Bazso left at the hour of chains, as was his wont, claiming that my bed was too hard and too tiny and that he needed a few hours of decent sleep to deal effectively with his band of miscreants (by which he meant the Red Sashes and Crow’s Foot Bluecoats). Personally, I suspected that he didn’t trust the security of Madame Bell’s flophouse – or of my warning systems. Which was a little insulting when I thought about it. True, I didn’t dare tell him why I was so good at my traps and disguises, but you’d think he could judge them based on quality alone.
Maybe it wasn’t the traps he didn’t trust.
Sitting on my desk with my legs drawn up to my chest, I brooded and watched his figure disappear into the shadows on the other side of the street. With a finger, I traced the arc of the brilliant moon and its pale sisters across the glittering constellations. Then I mapped the larger thoroughfares of the city by their lines of electroplasmic lights – whose advent had flung the Lamplighters’ Guild into a life of crime as the Lampblacks – and I waited for dawn.
When it finally came, what I could see of the distant sky between the buildings glowed a deep, dull red, pulsing and throbbing as if the shattered shards of the sun were striving to burst back into flames. They failed, as they always did, and after a quarter hour of desperate, doomed struggle, the horizon sagged back into blackness and the stars shone out fiercely. A new day had come.
Time to sleep, then, until my afternoon class.
----------------------------------------
“Isha! Oh, Isha, my darling!”
A familiar (and familiarly annoying) voice hailed me later that day as I left the Red Sash Sword Academy. Satisfied with the progress of my last batch of students, Mylera had promoted them to intermediate lessons and assigned me a fresh group of beginners, the usual motley mix of offspring of Iruvian nobles and diplomats, younger children of Akorosi aristocrats, and the better class of street thug. I gave them my standard lecture on different types of blades, taught them the basics of proper stance, and generally exercised them until even the less flabby and whiny ones complained. Then I dismissed them until the following week.
“Isha! Over here! Isha!”
Turning reluctantly, I glared into the darkness to find one of my ex-students, Faith Karstas, un-draping herself from the low wall around the school. As usual, she wore the most ridiculous dress ever, all bows and ruffles and tiers of lace. In U’Duasha, where we artificially maintained a proper day-night cycle, the fabric might have looked pink or lavender. Here in Doskvol, which embraced no such technology, everything faded into shades of grey and more grey, from the lace at her neckline to the satin sash that puffed into a huge bow at her waist and bounced up and down along with the rest of her.
“I told you to call me Glass,” I growled. The forgotten gods alone knew how she’d discovered my (fake) real name.
Also as usual, she ignored me. “Ash! Ashie, dear, wasn’t I right? Isn’t she as mighty as the majestic moon? Isn’t she as sublime as a slithering snake?”
A shadow detached itself from a neighboring doorway and acquired the form of a young man about our age, so pale he might have been albino. He cast an apologetic look in my direction – the default expression of anyone associated with Faith – and replied a little dismissively, “Yes, yes, she should do nicely.” Before I could take offense, he strode over and executed a prim bow. “Good evening, miss,” he said courteously. “My name is Ashlyne Slane. You may call me Ash. I find myself in need of a good swordsman – or woman – and Faith very, uh, enthusiastically recommended your services.”
“Oh?” I asked warily, hovering my hand at my side, where I could easily whip out my sword (not Grandfather, whom I didn’t demean with beginner lessons). I didn’t bother to introduce myself.
Faith flounced over, all her bows and ruffles bobbing merrily. “Yes, yes! Isha’s just the best-est swordmaster in the entire academy! I should know! I took half of a whole series of fencing classes from her!”
Yes, yes, she had. Her stint at the academy had been remarkable primarily for her outrageous attire. Who’d have thought you could find a frilly fencing jacket? Distraction via feminine charm had played a greater role in her practice matches than actual skill, but I had to admit that she’d worked hard. And then, halfway through the class, she’d vanished.
“May I propose that we retire somewhere more private? A tavern, perhaps?” Ash suggested.
I hesitated for a long moment. I really wasn’t certain that I could work with Faith for any length of time without stabbing her. But then again, I was constantly scrounging around for odd jobs, and even with Irimina’s commission, I was still short half a month’s rent. Bazso, under whose auspices I’d found my tiny flat in the first place, would never let Madame Bell kick me out – but there was a limit to the extent I was willing to rely on him. Even if he were my friend and lover. Particularly because he was my friend and lover. “Oh, very well.”
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Needing no further encouragement, Faith traipsed across the street to the nearest pub, where she and Ash explained their business over a dinner of mushroom pie and watermoss soup. Or, to be more accurate, Faith plopped down next to me and regaled me with a dramatic tale of how they’d met, which involved daring swordfights and narrow escapes and kidnappings-by-moonlight gone awry, which the shocked expression on poor Ash’s face told me was maybe twenty percent true.
