"Someone's going to come back here to check on me if I don't take my last fee front—"
"Then fix it on the way." Steps were headed toward the door. "Haste! Or there'll be bloodletting."
"Get down," Sophonisba groaned. "I'll get rid of her." Gillian slipped within the room and closed the shutters, stood in the dark against the wall while Sophonisba cracked the door and handed the fee out, heard a gutter dialogue and Sophonisba pleading indisposition. She handed out more money finally, as if she were parting with her life's blood, and closed the door. She looked about with a pained expression. "You owe me, you owe me—"
"I'm carrying something dangerous," Gillian said.
"It's being tracked, do you understand? Nessim doesn't like the smell of it."
"O gods."
"Just so. It's trouble, old friend. Priest trouble."
"Then take it to priests."
"Priests expect donations. I've the scent of gold, dear friend. It's rich men pass such things back and forth, about things they don't want authority to know about."
"Then throw it in a canal."
"Nessim's advice. But it doesn't take the smell off my hands or answer questions when the trackers catch me up—or you, now, old friend."
"What do you want?" Sophonisba moaned. "Gillian, please—"
"Do you know," she said softly, reasonably, "if we take this thing— we, dear friend—to the wrong party, to someone who isn't disposed to reward us, or someone who isn't powerful enough to protect us so effortlessly that protection costs him nothing—who would spend effort protecting a whore and a thief, eh, Sophie? But some there are in this city who shed gold like gods shed hair, whose neighborhoods are so well protected others hesitate to meddle in them. Men of birth, Sophie. Men who might like to know who's paying vast sums of gold for favors in this city."
"Don't tell me these things."
"I'll warrant a whore hears a lot of things, Sophie. I'll warrant a whore knows a lot of ways and doors and windows in Korianth, who's where, who has secrets—"
"A whore is told a lot of lies. I can't help you."
"But you can, pretty Sophonisba." She held up the razor. "I daresay you know names and such—even in the king's own hall."
" No!"
"But the king's mad, they say; and who knows what a madman might do? What other names do you know?"
"I don't know anyone, I swear I don't."
"Don't swear; we've gods enough here. We improvise, then, you and I." She flung the shutter open. "Out, out with you."
Sophonisba was not adept at ledges. She settled herself on it and hesitated. Gillian thought of pushing her; then, fearing noise, took her hands and lei her down gently, followed after with a soft thud. Sophonisba stood shivering and tying her laces, the latter unsuccessfully.
"Come on," Gillian said.
"I don't walk the alleys," Sophonisba protested in dread; Gillian pulled her along nonetheless, the back ways of the Grand Serpentine.
They met trouble. It was inevitable. More than once gangs of youths spotted Sophonisba, like dogs a stray cat, and came too close for comfort. Once the cant was not password enough, and they wanted more proof: Gillian showed that she carried, knife-carved in her shoulder, the brotherhood's initiation, and drunk as they were, they had sense to give way for that. It ruffled her pride. She jerked Sophonisba along and said nothing, seething with anger and reckoning she should have cut one. She could have done it and gotten away; but not with Sophonisba. Sophonisba snuffled quietly, her hand cold as ice.
They took to the main canalside at last, when they must, which was at this hour decently deserted. It was not a place Gillian had been often; she found her way mostly by sense, knowing where the tall, domed buildings should lie. She had seen them most days of her life from the rooftops of the Sink.
The palaces of the great of Korianth were walled, with gardens, and men to watch them. She saw seals now and then that she knew, mythic beasts and demon beasts snarling from the arches over such places.
But one palace there was on the leftside hill, opposed to the great gold dome of the King's Palace, a lonely abode well walled and guarded.
There were guards, gilt-armed guards, with plumes and cloaks and more flash than ever the rufflers of midtown dared sport. Gillian grinned to herself and felt Sophonisba's hand in hers cold and limp from dread of such a place.
She marked with her eye where the guards stood, how they came and went and where the walls and accesses lay, where trees and bushes topped the walls inside and how the wall went to the very edge of the white marble building. The place was defended against armed men, against that sort of threat; against—the thought cooled her grin and her enthusiasm—guilded Assassins and free-lancers; a prince must worry for such things.
No. It was far from easy as it looked. Those easy ways could be set with traps; those places too unguarded could become deadly. She looked for the ways less easy, traced again that too-close wall.
"Walk down the street," she told Sophonisba. "Now. Just walk down the street."
"You're mad."
"Go."
Sophonisba started off, pale figure in blue silks, a disheveled and unlaced figure of ample curves and confused mien. She walked quickly as her fear would urge her, beyond the corner and before the eyes of the guards at the gate.
Gillian stayed long enough to see the sentries' attention wander, then pelted to the wall and carefully, with delicate fingers and the balance Genat had taught, spidered her way up the brickwork.
Dogs barked the moment she flung an arm over. She cursed, ran the crest of the thin wall like a trained ape, made the building itself and crept along the masonry— too much of ornament, my lord!—as far as the upper terrace.
Over the rim and onto solid ground, panting. Whatever had become of Sophonisba, she had served her purpose.
Gillian darted for a further terrace. Doors at the far end swung open suddenly; guards ran out in consternation. Gillian grinned at them, arms wide, like a player asking tribute; bowed. They were not amused, thinking of their hides, surely. She looked up at a ring of pikes, cocked her head to one side and drew a conscious deep breath, making obvious what they should see; that it was no male intruder they had caught.
"Courier," she said, "for Prince Osric."
4
He was not, either, amused.
She stood with a very superfluous pair of men-at-arms gripping her wrists so tightly that the blood left her hands and the bones were about to snap, and the king's bastard—and sole surviving son—fingered the pouch they had found in their search of her.
"Courier," he said.
They were not alone with the guards, he and she. A brocaded troop of courtiers and dandies loitered near, amongst the porphyry columns and on the steps of the higher floor. He dismissed them with a wave of his hand; several seemed to feel privileged and stayed.
"For whom," the prince asked, "are you a courier?"
"Couriers bring messages," she said. "I decided on my own to bring you this one. I thought you should have it."
"Who are you?"
"A free-lance assassin," she said, promoting herself, and setting Prince Osric back a pace. The guards nearly crushed her wrists; they went beyond pain.
"Jisan," Osric said.
One of the three who had stayed walked forward, and Gillian's spine crawled; she knew the look of trouble, suspected the touch of another brotherhood, more disciplined than her own. "I was ambitious," she said at once. "I exaggerate."
"She is none of ours," said the Assassin. A dark man he was, unlike Osric, who was white-blond and thin; this Jisan was from southern climes and not at all flash, a drab shadow in brown and black beside Osric's glitter.