CHAPTER ONE
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats
Nor do they have tails
But they are most assuredly dead.
THE RED SCRIPT leapt out to Eveen, etched in cursive onto the plain brown card she held between a thumb and forefinger. After speaking the words aloud, she repeated them in her head twice again, trying not to snicker. She failed. Her laughter chortled into a snort that burst from her lips and nostrils like a thing seeking escape. The other patrons in the posh eatery swiveled stiff necks fitted into well-stitched finery to glare disapprovingly.
“It’s not supposed to be funny,” Fennis remarked. He sat across from her, his ginger eyebrows furrowing at her reaction.
No, it was absolutely ridiculous, she wanted to say, until she noticed the crimson splotching his cheeks. She wasn’t normally one to be concerned about feelings. But the man had a face like a baby—with big liquid eyes and cheeks that aunties and grandmothers would travel to pinch and wiggle. Who wanted to make all that upset?
“Umm, did you write this?”
He nodded, going more crimson. Crimsoner? Yes, he was going crimsoner.
“Oh. Well. Then. Ummmmmm.”
He sighed. “Just turn it over.”
She flipped the card. “Oh look. More words.”
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins.
Skilled. Discreet. Professional.
Here for your most pressing needs.
Eveen glanced back up at Fennis: an expectant cherub with a curly ginger halo.
“Stop looking at me like that. I’m doing my best here. What are we supposed to do with these again?” She motioned to the stack on the table.
“They’re calling cards,” he said, far too pleased with himself. “After you and the gang finish a job, you can leave them about. A way to drum up business.”
She held up a finger. “First, stop calling us a gang. We’re not street toughs with matching haircuts. We’re a guild of hired killers.” Another finger. “Second, what makes you think that the employers of someone we ship will want us doing more shipping on their behalf?”
“In this city,” he replied, “there’s always business for that sort of business.”
Well, Eveen admitted, he had a point.
Tal Abisi was a port city on the western peninsula. It was claimed more trade passed through here than through the three largest similar ports on the continent combined—silk and textiles from inland Vash, rum and blue spice from the Baleen Archipelago, magic-rich minerals and ores mined in far-off eastern Gulat, even wonders from the mechanical city of Kons. Goods flowed through Tal Abisi as readily as the gold and silver such trade generated. And where there was wealth, there were people to fight over it: business competitors, feuding mobsters, games of vendetta among the powerful who controlled the city, and more. Work, her kind of work, was ever booming.
Eveen tossed the card onto the table. “You ran this by Baseema?”
Fennis nodded. “She was quite amenable to the idea.”
“I bet.” Baseema was as hard as tempered steel, which is what you’d expect from a guild boss of assassins. But she had a soft spot for Fennis, who she’d hired to handle the guild’s paperwork. Probably that baby face.
Eveen’s attention—along with everyone else’s—was drawn suddenly to the trio that burst into the eatery. Instinct sent a hand reaching not for the two curved knives she kept strapped to her torso, hidden beneath the half-buttoned cobalt blue waist-length sailor’s jacket, but to the throwing dagger in the brown knee-high boot on her right leg. She’d teased out the black hilt, barely perceptible against the dark blue stripe that ran up her white breeches, before reassessing the newcomers.
One, a man in a fur-lined coat sewed with glittering sprocket wheels. Another, a woman, dressed similarly to Eveen. The two tussled over a third figure, in a puffy short skirt, sailor’s boots, and overly large coat, her skin painted a metallic gold. Eveen eased the dagger back into place. No danger here. These were actors and this was a bit of theatre. Not too surprising in Tal Abisi, on the third and final night of the Festival of the Clockwork King, the Pirate Princess, and the Golden Bounty.
Sitting back, she watched the impromptu show—complete with a competition of recited literature. Even this uptight crowd was riveted, gasping as the performers drew flintlock pistols that fired streams of orange ribbon, and descending into a hush as the golden girl reached into her chest to offer up a mechanical heart that burst into shimmering confetti. They were rewarded with applause, knuckle raps on tables, and a shower of coins. The small troupe hastily picked up their winnings, rushing out before the establishment’s matron—who stood smiling tightly and gripping the sides of her purple kaftan—lost patience. You could push things during Festival, but only so far.
“I never tire of hearing that tale,” Fennis murmured.
“I’ve read better,” Eveen said, flicking away confetti.
“All you read are those Terribles the presses in Kons churn out—Asheel the Maniac Hunter or Terrors of the Demon Lands.”
Eveen wagged a finger. “That’s solid literature! Asheel hunts maniacs—even though he’s a maniac! A maniac who hunts other maniacs? Genius! And Terrors of the Demon Lands are reputedly eyewitness accounts.”
Fennis regarded her skeptically.
“Whatever. Still better than the piss we just saw put on,” she retorted.
“Every story carries its own truths,” he said, in a very Fennis-like way.
“Pfft. A girl offers up her own life to stop feuding suitors—dramatic much?”
“She did it for love. And it saved Tal Abisi. Now she’s the city’s patron saint.”
“Love? More like caught between a conniving pirate and a megalomaniac.”
Fennis gestured at her. “Yet here you are dressed as the Pirate Princess yourself.”
Eveen tugged at the gold buttons of her jacket, pulling the white shirt beneath just past the cuffs. “I keep with the fashion. And who doesn’t like a festival? I’m just saying … the city almost gets laid to waste by an army of mechanical giants, is left with a magical hazard that makes an entire district uninhabitable, and almost three hundred years later that near-death experience is turned into three nights of revelry.”
