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Sorasa dropped and twisted out of the well-known maneuver, one she had mastered years ago. Teeth bared, she glared up at her would-be attacker.
He did not attack.
“Garion,” she bit out. Around them, the parade of godly followers thinned.
Like her, the man was hooded, but Sorasa did not need to see his face clearly to know him. Garion was taller than she, his skin white even in shadow. Still a lock of mud-brown hair fell into his dark eyes, as it had when he was a boy. Where her clothes were plain, dyed in earthen colors easy for an eye to slide over, his own tunic and cloak were garish. Scarlet and embroidered silver were impossible to ignore. He sneered at her coldly.
“I did not take you for a thief, Sarn,” he hissed in Ibalet. