Halcyon The Complete Trilogy (28 page)

The stranger angled toward them. Her whistling grew louder, rising and falling in time with her footsteps, and her hands remained in her pockets.

Kella beat on the door again. “Miss Amadi?”

The whistling broke off, and the detective saw that the woman was smiling, her gait suddenly breaking into a swinging sort of swagger, a lazy swaying accompanied by a cruel grin. “Thank you, for that. The name. It’s always good to confirm the target’s identity through a third party.”

Kella pulled the gun from her pocket and pointed it at the stranger. “Stop right there. Hands where I can see them. Right now, hands up.” Usem pulled out his club.

The woman, still grinning, slowly raised her empty hands. “Hm. The gray coat says police, but the gun says not-police. So one of them must not be yours, and I’m betting it’s the gun. Where’d you get it? Hm? It doesn’t look like standard army-issue. Did you swipe it from a crime scene?”

“Something like that.”

The woman laughed a husky, condescending laugh. She had an enormous hawk-beak nose set between eyes and lips that seemed sculpted to convey only cruel amusement. A thick mass of limp black hair disappeared beneath the collar of her white coat. “That’s Merin’s revolver, isn’t it? The idiot. Using a gun. I told him not to be taken in by all the flashy toys you people have, to stick to the old ways, but no, he had to go and steal a gun. Stupid, even for a Persian. I always knew he’d die young.”

“He’s not dead.”

“Then you’re as stupid as he is.” The woman’s hands drooped below shoulder level. “Very important,
very powerful
, people have hired me. These people like things done and done properly. On time, as instructed. Merin understands that, so as long as he’s alive, he’s a danger to you.”

Kella heard soft, uneven footsteps behind the apartment door. “And I suppose as long you’re alive, you’re also a danger to me?”

The woman’s hands fell a bit farther and she resumed walking forward. “Very much so, but only for the next few moments.”

“I said don’t move.” Kella strode away from the door into the street. “No one listens to me, no one ever listens to me.” She pointed the gun at the woman’s feet and pulled the trigger.

The cylinder rotated slightly, then clicked back again.

The stranger smiled. “I told Merin not to carry a gun. I also broke the stupid thing when he wasn’t looking to teach him a little lesson. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to actually be here when it failed. You’re not Merin, but you’ll do. The look on your face is precious.” She dashed forward across the small space between them and collided with the detective with two fists and one steel-toed boot all at once.

Kella staggered back and fell to one knee, stunned and gasping, unable to focus on the pains in her chest, stomach, and leg. The woman moved in a swirl of white cloth and blurry limbs, all flying and snapping into position as though God had decreed that her fists and feet belonged in the detective’s flesh and bones at that precise instant, and nothing in creation could prevent them from striking. Amid the flurry, Kella glimpsed a bloody bandage around the woman’s hand.

Usem brought his club down on the woman from behind, but she leapt back against him, inside the sweep of his arm. The detective gasped and dropped his club, and when the woman stepped away Kella saw the knife buried in Usem’s chest.

Kella heard a woman cry out and looked over in time to see the bakery door open for a brief instant to reveal Jedira’s terrified stare, and then the door slammed shut again. The detective refocused on the woman in white and staggered upright just as Usem collapsed to the street, still gasping, one hand gripping the handle of the knife.

Damn it. I can’t help Usem and protect the house at the same time
. As she stared down at him, she saw the detective’s hand fall from the knife and he slumped back to the ground.
Damn it, Usem. I’m sorry.

She cleared her throat and tried to focus on the woman in white, only barely able to ignore the fresh bruises all over her chest and arms. “You have a strange accent. I would have said eastern, but you don’t seem to like Persians.” Kella shifted, placing herself between the woman and the door.

“Most Samaritans don’t.” The woman surged forward again, fists flying in tightly controlled jabs too fast to count.

Kella took a dozen blows to the head and stomach before she could even raise her arms to shield herself. She barely heard the faint sigh of a blade slipping free of its sheath, and the detective hurled her body to the ground and rolled away.

“Oh no,” the woman said calmly. She held up a long thin knife. “Look. I just chipped the tip against the wall here. I’ve had this knife a very long time. I liked this knife. And I’m running out of knives as it is.”

