The Assassin's Curse

  "I know it. But you helped me."

  She blinked at me.

  "Though I can't figure out why."

  The woman shrugged. She plucked the pastry out of her lap and finished it off. "Why don't you come inside?" she said. "I can prepare some coffee. I think we both need it."

  She stood up and went into the shop. I hesitated. It still seemed too easy to me, her helping me with the assassin. Easy the way it had with the haggling. The woman stuck her head back out into the street.

  "You come from pirate stock, don't you?"

  I frowned. "How do you know that?"

  "Because I looked at you. Don't worry, I won't hand you over to whoever it is you're ru

  "I ain't ru

  "A pirate in the desert? You're obviously ru

  I didn't have nothing to say to that, cause I knew she had a point.

  "Come inside," the woman said. "And I'll help you."

  She took me to the back of the store, behind the curtains, and set some water to boiling in the hearth. Steam curled up into the dusty moonlight. I sat down at a low table in the corner and watched her. She didn't spend a lot of time getting the coffee all perfect, the way they do in drink houses, and she didn't ask me how sweet I wanted it neither.

  She sat down at the table across from me. I waited until she drank from her own cup before drinking from mine.

  "What do you know about them?" she said.

  I looked down at the little swirls of foam in my coffee. "They're hired," I said. "They know blood magic." I closed my eyes. "They're the only kind of death." I felt weirdly safe in this small back room. I wanted to fall asleep.

  "Ana

  "How'd you know my name?"

  The woman smiled. "How'd I know you were targeted? I know things."

  "Yeah, I wouldn't mind knowing how you knew the assassin was after me, too."

  She gave me a demure smile.

  I scowled, took another sip of coffee, and glanced around the room, trying to find something that I could use to get the woman to talk to me. But there were just dresses and bangles and bolts of fabric. The shop could have belonged to anyone.

  "I've fought one of them before," she said. "I won."

  That got my attention. I stared at her, trying to figure out if she was lying or not, if she really was a woman who had escaped the only kind of death.

  "Don't look so impressed," she said. "Contrary to what you may have heard, they are human."

  "What happened?" I asked. "Why would anyone try to kill you?"

  "Why would anyone try to kill you?" she shot back. "It doesn't matter, really. All that matters is one of them is after you."

  "You ain't go

  "Of course not. That sort of knowledge is more precious than gold. But I will help you. I'm not going to risk my life to save yours, mind, but I can offer aid."

  I hadn't quite decided if I trusted this offer or not when she pushed her coffee cup aside and slid her hands over the tabletop. Figures rose out of the wood. A little man in a long robe, a girl in a courtier's dress.

  "I'm no good at magic," I said. "So don't think I'm facing him down alone."

  "But you already did face him down alone." The woman didn't look at me. "And besides, you've got enough magic," she said. "I can see it in you."

  "You sure about that? Cause believe me, I've tried–"

  She lifted her eyes to mine, and I got swallowed up by gray and couldn't talk no more. My ears buzzed and my lungs closed up.

  "Quite sure," she said.

  "Alright. You're sure." My voice came out small and weak, but the woman smiled and the gray all disappeared. The room fell back to normal.

  "Tomorrow night," she said. "Go out to the desert. It'll make things easier, to be out in the open."

  On the table, the two figures began to move. The assassin's robe fluttered out behind him. The girl – I couldn't think of it as me – took small hesitant steps backwards, her hair swirling around her face.

  "This is how it's going to go without me," the woman said.

  And in one movement, the assassin lashed out with a tiny sword and the girl collapsed on the ground.

  I jumped in my seat, my blood pushing violently through my veins. I cursed in the secret language of the Confederation. The woman raised an eyebrow.

  "That's not going to happen," she said. "I'm going to give you something. A few things, actually. What they are isn't important."

  She raised her hand over the figures. They reset themselves. This time the girl carried four tiny vials in the palm of her hand. When the assassin's robes began to flutter, the girl hurled the vials, small as grains of rice, in his direction. A flash of green light. The assassin was gone.

  "Where he'd go?" I asked.

  "Elsewhere," the woman said. "A place where he'll never be able to track you." She waved her hand over the table and the figures slid back down into the wood.

  "So he'll die?"

  The woman stood up, walked to a counter on the other side of the room. She pulled out four narrow vials.

  "No," she said. "Don't ask so many questions." She set the vials on the table. "Four ingredients," she said. "Equal parts each. Throw them all at once. Say the invocation. That opens up the doorway. They'll pull him through."