First Kill (2 page)

“How do you know I’m not Harshini?”

“You touched the staff. It caused you no pain.”

“Have you ever found a Harshini?”

For the first time, the priest seemed a little uncertain. “Well … no.”

“Then how do you know it works?”

“Xaphista has spoken.”

“Pity he didn’t tell you to piss off, old man,” a woman remarked behind Kiam.

He turned to discover an attractive Fardohnyan woman standing behind him. She was dressed in a blue bodice designed to draw attention to her impressive bosom, and a diaphanous blue skirt that left her midriff bare. She wore a polished garnet in her navel and a slightly tarnished silver collar around her neck, denoting her as a
court’esa
.

The
court’esa
beamed at Kiam. “Ignore him. His god is a fool and attracts like-minded followers. Are you new in town?”

A little bemused, Kiam shrugged. “Does it show?”

“Shines like a beacon, sweetie. You’re Hythrun, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then come on inside and let me show you a good time.” She took his arm and made to lead him inside. Xaphista’s priest turned his attention to another potential patron. With some reluctance, Kiam shook free of her grasp. She was very pretty. At another time …

“I’m sorry; I can’t.”

The woman smiled at him and then stretched up on her toes to nuzzle his ear. Only she didn’t nuzzle him. She whispered impatiently, “The Bull’s Balls rents rooms by the hour, you fool, and if you go in there without a
court’esa
, you might as well pin a sign on your head announcing who you are and why you’re here. Unless you want me to send you back to the Raven in a funereal urn, you’ll smile and look lusty and buy me a drink, lover boy.”

She pulled back from him and smiled as if nothing was amiss. “So … ready from some sin, then?”

This wasn’t another test, Kiam realized with shock. This stunning Fardohnyan
court’esa
was his mentor.

“What … what do you prefer,” he asked, hoping his surprise wasn’t reflected on his face, “white wine or red?”

*   *   *

Her name was Teriahna. Although she didn’t seem to be much older than him, Kiam knew she had to be an experienced assassin to be given the task of supervising his first kill. She led him to a dark booth at the back of the taproom, ordered wine and a bowl of the delicious spicy stew he could smell outside in the street, and then sat in his lap so they could talk in private. The tavern was filled with similar booths, not all of which were full this early in the evening. The Bull’s Balls rented rooms out the back apparently, but patrons could sit at the booths as long as they liked, provided they ate and drank and paid their tab on the way out.

“Your target’s not likely to get here until closer to midnight,” Teriahna told him, as she settled herself in his lap and nibbled his earlobe, making it both impossible for anyone to overhear them and for Kiam to concentrate on what she was telling him.

“You know her?”

“Everyone knows her.”

“Why don’t you do the job, then?” he asked as she picked up his hand and placed it on her breast.

“Wasn’t my job to do. Can you at least try to look a little bit interested?”

He wrapped his arms around her a little bit more enthusiastically. “I … er.… Sorry…”

“What’s your plan?” she whispered into his ear like a lover.

“I don’t have one yet.”

“She’ll be here at any time. Don’t you think it’s time you started
making
a plan?”

Teriahna was right, but Kiam wasn’t being entirely honest. He did have a plan of sorts. What he didn’t have was an escape route if things turned to custard. He glanced around the room, noting the exits and the windows. They were too narrow to afford an escape, but the clientele in the Bull’s Balls was sufficiently determined to mind their own business that one could hopefully leave by the front door without causing too much comment, even if they were covered in blood.

“What do you know about her?”

“She’s a whore.”

“So are you.”

“The difference being that I have worked my way up in the world, young man. Sofya the Siren seems determined to work her way down.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she’s only recently taken up the life of a
court’esa,
according to the local gossips. Very scandalous affair, apparently.”

“Why scandalous?”

“Because not so long ago, our girl was the very proper and righteous daughter of one of the ruling houses of the Trinity Isles.”

“Why did she leave a life of privilege for a life on the streets?”

“What does it matter?” Teriahna asked, the teeth nibbling at his ear and sending shivers down his spine at odds with her tone. “Your job is to remove her, not offer employment advice.”

