The Witch's Betrayal (3 page)

"If you kill him," she said, "
c
ome back and tell me."

#

The woman at the dancehall was correct; it was easy to find Ajeeri's apartment building. It stretched down half the street, the
white
paint flaking off and lying like ashes in the surrounding gardens, which were dry and desiccated from the sun. No one to care for them, I supposed.

What wasn't so easy was finding Ajeeri's particular apartment. I made
my
way inside the building easily enough, traveling through the shadows until I emerged in the narrow, dusty hallway. Voices seeped through the walls. Each door was dark and narrow and marked with painted-on numbers. But I had no way of knowing which belong
ed
to him.

I slipped back outside and found a quiet alley in which to retreat into Kajjil and cast the tracking spell. It was difficult with only a name, but he was close by, in his apartment. I uncovered him easily, hiding away on the apartment building's top floor.

I left Kajjil but did not return fully to the world. For a moment I hovered amidst the cool damp shadows, trying to decide if I should go to his front door or if I should slip directly into his apartment. He wasn't a target, technically, but I also didn't want to drag my investigation out any further than was necessary.

When I stepped out of darkness, I stepped into the middle of his living room.

It was empty, dark, cool. Thick brocaded curtains hung unmoving in front of the windows. The room, the entire apartment, had that still quality I associate with nighttime, with a house full of sleep and dreams.

Of course. He r
a
n the night market. Why would he be awake during the day?

I slipped through the labyrinthine hallway, opening every door I came across. The apartment was full of the curiosities of a night market -- clumps of rare flowers drying from the rafters, shelves of glass candles and spirit paintings, stacks of spellbooks. It didn't take me long to find Ajeeri,
though
. He was asleep, as I'd expected, sprawled out on his stomach on top of the sheets of his bed, snoring a little. For a moment
I
hovered in the doorway of the room, watching him in the dark. Appraising him. He was wiry and thin, his hair going patchy at the back of his head.

I stepped one foot into the room.

Ajeeri sat straight up,
his
eyes wide open. I pulled my sword by reflex. His gaze zeroed in on me and for a moment he just sat in the bed, sheets crumpled around his waist, watching me.

Then he bounded off the bed, running in long quick strides toward the window.

"Stop!" I roared, drawing my sword across my palm and pulling magic from deep inside me, casting a web of it over the apartment. Ajeeri slammed into the magic
shield
and fell flat on his back. I moved with the shadows until I was crouched over him, sword at his throat.

"This isn't right!" he babbled. "Do I look like a threat to the Empire? I just run a night market, that's all
.
I provide a service to the city of Lisirra --"

"I'm not here to kill you." I hauled him up and tossed him on the bed, although I kept my sword out, more as an intimidation tactic than anything else. My magic still crackled in the air and my blood was smeared across my palm, the wound stinging. Ajeeri looked around the room, his eyes bright. Trying to find a weakness in the magic, no doubt. I strengthened it.

"What do you want?" he asked, his eyes finally settling on me. "You say you're not here to kill me, yet you trap me
i
n my own bed." He lifted his hands halfway to his head, as if they were shackled in invisible chains. "
Blood magic.
" He spat the words out, the way most people d
o
.

"I'm looking for Lisim Sarr."

Ajeeri went still. The frantic expression left his face.

I steppe
d
toward him.

"I'm afraid I don't know a Lisim. Or a Sarr."

He'd gone too long without answering, and he was too glib, and I could smell the lie souring in the wave of magic.

"Don't lie to me." I lifted my sword. He turned his head and flinched a little but
otherwise
didn't move. "I heard you used to be partners."

"I've never had a partner. Do you know anything about me, assassin? Ask anyone in the pleasure district and they'll tell you what I always say: a partner's not worth the trouble. He'll take half and leave you when you need --"

I leapt onto him, digging one knee into his chest bone, pressing him back into the bed. He squawked and struggled to free himself until I held the sword at his throat.

"I heard," I said, "that you used to be partners."

Ajeeri stared at me. He didn't look frightened, exactly, only cautious, careful. I pressed the flat side of my sword against his neck. The heat from his skin clouded the metal.

"Who told you that?" Ajeeri asked.

I didn't answer him.

"Partners isn't the right word."

I waited for him to say more, but he only stared at me over the curve of the sword.

"So you do know him," I said.

"Everyone knows him. Everyone down here, in this charming piece of the city." He wriggled beneath me. "Do you think you could get up? Your knee's causing me a bit of pain -- "

"No. Why isn't partners the right word?"

"Because we weren't bloody partners. Why are you asking after him?"

I didn't say anything.

