First Kill Read online

  For a moment, Kiam didn’t know how to answer. His mind was too clouded by memories for him to think straight.

  They were both fifteen when he met Sofya the first time. Her father had come to Greenharbour to discuss trade terms with the High Prince—or, rather, his sister. Princess Marla ran the kingdom in her brother’s name. Everyone knew that, even if nobody said it out loud. Marla had invited Symposiarch Kannangara to Greenharbour to discuss the growing problem of Trinity Isles pirates—or, as the Trinity Islanders preferred to call them, traders of opportunity. He’d brought his daughter with him and it was love at first sight for both of them.

  The talks were intense and quite fraught at time. For two glorious weeks, Kiam and Sofya had been ignored by adults too consumed with weighty matters of state to notice what the young lovers were up to.

  His stepbrother, Damin Wolfblade, discovered what was going on before Sofya’s father found out, fortunately—although Kiam was gutted at the time. Damin arranged for Sofya to leave Greenharbour for a tour of the famous horse stud at Warrinhaven and for Kiam to return to his training at the Assassins’ Guild before anyone else noticed they’d fallen madly in love.

  He’d expected some sort of punishment when he returned to the Guild for endangering the negotiations with his teenage lust, and for Sofya to receive an even more dreadful punishment. Trinity Islanders—unlike the Hythrun—considered a woman’s virginity a prize above all others. It was a tradable commodity when looking for a wife. At best, had her father learned about their romance, she would have been whipped within an inch of her life. She could have been put to death if Grem Kannangara considered the insult to his family’s honour sufficiently dire.

  It might, in the worst case, have set Hythria and the Trinity Isles at war.

  But Damin—the Gods reward him—had never said a word to Kiam’s father, Princess Marla, Grem Kannangara or anyone else. For that alone, Kiam would be Damin Wolfblade’s loyal servant until the day he died.

  “She might remember me,” Kiam said, when he was able to find his voice again. I know I’ll never forget her.

  “Then I’ll get out of your way,” she said, rising from his lap. Without warning, she slapped his face as hard as she could, stinging his cheek and making his eyes water. “I don’t do things like that!” she announced so loudly, everyone in the tavern turned to stare at them.

  As soon as she was sure she had the attention of the whole tavern, Teriahna swept up her skirts and stormed out of the tavern, leaving Kiam alone in the booth, with everyone laughing at him.

  Nicely played, he thought, as he buried his face in his beer to hide his embarrassment.

  Teriahna’s little show had the desired effect. As she slammed the tavern door on her way out, Sofya broke away from the group of admirers hovering about her by the bar and approached Kiam.

  He leaped to his feet, wondering what she would do when she realized who he was.

  “Whatever did you ask of her?” Sofya laughed as she approached him. Everyone in the tavern was watching them, waiting for his response. “I hear there’s not much a Fardohnyan whore won’t do.”

  Kiam stared at her, unable to speak, his heart pounding, partly from fear she might expose him, partly from a remnant of the insanely intense feelings he’d once burned with for his first love.

  He need not have worried. She stared at him as if he was a complete—if somewhat amusing—stranger.

  “Come, tell us all where a Fardohnyan whore draws the line?” She glanced around her audience with a laugh. “We’re dying to know.”

  Applause broke out, and some of the patrons cheered at her words. Kiam was gutted, not because she was teasing him, or making him the butt of her joke, or even that she didn’t recognize him.

  This was not Sofya, he realized. It was her body, her smile, her lips that had once caressed his, but the soul looking out from those big dark eyes did not belong to the girl he knew. The girl he had loved.

  Everyone on the tavern was staring at him, dumbstruck. Thinking he was a fool.

  And right now, that was just fine by Kiam. He needed answers and he wasn’t going to find them here.

  Looking embarrassed and humiliated—and not all of it an act—Kiam pushed his way past Sofya and ran from the tavern to the jeers and catcalls of the other patrons.

