Chapter One
ROYO
City of Umbria, Yusan
Gold for blood—that’s my advertisement and the words I live by.
The merchant slowly counts out gold mun, his gloved hands shaking as each coin lands in his palm. He’s a little taller than me, but my shoulders are twice as wide.
“Hurry it up. I don’t got all night,” I say.
My deep voice startles him, and two bronze mun clatter onto the ground. He lets the coins roll away but pauses to consider chasing them down. Ten Hells. This is gonna take two lifetimes.
Finally, he slips the money into my hand, paying for the broken nose and leg. Then he darts away, fur-lined cape flapping in the night breeze. It’s not a noble living, being muscle for hire, but the upper class ain’t great neither.
I count my gold as I lumber between the soot-covered buildings. All there. I put the money in my coin purse and tuck it into my inner jacket pocket. Behind me, my latest victim whimpers in the darkness of the alley. If he keeps up that noise, the hael birds will peck him clean before morning. And the rich merchant prick didn’t pay for a kill.
“Can you stop that racket?” I say.
The whimpering dies down.
“Thank you,” I say. He’s silent—shut up by my manners or his pain.
I think about going back to help. I always think about it. But it’s none of my business. It’s not my problem, what happens after my jobs are done. Or why the merchant wanted to send a message in the first place.
Those are roads that lead nowhere. And I’ve got somewhere to be.
I blow a warm breath in my gnarled hands. This fucking cold. Frost shines on the cobbled streets, and the runoff has already started to freeze. What trees there are in this cramped city are long bare. Winter comes quick in Umbria. But then, death always does.
I should probably buy some warm gloves, but my stomach tightens at the thought of parting with even one silver mun. Every coin counts, and I don’t really need posh shit anyhow.
When I get to Inch Street, two well-dressed couples split around me. They’re all fur muffs and expensive, feathered hats. Swells. They give me a wide berth, then scurry away like I’m contagious or something. I guess if my size don’t intimidate people, the scar dividing my face does the trick. People stay away.
Good.
With a grunt, I shoulder open the heavy wooden door of Butcher & Ale. I’ve been in cleaner, nicer places with better grub, but those pubs don’t fit me. The tavern is warm without being hot and noisy, without being loud, and that’s all I need. Butcher & Ale is home. It’s where I started doing business ten years ago. Right after I turned fifteen, I set up shop in the corner—forty pounds less muscle with no scar on my face. They know what I do here, but I keep the place safe, so they look the other way.
I sit on my usual stool
at the end of the bar. Yuri sees me and pours me a pint. He could be forty; he could be sixty. Who knows with that bald head. But he’s not the chatty type, and I like that.
He slides a beer across the worn wood. The glass is mostly clean. “Someone’s been looking for you.”
I raise my eyebrows and chug a gulp of ale. Somebody’s always looking for me—to fight, to hurt, to kill. This ain’t news. “Why should I care?”
Yuri puts the bar towel over his shoulder and leans forward. “It was a girl.”
I stop drinking. My heart thuds and then lodges in my throat. I will it back down and play it cool. “What’d she look like?”
“Pretty,” Yuri says. Not the most helpful description. I curl my hand into a fist and stare. His eyes widen, and he rubs his nose somebody else broke a while ago. Then he starts yammering. “About my height, big brown eyes, kinda short black hair. Around your age—like mid-twenties. Red velvet cloak.”
I swallow, digesting his words. A tall, twenty-something girl asking about me is unusual. And I guess “pretty” makes a difference—can’t remember the last time a pretty girl looked for me. Maybe she wants an old boyfriend taught a lesson or revenge on another girl. I don’t hurt girls, though.
“She’s staying at the Black Shoe Inn,” Yuri adds.
The nicest joint in maybe all of Umbria. So she has money and she’s not from here yet somehow knew to look for me. Here. This reeks of trouble.
“Not interested,” I say.
