I'd been able to procure a stack of firewood from a desert tree growing outside the city wall. With my magic I cut the tree into pieces and shoved them into a burlap sack I stole from Leila's house, along with a bit of flint from the pile beside her stove, and here I was, with everything I needed to cast the Fire of Amkarja. A stack of wood, a piece of flint, and my own blood.
I began to work, slowly and methodically. I arranged the firewood in a circle, making a neat, even pile. Putting off the inevitable. When I was finished I stepped back, my arms crossed over my chest. It was cold without the sun, and I shivered beneath my armor and my robes, although I wasn't sure I was shivering from the cold.
I knew how the fire was supposed to work: I would cast it, using my theoretical knowledge, and the magic would draw me in close, making me a part of the fire. The flames would show me the faces of those who were lost. I would ask the fire to show me Lisim Sarr. Because I am Jadorr'a, and because I gave a part of myself up, it would comply, although I knew I would have to be careful, I would have to be polite. Armed with this new information, I could travel through the shadows to kill Sarr in his bed, completing my commission and saving the lives of the people in the pleasure district.
Once it was done, I would need to ask the Order to send help to extinguish the flames. I wouldn't be able to do it on my own, and if I left it, the fire would burn and burn until the end of the universe.
Enough dawdling. I had until sunrise to complete my commission.
I pulled out the flint and held it, measuring its weight in my hand. Then I struck it, tossed the tiny flame onto the wood, and watched as it all caught fire. I grabbed my knife and poised it over my forearm. My tattoos glowed, sensing the magic I was about perform. I closed my eyes. I thought of the words, an ancient spell in the language of the Order, one I knew perfectly. I knew everything perfectly. I had just never done it before.
I began to chant.
At first the words were only words, but as they spilled out of my mouth they transformed into magic, and I no longer belonged to myself. My voice was no longer my own. It was the voices of the lost, calling forth the Fire of Amkarja. The knife pierced my skin. I wasn't expecting it. My eyes flew open at the jolt of pain. The knife dug deeper. Blood gushed over my arm. No. No. This wasn't right. It was supposed to be a nick, enough to draw a few drops --
Enough of me remained that I was able to yank the knife away and fling blood into the already-golden flames, completing the spell and igniting the fire. Something whispered at the back of my head. A bit of wisdom. A warning. Don't look.
I looked.
It wasn't right. I was supposed to see the lost, figures twining and dancing in the gold of the fire. But instead I saw myself, my face twisted and monstrous. The true me, I thought. The face of an assassin.
Fear flooded through my body. My arm burned from where I had lost control of my knife.
"I'm not lost," I said to the fire.
It roared in response, letting off great waves of heat. Forced by the magic, I drifted close to the fire, wanting to be a part of it, to feel the flames wrap around me like a blanket. I vaguely remembered my task. My commission. "Lisim Sarr," I managed to choke out. "Please, I need to find Lisim Sarr."
My face-in-the-fire snarled at me. Lisim Sarr didn't seem so important anymore. Only the fire; the golden sputtering light. I was close enough to touch it. I knelt down in the sand and leaned forward. The smoke tickled my eyes. The flames licked at my face.
The pain was dazzling.
I screamed. The left side of my face felt as if it had been ripped away. I screamed and fell backward and screamed and screamed and when I hit the ground I didn't hit sand, I hit floorboards, rough-hewn, cold, damp. I couldn't see out of my left eye, everything was blurred and indistinct, but out of my right I saw that overhead was a gapped ceiling of the sort they had in the ice-islands.
"Who the hell are you?"
A man's voice. It cut momentarily through the shriek of my pain. I rolled onto my right side. My left side was still burning, the pain moving inside of me now, sliding into my bloodstream. I lifted my head. The man was wrapped in shaggy furs, but he wasn't an ice-islander. He was Empire. He was a Lisirran.
He was Lisim Sarr, my magic whispered.
For a blinding moment I didn't know what to do. Sarr leaned over me, squinting, and then his eyes went wide, and he recognized me, bleeding and burning though I was, and through my good eye I saw him drawing up his magic.
The Order trained me well, all those years ago, when I was nothing but a scared little boy. They left me with no choice but to be an assassin in all moments. The pain was paralyzing, but still I conjured up my speed, what little remained of it. In one blurred motion I pulled out my sword and I drew it across Sarr's belly. His blood splattered across the floor, and he died. I didn't feel anything. Everything hurt too much.
I reached out one shaking hand and slapped it into his blood. I didn't trust my own blood; it had betrayed me to the fire. But I used the blood of this wicked man and I fell backward through the shadows, through Kajjil, back over the sea and the ice, back to the Empire.
#
I was in a bed, soft and luxurious and familiar. I sank into the blankets. I couldn't feel my body; it was like being in Kajjil, but I wasn't in Kajjil. I wasn't at the Order either. This wasn't an Order bed. It smelled of river water and perfume.
"Leila." My voice rasped and came out barely above a whisper.
"Shhh, don't talk." A shadow fell over me. I was aware of a hand stroking my hair but I couldn't feel it.
"I can't feel --"
"Oh, Naji, you never listen. I asked you not to talk." The bed moved beneath me. I turned my head a little. Leila was sitting beside me, her hand stroking my hair. I saw this but didn't feel it.
"You were very stupid," she said.
I didn't answer.
"I told you not to go after him."
Him. Sarr. I'd killed him. Only then did I notice the yellow sunlight in the windows. I'd completed my commission. But I still felt like I was being punished.
I tried to sit up and Leila nudged me back down, gently. "You aren't well. I worked a spell for the pain but I'm afraid it's too strong for you to go wandering around."
"I don't feel myself."
"Well, that's what I had to do to take the pain away." She shrugged. There was something in her expression I couldn't place. Distance or sadness or revulsion. Or maybe all three mixed together. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know what to make of any of this. I wondered if the fire was still burning in the desert. It needed to be extinguished.