Delivery (excerpt of the Hunter series, later books)
Careful when dealing with assassins...
The clanging was a bit of a giveaway.
Knowing what to look for, I spotted them almost instantly. No one ever looks above. Hah. Wrong. You trained me too well.
And who the hell would be looking down from those towers, I wondered. Big and small, slender and massive, they were spread around seemingly randomly through every district, reaching for the sun every which way and casting a shadow on anything beneath. Wouldn’t someone see them anyway, and alert the guards? Or was it normal for these people to take to the rooftops here, like it had seemingly been normal for these people to invite known assassins as guests of honor to their parties? There was no telling. Who the hell knew with this crazy city, where people floated along on nothing at will, randomly entered other people‘s property without a care, thinking they could just buy anything and anyone inside if they had enough money, and obviously thought it okay to just get anyone abducted who struck their fancy, if in a bind, as well as a wonderful gift to bind fucking demons to them?
Theirs wasn’t the effortless flow of motion my Papá espoused — that fell entirely under the header ‘supernatural’ as I knew by now. No matter how well-trained, no one could achieve that in a normal lifetime. But this one got close anyway. I watched them with equal parts apprehension and fascination as they swung and flipped and jumped their way over the rooftops, scaling walls in mere seconds and vaulting from one roof to the next in a way that should have been impossible with the added weight they carried slung over their back. Mostly with one hand, keeping the bundle in place? Damn, that person was good.
Likely better, I thought, thinking back to the only one of them I had seen in close quarters before. The one that had tried to kill our Emperor, half-succeeding, and had only been taken down because Ellie’s abilities were even more otherworldly. I held no illusions as to how much our contributions had settled that score. We had been a distraction mostly, at most some help to box them in so they wouldn’t avoid the fight. But it had been Elisa who’d actually fought them.
I wouldn’t be able to do the same yet. Not even with the Beast up. The thought made me uncomfortable. Especially as this one seemed even better than the one back then. And I had no Ellie right now.
I did, however, have my bow, held beneath the railing yet, but already strung; the same one she’d gifted me what felt like ages ago these days. A reassuring weight in my hand, just like the quiver full of sharp arrows at my side, hidden behind my leg by the way I was standing. I knew I‘d be able to send an arrow flying in half a heartbeat.
Much good that will do me, if they get close. Problem being, of course, that they had to get close, to deliver our ‘parcel’. If it had been a trap after all, I would have probably had the opportunity to finally find out, if I actually was what I suspected. Or unlike Papá after all.
Against a whole city in pursuit? But then, we were banking on being out and gone before most of them noticed. If they had done their job as well as they did parcours running, we might not even have to deal with a single guard. One could hope. At most, we hoped to only have to fend off a few while the ship raced away. Thus the bow and arrows.
“Tell them to get ready,” I mouthed back behind me and waved towards my brothers, still hidden below deck like everyone else. It wouldn’t be long now. We’d better be ready to race out of this damn harbor as fast as we could, and that meant sails at the ready.
The sailors soon came out to rig them for quick getaway; they‘d been waiting for the signal, not a boarding. This would be a switch-off, not some slow exchange. There was no telling how hot the pursuit after our delivery person would be, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to stay once the mages caught on to what was going on here. None of us, really.
If the assassins had betrayed us, they would have already caught us. There was a certain amount of calm in that thought. With ease. There was no need to set up some elaborate trap by faking to deliver what we had bargained for to get on our ship. This city was crawling with mages. And the worst kind, too. Simply sinking our ship with a few fireballs should have been easy.
Especially after the stories I’d heard, listening in. Burning people alive, supposedly accidentally, because there was too little water around. Because they’d forgotten or never knew that normal people could not withstand fire as they could a dousing of water. Sweet Balance, how this world is out of order.
Just like this. Me, hiring one of those assassins to extract a kidnapped friend. The thought was as absurd as my reality right now. I never even knew who they would send.
