14

"I'm not excited about going back to Byzantium," Simend admitted to Edric once they were sailing out of the harbor at Meleko.

"You should have stuck around to hear where we're supposed to meet the client once we're there," Edric told him.

"Why?" Simend asked with a chuckle. "Are we supposed to meet them at the Drowned Dog?"

"We are," Edric said.

Simend fixed a weary gaze on the shark, but Edric just stared over the rail and out towards the ocean. Sea travel always made him a little homesick. "You're joking, right?" Simend asked. "Just trying to get a rise out of me because I wouldn't tell you about that archive."

"I am not," Edric said.

"Edric," Simend said. "We are banned from the Drowned Dog. We can't go back there."

"Well maybe somebody shouldn't have murdered our mark right in the middle of their dining room the last time we were there," Edric told the ocean.

"Arbiter take me," Simend said, tossing up his hands. "Are you still sore about this?"

Edric did turn to face him at that. "They always had the best shrimp in the entire province," he hissed, poking the dancer in the chest. "And now we can never go back!"

"It was a clean kill!" Simend insisted. He leaned into Edric's finger. "You know he was better at lightcrafting than even you are. He'd spotted us, and if we'd let him slip away, he'd have turned himself invisible and we'd never find him again. Besides, even the innkeeper said everybody hated that guy. I don't know why it's such a big deal that we killed him."

"Oh, I don't know," Edric said. He pulled his hand away from Simend's chest, and the jackal stumbled slightly. "Maybe it's the fact that a guy getting murdered and having his arm ripped open during their dinner rush wasn't exactly great for business."

"You're the one who removed his symbiote, not me," Simend said.

"Well what was I supposed to do?" Edric asked. "Leave it there? Or try and drag his body around until I could get to a secluded place to perform surgery while the guards were actively out in force to arrest us? Recovering the symbiote was the only reason we killed him."

"You know full well that wasn't the only reason we killed him," Simend said. "It's just the reason the two of us specifically got the job to do it."

Edric scowled at him. Simend was right, of course. The slaver had gotten marked for elimination because of his trade, not his symbiote, but Simend and Edric were the ones who got called to take out rogue luminaries by the people who were discerning enough to be in the market for high-end hired killers. The thought of unsavory professions, however, pulled Edric out of his argument with his partner. They had not gotten a private berth on the ship, and nearly every person on deck was either staring at them in horror or pointedly not looking at them at all. "Maybe we should continue this discussion after we get to land," he suggested.

Simend blinked then looked around the deck himself. "Balls," he said. "And here I was hoping for a peaceful trip."

"Well at least you won't have to put up with small talk from strangers," Edric told him.

They disembarked at the Isle of Dogs to find a ship where every person on board was not terrified of them. It also gave them a chance to rent a private room and enjoy each other for the first time since they'd returned to Meleko. When Edric basked in the afterglow that night, the panting jackal draped across his broad back, his thoughts returned as they always did to Binta. He always felt just a little bit disappointed in the clarity of thought that came in the wake of a good railing from Simend. Not disappointment in what they'd just done, of course. Every part of him tingled when the two of them had finished in a way he never felt after doing the same with Binta. He just wished he could feel this sated and content and still have her in his arms.

They secured passage on a ship bound for Sala the next day and managed to keep their discussions away from work for the entirety of the voyage. After another enjoyable overnight stop in Sala, they took a ship to Ostia. There they did not spend the night. Ostia was the mustering and training grounds for the New Roman Legion, and neither of them cared to have anything further to do with that nonsense. They stopped only to buy thick tunics for them both since not even Simend was up to going topless in the winters north of the Internal Sea. They then found passage on yet another ship, this time heading all the way to Byzantium with a handful of stops along the way. They listened in on the chatter amongst the other passengers while they waited to cast off. The primary topic of conversation was the unrest that had followed the disappearance of Sabina Augusta Poplicola, the New Roman princess.

"I heard that a dog kidnapped her," one well-dressed Homin woman said to another as the ship finally sailed out of Ostia's harbor. "Probably to eat the poor girl."

Simend rolled his eyes. "Of course they blame a Sabwa," he muttered, but kept his voice low enough that the gossips wouldn't hear. He and Edric knew full well there was no point in trying to correct some blue-blooded Homin.

"How horrid!" the other woman replied. "They mobilized an entire century to rescue her just a few months back. And that's on top of the Enforcers! The Six are still out there searching as well."

Edric exchanged an angry look with Simend at that. "Balls," the jackal swore beneath his breath, and Edric nodded. Their clients were on the run from the Enforcers. If the Emperor's Six were out searching for the abducted princess, that meant the two of them had just gotten called up to play bodyguard to the New Roman princess herself, a mess of political intrigue with which neither of them had any interest at all in participating. Edric jerked his head towards the bow of the ship, and the two of them huddled there to discuss their options as far from the crew and passengers as they could get.

