The Taste of Waterfruit and Other Stories (Story Portals) Read online

  Eventually, Katya crept onto a balcony and found Zaki. Othman’s younger son was sending his followers through one or another of the doorways ringing the open space below.

  Katya sent her cobra crawling down a staircase.

  * * *

  “To kill Zaki,” Othman said.

  “No,” Katya said. “Under the circumstances, that would have been acceptable. But I didn’t think it was likely, and it wasn’t a part of the design.”

  * * *

  Zaki had thrown a scalpel into the cobra. He nudged the reptile with his toe to make sure it was really dead, then bent down beside Yusef’s corpse and picked it up for a closer look.

  A last trace of blue light glimmered in its eyes. Then the whole scaly length of it melted away and left him with an empty hand. Without a doubt, the reptile had been a product of his sister’s sorcery.

  “There will be more of these,” he said. “We need to keep an eye out for them as well as our quarry.”

  “Are you sure that will be good enough?” Saqr asked, a frown making his long face more saturnine than usual, his blowpipe clutched in a leather-gloved hand. “I mean, can we be certain this was an accident?”

  Inwardly, Zaki sighed. Saqr was the steadiest and most sensible of his followers, but that didn’t mean much. As he’d learned his whole life through, other people were messy creatures prone to irrational notions and erratic behavior. Even his scheming spider of a father was still agonizing over his mother’s death years after the fact, and his beast of a brother had imagined that the disappearance of Zaki’s favorite concubine might keep him away from the castle. He didn’t understand such stupidity, but, happily, incomprehension had never stopped him from exploiting the edge superior clarity afforded.

  “Do you think,” he asked, “that Manal has decided to kill Numair and me instead of the assassin? She wouldn’t do that. She understands that a lone woman, even this ‘Lady Kat,’ is an easier target and a surer way to get what she wants.”

  “Maybe,” Saqr said. “Still—“

  “I know you’re accustomed to skirmishing with the other factions, but they won’t bother with that tonight, because our real errand is a matter of some urgency. And yet here you stand, Saqr, wasting time with blather. I wonder what your mother would say. Perhaps I should call on her and ask. I could also inquire if she still lives in fear of losing the sight in her other eye.”

  Saqr turned pale and swallowed. “Please, ya fendim, you know I didn’t mean anything. The fellows and I are all here to do whatever you tell us.”

  “In that case, get to work.”

  * * *

  Othman sneered. “Since you claim to know so much about us, you should have known your trick wouldn’t work. Zaki’s too cunning.”

  Katya smiled. “A single stone can sometimes start an avalanche. But if it doesn’t, you can toss another. And another after that.”

  * * *

  Katya assumed Zaki’s men would sweep the entire area, upper levels included. So she slipped out to a nearby building and waited, dodging another cobra and a contingent of Numair’s crossbowmen along the way.

  When she made her way back to the snake-bitten corpse, Zaki and his followers had moved on, just as she’d hoped. What was unfortunate was that they’d taken the dead thief’s blowpipe darts with them.

  That meant Katya would have to move in close to make her next kill and slip away again unseen. It would be more difficult, but not impossible. She appropriated the dead man’s garrote and skulked onward.

  She found a squad of Numair’s crossbowmen investigating the arches that opened off a courtyard with a dry, guano-spattered fountain in the center. She circled around, crept toward one of the archways through the darkness on the other side, and then tossed a pebble to make a little clicking noise. A cutthroat came through the opening warily but looked first in the direction of the noise. Which meant he turned away from her.

  She drove the heel of her hand into the back of his head to stun him and make him easier to strangle. But he still thrashed and kicked as the knotted cord cut into his neck. His comrades called to one another and rushed to investigate the commotion. She could hear their scurrying footsteps.

  Fortunately, death arrived first. She left the garrote around the Red Tiger’s neck but, hoping no one would miss it in the excitement, snatched up his arbalest. She retreated into the darkness just as the first of his friends appeared silhouetted in the arch.

