The Assassin's Curse

  The garment division was an impressive one, with shop after shop selling bolts of fabric and ready-made gowns and scarves and sand masks. Tailors taking measurements out on the street. Carts piled high with tiny pots of makeup and bottles of perfumes.

  It was a lot of options. I knew that I wanted a merchant who wouldn't ask me no questions, but I also couldn't use someone who was the sort to traffic in stolen goods, since I didn't want anyone who might have gotten word from the Hariris to be on the lookout for their missing bride. I decided it was probably safer going the slightly more respectable route, and that meant cleaning up my appearance some.

  I snatched a pot of eye-powder and a looking glass from one of the makeup carts and darted off into a corner, where I wiped the kohl off my face with the edge of my scarf – a mistake I realized too late, when I saw I'd stained it with black streaks. I flipped the scarf around and tried to tuck the stained ends around my neck. Then I smeared some of the eye-powder on my lids the way I'd seen Mama do it, a pair of gold streaks that made my eyes look big and surprised. Good enough.

  The market was starting to get busy, people walking in clumps from vendor to vendor. I kept my head down and my feet quick, sca

  I was nearly to the desert wall when a shop – the shop, I thought – appeared out of the crush of people. It was tucked away in the corner of an alley, and I only noticed it cause someone had propped up a sign on the street with an arrow and the words We buy gowns written out neat and proper.

  The shop was small, but a pair of fancy gowns fluttered from hooks outside the door, like sea-ghosts trapped on land. I went inside. More gowns, some only half-finished. The light was dim and cool and smelled of jasmine. No other customers but me.

  "Can I help you?" A woman stepped out from behind some thin gauzy curtains. She wore a dress like the one I'd stolen, only it was dyed pomegranate red and edged with spangles that threw dots of light into my eyes. As she walked across the room, the sun splashed across her face. She was beautiful, which set me on edge, but there was something off about her features, something I couldn't quite place–

  "Oh, I apologize," she said in Ein'a, which was the language of the far-off island where I'd been born, the language my parents had spoken to me when I was a baby. "We don't normally get foreigners."

  Maybe I wasn't as inconspicuous as I thought.

  "I speak Empire," I said, not wanting to stutter my way through Ein'a.

  The shopkeeper smiled thinly, and I realized what it was that bothered me about her face – her eyes were pale gray, the same color as the sky before a typhoon. I ain't never seen eyes that color before, not even up among the ice-islands.

  Something jarred inside of me. I wanted out of that shop. But even so, I unwrapped my silk dress and laid it out on the counter, the movements easy, like I was acting by rote. "I was hoping to sell this," I said.

  The woman ran her hands over the dress, idly examining the seams, rubbing the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. She looked up at me.

  "It's dirty."

  I bit my lower lip, too u

  "And it reeks of camel." She glanced back down at the dress, tilted her head. "I recognize the cut, though. It's from court. Last season. How'd you come across it?"

  "My mother gave it to me." Avoid lying whenever possible. Always leave out information when you can. Another one of Papa's lessons.

  "Hmm," she said. "Looks like it's been through quite the adventure. I suppose I can use it as a guide. Merchant wives tend to be a bit behind on things." She folded the dress up. "I'll pay you one hundred pressed copper for it," she said.

  "Two hundred."

  "One fifty."

  "One seventy."

  She paused. Her lips curled up into a faint smile. "That's fair," she said. "One seventy."

  Kaol, I wanted out of that store. The haggling went way too easy, and that smile chilled me to the bone. It was like a shark's smile, mean and cold.

  She glided off to the back of the store, carrying the dress with her. When she came back out she handed me a bag filled with thin sheets of pressed copper. I slid the bag into the hidden pocket in my dress and turned to leave. Didn't bother to count. Felt heavy enough.

  "Wait," said the shopkeeper.

  I stopped.

  "Be careful," she said. "I don't normally do this for free, but I like the look of you. They're coming. Well, one of them. Him."

  I stared at her. She said him like it was the proper name of somebody she hated.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Oh, you know. Your dream last night."

  All the air just whooshed out of my body like I'd been in a drunkard's fight.

  "I ain't had no dream last night."

  She laughed. "Fine, you didn't have a dream. But you know the stories. I can tell. I can smell them on you."

  "The stories," I said. "What stories?" All I could see was the gray in her eyes, looming in close around me. And then something flickered in the room, like a candle winking out. And I knew. The assassins. That bogeyman story Papa used to tell me whenever I didn't mind him or Mama.

  "Ah, I see you've remembered." The shark's smile came out again. I took a step backwards toward the door. "You're going to need my help. I live above the shop. When the time comes, don't delay."

  I tried to smirk at her like I thought she was full of it, but in truth my whole body was shaking, and I was thinking about Tarrin yelling at me yesterday afternoon, trying to get me to come back. My father isn't afraid to send the assassins after his enemies. But men'll say anything to get you to do what they want. If Tarrin couldn't charm me onto his ship, he'd try to scare me. Well, it wasn't go

  The shopkeeper tilted her head at me and then turned around, back toward the curtains. I darted out into the su