Sicarius released her with a swift motion. “It’s more likely that her reputation will be ruined because she associated with us. If she joins and doesn’t simply tell the authorities what you told her.”
True. Amaranthe hated to admit it, but he was probably right. That had been impulsive and foolish of her. She forced herself to smile and say, “We’ll see.”
Sicarius stalked away without a word. Amaranthe had learned nothing useful in regard to those under-skin devices, and her plan to win Sicarius for herself seemed less likely to work than ever. Right now, she’d be lucky if he didn’t strangle her on the way back to the city.
Chapter 7
Akstyr strolled down the street with his hands in his pockets, trying to look casual despite the sweat slithering down his spine. Affluent pedestrians meandered down the cobblestone lane, chatting with vendors selling everything from exotic spices and flavored honeys to engraved wooden swords and shields for children. Now and then, enforcers strode past the carts, batons and short swords dangling from their hips. Akstyr subtly avoided them, glad he had tied his hair back in a knot so his usual spiky tufts wouldn’t draw attention. It seemed a strange neighborhood for his contact to frequent, but then the man wasn’t a criminal himself, so he had no reason to avoid the law.
A couple of thieves tried to “accidentally” bump Akstyr for a chance to fish in his pockets, making him feel a little more at home. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, he didn’t have any money for them to find. Amaranthe and the others weren’t back yet, so payday hadn’t come, and he’d spent his last fifty ranmyas to arrange a meeting with Khaalid, a sharpshooter and blade master who had, his reputation said, gotten wealthy by collecting bounties on gangsters and felons. His reputation also said the meaner the bastard he was hunting, the better. He might be crazy enough to want a stab at Sicarius and wealthy enough to pay for information on his whereabouts.
A brass sign hanging above a doorway ahead of Akstyr read, Juiced. He weaved around vendor stalls, heading for the shop.
To his side, someone darted out of sight, using a vegetable cart for cover. Akstyr paused. It probably had nothing to do with him, but nobody else was acting suspiciously in the neighborhood. He hadn’t had a good look, though he’d glimpsed long hair and a dress.
He waited for a moment, but he didn’t spot the person again. After resolving to keep an eye out on the way back to the hideout, Akstyr slipped into Juiced.
Warmth rolled from a furnace in the back where a boiler powered an engine driving a maze of moving pipes, gears, and levers that stretched along the walls and even across the ceiling. The complex apparatus smashed fruit and muddled the cafe’s “special blend of energizing herbs” before pouring the contents into giant glass carboys that filled shelves behind tables full of patrons. Some carboys were fermenting their concoctions, emitting a yeasty smell that competed with the fruity scents in the air, while other jars had spigots and simply held fresh juice.
While Akstyr watched, a woman wearing a grass skirt filled a glass with a greenish liquid and delivered it to a table where a slender, fit man dressed in dark green sat alone. He handed the server a couple of coins and sipped his beverage. Couples and groups occupied the other tables, so Akstyr figured this lone figure was his contact. The bounty hunter lacked a Sicarius-like knife collection, but he did have a pair of long blades in a torso harness that he’d draped over the back of his chair. If he carried a pistol, it wasn’t visible-not surprising since firearms were outlawed in the city. A few scars chipped at his weathered features, giving him the experienced visage of a veteran, and Akstyr vowed to be careful dealing with him.
The man nodded in his direction, and Akstyr joined him. The bounty hunter had taken a chair that put his back to a corner, and Akstyr grimaced at the only other option, a seat on the opposite side. After seeing that person darting out of his path, he didn’t want his back to the door either.
He dragged the free chair about so that the back faced a clanking, hissing tangle of pipes and sat down. He promptly felt silly since the position put him less than a foot away from the man’s arm.
“Khaalid.” The bounty hunter inclined his head in a nod, all business, but then a smirk teased his lips. “Do you find me attractive, or do you always sit this close to people you’ve just met?”
Akstyr’s instinct was to scowl and scoot the chair away, but it might be better to act as if the comment didn’t bother him. He wasn’t some young rube. He was calm and unflappable. “Enh, you’re decent.”
“Quite true, yes.” Khaalid eyed him up and down, and Akstyr struggled not to panic. He hadn’t offered some sort of flirtation, had he? “You’re either fearless or stupid to want a meeting with me,” Khaalid said. “Care to opine on which it might be?”
Relief washed over Akstyr when the bounty hunter switched to business, but he stiffened as soon as the man finished speaking. “Why do you say that?” Akstyr asked, figuring that sounded better than confessing to either of the two options.
Khaalid slipped a hand into his pocket. Akstyr tensed, thinking the man might pull out a weapon, but he removed a piece of paper. Rather leisurely, he unfolded it and held it up for Akstyr’s perusal.
On the paper was a clumsy sketch of himself. He wouldn’t have recognized it except for the spiky hair and an inset image of an oversized hand with a Black Arrow brand clearly displayed. Words under the drawing read, “Wanted dead: Akstyr, former Black Arrow and wizard. 5,000 ranmyas. To be paid upon proof of death by Trevast the Terror, the Madcats.”
It was the first Akstyr had heard of the bounty. It probably should have scared him, but mostly it irritated the piss out of him. Trevast was buddies with Tuskar, the Black Arrows’ leader and Akstyr’s old boss. Amaranthe had sweet-talked Tuskar into leaving Akstyr alone-there’d been an implied threat that Sicarius wouldn’t stand for an attack on Akstyr-but Tuskar was afraid of magic and had never liked Akstyr, so he’d probably talked Trevast into putting the bounty out. Too much of a coward to do it himself and risk Sicarius’s ire.
“Fresh news to you?” Khaalid returned the poster to his pocket.
Akstyr shrugged. “Only bounties put out by enforcers are legal. As far as I know, they don’t particularly want me.” Only because they didn’t know that he practiced the mental sciences, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. “From what I hear, you kill gangsters and are on good terms with the enforcers. You won’t turn me over to some street thug.”
“But you run with people who the enforcers do want. The emperor too for that matter.”
“Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I’m listening,” Khaalid said.
“They say you’re good, but you’re not nearly as well known as Sicarius.”
“Irrelevant,” Khaalid said, his eyebrows descending. “I hunt villains. I don’t assassinate honorable citizens.”
“He’s a villain, right? Why don’t you hunt him?”
Khaalid’s lips thinned.
“The villains you’re hunting would fear you more if you could say you’d taken him down,” Akstyr pointed out. “Think what it would do for your reputation. Think of the prices you could command then.”
Khaalid leaned back in his chair. “I’ve decided. You’re fearless and stupid. You’d betray someone you run with, someone exceedingly dangerous, and for what? You want me to kill him and give you a cut of the money?”
“Look, he’s as mean and cruel as they get.” Not really, Akstyr thought, but he did catch himself rubbing his neck and remembering the time Sicarius had threatened him if he didn’t do what Amaranthe said. “Somebody’s got to rid the world of him.”