"He'll come through here," Chidinma explained as they moved."After he reads the message.He'll need air."
The tallest of the three—the one with a scar cutting through her brow—nodded once.
They positioned themselves among the barrels, and the night swallowed them whole.
The drinkhouse's back door creaked open.
A man stepped out, squinting against the darkness, a folded parchment clutched in his left hand.He was medium height, medium build, and the kind of man who could disappear into any crowd and be forgotten immediately.
He moved away from the door, towards the barrels, lifting the parchment close to his face, squinting at words written in the old man's trembling hand.
"Urgent," he muttered."For the Iyom."His body tensed, eyes softening.
He never heard them.
One moment he was standing, reading, alone in the alley.The next, a hand clamped over his mouth, an arm locked around his throat, and the darkness itself seemed to come alive with women.They lifted him off his feet and carried him into the deeper dark between the buildings.
The parchment fluttered to the ground.
The arm around his throat tightened, and the world began to sway.
Then darkness took him.
He woke to cold stone beneath his back and torchlight flickering against his closed eyelids.
He didn't open his eyes immediately.He'd survived too long to give away that advantage.Instead, he listened—to the crackle of flames, to the soft rustle of cloth, to breathing—for multiple sets.
He was in trouble.
"I know you're awake."
The voice was young.A woman.
The man opened his eyes.
He lay on the floor of what appeared to be an abandoned storage room—jars in the corners, dust on the shelves, and the remnants of some long-forgotten trade.Torches burned in iron brackets on the walls, and in their light stood four women.
The woman who spoke to him sat on an upturned crate a few feet away.
She was dressed in black cloth that clung to her form.And on her upper arm, catching the torchlight and holding it, a gold armband in the shape of a viper.
His blood ran cold.
He knew that armband.
Everyone in the trade knew that armband.
"The Viper," he whispered."I'm dead."
The young woman's lips curved slightly."Not yet."
The three kohl-eyed women did not move, but something in the room shifted nonetheless.
"Eze Udoka," the seated woman said."My father's most trusted courier, retired Imperial Apothecary."
The words hit him; he looked at her face again."Chukwuemeka's daughter," he gasped."What do you think you're doing?Does your father know—"
"It's best if he never finds out."Her voice was flat."Or your life ends."