Yuri shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
He wanders down the bar to serve another customer. A guy looking old for his age sits on the stool four paces down from me. He only makes eye contact with Yuri, so he’s also here to drink alone. Sometimes it feels less lonely to drown your sorrows in a shared barrel of ale. To vanish in the pub crowd. Even if you don’t say a word to nobody. Most nights, that’s me.
But I can’t disappear tonight. I know in my guts it’s going to be one of those times when I can’t forget no matter how much I drink. So why give myself a
headache that’ll hit behind my eyes tomorrow?
I down my beer, leaving the dregs. I push back from the bar, the legs of the stool scraping the sticky floor. “I’m outta here.”
Yuri’s bushy eyebrows rise. It’s like what he didn’t get on his head went to his face instead. “Already?”
He’s right to be surprised. I’m normally good for a few beers as I take up my corner and wait for my next job to come in. Trouble always has a way of finding me. Usually it’s quick, but sometimes it takes four beers. Tonight, it’s just the one.
“Headache.” I tap my temple like he don’t know where my head is. But it’s a lie. And from his beady eyes going side to side, Yuri doesn’t believe it for a second.
But he nods. “Night, Royo.”
I take a step to leave, and something strange happens. An off feeling hits me, like a heart skipping a beat. Out of the corner of my eye, I swear there’s a blur of red. I blink hard, look around, then glance into the bar mirror. Nothing. Just my scarred face and shorn head looking back at me. Nothing red in sight. I shake my head. I’m real off tonight. Best I leave now.
I trudge my way out of Butcher & Ale and back onto the frigid street. I’ll need to repair the laces of my boots soon, probably patch the leather again—they still got some wear left.
I swear it got colder when I was inside. My exhale now makes little fogs in the air. I blow a hot breath into my hands again as I walk.
Five blocks in the wrong direction later, I pass the Black Shoe Inn. I can’t help but slow down and stare at the lamps glowing in the windows. I wonder…then shake my head.
What am I doing? What am I even looking for?
I walk double time to get away. It’s too suspicious. Too off. My instincts are always right, and the scars I bear are reminders of the times I’ve ignored my gut. The last time cost me everything. I’m not doing it again.
It’s about a fifteen-minute
walk along Avalon Road to my shack on the cheap end of town. The buildings get more run-down, smaller, as I leave the business district. Umbria’s been going downhill since King Joon rose to power back when I was a kid. The whole country has.
The road bends, and then I have the river on my left. You’d think being near the water would be nice, but not in Umbria. The only waterway we got is the dirty Sol River. People empty chamber pots and dump trash right into the thing. And it’s even colder, the bone-chilling kind, when you’re close enough to hear the water lick the filthy shore.
I try to stay aware of my steps, my surroundings. There are too many dangers in Umbria from gangs, from men like me, from the hael birds, to be caught sleepwalking. But I’m off my game. Distracted.
I blame Yuri. He’s a barkeep, not a messenger. He could’ve kept all that noise to himself.
But I’m not really mad at Yuri. Truth is, I’m thinking about her. When Yuri said it was a girl, I hoped. And hope is a jagged knife. Hope pieces together dreams out of broken glass only for reality to come and smash them all over again. Hope is the cruelest punishment of them all. Because without hope, I know: it’s not her, you fool. It can’t be. It can never be.
Because I killed her.
Chapter Two
EUYN
City of Outton, Fallow
I’m being hunted.
I laugh quietly into my beard at this cruel twist of fate as I weave on light feet through the Outton marketplace. I was once a prized hunter—the best in Yusan, according to the king. And now here I am, in the badlands, in Fallow, and I am the prey.
I dart to the side, using timbers for cover to not give anyone a clean line of sight. I’ve spent the last three years trying to avoid someone collecting the twenty-thousand-gold-mun bounty on my head. At least this senseless warren called a market helps.