  There hadn’t been time to grab the dead man’s case of quarrels, but she only needed the bolt already loaded in the crossbow to kill one of Manal’s addicts. It was actually more difficult to make her escape afterwards. His comrades instantly charged her hiding place with all the violent energy their drug provided. Luckily, it made them into sprinters, not long-distance runners, and she managed to keep away from them until they lagged behind.

  Like the other cutthroats, they left their dead comrade where he’d fallen. Unlike the other two factions, they didn’t rely on a particular weapon that was recognizably their own. But they did have the purple stains on their raw, gnawed fingertips. Katya rubbed the sharkskin grip of a leaf-shaped throwing knife on the corpse’s digits until some of the residue came off.

  * * *

  “And so it continued,” Katya said, “round and round and round.”

  Othman felt sick in the pit of his stomach. Not out of pity for any of the individuals who’d perished. After Intisar died, he’d handed off the day-to-day operations of the Red Tigers to his children, and didn’t even know all the current members. But it galled him to imagine that the organization as a whole might be weakened and diminished.

  “And you could just...do this?” he asked. “It didn’t even matter that everyone was hunting you?”

  “No,” Katya said, “it did.” The fire had burned down to embers, but the first wan light of dawn was shining through the casement to gleam on her smooth olive cheek. “I was playing tricks on them, but at the same time, they were herding me. I was gambling I could change their priorities before I ran out of room.”

  * * *

  Manal’s man lay where he’d fallen, with a blowpipe dart in the back of his neck and one purple-fingered hand outstretched. His face a different shade of purple thanks to the broken nose Numair had given him, Ubayy looked down at the corpse and said, “Another one.”

  “Not one of ours,” Numair said.

  “But we’ve already stumbled across two of our own dead,” Ubayy said. “Zaki and Manal’s men are killing each other and us, too.”

  The men behind him growled and muttered.

  “It’s not Tigers killing each other,” Numair gritted. “It’s Lady Kat, and the best way to protect ourselves is to keep looking for her until we catch her.”

  “Ya fendim, please, just think about it. We don’t know the Lady Assassin is even here.”

  “Don’t be an idiot! Anis saw her!”

  “He saw a shadow on a wall, for just an instant before it disappeared. Who knows what it really was?”

  Making a show of it, Numair hung his crossbow on his belt and closed his fists. “I can beat you down again if that’s what it takes to pound sense into your skull. I can beat all—“

  Someone gasped.

  Numair pivoted. Framed in an archway, two more of Manal’s men stood staring at their fallen friend and the Red Tigers gathered around the body.

  “It wasn’t us,” Numair said, and he meant to add, look at the dart. But before he could get the words out, the addicts charged.

  His own men met them with a ragged, clacking volley of crossbow bolts. One of Manal’s followers dropped, but, amazingly, the other kept coming, staggering with two quarrels in his chest.

  Numair’s followers didn’t mind. After hours of futile, nerve-wracking seeking in the dark, they were happy to have an outlet for their frustrations. They drew their scimitars and slashed Manal’s man until his legs collapsed beneath him, then went on hacking him, and his comrade, too.

  They were
still at it when yet another addict appeared on a balcony overhead, spied them, whirled, and vanished through a doorway, all before Numair could lift his crossbow for a shot.

  “Curse it!” he snarled.

  “What?” Ubayy asked. He hadn’t seen the wretch overhead.

  His incomprehension was infuriating. Numair’s hand trembled with the urge to shoot him in the belly. “Another of Manal’s people just spotted you all, and when he tells her what he saw you doing, she’s going to believe we decided to kill our rivals. And she’s going to strike back. So rejoice, jackass! You’re about to get the fight you wanted.”

  * * *

  “Obviously,” Katya said, “the three groups couldn’t fight each other and look for me at the same time. It wasn’t difficult to sneak to a spot from which I could watch the battle.”

  * * *

  Manal had never seen a conflict as deadly as the three-way struggle in the courtyard with the fountain. It was a chaos of streaking missiles, slashing blades, and howling, screaming combatants.