  Teriahna was waiting outside, across the street. She said nothing, just stared at him for a moment, and then she turned and lost herself in the evening crowd on the street.

  I’ve failed, Kiam realized.

  It was obvious now why he’d been given this job. He thought his father unaware, all these years, of his romance with Sofya. But he must have known. Kiam doubted Damin had let it slip, but it explained why nothing had ever been said to him about it. The Guild was biding their time, waiting until they could use the information to their best advantage.

  How fortunate for them that someone wanted Sofya dead just in time for Kiam to graduate to the ranks of a full assassin.

  But that’s not Sofya. Kiam had no sound reason for his belief other than a gut instinct he had been trained to trust. Something was amiss.

  Grem Kannangara loved his daughter, but given the life she was now leading, it was more than likely it was the Symposiarch himself who had commissioned the kill. If having a brief romance with the step-nephew of the Hythrun High Prince were a blow to the honour of his House, Sofya selling herself in the taverns of Calavandra would be a humiliation he could not abide.

  Kiam turned and headed back towards the inn where he’d left his things, pushing past the people on the streets without really seeing them. A part of him remained alert for Teriahna. She might be willing to give him another chance, but right now, she probably thought he had no chance of completing this task and was already arranging to deliver the penalty for his incompetence.

  He didn’t have much time, he figured, to either kill Sofya or find out what was really going on.

  The only person who might know, he realized, was the man who had probably commissioned this kill.

  Grem Kannangara, the Symposiarch of Calavandra.

  * * *

  Scaling the walls of the Symposiarch’s palace proved alarmingly easy. Someone should warn him about that, Kiam thought as he dropped silently from the wall to crouch in the shadows of the main courtyard in the family wing of the palace. The flat roof had made ingress ridiculously easy, and he’d been able to scan the entire palace unseen, crossing silently from one building to the next until eventually figuring out where Grem had retired for the evening. After that, all he needed to do was wait until the Symposiarch was alone.

  He had dropped into the courtyard on that assumption. Across the small courtyard beyond the fountain, the doors to the Symposiarch’s sleeping chamber were open to the balmy night. He rose to his feet, about to reveal himself, when a knock at Grem’s door forced Kiam to blend back into the shadows.

  Grem emerged from his bathing room, his hefty body wrapped in a towel, his head wet from his bath. He called, “Enter,” to whoever was outside the door, turning to face them as they entered. His whole body stiffened at the sight of his late-night visitor.

  The sheer curtains prevented Kiam from seeing who the visitor was, but Grem’s obvious anger intrigued him. Who could possibly impose on this powerful man so late at night, cause him so much anger and not be executed for his temerity?

  “What do you want?” Grem demanded of his visitor.

  Clinging to the shadows, Kiam moved a little closer to hear the visitor’s response.

  “Your answer, my lord,” the unseen man responded in a heavily accented voice. The man sounded like a Karien.

  “What you ask of me is … impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible for those who believe in the One True God.”

  “I cannot do what you ask…” There was an edge of desperation in Grem’s voice, something Kiam had never heard before. Grem Kannangara was a big, powerful man with a booming voice and a personality to match. This man verged on
the edge of a quivering wreck.

  “Do you need more proof of Xaphista’s power? Is not the fact that your only child currently dishonours your House with every breath she takes sufficient punishment for your reluctance to embrace the one true religion?”

  “What you ask of me is too much. People will die.”

  “Then I can only assume you enjoy the reports you receive daily, about your daughter’s stellar career as a whore.”

  Grem’s expression was tortured. “What if I announce I now worship the One God … surely that will be enough?”

  “The One God demands you deliver the Trinity Isles to him,” the Karien priest said—Kiam reasoned the visitor could be nothing else. “You must drive out every worshipper of the false gods. Only then will your daughter be released from her life of sin. I trust you will make the right decision, my lord, before pestilence or some drunken sailor your daughter is servicing for a pittance solves your dilemma for you.”

