“We’re masked and robed, Ravi. You’ve described half of them.”
He gulped. “I just—I just have to think! The disguises rotate with where we meet. I can’t remember!”
“Ravi,” she said soothingly. “Haven’t things gone well for you as long as you’ve been with me? Trust me, and things can go better yet.”
He sighed, defeated. “It’s Atevia Zelorn.”
“Zelorn? The wine merchant?!”
“You can’t approach him until after the Feast of the Dying Light. There’s a huge party afterward. Stuff slips. He won’t know it’s me if you wait. Please, Lady Crassos, please be respectful. These people . . .”
“Of course, of course, my dear.” Aglaia put a hand on Ravi’s cheek, softly kissed his lips, then firmly pushed him away.
The man was reduced to a stammering flubberkin, which was frankly bizarre. It was painfully obvious that Aglaia despised him, wasn’t it?
If Teia hadn’t already reasons beyond counting to hate Aglaia, she would have added this easy manipulation to the list. Although it had been rather smoothly done, hadn’t it? The woman wielded what she had like a chain whip.
Add another reason to the list of reasons to hate her: making Teia admire something about her. Sweet Orholam’s garlicky breath, Teia was going to enjoy killing her.
She didn’t think that the Order was going to kill any of the remaining Guiles just because Aglaia Crassos wished it, but she didn’t know how much she should bet on that.
She couldn’t let Aglaia get in touch with Murder Sharp. Right now, as far as Sharp was concerned, Aglaia was just one barely initiated member of the Order among many. But the woman’s whole purpose in joining was vengeance on the Guiles, which Teia wasn’t going to allow. But wouldn’t the Order find it suspicious if Aglaia disappeared right after she insisted on killing a Guile?
Or would it be more suspicious if Ravi told the leadership how she’d disappeared before she even got to ask?
Well, there’d be no suspicion at all if Teia killed both of them now. After all, she had all she needed from them.
This is how life gets cheap. Someone teaches you how easy it is to kill. Someone gives you permission. The next moment it simply seems like the thing to do. You’re stopping an unwanted flow of information, not sending immortal souls to their maker for judgment.
It was a hell of a thing, war. And yet part of her loved it.
Regardless of how she felt, though, this was still the thing to do. They had chosen treason. Teia was simply the satrapies’ shield coming down on their necks.
There was nothing more to think about it.
The meeting ended soon after, and Teia followed Ravi Satish. Finding Aglaia again would be easy. Ravi was the more pressing.
Lord Ravi had come from one of the families dispossessed and bankrupted during the False Prism’s War. He had little more than the clothes on his back, and no morals whatsoever. He supported his delusions about a return to power on illegal slave trading—mostly from drugging and enslaving sailors with the help of unscrupulous tavern owners.
He was the kind of man who would have lots of enemies—but not subtle ones.
Blunt force, Teia thought, as she followed him through the streets. She didn’t want any inexplicable (and therefore possibly caused by paryl) deaths to pique the Order’s interest. A knife? A knife would work, too, but knifings were almost never clean. An assassin might kill with a single well-placed thrust, but usually a knife murder involved dozens of stabs and slashes, lots of mess and noise, and more danger. If she wanted a stabbing to look like the result of a drunken brawl or a sudden passion, she’d have to be willing to dice him up.
She’d done enough grappling recently, thanks. She’d rather not.
Blunt force it was. A single, furious smash over the head could result in death, and look almost accidental. Someone might hit a man he hated over the head, see what he’d done, and then flee. It could be almost soundless, too, where a knife fight would be more notable if it weren’t heard than if it were.
At one point as she followed him, Lord Satish walked right along the edge of a quay he’d cut through as a shortcut. Teia had a sap, a leather casing covering a pouch of lead balls.
Hit him, grab his purse, and roll his body into the water! Quick!
But she hesitated, looking around to see if anyone might witness it, and when she was sure that there was no one looking, Lord Satish was already past the place where it would have been a good option.
She should’ve been more aware. She should always be thinking about what to do if an option presented itself. Dammit!
He led her to a boardinghouse. It didn’t exactly have an inn on the first floor, more just a single hogshead barrel of wine, an old door propped on sawhorses to make a counter, and one currently occupied stool. Lord Ravi paid the wine pourer, was given a full tankard of wine, and told which room he could sleep in. Then the barman went back to chatting with the two women who were sharing the lone stool.
Teia noted which stairs creaked, then followed Ravi up, her lesser weight silent. She hadn’t been close enough to hear which room he was in. She could only hope that the slaving business had been going well enough for him that he could afford to have the room to himself.
Which was kind of twisted, if she thought about it.
He opened the door, and Teia peeked over his shoulder. Empty. Perfect.
She didn’t follow him in. Instead, she went downstairs and found the boardinghouse’s utility closet. Boardinghouses always had things to fix, even if, like here, they didn’t actually fix them all that often.
Nonetheless, she was able to find a hammer with an iron head. Good enough.
She ghosted back up the stairs. No sense in delaying things.
But she paused at the door.
One breath, T. You get one deep breath to panic. Then you move.
She took her long deep breath, and savored her paralysis like a warm bed on a cold morning. Then she exhaled slowly, shimmering into visibility and removing her hood.
She opened the door and stepped into the room like she owned the place. It was small, nondescript, not very clean, with fresh rushes thrown down on the bed on top of months of dirty ones. Ravi Satish was halfway into pulling his tunic over his head.
At the sound of the door opening and closing, he said, “What the hell? Arun told me I’d have this room to myself to—oh.”
He finished shucking his tunic off and stopped speaking as he saw her.
“Dammit, that’s what he told me,” Teia said. “Did one of us get the wrong room?”
“Uh, second room on the right?” Ravi said.
“That’s what he told me,” Teia said, giving him a bold look.
“Arun’s always been a joker. I’m going to have to thank him for this one, though.”
“No,” Teia said quietly. “No you’re not.” She took off the master cloak and hung it on a hook by the door.
Ravi picked up his tankard, still standing bare-chested. “I’m, uh, not sure I take your meaning.”
“Would you be willing to share?”
“Share? The bed?” he asked.
“The wine. I’m parched.” But she smirked as if the bed might be a possibility, later.
“Oh, the wine. Of course. Of course.”
“Thank you,” she said. She took the tankard and pretended to drink. She coughed. “Oooh,” she said, “that is really bad.”