"What are you talking about?"
"Oh, you know. Your dream last night."
All the air just whooshed out of my body like I'd been in a drunkard's fight.
"I ain't had no dream last night."
She laughed. "Fine, you didn't have a dream. But you know the stories. I can tell. I can smell them on you."
"The stories," I said. "What stories?" All I could see was the gray in her eyes, looming in close around me. And then something flickered in the room, like a candle winking out. And I knew. The assassins. That bogeyman story Papa used to tell me whenever I didn't mind him or Mama.
"Ah, I see you've remembered." The shark's smile came out again. I took a step backwards toward the door. "You're going to need my help. I live above the shop. When the time comes, don't delay."
I tried to smirk at her like I thought she was full of it, but in truth my whole body was shaking, and I was thinking about Tarrin yelling at me yesterday afternoon, trying to get me to come back. My father isn't afraid to send the assassins after his enemies. But men'll say anything to get you to do what they want. If Tarrin couldn't charm me onto his ship, he'd try to scare me. Well, it wasn't gonna work.
The shopkeeper tilted her head at me and then turned around, back toward the curtains. I darted out into the sunny street and took a deep breath. The eeriness of the shop faded into the background; out here there was just heat and sand and sun. Normal, comforting. Plus I had money hanging heavy in my pocket. I reached down to pat it. Enough to pay for a room at a cheap inn.
Fear still niggled at the back of my head, though. I hadn't thought about the assassins in years and years.
Papa talked about them like they were ghouls or ghosts, monsters come to take me away in the night. The stories always ended in the death of the intended victim. "They're relentless," he had said, one night when I was ten or eleven, my face red and itchy with anger. I'd sassed him or Mama or both, and probably spent some time down in the brig for it too, but by then we were in the captain's quarters. The lanterns swung back and forth above our heads, the lights sliding across the rough features of Papa's face. "You can't escape an assassin." He leaned forward, shadows swallowing his eyes. "Hangings, bumbling bureaucrats, dishonest crewman, jail – those you can talk your way out of, you try hard enough. But this kind of death is the only kind of death."
He always said that when he told me assassin stories – the only kind of death. It was this refrain I'd get in my head whenever I did something bad, like playing tricks on the navigator or trying to read one of Mama's spellbooks without permission. The assassins were blood magicians in addition to skilled fighters. They lived in dark lairs hidden in plain sight, like crocodiles. They were the last refuge of a coward, of a man too afraid to fight you himself – and that was why they were so dangerous. They gave power to cowards.
As I got older I realized, for all the stories, I ain't never heard of a pirate's out-of-battle death that couldn't be explained away by drink or stupidity. And at some point, I decided the assassins weren't real, or if they were, they weren't interested in tracking down a captain's daughter as punishment for not minding her elders. Or refusing marriage, for that matter.
So that's what I told myself as I cut through the sunlight, back toward the food vendors to buy myself a sweet lime drink. The woman was probably a witch in her spare time, trying to drum up business for her cut-rate protection spells, and the only thing stalking me in the night was some memory from my childhood. A story.
I paid for a room at an inn on the edge of town, not far from the day market. It was built into the desert wall, and my room had a window that looked out over the desert, which reminded me a bit of the ocean, the sand cresting and falling in the night wind. The room was small and bright and filled with dust, although clean otherwise – cleaner than my quarters on Papa's boat anyway.
I stayed in the inn for four days, and for four days nothing happened but dreams. They were the same one as the first night, me wandering around the black glass desert, waiting for somebody to find me, knowing I was going to die. I took to sleeping during the day – though that didn't stop the dreaming none – and went out as the sun dropped low and orange across the horizon, wasting my nights at the night market that was conjured up by sweet-smelling magic a few streets over from the day market's husk. The vendors at the night market hawked enchantments and magic supplies instead of food and clothing, spellbooks and charms and probably curses if you knew who to ask. It was a dangerous place for me to go: not cause I'd started believing in the assassins, but because you get a lot of scum hanging around the night markets, and the chance of somebody spotting me and turning me into the Hariri clan or my parents was pretty high.
But I went anyway, wearing my scarf even though the sun was down so I could pull it low over my eyes. I liked to listen in on the sandcharmers who worked magic from the strength of the desert. Mama could do the same thing but with the waters of the ocean, and it occurred to me, as I listened to the singing and the chanting, that I missed her. The most I'd ever been away from her – and from Papa too – was the three weeks I spent failing to learn magic with this sea witch named Old Ceria a couple years back. But that had been different, cause I knew Papa's boat would pick me up when the three weeks were up, and Mama'd be waiting for me on deck.
That wasn't going to happen now.
I spent a lot of my time daydreaming during those four nights, too, letting my mind wander off to what I was gonna do now that I wasn't tied to a Confederation ship no more. I knew I had to hide out till the Hariris got over the slight of me running away from the marriage, but once that all settled I'd be free to set out from Lisirra and make my fortune, as Mama used to say of all the young men who set sail with ships of their own. A ship of my own was what I really wanted, of course – what Confederation child doesn't? Course, the Confederation won't let women captain, and the Empire ain't nothing but navy boats and merchant ships, but I could always make my way south, where the pirates don't take the Confederation tattoo and don't adhere to Confederation rules, neither.
It was a nice thought to have, and there was something pleasant about spending the early mornings before I fell asleep planning out a way to get first to one of the pirates' islands – probably Bone Island, it's the biggest, which makes it easier to go unnoticed – and then down to the southern coast. The daydreams took my mind off the Hariris, at any rate, and most of the time they kept me from feeling that sharp pang of sadness over my parents.