No Quarter (2 page)

Vree jumped.

She was holding the rope but still falling when the
Raven's
reinforced bow rammed into the
Fancy's
side. The rope took up most of the shock, her arms the rest. Her right hand lost its grip, gained it again as the rough hemp burned a line across her palm, but the dagger in her wrist sheath twisted out and into the sea.

Shit!

She let her weight on the rope swing her in over the deck. As the ship rose, cresting a wave, she dropped, rolled, and sprinted for the stern.

Survive to reach the target. She'd been seven when she'd started training.

Bannon had been six. They'd survived the training—two out of three didn't. She couldn't remember how many targets they'd survived to reach.

The world became a scarlet shirt and the pale column of throat above it.

In the confusion of boarding, few of the pirates noticed her. Those that did, she avoided although one took a wild swing and slashed a shallow cut diagonally across her back.

When Vree reached the sterncastle, a narrow three steps above the main deck, she leaped, without pausing, up and over the railing, landing directly in front of her target.

The captain broke off bellowing orders and began to laugh. A large woman, carrying very little of her weight as fat, she towered over the short, slender Southerner. "Have you come to challenge me, little sprat?" her voice cut through the bedlam and heads began to turn on both ships. "I think not."

Her heavy sword slammed down into the deck, splintering the wood, but Vree had begun to move before she'd finished speaking. Virtually too fast to follow, the point of her long dagger slipped in under Edite's left ear, drew a graceful line across the captain's throat, and slid out from under the right ear. She finished the motion by flicking her remaining wrist dagger down into her hand and sending it hilt deep into one of the brilliant blue eyes of the sailor on the tiller.

Edite scowled and began to choke, covering the immediate area with a crimson spray. Sword and dagger fell from fingers that curved to clutch futilely at life. With her windpipe and all major blood vessels severed, she didn't live long. As she slammed into the deck, still twitching, a roar went up from her crew. As one, their prize forgotten, they turned on Vree and, screaming with rage, they rushed for the stern. A few, already on board the
Fancy
, returned to join the enraged mass. A high-pitched voice, shouting for them to continue the attack, was ignored.

An ax splintered the deck at Vree's feet and a javelin cut through the place she'd been an instant before. Fortunately, most of the howling pack forgot the missile weapons they held in the desire to personally rip their captain's killer limb from limb. Backing rapidly into a corner of the stern, Vree's hips hit the rail. The first half-dozen crew members charged toward her past their captain's body, faces twisted in identical masks of hate.

*Vree!*

She hit the water in a clean dive some distance from the
Raven's
ebony hull and stayed deep as long as she could.

*I didn't know you could swim.*

The relief in Gyhard's mental voice was so great that Vree very nearly laughed aloud. *The Sixth Army's garrison was at Harack, on the coast. When I was eleven, we had to swim about five miles back to shore in the middle of the night.*

*When you were
eleven?*

*Bannon was ten. The swim wasn't so bad, but the sharks were annoying.*

*Sharks!*

This time she did laugh as her head broke the surface, the water pulling her dripping hair back off her face. *I'm kidding about the sharks.* Bobbing up and down the swells, salt burning in the cut across her back, she turned until she could see the battle raging on the two ships. Although she thought she could hear the Fancy's armsmaster yelling orders, she had no way of knowing who was winning.

*If the garrison was by the ocean, why didn't you know what a bowsprit was called?*

*Because it wasn't important; we had too many other things to learn, and a ship has no throat to slit. I guess we should go back and…*

Large hands closed around Vree's waist and dragged her under. Released her, grabbed her shoulders, and pushed her deeper. As the water closed over her head, she fought a heartbeat's panic, then pointed her toes and pushed up against the water, trying to go deeper still. It almost worked. Her attacker lost his grip on her shoulders but caught a painful handful of her hair.

Taken by surprise, her lungs were nearly empty. She needed to breathe.

Most assassins died after taking out their targets, success having made them careless.

Her chest burned. A primal panic clawed at the inside of her mouth and throat.