  That was why she was happy to be on the battlements above it. It was safer.

  Or so she’d assumed. But as she selected a target for her next spell, Numair lunged through the doorway at the end of the wall-walk. Somehow he’d fought his way through the guards she’d counted on to block the stairs.

  He shot his crossbow, and she tried to jerk aside. A shock jolted her as the quarrel pierced her anyway. But she couldn’t think about that, couldn’t let it slow her down, because he dropped the arbalest, whipped out his scimitar, and rushed her.

  She tossed Yasirah out of her sleeve and gasped out words of power. Quicker than the eye could follow, the cobra grew to the size of the largest python and struck at Numair.

  Who met her with a stop cut to her wedge-shaped head. And, to Manal’s astonishment, Yasirah collapsed and dwindled as she thrashed.

  Numair bounded over the snake and her death throes and sliced Manal across the torso. The next thing she knew, she was on her knees, with no memory of dropping.

  He sneered down at her. “The assassin made fools of us all, sister. But I’m glad it worked out this way. I’ve always wanted to kill you and Zaki, and after you’re gone, what choice will Father have but to bequeath the Tigers to me?”

  Manal assumed she already was “gone,” or as good as. But curse her to the blackest depths of Hell if she allowed her killer to survive her. She flung herself forward, wrapped her arms around Numair’s legs, and, clinging, croaked a spell. She used every bit of her vitality to empower the magic, for, after all, she had no further use for it anyway.

  The power flowed from her nearly as fast as her life’s blood, forming first into tendrils of blue mist and then, as the darkness took her, solidifying into a dozen cobras. They crawled up Numair’s body, striking repeatedly.

  * * *

  “It was beautiful,” Katya said, “but not perfect. For that, all three would have needed to kill one another with their own hands. But it would have taken phenomenal luck to accomplish that.”

  * * *

  Zaki crept through the dark tower peering for “Lady Kat.” Surely she was somewhere nearby, probably in an elevated position that afforded a good view of the bloody spectacle unfolding in the courtyard. In her place, he certainly would have wanted to observe the fruits of his labors.

  With luck, she believed her strategy was working perfectly. He required his men to dress in the same blacks and grays he favored precisely so an enemy would have difficulty picking him out from the crowd. And since he’d ordered them into battle with Numair and Manal’s followers despite the senseless, wasteful nature of the conflict, she ought to think he was fighting in their midst.

  If she did, she’d underestimated him. Except for that miscalculation, though, her strategy really had proven effective, and he saluted an intellect only slightly inferior to his own. He wondered how she would have conducted herself if fate had brought her to his table. What ingenious lies and blandishments would she have spun to persuade him to stop the pain? How long would she have lasted before she broke?

  The sight of a form in a dark hooded cloak put an end to his musings. Lady Kat was kneeling behind the parapet of a balcony.

  He slipped a scalpel from its sheath. He could unquestionably hit the target from here, but he needed to slip a pace or two closer to be sure of a kill. He glided forward.

  And saw what the gloom had hitherto obscured. There wasn’t a human body inside the cape and hood. The shape was wrong. The cloth was hanging on some other sort of object.

  He started to whirl. But before he could, something whizzed across his throat, and wetness spilled down his chest.

  * * *

  “It may comfort you,” Katya said, “to know the Red Tigers didn’t lose all their best men. Once the chieftains were all dead, the underlings stopped fighting, for what did they have to gain from it, anyway? What did they ever gain from your children’s hatred of one another?”

  Othman shook his head. The dreamlike feeling was growing stronger again. “Nothing, I suppose.”

  “Well,” Katya said, “that’s my report. I brought along trinkets taken from the three bodies, ornaments you’ll surely recognize, if you need proof that I’ve executed my commission.” She paused, giving him a chance to respond. “If not, I’d like my fee.”

  “You can’t really expect me to pay you.”

  “I did think you might be reluctant. But, fortunately, you’re a wealthy man, and you live like one. This very study is full of precious things.” She rose, turned to a shelf, and picked up a jade vase. “This looks valuable. I’ll take it, and we’ll call it even.”