“Is it her family who wants her killed?” He said it low and carefully, nuzzling at Teriahna’s ear for the benefit of anyone who might be watching them. She reacted immediately, pulling away from his embrace to glare at him.

“It’s not your concern who or why. Didn’t they teach you anything?”

“I need to know if there are likely to be any repercussions. I haven’t passed this test, I believe, until I get home in one piece without any adverse consequences to the Guild.”

His answer seemed to satisfy her. “Then the answer is, I don’t know. I haven’t been here in Calavandra much longer than you, truth be told. I don’t know what will happen when you … take care of her.”

Across the room, a cheer went up, but with Teriahna blocking his view, he didn’t know what had so enthused the other patrons of the Bull’s Balls. Kiam was aware of it, as he was aware of everything going on around him, but he assumed it had something to do with the dice game going on near the bar.

“Then, don’t you think, before I … take care … of anyone, it would be wise to … Gods, is that her?”

Teriahna had moved slightly and Kiam had discovered the reason for the cheer.

Sofya the Siren had arrived.

Kiam found himself almost unable to breathe. She was a slender girl with flawless caramel skin and eyes the colour of a midnight storm. She was dressed in a light shift that left nothing to the imagination about what might lie beneath, only three clusters of strategically placed cheap glass beads offering any sort of modesty. But it wasn’t her dress that stopped his heart, momentarily, or her peerless beauty.

“What’s wrong?” Teriahna hissed when she realized he’d been struck dumb by shock.

“I … I know her.”

“
What
?”

“I know her,” he told his mentor in a low, disbelieving voice. “Only, when I knew her, she was Sofya Kannangara, daughter of Grem Kannangara, the Symposiarch of Calavandra.”

“How did you meet … Oh, of course.”
Your stepbrother is heir to the Hythrun throne
. She didn’t say the words, but Kiam could almost hear her thinking them. “Will she remember you?”

For a moment, Kiam didn’t know how to answer. His mind was too clouded by memories for him to think straight.

They were both fifteen when he met Sofya the first time. Her father had come to Greenharbour to discuss trade terms with the High Prince—or, rather, his sister. Princess Marla ran the kingdom in her brother’s name. Everyone knew that, even if nobody said it out loud. Marla had invited Symposiarch Kannangara to Greenharbour to discuss the growing problem of Trinity Isles pirates—or, as the Trinity Islanders preferred to call them,
traders of opportunity
. He’d brought his daughter with him and it was love at first sight for both of them.

The talks were intense and quite fraught at time. For two glorious weeks, Kiam and Sofya had been ignored by adults too consumed with weighty matters of state to notice what the young lovers were up to.

His stepbrother, Damin Wolfblade, discovered what was going on before Sofya’s father found out, fortunately—although Kiam was gutted at the time. Damin arranged for Sofya to leave Greenharbour for a tour of the famous horse stud at Warrinhaven and for Kiam to return to his training at the Assassins’ Guild before anyone else noticed they’d fallen madly in love.

He’d expected some sort of punishment when he returned to the Guild for endangering the negotiations with his teenage lust, and for Sofya to receive an even more dreadful punishment. Trinity Islanders—unlike the Hythrun—considered a woman’s virginity a prize above all others. It was a tradable commodity when looking for a wife. At best, had her father learned about their romance, she would have been whipped within an inch of her life. She could have been put to death if Grem Kannangara considered the insult to his family’s honour sufficiently dire.

It might, in the worst case, have set Hythria and the Trinity Isles at war.

But Damin—the Gods reward him—had never said a word to Kiam’s father, Princess Marla, Grem Kannangara or anyone else. For that alone, Kiam would be Damin Wolfblade’s loyal servant until the day he died.

“She might remember me,” Kiam said, when he was able to find his voice again.
I know I’ll never forget her.

“Then I’ll get out of your way,” she said, rising from his lap. Without warning, she slapped his face as hard as she could, stinging his cheek and making his eyes water. “I don’t do things like that!” she announced so loudly, everyone in the tavern turned to stare at them.