Kella stood up, this time with her own fat knife unfolded in her hand, its wide blade bright and shiny in the gas-lit haze of the street. “You talk a lot for a killer.”

“I’ve heard that before.” The Samaritan tossed her thin blade aside and quickly produced another identical one from inside her white coat. “But not everyone hides in the shadows, stalking their prey like Merin does. I often work in broad daylight, in public, with more witnesses than you might believe.”

“Oh, I believe you.” Kella wheezed, her chest aching and her head ringing from the last blitzing. A curious green and purple blot drifted across her vision.

“Thank you, for that.”

“You and Merin work together? Partners?” She blinked, trying to get the blot out of her sight. It looked too much like a rabbit.

“Not precisely, no.” The woman ran a finger along her new knife’s edge. “But we run in the same circles. We’re contracted through the same broker.”

“An assassin’s guild, then?” Kella massaged her chest and arms where she could feel bruises of all sizes forming deep in her skin. “Interesting. Tell me more.” Her head was clearing, but too slowly.
I can’t beat her.

The woman laughed. “You think you’re buying her time, don’t you?” She nodded at the closed door through which Jedira had momentarily appeared. “Letting her escape out the back door while you distract me?”

Kella froze, a sharp frost blossoming in her gut. “Yes.”

“Well, that might have worked, but I jammed the back door shut before I came around the front just now, so I’m guessing that, at this moment, she’s down in the basement, pressing up against that door, wondering why it won’t open. Alone, in a dead end. Incredibly convenient for me, really. It’s not the cleverest trick, but it does make the job easier.” The Samaritan spun her knife through the fingers of her uninjured hand, dexterously twirling it back and forth. “Speaking of the job, since Merin didn’t kill you, I suppose I’ll be making a bit extra tonight.”

Kella exhaled slowly, raising her hands to meet the next assault.

The woman assumed a similar fighting stance, then smiled and dashed away toward the baker’s door and kicked it in. The rusty lock popped free of the doorsill and the door swung open. A frightened shriek echoed from within. The Samaritan vanished into the dark opening in a flourish of white coattails.

“Stop!” Kella leapt after her, plunging through the splintered remains of the door and gouging bits of skin from her hands and cheek as she did so. “Don’t touch her! Get back here!” She raced down the narrow hall, spun at the end, and dove down a rickety wooden stair into the cold of the basement where she could hear a lone and terrified voice stammering below. At the bottom, she turned the corner and saw the assassin standing in the center of the room and Jedira Amadi backed up against the cellar door that should have let her up into the alley behind the shop. Jedira’s eyes locked with Kella’s for a moment. Tears streamed down the young woman’s face and a wordless pleading babble tumbled from her pale lips.

“Hey!” Kella lunged at the Samaritan’s back, but the killer whipped around and smashed a small bony fist into Kella’s throat. She stumbled back into the wall, stunned, gasping for air, her brain unable to process the chaotic sensations of pain in her neck.

“I just had a wonderful idea, officer.” The woman spun her long stiletto across her fingers. “What if I kill her and frame you for it? That’s much better than an unexplained body in a basement. There’ll be a scandal in the police department, everyone will lose faith in the government, and there will be fear and chaos in the streets. It’ll be fun.”

“Never…happen,” Kella croaked as she shuffled forward, her eyes darting from the spinning stiletto to the killer’s eyes and back. “Now just listen. No one has to die. I…I’m willing to cut you a deal in exchange for your…testimony against her, against Lady Sade. You’ll have to do time for killing Usem, but we can work something out.” The sheer effort of talking around her throbbing throat was almost unbearable.

The woman shrugged. “Or I could just kill her.”

“No!” Kella dashed forward, only to have a steel-toed boot smash into her belly, slamming her back into the wall and blasting all of the air from her lungs. She fell to all fours, trembling, trying to force herself to inhale and breathe even as she tried to stand back up. Suddenly, she realized that she couldn’t hear Jedira crying anymore.

The detective sat up just as the Samaritan stepped on her wrist and jerked Kella’s broad knife away. A fist drove her head back into the floor and the basement exploded in green and purple lights. In a daze, Kella watched as the woman in white plunged the thick blade into Jedira’s body lying spread-eagled on the steps below the cellar door.