The sea closed around her ribs and squeezed, trying to force her to inhale.

Through slitted eyes, she could see a huge, dark shape in the water above her.

Facing her.

Throwing the strength of arms and shoulders into a backstroke, she drew her legs up and, knees touching her own forehead, drove both feet past his arm and slammed them up under his jaw. Pulling herself over and around, she sucked in great lungfuls of air as her face broke the surface and finished the circle, coughing, gasping, with an unnecessary dagger in her hand.

*I think you crushed his throat.*

Forcing her breathing to slow, Vree sheathed the dagger and started swimming for the ships, ignoring the choking, thrashing pirate just over an arm's length away.

*Aren't you going to finish him?*

*He's finished. And I'd rather not put more blood into the water.* Arms and legs growing heavier with every heartbeat, all she wanted to do was get back on board the
Fancy
before the last of her energy gave out.

*I don't understand why they're carrying on like this.*

Through Vree's eyes, Gyhard watched as the crew of the
Gilded Fancy
celebrated by lantern light. The captain'd had two casks of sweet Imperial wine brought up on deck and most of the toasts drunk had been to Vireyda Magaly, the savior of the ship. Gyhard could feel her confusion and recognized its source. While any of the Seven Armies might rejoice at the removal of an enemy commander—for the lack of a battle no lives were lost—they'd been trained to make no fuss over the assassin who, after all, had only been doing her job. But Vree was no longer in the Imperial Army and she'd just done the impossible. *You've never worked with an audience before. Usually, the people who see you don't survive the experience.*

She shifted uneasily. *So?*

*So, you do impressive work.* He remembered the first time he'd seen her kill; by the time he'd thought she should start moving, it was all over. Her concentration, he'd just discovered, was as complete as it appeared—nothing got in her way. Fueled by that concentration, her speed was terrifying. If he ever took control of her body, the difference would be night and day, her deadly grace lost.
If
he ever took control of her body
... He buried the thought as deeply as possible, lest she feel it.

He'd wanted to remind her back when she'd been worrying over how assassins couldn't feel, that she wasn't an assassin any more. Except that only an Imperial assassin with years of brutal training both mental and physical behind her could hope to make that jump, and as she obviously intended to make it and he had no choice but to go along…

In the corner of her vision, he caught sight of the two Imperial merchants and felt the memory of hair rising off the back of his neck. Although both merchants held heavy metal goblets, their expressions were anything but celebratory and when one of them, believing herself unobserved, glanced at Vree, she was scowling.

In the Havakeen Empire, assassins were named the blades of Jür, the goddess of battles, and their terrifying, deadly skills were controlled by the army. The citizens of the Empire were constantly assured that assassins were not only rare but safely sheathed, killing only on order of their commanders. Trained from early childhood that the army was their only family, assassins never left… home.

As an added reassurance to a nervous population, it was well known that if, in spite of incredible odds, they should desert, they would be targeted and quickly killed.

But Vree had been trained with her brother and that attachment had been strong enough to break all the rest. She'd killed the man sent to kill her and had bought her freedom from His Imperial Majesty with the life of his youngest son.

Gyhard, though born in Shkoder, had lived most of his hundred and thirty-six years—most of his lives— in the Empire and could understand the fear on the merchant's face.
This
assassin was not sheathed by the army and she'd just made her own decision to kill— without orders. If that were possible, how could anyone be safe?

How indeed, Gyhard wondered. When the celebration was over, it would only take a couple of voices to turn the admiration to fear. "
Listen to me, I come from
the Empire, I know
…" She was too fast. Too deadly. Too impossible to stop. And they had all seen what she was capable of. Assassinating both merchants before the warnings could start seemed a bit extreme even if he could convince Vree to do it.

Besides, after the afternoon's exhibition of her abilities, the authorities wouldn't need a bard to discover who'd wielded the knife—Vree was deadly but hardly subtle.

As Vree turned slightly to watch a sailor juggling three torches, an ax, and a dead chicken, Gyhard took a better look at the merchants. There was nothing obviously wrong with the male of the pair; young enough, reasonably good-looking.

