“And you want it to be somebody else, somebody who will take the risk and share the bounty with you.”
“I don’t want a share of the bounty, and I wouldn’t openly go against him. But someone like you… If you’re as good as they say, maybe you could do it. All I’m asking is a finder’s fee for pointing you in the right direction. I’ll tell you where he is and what I know about him. Including… his one weakness.”
Khaalid drank some of his green juice, though he took longer consuming and contemplating the beverage than normal. Akstyr hoped he was thinking things over. As far as Akstyr knew, Sicarius had no weaknesses, but he could make something up to entice this man. All he had to do was capture Khaalid’s interest, arrange to collect the finder’s fee, and send him off in the wrong direction. A part of him couldn’t help but think that he’d never have to worry about Sicarius again if he sent Khaalid in the right direction, but this man probably couldn’t do the job. And if Sicarius found out Akstyr had been behind the setup…
“How much of a finder’s fee are you looking for?” Khaalid asked.
Akstyr leaned back and crossed his leg over his knee, trying to appear indifferent over the conversation’s outcome, but inside he was jumping up and down and clenching his fist. Khaalid was interested.
“Fifty thousand ranmyas,” Akstyr said, expecting to negotiate. Twenty-five thousand ought to get him out of the empire and into a good school.
“You don’t want much, do you?” Khaalid asked.
“I want to make sure the only people who try are serious and honestly believe they can succeed. It’s a big risk for me. If you fall at Sicarius’s feet, and he questions you before he kills you…” Akstyr twitched a shoulder. “I want that ugly lizard out of the world, but I’m not looking to die in the process.”
“Hence why you’re trying to get someone else to risk dying.”
“Someone else who’s capable of killing Sicarius. I know I lack the skills.”
“You flatter me, but I imagine you flatter everyone you’re trying to talk to their deaths.”
“You’re supposed to be good.”
“What’s Sicarius’s one weakness?” Khaalid asked. From the abrupt way he shifted the topic, Akstyr guessed the man was trying to catch him off guard so he’d let the information slip.
“I’ll need to see your payment before I give you such a key detail.”
“Uh huh.” Khaalid finished his juice, left a coin on the table, and stood. “I am good. And intelligent. That’s why I’m not touching your offer.” He buckled on his sword harness.
Akstyr cursed to himself. He’d thought he had enticed the man. “I’ll tell you everything I know for twenty-five-thousand ranmyas.”
Khaalid tossed the folded wanted poster onto the table. “No, and if I were you, I’d get out of town unless Sicarius likes you enough to protect you from the money-hungry gangsters who are going to be wrestling with each other for a chance to get your head first. Given what you’re trying to do to him, I doubt that’s the case.”
Khaalid strode out of the juice cafe without a backward glance. Not tempted by the offer after all. Maybe Khaalid had been stringing Akstyr along to get more information. Information he might send along to someone else?
A clank sounded on the wall above the chair the bounty hunter had vacated. A bunch of grapes had rolled into a glass box, and a series of alternating ceramic pestles came down, mercilessly squishing the fruit.
Akstyr cursed again, this time out loud, and strode out of the cafe. Worried that he’d made a huge mistake, he forgot to pay attention to his surroundings. When a hand stretched out from behind a vendor’s cart to clasp his forearm, he jumped two feet.
He whirled toward the source, his own hand scrabbling for his knife, but he stopped before drawing the blade. A woman stood before him-a familiar woman. She was leaner than Akstyr remembered, with a hawkish nose and knobby wrists protruding from a clean but oft-patched dress. The long braid hanging over her shoulder was the same, though gray strands mingled with the black now.
Akstyr stepped back, pulling his arm from her grasp. With stiff formality, he said, “Mother.”
She smiled, a gesture he had rarely seen, and stepped forward, lifting her arms. She must have noticed his stiffness, for her hands dropped. “Son.” Her smile remained.
Akstyr searched the crowded street behind her. “Your sweet-thistle-dealing lover not around?”
“Lokvart? No. We… We’re not together any more.”
“I see.” Akstyr did not know if that made him glad or not. It’d been more than eight years since he’d seen his mother, and time had worn the edge off his bitterness. Sometimes he felt proud that he’d survived without her help, that he was learning the Science, and that he might be somebody who mattered someday.
“Yes.” His mother took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I know that probably doesn’t mean anything to you at this point, but I was wrong to… I never should have been with someone like that. When he made me choose you or…”
“The sweet thistle?”
“You or him, I should have left. But I was afraid of being alone again with no roof and no job and.. I’m sorry,” she repeated, then found her smile again. “You look good. You’re a man now.”
“Why are you here?” Akstyr eyed the street again. Though this wasn’t the type of neighborhood gangsters roamed, the new bounty on his head left him uncomfortable standing out in the open. “You haven’t looked for me for eight years. Why now?”
“Eight years? Has it been that long? It’s only been since this summer that I was able to wean myself away from the thistle.” She slipped a hand into a dress pocket and pulled out a paper.
Akstyr tensed. Not someone else toting around his new wanted poster.
But she unfolded a pair of newspaper clippings. “I’d thought… I’d feared you had died on the streets all those years ago. Then I saw your name this summer and again last week, mentioned with those other people that are… helping the city, is that right?” Moisture brimmed in her eyes. “I know you won’t believe this, but I’m proud of you.”
“Uh. All right.” If his mother had ever shown that she cared for him, Akstyr might have felt more at her proclamations, but all they were doing was making him uncomfortable.
She dabbed at her eyes with a worn dress sleeve. “I never thought a child born of the blood of a thieving rapist could ever be anything special.”
Akstyr jammed his hands into his pockets and resisted the urge to say that her blood wasn’t anything special either.
“But you’re doing something with your life, aren’t you?” She met his eyes. “You’re not going to be worthless like your Ma.”
What was he supposed to say to that? All Akstyr remembered of his mother was yelling, mostly yelling about what a burden he was and that she wished he’d never been born. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t had to fend for himself, stealing food and swiping clothes from lines strung between alley walls. These tears and kind words-apologies-were unfamiliar. A part of him wished to believe it was real, that time had changed things, changed her, but most of his parts were too busy being suspicious. To hunt him down after all these years, she had to want something.
“I have to go,” Akstyr said.
His mother stepped forward, a hand outstretched.
Akstyr stepped back again, and she dropped it. She closed her eyes and seemed to fight to mask a hurt expression on her face. Akstyr tried not to feel like a bastard, but she was making it hard.
“I’m busy,” Akstyr said. “That’s all. We’re getting ready for a mission.” Which was true. Amaranthe and the others might be back any hour.
“I understand,” his mother said. “But please tell me where I can find you again. It was chance that I saw you today.”
“I don’t know. We’re going to be out of the city for a while.”
“When do you leave? At least let me buy you one of those dog-shaped cookies that the bakers at West Quay make.”