The Assassin's Curse (5 page)

A current breezed past; the thief swimming by
her?

Amaranthe took a chance and lashed out with
Sicarius’s dagger. It slipped into flesh and muscle, far more
easily than a normal blade would have. The man screamed, but he
managed to grab her wrist as she was retracting the blade.

Knowing he had his own knife, Amaranthe
pulled both legs up to her chest and kicked out. Her heels hammered
into the man’s abdomen, and he released her with a grunt.

She ought to close and finish him, but she
needed air. She clawed her way to the surface, though she tried to
break the water carefully, so the woman would not hear if she were
nearby. Maybe the thief would be busy with her sinking ship.

As soon as Amaranthe broke the surface, she
inhaled a great gulp of air. A rifle cracked, and water splashed
inches from her head.

Amaranthe ducked back below the surface and
swam. She had not had a chance to get her bearings, and had no idea
which way she was going, only that she needed to put a lot of
meters between herself and the woman with the gun.

She stroked until her lungs burned for air,
and then stroked farther. Only when her fingers scraped algae-slick
rock did she come up. She had run out of room to run. In her heart,
she hoped she had swum toward the mainland instead of the island,
but her brain knew that was unlikely—she hadn’t traveled far enough
for that.

When she broke the surface, she let only a
couple inches of her face come out, just enough to breathe in
several deep breaths. When a few seconds passed with no one
shooting at her, she lifted her head farther.

She was indeed back on the island, kneeling
in the shallows. The woman’s voice floated to her from twenty
meters away. Her boat was sinking—only an inch or two remained
above the water—and she had pulled the man to its side. She was
repeating something over and over. His name? He floated in the
water on his back, unmoving.

Amaranthe closed her eyes, grimly realizing
that she’d killed the man. The poison. Even in the water, some of
it must have remained on Sicarius’s knife.

When Amaranthe opened her eyes, the woman was
looking in her direction. The darkness hid the thief’s features,
but there was no mistaking the long gaze toward the beach. The
woman grabbed a rifle and slid into the water, leaving the man and
her sinking cargo behind. She stroked toward the beach.

Without turning her back on the woman,
Amaranthe eased out of the water herself. She backed to the foliage
and ducked behind a tree. She still had Sicarius’s knife, and she
judged the distance to the beach where the woman would be wading
out. The thief would be most vulnerable then, slogging out of
hip-level water. Amaranthe flipped the blade and mentally steeled
herself to make a throw. If she didn’t take her adversary out, the
thief would blast those fancy new bullets into Amaranthe’s
chest.

When she raised the blade to throw, a
calloused hand grabbed her wrist.

She jumped to the side, trying to twist her
arm and pull it free, but the steel grip held her firm. “Sicarius?”
she whispered, not certain whether to hope it was him or not.

“
Muk derst
.”

It was his voice, but she had a feeling it
wasn’t him. On the beach, the thief was stepping out of the water,
her rifle held before her, her gaze roving the tree line. All it
would take was a shout from Sicarius, or this Nurian spirit
possessing him, to alert the woman. She would come charging up the
beach, shooting to kill.

A hand came to rest on the back of
Amaranthe’s neck.

She swallowed. Or Sicarius could do the
killing for the thief. A tremor went through the calloused hand,
and she knew Sicarius was fighting this spirit, but if he had been
unable to leave the island, what could he do now?

“
Muk derst
,” he repeated, more
insistently.

She took a guess and dropped the knife. He
did not let go.

“Azon Amar?” Amaranthe breathed. “Do you
understand me?”

Pebbles crunched on the beach, the thief
walking slowly, her rifle turned inland. She glanced toward the
lake where her boat and its cargo of stolen goods had succumbed to
the leak and disappeared beneath the waves. The moonlight was not
quite bright enough to illuminate the woman’s firm, determined
chin, but Amaranthe had no trouble imaging it.

“Yes,” Sicarius whispered. The word came out,
not in his usual monotone, but in an accent that put more emphasis
on the vowel than was normal for a Turgonian.

“I don’t want to die out here,” Amaranthe
said, wondering what type of bargain she could try to make that
would entice a dead man. “Is there anything I can do to win my
life?”