Suppose he could convince Vree to push him into the male merchant? Once there he could easily silence the rumors by arranging an accident… except that even should Vree prove willing—which she wouldn't—Gabris and Karlene had made it clear what the bards would do if he acquired a body by taking a life.

"
As we can neither remove you nor bring you to justice for the lives you've so
callously ended as long as you remain in Vree's body, you have, for the moment,
found sanctuary. You'd best not forget what you owe her for that
." Karlene's voice had made it a warning, not a reminder. "
But this is where we draw the line. If
anyone else dies because of you, anyone, the bards will see to it that your kigh
goes back into the Circle so fast you won't know what hit you
."

That Karlene and Gabris were a very long distance away in the Empire meant little when they both Sang air and distance meant nothing at all to the kigh.

He felt Vree's foot tapping in time to the music as a battered squeeze-box, a fiddle, and a pair of pipes began to play. The army had gone to a great deal of trouble to present the assassins as weapons; perhaps it would help if Vree were seen as flesh and blood. *Why don't you dance?*

To his surprise she shifted uncomfortably. *Don't you start.*

*Start what?*

*The whole time Bannon shared my body, he kept trying to push me into having sex with someone, anyone. You. Karlene. He didn't care just as long as he got to experience it from the other side.*

*It's just a dance, Vree.*

He could feel her tension as she chopped a hand at the leaping, stomping, sweating bodies that filled the deck. *If you think this won't end in a sacrifice to the horizontal gods, you never spent much time expecting to die.* She snorted. *How stupid of me; of course you didn't. If you expected to die, you just… jumped ship.*

Wiping damp palms on her cotton trousers, she added, her voice flat, all sarcasm gone, *Not for Bannon. Not for you.*

It didn't take much to recognize where the tension originated. First Bannon.

Then him. *It's been a while, hasn't it?*

*Shut the slaughter up!*

*Vree, I'm not your brother. I don't want to be with you—in you—while you're with someone else.* The thought of her wrapped in the arms of a man or woman, taking what he couldn't give her, drove daggers into his heart and twisted. She might not know how she felt about him, but he knew exactly how he felt about her.

*Don't say it.*

They could feel each other's strong emotions.

*Vree…*

*No.*

When the
Gilded Fancy
made her way into Pitesti Harbor—the only harbor in the Broken Islands deep enough for a merchant ship of her draw—followed closely by the
Raven
, the hysterical reaction on shore could be both seen and heard from the foredeck. Bells rang out, fishing boats ran themselves aground, and the broad pebble beach curving between the town and the sea began to empty.

"Fools think they're being invaded," the armsmaster snorted, jerking his head at the masts where the flags of Shkoder hung limp and unreadable. "Think i'Oceania's crew has both ships."

Vree glanced toward the
Raven
where the late captain's body had been lashed to the bowsprit. The surviving pirates were secured belowdecks and the sailors now guiding her in past the breakwater were a skeleton crew off the
Fancy
.

On shore, the beach began to fill again as archers took up their positions behind the curved shields of overturned dories and siege engines were uncovered at both ends of the crescent.

"Pitesti was the last place to fall when Shkoder took the Broken Islands," the armsmaster told her, leaning unconcernedly on the rail. "They're proud of that.

Obviously, they don't intend to fall again."

Vree squinted at the town silhouetted against the setting sun. "I'd feint at the harbor, land troops on the other side of the island and take the place from behind."

The armsmaster nodded. "You and King Mikus."

*Should we be worried?* As far as Gyhard could tell, the catapults were being loaded with what looked to be bales of hemp soaked in pitch.

Under the circumstances, it seemed a reasonable question, so Vree repeated it.

"No, we're just at the edge of their range." As the armsmaster spoke, the anchors were dropped. "Captain'll send a boat in. With any luck they won't sink it."

From the expressions on the faces of the boat crew, they were aware of their danger; postures visibly relaxed when the keel scraped gravel and the mate stepped safely ashore. Her hands out from her sides, she moved a body length from the boat, and stopped.