Outton market looks like it was hastily put together overnight, with timbers and whatever fabric they could salvage off a ship, and then the next morning they decided to leave it that way for a hundred years. I wonder if the markets in Yusan are the same—grimy and slapdash. I never stepped foot in one because we always had servants to shop for us. Servants to do anything we desired, actually. But that isn’t the life I have anymore. It’s just the one I can’t forget.
I pass a stall of tanned hides being sold by a gruff-looking fellow behind the counter. He nods to me, and I nod back. I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know his name. I haven’t asked lest he ask for mine.
When it’s clear I won’t be purchasing anything today, he ignores me and continues scanning for light fingers, a blade in his hand. Without a king, justice is meted out individually in Fallow.
The feeling of being watched prickles my skin. I toss a quick glance over my left shoulder to see if I’m being followed. Nothing.
I continue past noisy chickens and aromatic spices. The scents of clove and cardamom are overwhelming as my boots shuffle along the dusty earth. I pretend to consider dried dates as I look over my right shoulder. Still nothing. Nothing but the ordinary scene. It’s all tired women in rough spun dresses carrying wares on their heads and bearded men looking for goods or for a good fight. Children are rare here, and the ones I have seen are dirty little pickpockets.
But I’m not worried about my purse today. I’m worried about my neck.
My heart pounds in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as the earth around me. But it’s not the sun. It’s that I’m a target outside in broad daylight like this. I want to blend in with the peasantry, but I’ve yet to master that trick. I walk with a hood covering my black hair and dusty sand encrusting my tunic and trousers, just like everyone else, but there’s something about me that refuses to be common.
Two women stare up as I pass. I turn to see if there’s a threat, scanning the rooftops of the baked-clay buildings, but they were just looking at me. Because my features, my manners are too fine, my head too tall. Three years stuck in Fallow, and I still don’t walk hunched over the way they do. My shoulders refuse to slump from burden. When I try to fake it, the pretty little innkeeper always squints and asks if I’m “deep
in my cups”—their term for drunk.
I should’ve stayed at the inn until dusk, when I can blend better. I’m safe there—as safe as I can be. I’ve checked every corner, plotted every escape route. There’s a rope ladder stashed in the drapes in case I need a fast exit out of my second-story room. It’s hotter on the higher floor, but a ground-floor window might provide access to me while I sleep. Not that I sleep much. My eyes are ringed with proof of that. When I do pass out, it’s with a poisoned dagger under my pillow and my crossbow hidden under the bed. There’s a sword in the washroom. Loaded traps wait over the door and windows. I don’t leave, especially during the day, if I can avoid it. But I couldn’t ignore the red envelope at my door this morning.
Prince Euyn Hali Baejkin
The Stables, one bell
I have an offer for you
Prince Euyn. Prince. Euyn.
My eyes stuck on those words, and my stomach turned, spoiling my meager breakfast of cold sausage and stale biscuit. Someone knows who I am. And no one should know because Prince Euyn died from exposure three years ago. When powerful men try to kill you, it’s best to let them think they succeeded. I go by the name of Donal now.
I crush the envelope in my pocket. I’ve been found. But by whom?
It’s occurred to me more than once in the last six bells that this could be an ambush. I scan the crowd again, searching for the all blacks of royal assassins. Maybe it would be a gift from my dear big brother to finally put an end to this limbo. To kill me like a man. But the problem is, I want to live—or at least I refuse to die. And King Joon wouldn’t directly order my execution—he didn’t last time, relying on the elements to kill me instead.
So what is this?
Who sent this? I’m paranoid, but logically I know it’s not palace assassins—they don’t send calling cards. They like to slit your throat before you can scream.
Madness. It’s madness
to follow this invitation. My body aches to turn around. To go back. But there’s only one direction I can go for answers: forward.
My boots kick up dust as I leave the sprawling market. Dust gets in everything here. There’s no point in trying to keep tidy. What I wouldn’t give for the perfumed baths of Qali Palace; the spotless, cold marble corridors; or even the shade trees of the royal garden, where the servants spray a cooling mist in the summer and fan us with feathers. But I’m stuck with sun, dry serpents, and desert vultures circling overhead.