Sicarius’s hand tightened about her neck.
“You already cost one of my people his life, his plan.” He spun her
about so quickly and with such power that her toes dragged in the
dirt. They bumped against a rock, almost knocking it from its
resting place.

Sicarius did not lower her, and her feet
dangled. Her neck protested the manhandling, but she bit back a
moan of pain, not wanting to alert the thief to her position.
Besides, her neck would hurt a lot more if he decided to break
it....

“You see those ruins?” He pointed up the
slope.

Trees choked the view, though she knew what
he was talking about. The old Darkcrest homestead was on this end
of the island, a sprawling stone structure choked with vegetation
that was gradually taking back the land.

“I’ve seen them, yes,” Amaranthe
whispered.

“They’ve been my home for decades now,”
Sicarius whispered. “An abandoned haunt filled with spirits of
people who loathe me and my kind. I’ve had to suffer their taunts,
about how I failed my mission, about how Turgonia will wipe my
people from the world and write them out of history. I’ve had
to—”

“You think you failed?” Amaranthe asked.

Sicarius—no, Azon Amar, she reminded
herself—had turned so Amaranthe’s back was to the beach, and she
could see the thief out of the corner of her eye. The woman had
stopped and turned in their direction. If Sicarius was fighting the
Nurian spirit, might his reflexes be a touch slower than usual?

“Your general, Hollowcrest, said the emperor
lived,” Azon Amar said.

A plan whispered into Amaranthe’s thoughts, a
dangerous one, especially considering her foe was occupying her
closest friend’s body. All she could hope was that the thief
wouldn’t be a good shot.

“He lied to you,” Amaranthe said. “You
succeeded in killing our old emperor.”

“I...” He shook her. “You would tell me
anything to live.”

“You’re in my friend’s head. He knows the
truth. Look around.”

“No. I will kill you now. With your friend’s
hands.” He chuckled without mirth, and it was jarring coming out of
Sicarius’s mouth. Sicarius never laughed.

His second hand came up next to the first,
and his fingers tightened about Amaranthe’s throat.

She kicked the rock. It clunked and skidded
into the undergrowth.

A shot fired.

Sicarius grunted and his grip loosened.
Amaranthe rammed an elbow into his ribs and leapt free.

Not certain if he had been shot or simply
surprised by the noise, she rushed to grab the knife on the ground
and sprint into the brush. In the darkness, there was no way to run
quietly. Leaves shook and branches snapped as she sprinted away,
parallel to the beach.

She kept an eye toward the thief and ducked a
heartbeat before the rifle fired again. A bullet thudded into a
tree over her head.

Amaranthe popped up, steadied herself, and
hurled the black knife. It was too dark to see it spinning through
the air, but the thief reeled back and dropped her rifle.

Afraid Sicarius—Azon Amar—whoever—would
recover quickly, Amaranthe abandoned the foliage and sprinted down
the beach. The moon peering over the crest of the island
illuminated her all too well, and she ran with her shoulders
hunched, fearing a bullet or knife in her back at any second. She
sprinted five hundred meters, pebbles shifting and flying beneath
her feet, until she reached the side of the island closest to the
mainland.

She chanced a glance back down the beach as
she veered into the water. A black-clad figure was sprinting after
her, closing the distance quickly.

Had she the breath to spare, Amaranthe would
have cursed Sicarius’s athletically inclined ancestors. She
high-stepped out as far as she could before diving into the water.
She was paddling her arms and kicking before her belly splashed
down.

Sicarius could easily overtake her before she
reached the mainland. Her only hope was that Azon Amar’s reach
ended before Sicarius caught up with her. And she had best move
quickly enough that no blighted seaweed had time to stretch up and
entangle her.

For the first thirty meters, Amaranthe did
not even lift her head to breathe. Her legs burned from the effort
of kicking, and her arms turned into lead weights. Finally she
lifted her head for air and to get her bearings. Through the water
streaming into her eyes, she spotted the dock where they had
stopped earlier. She shifted her angle toward it, put her head back
down, and kept swimming.

