The Assassin's Curse

  I stumbled away. The sword flashed, sang, cut a long gash in my right forearm. I fell down into the sand. He darted toward me, and I drew up Papa's strength and in one movement yanked my knife out from my sash and implanted it squarely in the assassin's thigh. He stumbled backward, dragging the knife from my grasp, and I thought he looked a little stu

  No time for thinking, though. I dove forward, grabbed the knife again. He swung his sword down at me and I was able to roll away, sand coating my face, stinging my eyes. I skittered backward across the desert like a crab. I thought the assassin was moving kind of slow for an assassin. Maybe the magic had done something after all. Or maybe he felt sorry for me. That sort of thing happens among cutthroats more often than you'd expect.

  The assassin reached into some dark place in his armor and I flung the knife at him, in my panic not taking care to throw it properly. The hilt bounced off his chest. He stopped and looked at me. All I could see were his eyes, but they had a lightness in them that made me think he was laughing, which got me angry instead of scared. I reached over and grabbed the knife, jumped up to my feet, swung my head around, looking for something to use as a weapon or something to use as a trick. Nothing.

  Nothing except a weird slithery motion through the sand, black against the black night. Then a pair of narrow white fangs. It was coming up behind the assassin, creeping up close to his ankles, but he didn't take no mind of it. Too busy pulling some murderous enchantment out of his cloak.

  I ain't never liked snakes. You don't see enough of 'em on the water to get used to 'em, really, and when I saw this one I shrieked without meaning to and stuck my knife clean through it, cause my fear had turned me into a fool who only acted on reflex. Darkness pooled out onto the sand, and the snake flopped a few times and then died.

  The whole night went still. I swear it was like the assassin and me were the only two people left in the world.

  The assassin said something in that beautiful-terrible language of his. But he didn't try to kill me, which was what I expected. I pulled the knife out of the snake and wiped the blood off on the hem of my dress. The assassin kept staring at the snake like he'd never seen one before. I took this opportunity to attempt an escape, and began creeping back over the sand on my hands and knees.

  "Stop," the assassin said, and I froze, sure I was about to die.

  Footsteps thudded on the sand. He came and stood beside me, and when I looked up at him, half-forcing myself to meet his eyes, he pulled the mask away from his face.

  He wasn't a ghoul at all, just a man, like the shopkeeper had said, and younger than I would've expected, though still a bit older than me, maybe by about five or so years. His entire left cheek was scarred, ripples and folds in the flesh as if from a fire or maybe magic. Beneath the scar he was handsome, though, almost as handsome as Tarrin of the Hariri, so I didn't exactly relax.

  "Did you save my life?" he asked.

  "Maybe." I figured in a situation like this, ambivalence is always best.

  "Why did you do that?"

  I looked at the dead snake and back up at his scarred face. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."

  The assassin frowned, and it twisted his face up in a way I found interesting. I waited for him to pull out his sword and slice my throat, but instead he sat down on the sand beside me. He draped his arms over his knees and stared morosely off in the distance.

  "I wish you hadn't done that," he said.

  "Um… I'm sorry?" I waited for a few minutes, watching him. Then I asked, "Are you going to kill me or what?" I figured I might as well get it out of the way.

  He looked over at me, moonlight flashing across his dark eyes. I decided I rather liked the look of him, which was a bit of a problem, all things considered.

  "No," he said, sounding glum.

  "Oh." Relief flooded over me, and anybody with any lick of sense would have picked up and ran back toward Lisirra. Instead, I opened my mouth. "Why not?"

  He hesitated. "You saved my life." A pause. "From an asp, of all things."

  "That's the dumbest reason I ever heard."

  "I'd expect you'd be grateful for it."

  "Oh, I'm plenty grateful," I said. "I'm just saying, that's a dumb reason."

  "Yes, well, I'm afraid there's more."

  I eyed him warily.

  "I have to protect you now." The words came out in a rush, like he was embarrassed to say 'em. I woulda been.

  "What? Why?"

  "You saved my life. That's how it works."

  "How what works?"

  He didn't answer, just rubbed at his forehead, and I figured this must be some kind of honor thing, like he swore an oath or something. Pretty stupid oath for an assassin, but what did I know? I'd heard about ships in the Confederation with ridiculous rules of honor. Like this one captain who had his crew give a portion of gold to a temple every time they made port in Empire lands. More often than not the temple turned 'em in, so they spent half their time being chased by the Empire navy.

  Fortunately, Mama and Papa never much went in for things like that. They always taught me that honor was best defined on a case-by-case basis.

  "Well," I said. "I don't require your protective services. I'm a pirate."

  "A bit far from the ocean," he said. He glanced at me out of the corner of his bad eye. "Besides, I'm afraid you do. The Hariri clan expects you dead. They'll send someone else."

  "Or," I countered, feeling pleased with my cleverness, "you could just tell them you did it."

  "They require proof."

  "Oh, hell." I did shudder a little at that, though. Bad enough they hired someone to do their fighting for them. Demanding proof? Good thing I managed to avoid marrying into that family.

  We sat side by side without speaking for a while. He went into some kind of trance, and the scent of mint was everywhere and his eyes glowed pale blue like before. Now that I wasn't scared out of my mind I realized they were the color of the glaciers in the northern seas.

  While he was in his trance, I sat there and did some thinking of my own. I lucked out with that snake, no doubt about it. If they sent another assassin – and I figured they would, on account of this one screwing up the job – it might be handy to have a bodyguard around. Better still if that bodyguard was an assassin himself. I didn't much want to admit it, but he was probably right about me needing his help.