, but you’ll do. The look on your face is precious.” She dashed forward across the small space between them and collided with the detective with two fists and one steel-toed boot all at once.
Kella staggered back and fell to one knee, stunned and gasping, unable to focus on the pains in her chest, stomach, and leg. The woman moved in a swirl of white cloth and blurry limbs, all flying and snapping into position as though God had decreed that her fists and feet belonged in the detective’s flesh and bones at that precise instant, and nothing in creation could prevent them from striking. Amid the flurry, Kella glimpsed a bloody bandage around the woman’s hand.
Usem brought his club down on the woman from behind, but she leapt back against him, inside the sweep of his arm. The detective gasped and dropped his club, and when the woman stepped away Kella saw the knife buried in Usem’s chest.
Kella heard a woman cry out and looked over in time to see the bakery door open for a brief instant to reveal Jedira’s terrified stare, and then the door slammed shut again. The detective refocused on the woman in white and staggered upright just as Usem collapsed to the street, still gasping, one hand gripping the handle of the knife.
Damn it. I can’t help Usem and protect the house at the same time. As she stared down at him, she saw the detective’s hand fall from the knife and he slumped back to the ground. Damn it, Usem. I’m sorry.
She cleared her throat and tried to focus on the woman in white, only barely able to ignore the fresh bruises all over her chest and arms. “You have a strange accent. I would have said eastern, but you don’t seem to like Persians.” Kella shifted, placing herself between the woman and the door.
“Most Samaritans don’t.” The woman surged forward again, fists flying in tightly controlled jabs too fast to count.
Kella took a dozen blows to the head and stomach before she could even raise her arms to shield herself. She barely heard the faint sigh of a blade slipping free of its sheath, and the detective hurled her body to the ground and rolled away.
“Oh no,” the woman said calmly. She held up a long thin knife. “Look. I just chipped the tip against the wall here. I’ve had this knife a very long time. I liked this knife. And I’m running out of knives as it is.”
Kella stood up, this time with her own fat knife unfolded in her hand, its wide blade bright and shiny in the gas-lit haze of the street. “You talk a lot for a killer.”
“I’ve heard that before.” The Samaritan tossed her thin blade aside and quickly produced another identical one from inside her white coat. “But not everyone hides in the shadows, stalking their prey like Merin does. I often work in broad daylight, in public, with more witnesses than you might believe.”
“Oh, I believe you.” Kella wheezed, her chest aching and her head ringing from the last blitzing. A curious green and purple blot drifted across her vision.
“Thank you, for that.”
“You and Merin work together? Partners?” She blinked, trying to get the blot out of her sight. It looked too much like a rabbit.
“Not precisely, no.” The woman ran a finger along her new knife’s edge. “But we run in the same circles. We’re contracted through the same broker.”
“An assassin’s guild, then?” Kella massaged her chest and arms where she could feel bruises of all sizes forming deep in her skin. “Interesting. Tell me more.” Her head was clearing, but too slowly. I can’t beat her.
The woman laughed. “You think you’re buying her time, don’t you?” She nodded at the closed door through which Jedira had momentarily appeared. “Letting her escape out the back door while you distract me?”
Kella froze, a sharp frost blossoming in her gut. “Yes.”