If Sicarius was right behind her... she
didn’t want to know. She was out of weapons and out of tricks.

Her knuckles grazed the bottom, and she
scrambled out of the water. Fear-charged limbs propelled her up the
slope and to the cabin. She tried the door but found it locked. She
spun about, putting her back to the wood, and scanned the lake,
searching for blond hair made silvery by the moonlight. He wasn’t
there. Had he already climbed out?

The logical part of her brain insisted that
Sicarius would be himself if he reached this shore again, that the
Nurian’s curse would have faded. The panicked
tired-of-being-shot-at-and-tormented-by-that-island part of her
brain had trouble believing it.

Time limped past, and Sicarius did not
appear.

Amaranthe walked back down to the dock, a new
fear worming its way into her mind. What if Azon Amar had summoned
Sicarius back before he could swim away from the island? What if
the Nurian spirit meant to keep Sicarius there as a prisoner for
the rest of his life?

Amaranthe lifted her chin.
That
would
not happen. If she had to, she would return to the city and collect
the rest of her team to rescue him. They could drug him if needed
and carry him—

Someone touched her shoulder, and Amaranthe
jumped and whirled about.

Sicarius stood there, damp hair sticking up
in tufts, his face hidden by the night.

Amaranthe skittered back until her heel found
the edge of the dock. He did not move.

“Are you... you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The accent had disappeared, and the
monosyllabic answers had returned, so she supposed that meant it
was him, but she had a hard time relaxing. She would not soon
forget the memory of those fingers wrapped around her neck.

“You sure?” she asked.

He extended a hand, palm up. Amaranthe
hesitated before stepping closer and accepting it. Gently and
slowly, he pulled her into a hug. It surprised her, and she did not
know what to say. The closest he usually came to hugging people was
grappling with them in wrestling practice—the “hug” tended to end
with one being hurled head-over-heels onto one’s back. He held the
embrace for a long moment, and she found herself wondering just how
close he had come to killing her. Had he been aware of everything
he had been doing while under the spirit’s influence?

She did not want to dwell upon that, so she
kept her tone light when she said, “Is this supposed to convince me
that you’re telling the truth? The real Sicarius doesn’t hug me
often.” Despite her words, she slid her arms around him, intending
to appreciate the gesture of camaraderie. Her hands encountered
dampness, not dripping water from the swim but sticky warm
dampness. “You’re bleeding,” she blurted, pulling her arms away
lest she hurt him further.

“You did arrange to have me shot,” Sicarius
said dryly.

“I didn’t think she’d luck into actually
hitting you,” Amaranthe said. “I’m sorry. I needed a distraction
to—”

“I know,” Sicarius said grimly. “I should
never have gone over there with you. I’d heard the story, of a team
of soldiers sent to plant a box of blasting sticks and blow up the
island, and of the warrior mage’s spirit taking over one of the
strongest and using him to kill many of the others.”

Amaranthe thought of the skeletons on the
beach. How many more dotted the island?

“I thought I was mentally strong enough to
resist the spirit.” Sicarius rolled his head back to stare at the
heavens before lowering it again to add, “Hubris.”

Amaranthe bit her lip. She shouldn’t feel
tickled by his admission, especially when he was standing there,
bleeding on the dock, but Sicarius so rarely gave away his feelings
that she had to admit pleasure at hearing him so clearly disgusted
with himself. “Hubris is a common flaw amongst imperial men.” She
had more than her share of it herself.

“Yes.”

“A very
human
flaw as well.”

“You sound pleased.” A hint of puzzlement
infused his tone.

“It’s just that between your athletic prowess
and your dedication to your training... Well, it’s like I said
earlier. Sometimes you don’t seem human.”

“There
are
other people like me in the
world.”

Yes, that Nurian warrior mage certainly must
have been one, but Amaranthe had never met anyone else of
Sicarius’s caliber. “Oh?” she asked, seeing a chance to tease
him—they could use a little lightness after that adventure. “How
many? Twenty? Thirty?”

“Five.”

Amaranthe smiled, wondering if he knew them
by name. “Do you know if the female thief made it?”