As soon as she was sure she had the attention of the whole tavern, Teriahna swept up her skirts and stormed out of the tavern, leaving Kiam alone in the booth, with everyone laughing at him.

Nicely played,
he thought, as he buried his face in his beer to hide his embarrassment.

Teriahna’s little show had the desired effect. As she slammed the tavern door on her way out, Sofya broke away from the group of admirers hovering about her by the bar and approached Kiam.

He leaped to his feet, wondering what she would do when she realized who he was.

“Whatever did you ask of her?” Sofya laughed as she approached him. Everyone in the tavern was watching them, waiting for his response. “I hear there’s not much a Fardohnyan whore won’t do.”

Kiam stared at her, unable to speak, his heart pounding, partly from fear she might expose him, partly from a remnant of the insanely intense feelings he’d once burned with for his first love.

He need not have worried. She stared at him as if he was a complete—if somewhat amusing—stranger.

“Come, tell us all where a Fardohnyan whore draws the line?” She glanced around her audience with a laugh. “We’re dying to know.”

Applause broke out, and some of the patrons cheered at her words. Kiam was gutted, not because she was teasing him, or making him the butt of her joke, or even that she didn’t recognize him.

This was not Sofya, he realized. It was her body, her smile, her lips that had once caressed his, but the soul looking out from those big dark eyes did not belong to the girl he knew. The girl he had loved.

Everyone on the tavern was staring at him, dumbstruck. Thinking he was a fool.

And right now, that was just fine by Kiam. He needed answers and he wasn’t going to find them here.

Looking embarrassed and humiliated—and not all of it an act—Kiam pushed his way past Sofya and ran from the tavern to the jeers and catcalls of the other patrons.

Teriahna was waiting outside, across the street. She said nothing, just stared at him for a moment, and then she turned and lost herself in the evening crowd on the street.

I’ve failed
, Kiam realized.

It was obvious now why he’d been given this job. He thought his father unaware, all these years, of his romance with Sofya. But he must have known. Kiam doubted Damin had let it slip, but it explained why nothing had ever been said to him about it. The Guild was biding their time, waiting until they could use the information to their best advantage.

How fortunate for them that someone wanted Sofya dead just in time for Kiam to graduate to the ranks of a full assassin.

But that’s not Sofya.
Kiam had no sound reason for his belief other than a gut instinct he had been trained to trust. Something was amiss.

Grem Kannangara loved his daughter, but given the life she was now leading, it was more than likely it was the Symposiarch himself who had commissioned the kill. If having a brief romance with the step-nephew of the Hythrun High Prince were a blow to the honour of his House, Sofya selling herself in the taverns of Calavandra would be a humiliation he could not abide.

Kiam turned and headed back towards the inn where he’d left his things, pushing past the people on the streets without really seeing them. A part of him remained alert for Teriahna. She might be willing to give him another chance, but right now, she probably thought he had no chance of completing this task and was already arranging to deliver the penalty for his incompetence.

He didn’t have much time, he figured, to either kill Sofya or find out what was really going on.

The only person who might know, he realized, was the man who had probably commissioned this kill.

Grem Kannangara, the Symposiarch of Calavandra.

*   *   *

Scaling the walls of the Symposiarch’s palace proved alarmingly easy.
Someone should warn him about that,
Kiam thought as he dropped silently from the wall to crouch in the shadows of the main courtyard in the family wing of the palace. The flat roof had made ingress ridiculously easy, and he’d been able to scan the entire palace unseen, crossing silently from one building to the next until eventually figuring out where Grem had retired for the evening. After that, all he needed to do was wait until the Symposiarch was alone.

He had dropped into the courtyard on that assumption. Across the small courtyard beyond the fountain, the doors to the Symposiarch’s sleeping chamber were open to the balmy night. He rose to his feet, about to reveal himself, when a knock at Grem’s door forced Kiam to blend back into the shadows.

Grem emerged from his bathing room, his hefty body wrapped in a towel, his head wet from his bath. He called, “Enter,” to whoever was outside the door, turning to face them as they entered. His whole body stiffened at the sight of his late-night visitor.