But dancing with the devil was damning enough. She wasn’t gonna get in bed with him, take his seed, and watch herself grow into another Murder Sharp.
She flexed and massaged her legs to keep them from cramping.
This waiting thing wasn’t good for her. Gave her too much time to think, and she went all sideways when she thought too much. Got maudlin. Full of regrets and hypothetical questions.
What would life be like if I’d gone with the Mighty?
Yeah, like that one.
Oh, poor Teia. Barf.
Besides, I’m not waiting. I’m stalking. I’m not sitting around hoping for a chance to murder someone. I’m hunting. I’m fierce. Even a little frightening.
Not a ghost; she was more like a fox, as her old shimmercloak showed. Not that she was particularly keen of hearing nor of smell. But if you dunked her in water, she did look about as small and frightening as a squirrel.
Ergo, practically indistinguishable from a fox.
No, no, that wasn’t it.
No, she was nocturnal like a fox.
Mmm, well, not entirely nocturnal. Her prey didn’t go about solely in the dark, so obviously she didn’t either, but she was nocturnal-y. That’s when the Order always met. At night, out of the sight of Orholam’s Eye, the sun.
And like a fox she was very focused. Her eyes locked onto her target and she didn’t let anything distract her as she glided toward her prey on silent paws. She let nothing interfere with her missions.
Which . . . makes me very concerned with my nocturnal-y missions.
I’m not a fox, I’m a teenage boy.
She nearly laughed out loud despite the danger and the dark. Hell, maybe because of it. Orholam’s balls, she’d actually slapped her forehead. While on a mission!
But she paid that no heed. Instead, she tried to remember exactly how she’d come to the punch line so she could tell . . .
Kip.
It was a kick in the stones.
Gavin’s wasn’t the only ship that had sailed, was it? Kip was gone, and gone in more ways than one. Gone so that even if he came back to the Jaspers, he could never come back to Teia.
Enough! Come on, she wished she could tell any of the Mighty. Ben would laugh. Ferkudi would bray—when he got it in a week or so. Big Leo would grin despite himself, and Cruxer would sternly disapprove, but if she watched him, she’d see a lip twitch. But they were gone, too. Fighting, out there somewhere in the thick of it. Even if they came back, they’d come back different, suspicious, uncertain at first whether she could understand or whether she was one of them now—the gawkers, the people who asked you if you’d killed anyone, and how did it feel, or what the worst thing you’d seen was. But they’d warm, those boys of hers. They’d laugh, eventually, and they’d be her friends again, once they saw that she understood, once they saw that she’d waded in shit and hadn’t come out clean, either.
But she had to brace herself that not all of them would come back. Worse, she had to brace herself that one or more of them wouldn’t come back because she hadn’t been there to guard their backs, seeing what they couldn’t see.
Oh, did we reschedule the pity party? And I showed up without my hankie!
Teia huffed. She wondered if she should start chewing khat to help her keep focused.
You know what? Fuck the Mighty and all this crybaby shit, she just wanted a friend to be able to tell a dirty joke to.
She’d settle for having any friend at all.
T! Are you serious with this?
She cursed to herself until the long string of images of unlikely transpositions of body parts distracted her. She went through her lists again, checking the corners of the dead-end alley, the roofs, her own packed paryl, the time, the moisture on cobbles. She really wanted to take out her frustration with herself on this asshole. If he would show up, please.
This was the poorest end of a working neighborhood. The house he’d disappeared into was small and dingy. It had been created by slapping up two walls to connect the stronger walls of two large estates where they pinched together. The rich had long ago left this section of Overhill, and the estates on both sides had been diced up into dozens of homes, but they’d incorporated those walls, making this first a blind alley and then a section of street unclaimed by anyone.
It was illegal to block the rays of the Thousand Stars. Set at all the larger intersections, their light was supposed to be able to reach any part of the city, with radial streets like a spiderweb. Only the very rich and the very poor defied the law and got away with it.
The doubly blind alley meant that whoever lived in the house where Halfcock had disappeared had to enter from the opposite side of Northeast Circle Street, under the eyes of whatever guards might be atop the wall. Halfcock had instead used a ladder to climb onto the roofs of the bordering estate, and then down into the alley.
He really didn’t want anyone to know he was here. Teia had no ladder, but since she’d assassinated the Nuqaba, she’d become a fearless climber.
No one else—except a Shadow like Teia—could follow Halfcock without being seen.
He might, of course, leave by the front door, in which case her waiting was for nothing. But if not, he’d isolated himself very, very effectively. There weren’t even windows along the walls here.
He wasn’t married, so he wasn’t here meeting his wife. It was too late now for the woman Teia’d glimpsed through the briefly open door to be Halfcock’s sister—unless he was simply staying the night, in which case Teia was wasting her time. He’d been there too long for it to be a prostitute, though Teia supposed some men might take half the night. All night even?
She wasn’t really sure how all that worked, but somehow she’d assumed it was a business generally more concerned with pumping out a large volume of satisfied customers quickly than . . .
Hmm, there was a dirty joke in there somewhere.
Where was Ben-hadad when you needed him?
Anyway, so that left it being one of two things. Halfcock had a mistress. If so, it had to be someone forbidden. Blackguards were allowed fornication, but could be stripped of their rank for adultery, because that was a breach of faith. If a person couldn’t keep their wedding vows, how could you trust them to keep the more difficult vows of Blackguard duty? Also, it opened them to blackmail. But sexual relationships weren’t banned for single Blackguards—only sexual relations with other Blackguards, or married people, or foreign agents.
Aha, got it! Punchline!
Prostitution was a business generally more concerned with pumping out a large volume of satisfied customers rather than pumping a large volume out of one satisfied customer.
She filed that one away too, for no one. Prostitution wasn’t terribly likely to come up in everyday conversation, unless you’re in a squad for long periods of time with sexually frustrated young men.
Why was her mind going to all these things, anyway? She really needed a boyfriend, didn’t she?
Yeah, T. What you really need is someone close enough to dig into your personal affairs.
I don’t have personal affairs. That’s why I need to get some.
We both know that ‘getting some’ isn’t going to happen.
Oh, hells. That’s what’s going on. I’m at the new moon of my cycle. Just popped out an egg. That would explain why I’ve been damper than an Abornean pearl diver short of his quota on tax day.