First Kill
Authors: Jennifer Fallon
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Knowing is not the same as understanding
.
Seeing is not the same as witnessing
.
Killing is not the same as murder.
Kiam Miar ran through the mantra in his mind as the bare-chested stevedores secured the heavy lines of the trading ship to the Calavandra wharf, their dark skins glistening in the heat of the midday sun. The men hauled on the ropes, singing a melodic chant to aid the rhythm of their work, pulling the ship into shore. He looked around, trying to appear jaded and unimpressed. The long stone wharves were noisy and hot and reeked of fish. Despite that—and his outwardly calm demeanour—Kiam was filled with a nervous excitement he was hard-pressed to contain.
The city of Calavandra hugged the steep hills surrounding the harbour that was the lifeblood of this island, the largest of the Trinity Isles and arguably the most dangerous. Some of the houses clung perilously to the slopes as if their foundations were fashioned from claws rather than the pillars or stumps of more traditional buildings. Mostly painted white to reflect the heat, with flat roofs that often housed gardens or washing lines, the city appeared a jewel from afar, more like a slum at close quarters. Kiam’s father, Galon Miar, the current Raven of the Hythrun Assassins’ Guild, once remarked that Calavandra was like the poor abandoned child spawned by an unseemly mating of Greenharbour and Talabar with none of the other cities’ wealth or culture to recommend her.
But whatever the city was for most men, for Kiam Miar it was something else entirely.
Somewhere out there, he knew, probably watching him even now as the ship docked, was the assassin charged with overseeing this final test. Kiam didn’t know if the man—or woman—would reveal himself at some point. He didn’t know if his mentor’s task was to help or hinder Kiam’s work.
He just knew he’d been given this job to prove he had what it took. His first kill, which—assuming he passed the test—would mean he was a fully-fledged assassin.
It would be his last kill if he failed. The Assassin’s Guild didn’t spend years training someone to kill silently and efficiently, move without being seen and hide the evidence of their work, just to cut them loose without any control or supervision if they didn’t make the grade. That his father was the Raven didn’t factor into it. If he failed in this task, Kiam knew his mentor had orders to take care of the matter without referring back to the Raven for his opinion. Galon wouldn’t hear about it until his son’s personal effects arrived in a small parcel along with a condolence note. In this heat there would be no question of shipping his body home. It would rot and putrefy long before it arrived in Greenharbour.
Kiam would succeed in this test or he would not be going home. Ever.
The task he had been assigned seemed quite straightforward. Somebody very wealthy wanted a young woman named Sofya the Siren killed. Kiam hadn’t been told his employer was wealthy. The mere fact the Assassin’s’ Guild had been hired to do the job was sufficient proof of that.
Poor people took care of their own.
Although he had been trained not to question the motive for a kill or judge the person soliciting another’s death, it was impossible not to wonder what this young woman had done to incur the wrath of someone sufficiently powerful, wealthy and angry, that they had passed a death sentence on her.
He supposed she was a mistress turned sour or a spurned lover. Despite the glamour of the Assassin’s’ Guild, truth was, they preferred to stay away from political assassinations. The bulk of their work, Kiam had learned at his father’s knee, was inspired by the basic human vices of avarice, jealousy and vengeance. Politics rarely entered into it.
Kiam had only the barest information to go on about his intended target. Sofya the Siren was twenty-one years old, supposedly. The description he’d been provided with was “pretty, dark-haired and fond of hanging out around the taverns of Calavandra where she makes her living as a working
court’esa”.
If Jondalup, the God of Luck, was on his side, she would not be hard to find and, given her occupation, not that hard to kill, either.
It was that which made Kiam cautious. An assassin’s first kill was meant to be a test of their wits, their skill and perhaps their ethics. Being sent to the Trinity Isles to kill a whore nobody would likely miss was suspiciously simple and left Kiam with an uncomfortable feeling in his gut.
It couldn’t be that easy. It was
never
that easy.
“First time?”
Kiam started a little at the unexpected question. The trading ship’s first mate was standing behind him. He hadn’t noticed the man coming up behind him, so busy was he, watching the stevedores and admiring the scenery.
You are going to be dead by the end of the week, you idiot,
he told himself crossly,
if you don’t start acting more like an assassin and less like a tourist
.
“First time visiting Calavandra?”
Of course the First Mate meant that. He doesn’t know who you are or why you’re here.