I check for tracks even though there are too many people going in and out of the market for them to be of much use. But our soldier boots leave distinct impressions, so I scan the road anyway.
The heat is oppressive as I cross to the stables, and I adjust my hood as I look back one more time. Nothing. Nothing but hazy air and commoners shopping. But nothing doesn’t mean you’re safe—it just means you haven’t spotted the danger yet. I’ve hunted every creature in Yusan, and few saw me coming.
I’m almost inside the stables when I see it: another red envelope. And then I notice the hand holding it. And I know it’s too late for me.
Chapter Three
SORA
City of Gain, Yusan
The meadow is beautiful this time of year. I run my delicate, bejeweled hand over the tall grass. The green grass is lovely and soft and yet, at the same time, hard and sharp. Like me.
I’m not entirely certain how the foraging lessons began. Or at least how they became a regular event. But every week, I meet five beggar children in the meadow outside of the great city walls. There are a surprising number of wild edibles and sweet berries between here and the tree line. I take the children under the trees on the hotter days to teach them about edible roots, but I don’t dare go farther than that. I can’t.
“Sora, what about this one?” Gli asks. She holds a spotted mushroom in her hand. Her little face with a cleft lip looks up at me, hopeful. Her thick curls are brushed back as best she can.
Gli is nine—the same age I was when I was taken. Well, not taken…sold.
My parents were paid a handsome price for their eldest daughter. My former parents. I, like these children, am an orphan. But unlike them, I’m not free.
I stare at the horizon. Sometimes I think about going past the tree line again, this time prepared for the Xingchi forest. I could run away from Gain and never return. Maybe I could make it all the way north to the safety of Khitan. But then I remember the collateral they have. The reason I can’t leave.
“Sora?” Gli asks.
She’s still staring up at me with her big brown eyes, waiting for an answer. I shake away my thoughts and return to the present.
“No, no, little dear,” I say. I tuck my long black hair behind my ear as I lean forward to look at her mushroom. “You see these spots? Do you recall what those mean?”
I give her a moment to remember my lesson from last week.
Gli frowns, her chin dropping to her chest. “Poison.”
“That’s right,” I say.
I stroke her cheek and raise her face. She has darker skin than my northern pallor. She’s also near tears. Life has not been forgiving of her mistakes. But I can be.
“You remembered after forgetting, and that’s just as valuable as knowing the first time,” I say. “Perhaps more, because you will lock it into memory now.” I pause and brush the mushroom from her hand. “We avoid the poisonous ones.”
She smiles even though she was wrong, and I smile back. And then Tao, who is five and never seems to forage so much as hold my hand the entire time, pulls me away to chase a butterfly. I let him, raising the hem of my colorful dress. Childhood is short, and delights are scarce for the
poor in Yusan. Even scarcer for assassins like me.
But the sun is shining on the meadow, and it’s a temperate afternoon, and there are children giggling and butterflies floating on the gentle breeze. The air smells like earth and wildflowers, with a hint of the West Sea. The sunshine will soon be replaced by the heavy rains of the monsoon season. So I try to savor the sunny days. To remember.
I try to see that there is still goodness in this realm. That I am one of the lucky ones. I survived. We survived.
The children and I have barely finished foraging when I spot a figure at the edge of the meadow. A chill careens down my spine, and my shoulders push back. I’d know that black stallion and profile anywhere. It’s the Count. And gods do I hate him. I have wished him dead well over a thousand times. But, sadly, the gods don’t honor wishes from girls like me.
I suppose he’s thought of as attractive, but money and status enhance people’s opinion of powerful men. He is twenty-five years my senior with a heart as black as coal. I see him for who he is.
“Okay, children. Same time next week?” I ask.
“Yes, Miss Sora,” they say in unison.
“Good.” I smile, but my fingers are icy as I pat Gli’s shoulder. “Now, best be on your way.”