  The priest left without waiting for Grem’s permission to depart. As the door closed, the big man collapsed to his knees and put his head in his hands, weeping silently.

  Kiam was at a loss. He had never seen such a broken man.

  But the reason he had been contracted to kill Sofya was beginning to make sense.

  The One God was making a move on the Trinity Isles. If the Symposiarch closed the temples, killed or drove out all the nonbelievers and declared the worship of Xaphista the only true religion, the other islands of the Trinity Isles would follow. Grem had obviously refused and they were using Sofya to force his hand.

  And that was why he had commissioned the Guild to kill her.

  If Sofya was dead, the Karien priests could no longer use his daughter against him.

  Does the Guild know about this? he wondered as he faded back from the Symposiarch’s sleeping chamber. He would learn nothing more there tonight. He was much more interested in following the priest, because once Kiam realized there was a Karien priest of Xaphista the One God involved, he also knew the reason Sofya didn’t recognize him.

  * * *

  Teriahna was waiting for Kiam in his room at the inn.

  “Did you follow me here?” he asked, wondering if she was here to kill him for his failure or give him a chance to explain himself.

  “When you arrived yesterday. You made no attempt to hide from me.”

  “Would there have been a point?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps not. Where have you been?”

  “Doing my job.”

  “Then Sofya the Siren is dead?”

  “You know she isn’t.”

  “Interesting definition you have, then, of doing your job.”

  “That girl in the tavern isn’t Sofya.”

  “Assuming I entertain your absurd notion, who is she, then?”

  “It’s Sofya’s body,” he said, “but I don’t know who’s inside it. I do know why she’s plying her trade at the Bull’s Balls, though.”

  “Is this going to make any difference to how you kill her?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Teriahna rolled her eyes. “Oh, this had better be good, little man, because right now, I’m mentally composing my letter to the Raven about his son’s unfortunate demise brought about by his spectacular level of incompetence.”

  He treated her to a winning smile. “So, you’re not here to kill me?”

  “We’ll see. What’s this plan you have?”

  “We’ll get to that. First, I have to know if you’ll help me.”

  “Of course I won’t help you! It’s your test to pass, not mine.”

  “But isn’t part of the test demonstrating my ability to use whatever I have on hand to get the job done?”

  Teriahna scowled at him. “Not by getting me to do the job for you.”

  “I don’t need you to do the job, Teriahna. I need you to be there to save Sofya when I succeed.”

  * * *

  The training to become an assassin took almost a decade and was only partly about the physical skills required to take a human life in as many different ways as one could imagine. The majority of Kiam’s training had been about mental discipline. It had been about learning to resist the probing of a Harshini with the power to take secrets from an assassin’s mind, even though nobody had seen a real Harshini for more than a century. It was studying human nature. It was about comparative theology. And it involved wading through a mountain of historical literature that rivalled what they had stored in the Sorcerers’ Collective Library in Greenharbour.

  During his studies, Kiam had been particularly fascinated by the notion of miracles. Not because he wanted to work them, particularly, just that they existed at all. So, he’d read more than he needed to, about the various ways the gods had interfered with humanity over the centuries by working miracles, including accounts of soul transference between bodies, a trick favoured, apparently, by Xaphista. There were few recorded cases, and even those accounts seemed doubtful, but the possibility had intrigued him.

  When he suggested that was what was happening there, Teriahna had laughed in his face.

  But she had agreed to aid him, mostly, Kiam suspected, because she expected him to fail. When he did, she would be there to clean up his mess, first by killing Sofya herself and then coming after Kiam.

  It was a risk he was willing to take, and not just because he really didn’t want to kill the first girl he’d ever seriously kissed. If the Karien priest succeeded in his plan to control the Trinity Isles by forcing Grem Kannangara to destroy the other gods’ temples—and their followers—the whole of Hythria was threatened too. He owed it to his stepbrother—Hythria’s future High Prince—to prevent that from happening if he could.