"We can still back out of this job, right?" Edric whispered. "The client didn't say we'd be acting as bodyguards for the princess."

"Maybe it's a different client," Simend said. "The Enforcers don't exactly have a lot of friends, and didn't you say our contact was a jackal? Maybe it's somebody else who wants them dead."

"Like the jackal who supposedly kidnapped the princess?" Edric asked.

Simend scowled back at the two gossips across the ship. "Balls," he swore again. "I don't think we can back out of this one. We already accepted payment from Kamissa."

"Hold up," Edric said, his eyes narrowing and his broad tail sweeping the deck behind him. "Are you telling me that you expect that single archive to be full payment for a job to kill the Emperor's Six?"

"I mean," Simend stuttered. His tail curled between his legs. "It sounds like there's only four of them now."

"Simend," Edric snarled, baring all his serrated teeth at the jackal. "What was on that archive?" Simend backed away, his ears flat and his fur bristling, and Edric realized that whatever he was hiding, it was bad. Simend was afraid of very few things, and Edric knew full well that he himself was not one of them, no matter how many of his teeth he flashed. "What are you hiding?" he pressed.

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"Job first," Simend said, not meeting Edric's gaze. "Once we finish this job and the Enforcers are dead, I'll tell you on our way home to Meleko. I promise. And then we can… Well. We can take it from there."

Edric clapped his hands to the dorsal fin on the back of his head and clutched it tightly, squeezing his eyes shut as well. "Why are you being so difficult about this?" he asked.

"I need you to trust me on this one, Ed," Simend said softly.

Edric growled but released his fin. "Fine," he said. "I do trust you. But there had better be a good reason for this. Especially since it seems like I'm doing this job for free so you could destroy that archive."

"I'll make it up to you, I swear," Simend said.

"Excuse me," asked a voice behind Edric. Both luminaries spun on the interloper, Simend's hand on his sword and Edric's on his Astral arm. A young Geyk jumped away from them with a yelp, almost getting his broad antlers stuck in an overhanging rope. "Don't hurt me!" he yelped, his tiny tail twitching.

Edric sighed, and Simend ran a hand over his ears. "Sorry," Edric said. He didn't smile at the man. Sior smiles had a way of unnerving people. "We're a bit on edge. Was there something you needed?"

"Oh," the buck said, uncovering his eyes. "Oh, yes! The captain wanted me to ask if you two were real luminaries."

Simend rolled his eyes. "I'm surprised we made it this far before somebody asked," he muttered.

"Talking about our work as killers-for-hire kept people away from us on that first leg," Edric told him before turning back to the deer. "We are indeed real luminaries."

"Well we don't need you to kill anybody," the sailor said quickly. "Captain was just curious if you could give us a favorable wind."

"How much is it worth to him?" Simend asked.

"Don't bother, Sim," Edric said. He raised his right arm, pointing two fingers to the sky as he silently asked his symbiote for wind. "This one's on me."

"Are you serious?" Simend asked. "Ed, we get paid for our work. And weren't you just going on about not getting paid for this job?"

"Our job is murdering renegade luminaries, Sim, not filling sails. And I very much want this job to be over with as soon as possible," Edric said. The crystals on his arm flared in unison, and the sails billowed with a sudden gust. He reached up with his other hand and tapped the series of crystals that would lock in the generation of the wind without him needing to focus on it. He lowered his arms and flexed his metal-laced fingers. The light from the crystals faded but did not dim completely. "Let me know when it needs to change direction or stop," he told the sailor. "If the captain wants to thank me, let him know I'll take captain's rations for this trip."

"I'll let him know," the sailor said with a broad smile. "And thank you from me, too. I've always wanted to meet a real luminary." He hurried back to the bridge of the ship to report to the captain.

"It's fortunate he met two of the good ones," Simend said when the buck was out of earshot.

"Did he though?" Edric asked. "Our job is to kill people like us and harvest their symbiotes."

"We don't kill just any luminary," Simend said, swatting at Edric's dorsal fin. "We kill luminaries that are using their powers to hurt people."

"Yeah, I guess so," Edric said with a sigh.

"Hey, cheer up," Simend said. "Just think about how many people we freed when we killed that slaver. Oh, and about how we're actually going to get to eat well on this trip."

Edric gave Simend a sideways glance. "What do you mean 'we?'" he asked. "I got captain's rations for me, not you. You didn't do anything."

Simend's jaw dropped. "What?" he squeaked.

"I'm still mad at you," Edric said. "You can keep yourself occupied. I'm going to go see if they'll let me sit on the bridge."

Simend put a hand on Edric's hip to try and stop him from leaving. "Come on, Ed," he said. "Can I make it up to you somehow?"

Edric slapped him with his tail. "Not on the bloody ship, you can't."

Even with three stops for other passengers to embark and disembark, they made the voyage from Ostia to Byzantium in just over two weeks. "I think that's a record," the captain told Edric as they sailed into harbor without assistance from the shark's symbiote. The elderly deer rubbed at the nubs of the antlers he had shed for the season a day or two earlier. "Are you sure I can't convince you to stay on with us? I'd pay you well to do nothing but eat and make the wind blow our way."