If the Count is in a foul mood, he can grab a child and slit their throat. I know he won’t face any punishment for it. And I know this because I watched him do it years ago. I want to get the children away from him as quickly as possible. But these little ones have been raised by the streets. They understand the air shifting with danger and vanish in seconds.
I continue to smile at the empty field before walking toward the horse. It’s a warhorse that would trample me as soon as look at me. Just like its rider. My smile disappears as I get closer.
The Count’s brown eyes always scan me as one does offerings in a sugar house. As if he is figuring out where to consume me next. It’s not desire, though—it’s possession. Because he owns me, body and soul.
I give an almost imperceptible bow of my head. “My lord.”
“You’re looking well, Sora.” He smiles, scanning my body again in case I happened to miss it the first time. “Although why you bother with those filthy brats,
I’ll never know.”
I stare at him. He didn’t ask a question, so I don’t have to answer. And I’m not here for conversation.
The Count sighs and extends his gloved hand, giving me a calling card. There’s a name scrawled on it. Just like that, I’ve been given another mark. Another person to kill. A soul to steal.
And I have no choice.
Murdering is the way I repay His Grace for all the gold mun given to my former parents. The money lavished on my education and training—the training I never asked for that has left innumerable scars, most invisible. Every kill goes to my purchase price and the steep interest that started twelve years ago when I was sold.
But I have to pay him back or my little sister, Daysum, will suffer unspeakable things. And she is the only family I have left. She is his “ward,” which is a kinder word for prisoner. When I was sold, she was taken as collateral.
“When?” I ask.
“Tonight, Sora,” the Count says. His tawny face takes on a cold look—his real expression that shows his naked cruelty. “His body should be cold by dawn. If it is, you may see your sister for one bell tomorrow.”
He rides off and leaves me standing in the meadow alone. The threat is clear: fail, and you'll never see Daysum again.
Chapter Four
ROYO
City of Umbria, Yusan
I can’t feel my fucking fingers by the time I get to my door. Other men—foolish, trusting men—walk with their hands in their pockets, but I can’t afford to be foolish. I can’t afford the time it would take to get my hands free or the blow I couldn’t dodge just to keep my hands warm.
But I make it home. Home is a drafty shack close enough to the Sol to smell it, but the rent is one gold mun every two months, so I stay.
I check around the exterior for signs of a break-in. Windows are sealed shut. Faded clapboards are where they’re supposed to be. Satisfied, I unlock the three dead bolts on the door, then push my way inside and light the oil lamps.
It’s nearly as cold in the shack as it is outside. I don’t leave the furnace on if I’m going to be out—it’s a waste of money. But I kinda wish I had tonight. I need the comfort of a raging fire.
I stoke the embers back to life and warm my hands by the dimly lit coals. It takes a few minutes, but I finally thaw enough to start my routine.
There’s not much in here—a table and two chairs, a big seat by the furnace, a bed, and a washroom. I get up off the seat, make sure the window drapes are totally closed, and move the bed to the side. Then I pry up the floor plank. Under that, there’s the hideaway I dug out. And inside of the hideaway is my most valuable possession—sacks of gold mun.
I take out my coin purse. Fifteen gold coins. Five from the job tonight. Six from collecting this morning on yesterday’s job. Four from a wager I won in the gaming district.
Fifteen gold pieces. It’s a very good month’s wage in Umbria, but I need more. I always need more.
I eye the sacks in the hideaway. Each contains five thousand gold mun. There are ten of them. It took ten years to get this much. A decade of threats, gambling, broken bones, near-death mishaps, and blood. So much blood. But it’s almost worth it to see this gold crowding the small space. A warmth fills me. Pride. Safety. The things money buys. Then I remember—this is barely half of what I need.
I carefully lift the smallest sack. I add tonight’s wages and count out the new amount—two hundred and five gold mun. I cradle it as I would a baby, hoping for it to grow fat and large like its siblings, and then I lovingly fold the fabric down and deposit it next to its brethren.
