There was jingling on the stairs, muffled behind the door. Devon picked up his ledger. The door opened.
“’Lo, Dev,” the guard said.
“Oh, hello, Gamble.” Devon sounded nervous.
“That courier find you?”
“Courier?”
“Little shite musta got lost. Everything fine up here?”
“Sure, just fine.”
“See ya round.”
Devon waited until the guard had been gone thirty seconds, and then he stepped close to the bed and started stuffing his pockets. Kylar couldn’t see with what.
Here it is. The guard would be far enough away now that even if Devon managed to cry out, he wouldn’t be heard. Devon stepped away from the bed toward the bureau and Kylar crawled out from beneath the bed like a bug. He stood and drew the knife. Devon was mere paces away. Kylar’s heart was pounding. He thought he could hear the rush of blood in his ears.
Kylar did everything right. Low ready stance, advancing quietly but quickly, balanced so that if at any moment the deader reacted, Kylar wouldn’t be caught flat-footed. He brought the knife up to eye level, preparing to grab Devon and give him what Durzo called the red grin—a slash across the jugular and deep through the windpipe.
Then he imagined Doll Girl giving him the look she’d given him when he took the biggest piece of bread for himself. What are you doing, Azoth? You know this is wrong.
He recovered late, and it was as if his training abandoned him. Kylar was inches away from Devon, and Devon still hadn’t heard him, but the very nearness panicked Kylar. He stabbed for Devon’s neck and must have made some sound, because Devon was turning. The knife bit into the back of Devon’s neck, hit spine, and bounced out. Because of his convulsively tight grip that Durzo would have beaten Kylar for, the knife bounced right out of his hand, too.
Devon turned and yelped. It seemed he was more surprised by Kylar’s sudden appearance than by the sting in his neck. He stepped back at the same time Kylar did. He put a hand to his neck, looked at his fingers and saw the blood. Then they both looked down to the knife.
Devon didn’t go for it. Kylar scooped up the knife and as he stood, Devon dropped to his knees.
“Please,” he said. “Please don’t.”
It seemed incredible. The man’s eyes were big with fear—looking at little Kylar, whose disguise made him look even smaller and younger. There was nothing frightening about him, was there? But Devon looked like a man who’s seen his judgment come. His face was white, eyes round, pitiful, helpless.
“Please,” he said again.
Kylar slashed his throat in a fury. Why didn’t he protect himself? Why didn’t he even try? He was bigger than Kylar. He had a chance. Why must he act like a sheep? A big stupid human lamb, too dumb to even move. The cut was through the windpipe, but barely clipped one jugular. It was deep enough to kill, but not fast. Kylar grabbed Devon’s hair and slashed again, twice, slightly up, so the blood shot down rather than up. Not a drop got on Kylar. He’d done it just like Durzo had taught.
There was a sound on the stairs. “Devon, I’m sorry,” Bev said before she even got into the room. “I just had to come back. I didn’t mean—” She stepped into the room and saw Kylar.
She saw his face, she saw the dagger in his hand, she saw him holding the dying Devon by his hair. She was a plain young woman wearing a white serving dress. Wide hips, wide-spaced eyes, mouth open in a little O and beautiful raven hair.
Finish the job.
The training took hold. Kylar was across the room in an instant. He yanked the woman forward, swept a foot in, pivoted, and she flipped over onto the ground. He was as inexorable as Durzo Blint. The woman was beneath him, face down on the carpet that covered this section of floor. The next move was to slide the knife between her ribs. She’d hardly feel it. He wouldn’t have to see her face.
He hesitated. It was his life against hers. She’d seen him. His disguise was good only as long as no one knew there was a fourteen-year-old murderer about. She’d seen his face. She had intruded on a deader. She was just collateral damage. An ancillary fatality, Blint said. A wetboy would do what needed to be done. It was less professional but sometimes unavoidable. It doesn’t matter, Blint had said. Just finish the job.
Blint only allowed him to live so long as he proved he could do everything a wetboy did, even without the Talent.
Yet here she was, face down, Kylar straddling her on the floor, the point of his dagger pricking her neck, his left hand twisting her hair, trying not to imagine the red blood blooming on her white servant’s dress. She’d done nothing.
Life is empty. Life is meaningless. When we take a life, we aren’t taking anything of value. I believe it. I believe it.
There had to be another way. Could he tell her to run? To tell no one? To leave the country and never come back? Would she do it? No, of course not. She’d run to the nearest guard. As soon as she was in the presence of some burly castle guard, any fear Kylar might inspire in her would look as small and weak as a guild rat with a knife.
“I told him what would happen if he stole from the Sa’kagé,” she said, her voice oddly calm. “That bastard. With everything else he took from me, he didn’t even have the decency to die alone. I was coming to apologize, and now you’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Kylar said, but he was lying. He had moved the knife to the correct place on her back, but it refused to move.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow shift on the stairs. He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge that he’d seen it, but he felt a chill. It was the middle of the afternoon; there were no torches burning now, no candles. That shadow could only be Master Blint. He’d followed Kylar. He’d watched everything. The job was for the Shinga, and it wouldn’t be botched.
Kylar slid the knife between her ribs, pulled it sideways, felt the shudder and the sigh of the woman dying beneath him.
He stood and pulled the knife from her flesh, his mind suddenly detached, pulling away from him as it had the day in the boat shop with Rat. He wiped the red blade on her white dress, sheathed it along his thigh, and checked himself in the room’s mirror for blood, just like he’d been taught.
It was all the sorrow in the world to him that he was clean. There wasn’t any blood on his hands.
When he turned, Blint stood in the open doorway, arms folded. Kylar just looked at him, still hovering somewhere behind his own body, glad for the numbness.
“Not great,” Durzo said, “but acceptable. The Shinga will be pleased.” He pursed his lips, seeing the distance in Kylar’s eyes. “Life is meaningless,” Durzo said, rolling a garlic clove between his fingers. “Life is empty. When we take a life, we take nothing of value.”
Kylar stared at him blankly.
“Repeat it, damn you!” Durzo’s hand moved and a knife blurred through the air, thunking into the bureau behind Kylar.
He didn’t even flinch. He repeated the words mechanically, fingers atingle, feeling again and again that easy slip of meat parting around the knife. Was it so easy? Was it so simple? You just pushed, and death came? Nothing spiritual about it. Nothing happened. No one was whisked to Count Drake’s heaven or hell. They just stopped. They stopped talking, stopped breathing, stopped moving, finally stopped twitching. Stopped.