Ash himself provided more useful information. “My mother is the head of an organization that sells – well, never mind about that.” I nodded and filed that away for future investigation. “The important thing is that she knows Cortland, the leader of the Lost.” I nodded again. The Lost was a bizarrely idealistic band of thugs and former soldiers who devoted their lives to protecting the poor of Coalridge from predatory workhouse foremen. “They are not, shall we say, particularly well equipped to deal with the supernatural, and Cortland recently learned that the Billhooks have sent a Whisper against him.” Before I could ask, he specified, “Kamilin. A lightning mage from the Dagger Isles.”
“So Cortland hired you to deal with this Kamilin, and you’re looking to form a crew.”
“Correct.”
“I’ve seen Faith dealing with ghosts, so I know she’s a Whisper – ” (“You were spying on me? Why, Isha, I didn’t know you cared!”) – “and I’m a Slide, but what are you?”
Modestly, Ash replied, “I’m a Slide too. I can always tell when someone’s lying to me.”
Some of my family also developed an uncanny ability to detect lies, but I focused on disguises and misdirection. That meant our skills would complement each other nicely. In my head, I considered the going rate for assassinations and added a surcharge for the “lightning mage” part. Anywhere from six to eight coin should do.
But when I raised the issue of pay, Ash responded, “Cortland, as I’m sure you’re well aware, is low on cash. He has offered me – that is, us – a nice passenger car in the Old Rail Yard to use as a hideout. I’ve looked at it already. It has compartments that we can turn into bedrooms, plus a dining area that we can use as a common room. What do you think?”
I thought it sounded significantly less attractive than hard coin. “How long, exactly, will he let us use this railcar?”
“Oh, call it not a simple, humble ‘railcar,’ dearest Isha! For it is home! Sweet, sweet home in all its glory! With its raggedy carpeting and moth-ridden compartments and broken windows – ”
“Indefinitely.” Ash cut off Faith’s audition for Spiregarden Theater’s latest melodrama. “It’s ours for as long as we want it.”
All things considered, it wasn’t such a bad deal. If I moved out of my flat, I wouldn’t need to worry about rent anymore, and while Coalridge wasn’t any nicer than Crow’s Foot, at least it didn’t have all-out gang warfare all the time. “I’ll have to take a look at the railcar myself, but for now let’s say I’m in.”
“A toast, then! A toast to – ” Faith began.
“There’s one more thing,” Ash said flatly. Lowering his voice a little, he leaned forward across the table to address both of us. “I’ll need one-on-one time with the target. Before he dies, that is.”
Faith looked as if she couldn’t care less.
“Why, exactly?” I asked suspiciously.
“Oh, you know. One shouldn’t allow life to be wasted,” Ash explained vaguely, waving his fork as if to illustrate the vagaries of death and assassination. The movement rucked up his sleeve and exposed an inch of skin between his glove and sleeve.
The skin was pitch black.
I dropped my spoon and reached for my sword.
“Where did you say you’re from?” I hissed.
“Why, he’s from Tycheros, of course! Land of the demon spawn!” supplied Faith the helpful, lazily tilting her chair back from the table.
Demon. I gripped the hilt and prepared to draw my sword.
“Why, darling, one might think you’re a racist! And after I recommended you so highly too! You disappoint me, really you do!”
Both Ash and I ignored Faith.
“To be more precise,” Ash enunciated, “my family immigrated from Tycheros to Doskvol two years ago. And yes, my right arm is pitch black up the elbow, but the rest of me is albino. That is my demon telltale.” As if challenging me to act fair minded, he inquired slowly and clearly, “Is my heritage going to be a problem?”
Well, yes. The man was part demon.
“Isha,” Faith reproached me, “I know he’s a demon, but as someone from Iruvia, you can’t just stab him like that!”
I winced a little. Each of U’Duasha’s four noble houses drew its celestial mandate from a Demon Prince. House Anixis, for example, claimed to speak for Ixis, the Prince of Shadows, and served his will by running Iruvia’s spy network. Faith’s accusation made me sound like the worst kind of hypocrite, and she wasn’t even finished yet.
“Actually, on a second thought, I’ll bet Ashie does demonic stuff aaaaaallll the time! Ashie, go on, tell her about that time you kidnapped a baby – no, thirteen babies! – and brought them to the upside-down altar and – ”
I hadn’t yet broken my stare. “Is whatever ritual you plan to perform on the target demonic in nature?”
Ash answered immediately and, as far as I could tell, honestly. “No. The reason I need one-on-one time with the target has nothing to do with anything demonic.”
Sighing in relief, I released the hilt and picked up my spoon again. “I guess that’s all right, then.” I proffered a shaky, olive-branch of a smile.
Ash returned it. “Want to go see the railcar?”