"No," Edric said, smiling gently at Simend. His friend smiled back. The two of them had made up less than a day after their argument. Verbally, of course, with the promise of a physical reconciliation once they were in a port for more than a few hours. "I like my job."

"Well, my loss, I guess," the captain said. "I'll have to see if I can find another luminary to bring on. Their pay would more than make up for the money I'd gain with transit times this short."

"Make sure to get a right-handed one if you do," Edric told him, wiggling the fingers of his augmented hand. "The sinistral symbiotes don't handle wind as well. And don't take anyone from the Star Cult. They're all insane."

"Good to know," the captain replied. "Well, best of luck to both of you finding whoever you're hunting." They thanked the man and disembarked.

Byzantium was an old city, having weathered the Fall of the Star far better than much of the rest of the world. Old monuments left by the Romans and forgotten civilizations yet older still dotted the streets, and the current rulers claimed the walls were built on the foundations of pre-Astral fortifications. The Drowned Dog, being on the Homin side of the strait, was technically part of the New Roman Empire, which made looking for a contact that may or may not have kidnapped the emperor's daughter even more fraught. Especially considering the innkeeper still recognized the two of them.

"Hey!" the portly Homin man shouted from behind the bar. "Don't think that I've forgotten you two! Get out of here before I call the guards!"

Edric held up his hands. "We don't want to be here either," he said. "We're looking for a contact, not a mark this time, and they picked this place without asking us first."

"I don't care!" the innkeeper shouted. "Get out of my house!"

"Well this is going to be difficult," Simend said when they were both back outside of the large stone inn. They found a spot across the street away from the bustle of the crowds to talk.

"Do you think you can sneak in if you wear your mask and cloak?" Edric asked.

"It's cold, but it's not that cold. I'd stand out" Simend said, arms crossed over his chest. He scoped out the windows on the inn. "Especially now that they know we're back in town. Do you think the guards are still out for us?"

"They'd better not be," Edric told him. "We bribed them good last time."

"No joke," Simend said. "We barely earned enough from that job to cover those bribes." He sighed. "I think you going in unseen might be our best option."

Edric thrashed his tail across the cobblestones of the road. "You know full well how much radiance long-term invisibility consumes," he said. "I'd be able to sit in there for maybe an hour a day without putting that entire building into depletion."

"Well do you have a better idea?" Simend growled.

"Thunder's stones, Sim," Edric growled back. "I'm a medic, not a warlord. We both know you're a better planner than I am, so come up with something on your own!"

Simend grabbed both of his ears and took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "We know the contact's name, right?"

"Yeah, Dalibor," Edric said.

"I still think that's a very Ursi name for a Sabwa," Simend said, shaking his head. "Can you make yourself invisible, sneak inside, and read the guest register to see if he's even here?"

"Depends on where that lardass keeps his register," Edric said. "I might be invisible, but people will still be able to see the pages turning."

"So make it invisible too," Simend suggested.

"I can't read it if it's invisible!" Edric said.

"Balls," Simend swore with a growl. "How do the warlords do this?"

"Why don't you phase jump through the wall, snatch the register, and phase jump back out?" Edric asked. "I know you've been working on phasing through things."

"First off, everybody would still see me," Simend said. "Second off, phasing out my weapon is very different than phasing out myself. Third, I'd throw up more than you do after a couple weeks out of the water. Phase jumping makes me violently ill."

"I don't understand why you worked so hard on phasing out your weapon in the first place," Edric said. "What use is a weapon that can't touch anything?"

"Because it's fun," Simend said. "You should see the look on people's faces when you stick a sword through them and they don't die. But we're getting off topic."

"I can sneak inside invisible and steal the register, I guess," Edric said. "And then just put it back when we're done with it. Maybe he won't notice if I'm quick enough."

"It'll have to do," Simend said. "Let's get to it then."

"Let us? As if you're going to help," Edric grumbled. He hated being invisible. It was already hard enough for him to walk on land when he could see his feet, and it was even worse when people couldn't see him to stay out of his way or not step on his tail. But it would be quick this time. Just in and out. He took a deep breath, contacted his symbiote, and asked for invisibility. It wasn't something the symbiote was good at, so he had to focus on it the entire time. Soon enough, the lights on his arm flickered, and his entire body faded away. With one more calming breath, he started picking his way through the crowds and across the street. He wasn't even halfway across before a runner tripped over his tail, nearly breaking his concentration. "Cop yourself on, you gormless gobshite!" he swore in Draigic at the buck, who was looking confusedly around both for what he'd tripped over and who was shouting profanities at him in an unfamiliar language. Edric could tell the man had kicked him hard enough that it was going to bruise, and hearing Simend snicker from behind him did little to improve his mood. This job had better be worth it.