"You want to recruit him, is that it? He'd be good for your sort, I imagine, the sort of things he's done
. I hear the assassins are always looking for the cruelest killers.
"

I hit Ajeeri in the nose, a short sharp jab. I did it without thinking. Blood flowed over his mouth and I added its strength, its life's light, to the magic already shimmering in his apartment.

"Curse you," he muttered.

"I don't kill dancing girls," I said.

Ajeeri glared at me over
his
smeared blood
. "Not just dancing girls he's killed. Anyone he can find down here. Sailors, children
…
"

I thought of Leila.
I almost have enough money to move out of the city
. She knew who she
’d
helped. She
’d
called him a dangerous man. I felt vaguely sick. My magic rippled with spots of weakness.

Focus.

"If you weren't partners, what were you?"

Ajeeri sighed. "I mentored him, for a while. Taught him a bit of city magic. I'd the intention of letting him take over the night
market when I couldn't stand it anymore. But he had a streak of darkness in him. Some people do. I should have recognized it earlier, but he was charming enough that it was difficult to see." Ajeeri paused and stared up at the ceiling. "It's not a good combination with city magic, that darkness. The worst parts of the city'll get under your skin and bring out the worst parts of you. That's what happened to him."

I eased my knee off his chest
,
but kept the sword at his throat.

"Why does he kill people?"

I hadn't meant to ask it. I didn't need to know his reasons. I only needed to know where to find him.

Ajeeri looked at me. "I don't know," he said. "You're the killer here. You tell me."

My magic trembled. Ajeeri grinned, white teeth against red blood. The sight of it was enough for me to regain my focus.

"Where is he?" I said, pressing the sword more firmly against his neck.

"
I d
on't know!"

I tilted the sword, enough that he'd feel the pressure of the blade but not enough to cut him too deeply. A few drops of blood appeared. My magic swelled.

"I don't know! I don't keep in contact with a man like that. You want to find him, follow the damned bodies. We've gone a few weeks without one. It's won't be long, I'm sure."

I pulled away from him, leaving him sprawled on the bed. He lifted his head a little. My magic
coruscated
around us.

He was telling the truth.

#

Outside of Ajeeri's apartment, the sun was blinding, bouncing off the white
walls
of the houses and the far-off sparkle of the sea. For a moment it seemed like all the shadows had been wiped away, and I felt alone
and vulnerable
.

I walked to Leila's house. I didn't intend to; I intended to make my way to the city's center, where I could access the hall of records to investigate the murders. To follow the damned bodies, as Ajeeri had said. But I didn't have time, and after speaking to the woman in the dancehall, I didn't want to read about his murders anyway. I could imagine the sort of thing
s
darkness might draw out of a man like that. What abominations he'd create out of the magic of sacrifice.

Leila's house was closed up tight against the afternoon sun. I hadn't bothered to shift into the shadows on my way
t
here, and I was soaked in sweat, my hair sticking to the side of my face. Penance, I suppose, for being what I am, for being something so close to Sarr. Blood magic is a sort of darkness. Maybe not the same, but close enough.

I banged on Leila's door until she answered. When she saw me standing on her porch, she didn't say anything, only held the door open for me. I went inside and stripped off my armor and collapsed on the divan she kept in her main room. She brought me water in a simple wooden cup. I drank it down. She sat down on the divan beside me and tangled her fingers up in my hair.

"Why did you walk here?" she asked.

"Why did you help Sarr?"

Her hand froze against the crown of my head. Silence swallowed us both.

"I told you not to track him," she whispered.

I sat up, pulling away from her. She didn't reach for me.

"Why did you help him?"

"I explained that to you."

"You knew what he did. You had to, if you were warning me away from him --"

She looked away.

"Did you?" I said. "Did you know?"

She lifted her head and stared at a point in the distance. Sunlight poured around her, casting her skin in a soft golden glow. "Of course I knew," she said softly. "I didn't think they'd send you." She paused. "You shouldn't go after him anyway. Take the punishment from the Order and tell them to send someone else."

"This isn't about me being in danger!" I stood up, anger pumping through me. "You know how few times I get to do something -- something
worthwhile
? That my work can keep people safe?"

She didn't answer.

"I'm not completing the commission
merely
so I can avoid punishment. I don't know why you'd even think that." I could hardly look at her. The past three years I'd spent my life running errands for the rich
, because that was what the Order had become. Now
Leila had stripped me of an opportunity to save the lives of people in the pleasure district, dancing girls and children. All so she could have a little taste of wealth herself.

"You disgust me," I told her.

She looked at me, then, and I was startled to see she was crying. I'd never seen Leila cry. I didn't think she was capable of it.