The killer paused. “You know, I’d love to leave your own knife in your arm or leg, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t make much sense to the police when they find you, and I would hate to confuse them.” She plunged the blade up into a thick wooden beam overhead. “This won’t make much sense either, but that will just add to the mystery of your raging bloodlust, won’t it?”

Kella staggered up. She took a moment to stare at the dead woman at the other end of the room. Jedira stared blindly up at the ceiling, her throat slit from ear to ear.
She’d still be alive if I hadn’t gone to see Lady Sade tonight.
“Do you even know why Lady Sade wanted her dead?”

“I do, actually. Not that she told me, but after a while you pick things up here and there.” The woman smiled as she wiped her stiletto on a rag. “She’s an ambitious woman. You’d think with all she has, she couldn’t possibly want more, but she does. A woman after my own heart. And she’ll probably do a better job than that old cow of a queen you have now, so you should be grateful, actually. Until they hang you, of course.” A white boot swung up and kicked Kella back into the wall. The air left her lungs again and for a moment all she could do was try to stay on her feet as she gasped.

“Stop…you.” Kella’s vision went white for a second but her mind was racing.
How? How exactly are you going to stop her, detective? You’ve lost. The girl is dead and you’re barely breathing. Some police officer you turned out to be…

“I doubt that.” The Samaritan slipped her long knife away into her coat. “When they come for you, I suppose you’ll try to say that it was me, and not you who did this. A Samaritan woman dressed in white.” She laughed. “They won’t believe you, of course, but it should add a bit to my mystique. You know, for the newspapers. Perhaps I’ll start doing this on all my jobs. I’ll become a legend in my own time!”

“A real professional wouldn’t want the attention.”

“I never claimed to be a professional. I’m just very, very good at this.” Her hand flew out in a blur and Kella had one instant of pain in her forehead before the world vanished into oblivion.

Chapter 26. Sade

As she sat alone in her study with her cold tea cup beside her, Sade leaned back in her chair and rested her eyes.
Such a long day. So much done but so much still to do
.

Supper had been the highlight, without question. The barbarian princess couldn’t have provided a better performance if she had been coached to it. Still, the night was young. Sade rang the bell on the side table.

Izza entered promptly. “Yes, madam?”

“Is the steam carriage back yet?”

“Yes, madam. It only just returned from taking your dinner guests home.”

“I need to run a little errand in the morning. Very early. I want the carriage ready to leave at four-thirty. And have a couple of the porters ready to accompany me.” She paused as something hideous assaulted her nose. “What is that stench?”

Izza shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, my lady. It was the Samaritan woman. I believe she spent some time in the sewers just before she arrived.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, madam.”

Of course she was serious. Izza was always serious. Sade sighed. “Well, it’s on you too. Please change your clothes. Burn them if you have to. Oh, and you did tell Shifrah that she is not to do any more tasks for Barika?”

“Yes, madam. Although I don’t know that you can trust her not to. She’s quite opportunistic, in my opinion.”

“No, you’re probably right. That’s fine. She’s proven far less than perfect today. She’ll be no great loss when this is over,” Sade said. “See to the carriage and porters, and then go to bed. Four-thirty, Izza.”

“Yes, madam. Good night.”

Day Three

Chapter 27. Syfax

The ancient fortress city of Meknes was a dead end. Syfax found the empty stage coach at a hotel in an older part of town and the driver at the hotel restaurant said, with her mouth full of her very late supper, that she had no idea where any of her passengers had gone. Syfax gave the hotel manager a long, tired look before walking into the street, mounting his rented horse, and trotting back out onto the road to Arafez.

With Meknes a mere twinkle of gaslight in the distance behind him, the major reined in his horse at the top of a hill to stare at the long dark road ahead. Clouds hid the moon, but he guessed it was past midnight. There were no other travelers, mounted or otherwise, at least none that he could see or hear. The road itself was marred by irregular shallow depressions and the deeper ruts made by wagon wheels. But he could hear no engines, no horses, and no padding feet out in the night. Only the wind in the pines and the creaking echoes of the cicadas filled the mountain forest.