  The piece had been one of Intisar’s favorites, and, somehow, seeing it in Katya’s grasp finally spurred Othman into action. Faster than he’d moved in years, he leaped up, seized his scimitar where it sat ready to hand, snatched it hissing from its scabbard, and cut at the assassin’s back.

  She sidestepped, and the slash fell short. She whipped out her own sword, caught her attacker’s weapon in a bind, and spun it out of his aching arthritic fingers, all without ever even fumbling her hold on the vase.

  Othman glared at her. “Kill me, then.”

  “I never hurt a client. Now that our business is through, I’ll simply bid you good morning.” She backed toward the casement with her blade still leveled at his chest.

  “I’ll make the Tigers stronger than before!” he said. “I’ll come after you again!”

  “I doubt it,” she said as she disappeared.

  He stared after her, too choked with rage and grief—grief, perhaps, even for his children—to call for his household guards. He was still staring when the door clicked open behind him.

  He turned to see hulking Ubayy—who’d suffered a flattened nose—handsome but consumptive-looking Latif, and gloomy, horse-faced Saqr coming in. Since each had risen to a certain prominence within the Tigers, Othman knew them all at least a little.

  “Lady Kat!” he said. “She was just here!” His hand shaking, he pointed at the open casement.

  Latif snorted. “Two dozen of us dead, and still, that’s all he cares about.”

  “Get her!” Othman said. “I order you!”

  “Well,” said Saqr, “that’s the thing. You were the leader while Zaki, Manal, and Numair were alive because they could make us obey you. But without them, you’re just an old man who hasn’t really even tried to run things in a long time.”

  “I founded the Red Tigers,” Othman said, “and there are plenty who remember that! Members who will take revenge if you hurt me!”

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” Ubayy said and picked up a pillow from a divan. “If you don’t struggle too much, it’ll be just like passing away in your sleep.”

  A Glamour of Pearls

  by M P Ericson

  The square reeked of oxen, of hair and hide and other, stronger, and less pleasant scents. The creatures waited with megalith patience while each cart was unloaded. Only then did the g
rooms unlatch the shackles and lead the beasts away, while the carters lined up for pay and praise and to set hours for return.

  Trader work, not fit for wealthy merchants to foul their eyes and noses with. Zaida would not have come here on an ordinary day. But she had a particular errand with a particular man, and he should be here by now. Due in today or tomorrow, his messenger had promised, with an especially high quality shipment that she—his most honoured customer—would have first viewing of.

  And there she spotted him, exchanging pleasantries with one of his own carters, a stout woman in a dusty jerkin. Afif was the sort to chat with the staff.

  Zaida turned on her litter, reached out past the looped-back curtains to tap the arm of her messenger. "Go fetch him." While the smart young man hurried off, she sat up and arranged her pearl-embroidered robe around her.

  Really she hated to wear the thing in this heat. But she was tall and fine and reckoned beautiful, and she knew how to carry clothes, and it helped to show confidence in her own wares. She traded in pearl robes, and so she wore them—as did her staff, every one of them, no matter what challenge the weather laid down.

  Afif appeared at the side of the litter, dusty but cheerful. "This is indeed an honour! Though I take it you did not trouble yourself to come all this way just to welcome me?"

  "No." Zaida waved a hand in the direction of the bazaar. "I was in the mood to do my own shopping for a change. But I did hope to see you." She lowered her voice, dropped the smile of benign indifference. "I have a proposition for you, to our mutual advantage. Will you discuss it?"

  His own grin dropped at once. If he'd expected this, she was not surprised. It was, after all, the logical outcome of the way he had distinguished her from his other patrons—such as that odious Yosaf, the only merchant still seated higher than herself at the royal dinner each year.

  "A merger?" he asked in a low voice. "Is that what you have in mind?"

  "Of course."

  "Yes, I'll discuss it." He glanced up, refitted the grin, nodded to someone past her shoulder. "When and where?"