My nightly count done, I close up the hideaway and wash for bed. With the room put back to rights, I grab my empty coin purse. I’ll need to figure out a way to fill it again tomorrow. More screams, more blood, more bets. Whatever gets me gold.
It isn’t until I drop the coin purse into my jacket that I feel the card. I take it out of my interior pocket. It’s white with gold edging, and the handwriting is fancy.
Royo
The Black Shoe Inn, tonight
I have a job for you
I turn the card over in my hands again and again. Where did this come from? When? I look around even though I know I’m alone. Still, I check, because it’s impossible—no one gets the jump on me. But somehow, someone did.
Over and over, I search around my shack until I’m satisfied that no one else is in here. I still have my favorite blade in my hand, just in case. I do one more lap and catch my wild gaze in the washroom glass. My eyes are a cross between yellow and brown, but right now they look black. Black as the stubble of my hair.
I need to calm down and think it through. My door is locked; nothing was awry. The card didn’t appear when I was counting my gold. It had to have been when I was out—walking home or in the pub. And then I remember that blur of red at Butcher & Ale, that off feeling. I wasn’t seeing things. Someone picked my pocket.
No, not picked. They left the gold. Instead, they planted this card.
And there’s only one person I know of staying at the Black Shoe Inn—the girl who was looking for me. I’d think it was a coincidence, but coincidences need luck and there’s none of that in Umbria. At least not for me.
This is wrong. It’s all fucking wrong.
I pace in my tiny house, crushing the card in my palm. The bare walls feel too small, and instead of freezing, it’s scorching in here now. My face is flushed, my neck sweating. My heavy feet stomp across the worn wood floors.
How?
No one gets close enough to pick my pocket. I’m always alert. I have been since my face was sliced in half. So how did someone leave this without me knowing? Who? If it’s the girl Yuri told me about, I got even more questions.
It doesn’t matter, though. I should let it go. I should throw this card right in the fire. My gut is screaming that this note is nothing but trouble.
But I need to know how
they did it. Because at five foot ten, two hundred and thirty solid pounds, I haven’t been vulnerable in years. If someone could slip a note in my inside pocket, they could slip a blade into me. I need to know how. And most important: I need to know why.
I put my jacket back on and head out into the night.
Chapter Five
SORA
City of Use, Yusan
Looking back, I think it was my face that damned me.
I study it in the gilded mirror of the powder room. Straight nose, heart-shaped face, flawless skin, and violet eyes. The Count searched the whole realm for perfection, young girls who would turn into stunningly beautiful women. He had no use for the scarred like Gli or the sickly like Daysum. Sickly wouldn’t survive the training. I barely did.
I make certain my bloodred lipstick is perfect, blotting the edge with a silk napkin. Of course, everything is satins and gilding in this villa. The place smells clean, like clove and sandalwood. The noble class always has fine private baths while commoners are resigned to dirty public bathhouses and the river. But not here. Not for them. And it is us versus them. They have freedom. We do not.
When I resent my victims, it makes this easier.
No, I’m lying to myself. Again.
I grip the marble counter. Nothing makes this easier. But it’s this man or Daysum. And when I remember that simple fact, there’s no choice to be made or mercy to be shown. I have to see this through.
I adjust the sparkling veil over my straight hair. It’s silly to have a veil for modesty when my evening dress is nearly see-through, but I try not to think about my dress or anything else. I should be as thinking and feeling as a blade. Steel forged for one purpose—to end the lives of men. That’s what I was taught. And that is the only way to survive nights like this.
My hands shake as I pull the edge of the veil over my shoulder. That’s odd. My hands stopped trembling years ago after I completed my first few kills. I put my fingers out in front of me. They quiver so much that my rings blur. The jewels, of course, belong to the Count, but he wants me to wear them as a sign of his generosity. We both know he’d strip them off my dead body before I turned cold, but the jewelry adds to the appearance of the courtesan I’m supposed to be. ...
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