"This isn't right!" he babbled. "Do I look like a threat to the Empire? I just run a night market, that's all. I provide a service to the city of Lisirra --"
"I'm not here to kill you." I hauled him up and tossed him on the bed, although I kept my sword out, more as an intimidation tactic than anything else. My magic still crackled in the air and my blood was smeared across my palm, the wound stinging. Ajeeri looked around the room, his eyes bright. Trying to find a weakness in the magic, no doubt. I strengthened it.
"What do you want?" he asked, his eyes finally settling on me. "You say you're not here to kill me, yet you trap me in my own bed." He lifted his hands halfway to his head, as if they were shackled in invisible chains. "Blood magic." He spat the words out, the way most people do.
"I'm looking for Lisim Sarr."
Ajeeri went still. The frantic expression left his face.
I stepped toward him.
"I'm afraid I don't know a Lisim. Or a Sarr."
He'd gone too long without answering, and he was too glib, and I could smell the lie souring in the wave of magic.
"Don't lie to me." I lifted my sword. He turned his head and flinched a little but otherwise didn't move. "I heard you used to be partners."
"I've never had a partner. Do you know anything about me, assassin? Ask anyone in the pleasure district and they'll tell you what I always say: a partner's not worth the trouble. He'll take half and leave you when you need --"
I leapt onto him, digging one knee into his chest bone, pressing him back into the bed. He squawked and struggled to free himself until I held the sword at his throat.
"I heard," I said, "that you used to be partners."
Ajeeri stared at me. He didn't look frightened, exactly, only cautious, careful. I pressed the flat side of my sword against his neck. The heat from his skin clouded the metal.
"Who told you that?" Ajeeri asked.
I didn't answer him.
"Partners isn't the right word."
I waited for him to say more, but he only stared at me over the curve of the sword.
"So you do know him," I said.
"Everyone knows him. Everyone down here, in this charming piece of the city." He wriggled beneath me. "Do you think you could get up? Your knee's causing me a bit of pain -- "
"No. Why isn't partners the right word?"
"Because we weren't bloody partners. Why are you asking after him?"
I didn't say anything.
"You want to recruit him, is that it? He'd be good for your sort, I imagine, the sort of things he's done. I hear the assassins are always looking for the cruelest killers."
I hit Ajeeri in the nose, a short sharp jab. I did it without thinking. Blood flowed over his mouth and I added its strength, its life's light, to the magic already shimmering in his apartment.
"Curse you," he muttered.
"I don't kill dancing girls," I said.
Ajeeri glared at me over his smeared blood. "Not just dancing girls he's killed. Anyone he can find down here. Sailors, children…"
I thought of Leila. I almost have enough money to move out of the city. She knew who she’d helped. She’d called him a dangerous man. I felt vaguely sick. My magic rippled with spots of weakness.
Focus.
"If you weren't partners, what were you?"
Ajeeri sighed. "I mentored him, for a while. Taught him a bit of city magic. I'd the intention of letting him take over the night market when I couldn't stand it anymore. But he had a streak of darkness in him. Some people do. I should have recognized it earlier, but he was charming enough that it was difficult to see." Ajeeri paused and stared up at the ceiling. "It's not a good combination with city magic, that darkness. The worst parts of the city'll get under your skin and bring out the worst parts of you. That's what happened to him."
I eased my knee off his chest, but kept the sword at his throat.
"Why does he kill people?"
I hadn't meant to ask it. I didn't need to know his reasons. I only needed to know where to find him.
Ajeeri looked at me. "I don't know," he said. "You're the killer here. You tell me."
My magic trembled. Ajeeri grinned, white teeth against red blood. The sight of it was enough for me to regain my focus.
"Where is he?" I said, pressing the sword more firmly against his neck.
"I don't know!"
I tilted the sword, enough that he'd feel the pressure of the blade but not enough to cut him too deeply. A few drops of blood appeared. My magic swelled.
"I don't know! I don't keep in contact with a man like that. You want to find him, follow the damned bodies. We've gone a few weeks without one. It's won't be long, I'm sure."
I pulled away from him, leaving him sprawled on the bed. He lifted his head a little. My magic coruscated around us.
He was telling the truth.
#
Outside of Ajeeri's apartment, the sun was blinding, bouncing off the white walls of the houses and the far-off sparkle of the sea. For a moment it seemed like all the shadows had been wiped away, and I felt alone and vulnerable.
I walked to Leila's house. I didn't intend to; I intended to make my way to the city's center, where I could access the hall of records to investigate the murders. To follow the damned bodies, as Ajeeri had said. But I didn't have time, and after speaking to the woman in the dancehall, I didn't want to read about his murders anyway. I could imagine the sort of things darkness might draw out of a man like that. What abominations he'd create out of the magic of sacrifice.
Leila's house was closed up tight against the afternoon sun. I hadn't bothered to shift into the shadows on my way there, and I was soaked in sweat, my hair sticking to the side of my face. Penance, I suppose, for being what I am, for being something so close to Sarr. Blood magic is a sort of darkness. Maybe not the same, but close enough.
I banged on Leila's door until she answered. When she saw me standing on her porch, she didn't say anything, only held the door open for me. I went inside and stripped off my armor and collapsed on the divan she kept in her main room. She brought me water in a simple wooden cup. I drank it down. She sat down on the divan beside me and tangled her fingers up in my hair.
"Why did you walk here?" she asked.
"Why did you help Sarr?"
Her hand froze against the crown of my head. Silence swallowed us both.
"I told you not to track him," she whispered.
I sat up, pulling away from her. She didn't reach for me.
"Why did you help him?"
"I explained that to you."
"You knew what he did. You had to, if you were warning me away from him --"