"What was I supposed to do?" she asked. "If I hadn't taken his offer it would be another four years before I could move. I'm
dying
here, Naji. Literally. I need the river."

I stalked away from her, heat rising up in my veins. "You have the money," I snapped. "Just tell me where he is."

"I don't
know
."

I stopped, staring at her door.

"I cast the spell, but he drew up his own magic at the last minute and it wiped my memory clean. I have no idea where I sent him
. T
hat's why I didn't tell you earlier."

The room wrapped around us.

"I'm never going to find him, am I?" I said.

"Not asking after him. It won't work. He's got my magic and his, and I can't undo my own spell. I don't even remember what I cast. He took it all away."

I continued staring at her door, my thoughts heavy. I had the afternoon
;
I had the nighttime. And then the Order would punish me, and I would have let a murderer go free.

The thought twisted me up.

"I'm sorry," Leila said behind me, "But there's nothing --"

I turned to face her. "Can I borrow one of your rooms?"

"What?"

"One of your rooms. Can I use it safely? I need to slip away."

She stared at me like she didn't understand. "I told you, it's impossible --"

"Darkest night, Leila, just answer my question."

She sighed and fell back on the divan. "Of course you can use one of my rooms," she said, and she wiped the tears away from her eyes.

I didn't say anything, only followed the familiar path of her hallway. There was a
room
tucked away in the back of her house that I thought would serve my purposes
well. A
closet, really,
with no windows and no chances of distraction. I put up a locking charm when I went in
—
a precaution, although I didn't expect Leila to interrupt.

I traced my knife along the edges of the Order tattoos, dropping the blood on Leila's floor in a lopsided circle. I didn't have all the supplies to do this properly, but
I
hope
d
my blood and my urgency would be enough for me to find the answers I needed. I tossed my knife aside, out of the circle
,
and sat down and began to chant in the language of the Jadorr'a, the words low and rough in the back of my throat. Magic steamed in the air.

I fell away.

My body stayed in Leila's house but
I
opened my eyes in the center of Kajjil. When I joined the Order as a little boy, I memorized spell after spell, but this one, this opening of a gateway, was the first.

This was the part of Kajjil that held answers.

Kajjil's center looks different to every individual. For me it was a desert of glass. The wind sounded like chim
es
. I wandered over the landscape, murmuring my question in
the language of the Jadorr'a:

How do I find Lisim Sarr? How do I find Lisim Sarr?

I wasn't sure I would get an answer.
The wind slipped through the glass dunes.
My feet ached. My eyes watered.

How do I find Lisim Sarr
? I asked, raising my voice.

And then Kajjil's center answered. The place was created by the Order years and years ago, and they built it out of the knowledge of every Jadorr'a who
had
ever
been
. Those Jadorr'a answered me now, whispering on the wind:

Fire
.

Fire.

Fire
.

"Fire?" I didn't understand. I've no capacity for fire magic.

Fire
, the voice said, rising in a clamor.
Fire fire firefirefirefire
.

And then flames erupted out of the glass ahead of me, golden flames shot through with human bodies, and I understood.

The Fire of Amkarja.

The flames extinguished in a curl of smoke, but the voices continued to chant
fire
as I stood in Kajjil, afraid to return to my body. I knew, in theory, how to ignite the Fire. It was one of the spells I had memorized as a little boy. A spell my tutor had warned me away from.

"To find what is lost," he'd said,
leaning over me as I worked.
"It never goes out. It will always keep looking. But there are easier ways to track a target."

And he was right, assuming the commission was simple. Routine.

I pulled away from Kajjil and reconnected with my body. For a moment I lay in the circle and stared up at the ceiling. The room was darker than when I had left, no bright sunlight peeking through the crack in the door. I was losing time.

I stood up, gathered my knife,
and
crept out to Leila's hallway. Her house was empty, still, and dark. I found her sleeping on the divan, the skin around her eyes red from crying. I knelt down beside her and shook her awake. She gasped a little and her eyes opened and gave me a long sad look.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"You aren't a very good person," I said.

"I know. I'm all right with it." She reached over and cupped my face in her hand and smiled. Her touch was gentle and soft and it reminded me of every other time she had ever touched me. Stupid as it was, I couldn't stay angry with her. "You're not, though," she said. "Not finding him won't change that."

"I know how to find him." I took her hand in mine and squeezed. She watched me, her expression unreadable. I stood up. "I saw the way in Kajjil."

She pushed herself up onto one arm. "Are you going to do something stupid?"

"I'm going to stop him."

"So yes."

I turned away from her and walked to the door. Behind me, she said my name. She told me to wait.