I’d just been given a name and walked into some sleazy downtown bar in this horrid City of Towers, trusting directions that might’ve just as well lead to some torture chamber, because I didn’t fucking know anything about this place and there was no other way to get her back, either. I still couldn’t believe my best friend had insisted on coming. Again. Especially after how our last trip of a similar kind had turned out. It was unreal how smooth the contact with this assassin’s guild had gone in comparison. A fucking puppeteer. Someone had a very twisted sense of humor there. But then, would you ever expect anything else from an assassin?
Jaguar, I settled on, as they got closer. Not quite the fluid grace of Sintram, but definitely in line with the grace of one those big cats we’d seen in the jungle. Sinuous speed, powered by strong muscles underneath. More like a churning waterfall than silk and soft water flowing effortlessly around any obstacle. An explosion of hidden power any time they moved. Impressive speed, too. It had taken them barely a few minutes to get across the district in front of those sky-reaching towers ahead and to our ship laying at rest moored to one of the quays in the bay. The rope was only loosely slung around the pole on purpose. That peace was as illusionary as any safety was right now. I could only hope they’d done their job well and did not have mages already hot on their trail, or we’d all be fucked. Simply and surely. We were not equipped to deal with this people, no matter if the assassin moving to board in one smooth movement right now decided to fight with us or not.
Fight? Mad Gods, there wouldn’t even be a fight.
He landed a bit away from me, taking a few quick steps to reach me while I recovered, sliding between the sailors busy bustling around like a shadow, after startling one of them into a soft yelp with his landing, just as I had moved to kick down the plank for him, and barely kept back seeing him jump instead. Him? Yeah, him.
“You.”
The whisper was out before I could stop myself.
There was nothing at all to indicate who he was. He might have hidden any gender, almost any body type beneath those flowing robes concealing his true form. His face was almost entirely covered by a shawl, as black as the rest of his clothing. But there was this tiny strip he’d had to leave open around his eyes.
Unable to do all that without physical vision. Good to know. It might have been a ruse, of course, to conceal the full amount of his abilities, but it didn’t seem likely.
What little skin was visible between those folds of cloth, mostly around his eyes —and his hands that curiously were not hidden by gloves, as it would’ve been easy to do— was pitch-black. And I do not mean the natural kind of darkest possible skin color. It was very much un-natural. It was a void. Sucking in any color, seemingly sucking in any available shadow towards him. It was darker than the darkest color the alchemists had succeeded to create for his clothing – and that was already not a color you could normally buy anywhere. Don’t get me wrong: We knew black cloth. Like, really black. Naturally sourced cloth color was never that dark. I’d seen the alchemical variety before, though. This was it. And it looked lighter, compared to his skin.
I finally understood then why their nickname was ‘Nightmares’.
Aptly named.
His eyes, though…
They were the natural kind. The white of his eyeballs almost blazing, against that void. And the irises were dark, but they were naturally dark. The darkest black-brown you could find, reminiscent of coals, but all natural.
And I’d seen them before. In an entirely different face. One that had been only a light brown. So they can’t change their eyes. I had never heard the stories yet, about how they were able to shift, putting up illusionary masks of some kind, posing as entirely different people. I would hear them only afterwards. But in this one moment, strangely suspended in time, when our eyes met in person for the first time?
My instincts knew, confronted with this. Just as I knew him.
I couldn’t have explained how I recognized him. I just did.
Somehow, I’d assumed they’d send someone else. Anyone else, really, but the one person who had spoken to us in broad daylight. Wouldn’t they know who’d done it now? Maybe that was the point. It all seemed to be fun and games to them.
But I hadn’t been prepared for it.
Thus, the You.
I couldn’t hold it back. I didn’t even realize why I should. Yet.
It was out before I could do anything about it. Before I could even think of why I should not speak my wisdom. It hadn’t been a conscious choice. Barely a whisper.
“Over there,” I motioned, trying to cover up my mistake, without even yet knowing why I did that; just an increasingly queasy feeling in my stomach telling me I’d just done something wrong. Maybe because one shouldn’t look assassins in the eye. Much better to keep their hands and feet in view…
But of course he’d heard, in that split second before I half-turned away from him, indicating the hatch in the ship’s floor, and, honestly? Trying to hide the expression on my face away that I felt burning there.
Because those coals had suddenly started to catch fire at that.
Shit. What had I done?