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“It was a good crossing, yes?”
It had been uneventful, at least. “I suppose.”
“You tell your sister that when you get back home, won’t you? You tell her we do good work. Reliable, like.”
“My
sister
?”
“Luciena Mariner.”
For a brief moment, Kiam didn’t know what to say. His passage had been arranged on this vessel by the Guild. It had been booked under the false name he was using—Peryn Drake. And yet this man had recognized him as a member of the extended Wolfblade clan.
Luciena Mariner was the owner of this ship and probably half the vessels currently docked in Calavandra at the moment. She was also the stepdaughter of one Marla Wolfblade, who happened to be the sister of the High Prince of Hythria, the mother of the Hythrun heir, Damin Wolfblade, and who was, until quite recently, married to Kiam’s father, Galon Miar, making her his stepmother, too.
Few people knew that, however. Kiam was twelve when Marla married his father, and while he and his sisters had been welcomed into the Wolfblade family without reservation, his apprenticeship to the Assassins’ Guild meant his time at the palace had been limited. And while it was no secret one of Marla’s stepsons was an apprentice assassin, Kiam didn’t think he’d attended so many public functions as a member of the royal family that his face was well known.
Which meant this was a test. One of many the Guild had in store for him.
“Don’t I wish I
was
related to Luciena Mariner,” he said with a rueful smile. “I’d be travelling in much grander style than this old bucket, reliable and all that she is.”
“Are you sure?” the mate insisted. “You look a lot like one of her brothers.”
“I think I’d remember something that important if I was. How long until we can disembark?”
“Dunno,” the mate said with a shrug. “Depends on the customs men. Maybe an hour or two.”
“Then I shall spend my time imagining spending the fortune I’d have if truly was related to someone as obscenely wealthy as Luciena Mariner.”
The mate opened his mouth to respond but it quickly turned into a bellow of anger when he spied the crew tasked with tying up the ship apparently not performing the undertaking to his satisfaction. As he stormed off, yelling at the sailors in the bow, Kiam turned back to study the wharf.
First test passed,
he decided. The mate had obviously been tipped off about his true identity and the Guild wanted to know if he would give it up if he were recognized.
What else they have got in store for me?
he wondered.
He had a couple of hours, he guessed, before he found out.
* * *
Where he might find Sofya the Siren was disturbingly easy to discover. Kiam merely asked the innkeeper where he took a room if the man had ever heard of her.
“Everyone has heard of her,” the jovial Calavandran chuckled. “She usually hangs out at the Bull’s Balls.”
“You have a tavern called the Bull’s Balls?”
“Doesn’t everywhere?”
Kiam paid the man, threw his bag in the small, modest room he’d rented, and then headed back outside to find the tavern. It was some way from the wharf, he discovered, contrary to what he had been told before leaving Greenharbour about Sofya the Siren’s fondness for dock taverns, but it was a minor detail hardly worth quibbling about. Of more concern to Kiam was the number of Xaphista’s priests who seemed to be preaching on almost every corner about the perils of sin and the foolishness of those who refused to acknowledge that there was really only one true God and all the others were simply figments of their believer’s imaginations.
Kiam knew that to be a lie. His stepbrother, Damin Wolfblade, had actually met the God of War, and Wrayan Lightfinger, family friend, legendary thief, and head of the Greenharbour Thieves’ Guild, had spoken with Dacendaran, the God of Thieves, on any number of occasions.
There were gods aplenty, he knew. They were capricious, quite venal at times, and always trying to get one up on the other gods of the pantheon. Xaphista’s method was, it seemed, to simply pretend the others didn’t exist.
He reached the Bull’s Balls just on dusk. There was a preacher outside who carried a staff bearing the sun intersected by a lightning bolt. The man blocked Kiam’s way as he tried to enter the tavern, where the smell of something spicy and delicious was beckoning.
“Are you an evil one?” the priest asked. He had a wild-eyed look that made Kiam wonder if Xaphista’s followers found their faith in the bottom of a mushroom pipe.
He pushed aside the staff. “Get out of my way, fool.”
The priest glared at him but stood aside. “You may pass. You are a sinner, obviously, but not an abomination.”
Kiam stopped and looked at the man curiously. “Abomination? Oh, you mean Harshini?”
“Wash your mouth out, sinner, lest their evil seek you out for speaking their name.”