  He sent Teriahna back to the Bull’s Balls to watch over Sofya. His instructions to her had been simply Watch her. You’ll know when I’ve succeeded.

  Teriahna had shaken her head at his folly but left without a word.

  Kiam headed back to the palace. What he was looking for should be there. Sofya was a princess and would have been guarded like the precious jewel she was. There was no chance Grem would have let her out on the streets of Calavandra where she might be corrupted before he could arrange a suitable marriage for her, so however the Kariens had gotten to her, they had likely done it in the palace itself,. That meant what he was looking for was probably still there.

  Kiam roamed the palace roof for most of the night before he found it.

  It was the Karien priest carrying a tray with a bowl of broth from the kitchen, across a courtyard to a locked basement door that alerted him. Arrogant to a fault, no priest carried his own food or waited on anyone else. The only reason a man like him would be taking a tray to someone late at night was because he didn’t want anyone else to know about it.

  The priest seemed oblivious to the fact he was being followed. Kiam wasn’t sure if that was a testament to his assassin skills or the priest’s preoccupation with his own problems. He picked the lock silently and followed the man through the door, down a narrow dark staircase and into a dimly lit basement where an acolyte sat by a narrow stretcher, beside the desiccated body of an unconscious old woman.

  “How is she?” the priest asked.

  “Still alive. But barely.”

  “She is dehydrating,” the priest said. “You need to keep her fluids up.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to take this long.”

  “The Symposiarch is a tougher nut to crack than we thought.” The priest put the tray on the stool beside the acolyte and began to roll up his sleeves. “I’ll see if I can get something into her. Take a break while you can.”

  The acolyte rose to his feet and stretched for a moment, leaving Kiam with a dreadful dilemma. The acolyte had to pass Kiam to get out of the cellar, but he had been commissioned to kill only Sofya. He was hidden by the shadows now. As soon as the acolyte passed him, he would be discovered.

  We don’t kill innocent bystanders.

  It was one of the basic tenets of the
Assassins’ Guild.

  Well, that’s easy, Kiam decided, as he slid a long narrow blade from the side of his boot. Neither of these men is innocent.

  He took the unsuspecting acolyte down silently as the young man headed for the stairs. The man didn’t know what had happened to him or make a sound as Kiam lowered him to the floor in the shadows, his throat slit from ear to ear. The priest remained oblivious to the danger. He was busy tending to the old woman, trying to spoon some of the broth into her slack mouth. This, he guessed, was the woman in control of Sofya’s body.

  Hopefully, once she was dead, Sofya would not longer be possessed.

  Whether his action would save Sofya or end her life, too, Kiam couldn’t say.

  The blood from the acolyte’s severed jugular reached the priest a moment before Kiam did. The man glanced down at the floor, puzzled by the dark liquid pooling at his feet. Then he looked up.

  Kiam drove the knife through his right eye and straight into his brain before he could react. The priest dropped as silently and as dead as his acolyte.

  The woman on the bed had not moved.

  Kiam looked down at her, wondering who she was. She must have known what they were planning. Perhaps she was a true believer. More likely she was an old whore who’d jumped at the chance to be young and beautiful again for a time.

  Surely, she had known that even if they had succeeded, the Karien priests would never have let her leave this cellar alive.

  Kiam felt a twinge of pity. He squashed it ruthlessly as he plunged his knife into the old woman’s heart, hoping it was enough to release Sofya from the spell that possessed her.

  And hoping Teriahna would see the change come over Sofya at the Bull’s Balls and not decide the young woman still needed to die.

  He felt the old woman’s heart stop beating against the blade and withdrew it. Then he squatted down, dipped his silver raven ring into the blood pooling around his feet and, one by one, marked the foreheads of the priests and the old woman so whoever found them would know this was the work of the Assassins’ Guild.

  Once that was done, Kiam stepped back out of the blood, took off his boots and his blood-soaked shirt, rolled them into a ball and carefully made his way out of the cellar, leaving no betraying footprints behind.