“Ah yes! Good idea.” The man bowed his head. “So we the blessed few.”
“So we the blessed few,” Yassen murmured as the man disappeared into one of the shops.
He leaned against the wall, heart hammering. The Ravani may have mixed feelings toward the royal family, but they all detested the Arohassin. One look, one word, and a mob would be on him.
Elena’s speech still rang in his mind. Yassen had never been the religious type. He hated fire, and he always thought the Phoenix was a cruel, vengeful god. But he could not deny the power of her words, for there was truth in them. Ravence was a land of devotion. They worshipped the Phoenix even though it had been a long five hundred suns since they last saw the Prophet. The Arohassin had warned him about the power of faith. But it wasn’t until now that Yassen had truly seen it. And he had been terrified by it.
His earpiece crackled.
“Scarlet sighted by Eagle One,” a voice said.
Yassen pretended to be preoccupied by the pig’s feet hanging from a storefront. He glanced up at the building to his right. Behind a dark window on the top floor, Samson sat before a panel of holos, tracking their movements.Hismovements.
Once they smoked out Giorna, the Arohassin agent, he would cut off her escape. Samson’s men would then swoop in, and he could finally, hopefully, earn some trust in this forsaken place.
Yassen licked the sweat from his lips.This is just another sting operation. Just follow protocol.
He had worked with Giorna, six suns before. He’d had only a few missions under his belt, and she was his superior in both age and kills. When they snuck through Teranghar to assassinate a Ravani official, she had barely given him a second glance. But he had been a strong climber back then. Scaled canyons in a matter of minutes. She had made him climb to the top of the home where the official met his mistress. When he returned to tell her where exactly in the room they were positioned, she had finally looked at him.
“Can you shoot?”
He had nodded, though his hands had trembled. He was too afraid to tell her of his promise: to never kill a defenseless man. And the official definitely did not have a weapon.
Giorna had watched his face, and then, wordlessly, she led him to a building across from the mistress’s home. Assembled a beautiful pulse rifle that she had picked herself, telling him it was a part of her private collection. Then she knelt before the window that faced the mistress’s bedroom and shot.
Later, Giorna had told everyone he had made the kill.
Yassen’s ear crackled again. “Scarlet heading south down Butcher’s Alley. Eagle One and Two are in positions.”
“Hawk in position,” Yassen muttered.
“Scarlet in the alley. Do you have eyes?” Samson asked.
Yassen glanced around discreetly. He saw red everywhere. The canopies covering the stalls, the castaway feathers of a skinned yuani, the blood dripping down the hanging sacks of meat and pooling in the sand below.
Then he spotted the rust-colored hair.
Giorna was a small woman. Yet Yassen immediately recognized her walk. The straight-set shoulders, the upright chin and chest. The way her eyes, closely set and with an eternal look of disdain under their thin brows, slowly scanned the crowd, her hand always hovering right above her hip where, no doubt, a weapon was concealed.
“I have eyes.”
Yassen angled his body so she could not see his face as she drew near. Out of the corner of his gaze, he saw her glance at the window beside him.
Quickly, he made to go inside, calling for the butcher’s attention. The merchant turned and yelled at him to wait. Yassen spat back that he was in a hurry, rolling hisr’s to imitate the rounded southern Rani accent as Giorna passed him.
Her arm brushed against his shoulder. And then Yassen felt the knife point graze across his spine. He whipped around just as she began to push it into his lower back, ramming his hand down. The knife clattered to the ground, but she was already gone.
He darted after her. “Scarlet’s on the run,” he barked into the comm.
He vaulted over a bin of dried hawk bones that she knocked over as she fled. She veered to the right, threading past shouting merchants. They crowded in, jostling Yassen, but he shoved through them. One vendor pushed a cart piled high with sweet summer apples imported from Cyleon; Yassen tried to swerve but he was moving too fast—he crashed right through it, sending the fruit flying.
“Mother’s Gold!” the merchant cried as Yassen hopped over the spilled goods. “My apples!”
Yassen shouted apologies but did not slow. Giorna dashed to the left, and he headed down an adjoining alley to intercept her. His feet pounded against the pavement. The streets began to narrow, twisting north, which meant…She’s heading to the main bazaar.A small woman like her could easily hide in a big crowd. And if she vanished, Leo would have his head.
Yassen ran faster.
He spotted a man stacking crates of liquor on top of a floating platform. Another stood on the roof of the bar, waiting for the cargo. Yassen swung onto the platform just as it began to rise, wincing as a jolt of pain stabbed up his arm.