“People deal with memories of trauma in odd ways,” Fennis replied.
“Memories,” Eveen muttered. “Wouldn’t know much about those.”
Fennis winced. “Sorry.”
She waved him off with a lie. “Hard to miss what you don’t have.”
The awkward lull was broken by a server, drinks in hand, wearing a lopsided smile. He’d been making googly eyes at her all evening, likely wondering if she and Fennis were an item. No worries there. The man had never once glanced at her with amorous intent. The only passion or arousal he showed was for food—like the way his face lit up now watching wine poured into a pewter goblet. He’d arrived here as a boy from a backwater village, Mara’s Bay or some such place, where the most exciting cuisine was bluefish, whatever that was. Tal Abisi expanded his palate, and he’d become a connoisseur of rare delights—which is why they’d ended up in this snooty spot, instead of the hole in the wall joints she preferred.
Pushing back twisted dark locs that draped casually over one eye, she bit her lip and caressed the stubble on the side of her scalp she kept shorn. The server was attractive enough. And that whole memory thing was working her mood. Some flirtation was better than having to watch Fennis inhaling the aroma of his wine with unbridled bliss. Aeril’s fiery tits. The man should rent a room already.
The server’s lopsided smile widened. Finger tracing the rim of her goblet, Eveen eased back into her seat, extending one leg its full long length in her tight breeches. That sent his eyes a bit more googly. Like using glow glass to catch river eels. She wondered if he’d pour some of that wine into Fennis’s lap? That might be fun. But his smile abruptly disappeared, face shifting to unease. He looked away, quickly filling her goblet before turning to go. She scowled at his back. What was that about?
“You keep forgetting to blink.”
Fennis eyed her above his goblet, sipping wine.
“What?”
He indicated the retreating server.
“Blinking. You forget that sometimes. It can be … off-putting.”
“Oh,” Blinking. One of those habits you had to remember, when you were dead.
Her eyes—after intentionally timed blinks—went back to the stack of cards.
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats
Nor do they have tails
But they are most assuredly dead.
No lies there. Eveen was dead. Like dead, dead. For real dead.
How that had happened—she didn’t know. No clue about who she’d been in life either. Not a single solitary memory. She was certain her name hadn’t been Eveen. She just liked the sound of it. Eveen. Eveeeen. Eveeeeeen. It rolled off the tongue. About the only thing she could say for certain was that she’d done this to herself. She’d been shown the contract and everything—the one agreed to in life, giving herself to the goddess she now served. Her fingers slid along the nape of her neck, touching the black tattoo imprinted against her dark skin: the jackal-eared hound, sigil of Aeril, Matron of Assassins, to whom she was bound, body and soul, in death.
She took a sip of wine—wishing it could evoke whatever it was doing for Fennis. Dull, of course. She could drink bottles more and she’d never get exactly drunk, just somewhere on the edge of inebriety. Everything was like that when you were dead. This wine. Food. Sex. The sweetness and verve—there was a nice word, verve—was just missing. Like someone baking you a pie and removing just enough sugar. You’d eat it, sure. What kind of weirdo turns down pie? But it just wouldn’t have the proper sweetness. No verve.
At least the guild had done right by her resurrection. Had to give them that. She wasn’t some shambling half-rotted corpse out to devour brains or the like. The reanimation sorcery kept her like a living person. Well, almost. Her skin had a dull cast to it, though nothing the right oils and a good soaking couldn’t fix. Some involuntary acts, like blinking, she had to force herself to do to keep up appearances. And, as a rumble in her stomach reminded her, there was eating.
Thankfully their server was returning. No more lopsided grin or googly eyes, and with others in tow. They set down dishes piled with food. Broiled stepper birds in pungent herbs. A braised shank of mutton doused in mint. One bowl of fried squid in a tangy sauce. And the honey-glazed ribs of some roasted beast. She dug in with ferocity.
The dead were ravenous for food—lots of it. Something to do with the sorcery preserving her undead flesh. Like everything else, none of it even tasted that remarkable. Still, even in death this body hungered for its sacrifices.
“Observing you eat is always a wonder,” Fennis commented, watching her crack open thin stepper bird bones to get at marrow.
“I don’t need your judgment. Aren’t you having anything?”
“Oh yes! Here it is now!”
The server returned with a plate of white yogurt and a sheet of thin flatbread. Two bowls followed, each filled with wriggling things that made her squint.
“Are those ants?”
Fennis nodded, riffling through his coat—a long gray jacket with endless pockets that swallowed him in its fullness—until he procured a small vial. Unstoppering it, he poured a dark viscous liquid over the wriggling ants.
“Peppered honey,” he explained. “A delicacy I learned from a Banari ship captain.”
“Thought all they had in Banar were knife duels if you looked at someone the wrong way,” Eveen said, crunching her squid.
“Well, yes.” He produced a pouch and pinched some green seasonings to sprinkle on the hapless ants. “But they’re also known for their daring cuisine. The ants are from the Splintered Isles, one set red, the other blue. They’re generally docile. But if ever the two cross they turn vicious! It is said the secretions they exude in battle taste like nothing else.” Tearing off a bit of flatbread, he dipped it in yogurt, then rolled it in both bowls of honeyed ants.
“Wait. You’re not going to—”
Before she finished, he stuffed the concoction into his mouth—chewing in ecstasy.
Copyright © 2024 by P. Djèlí Clark
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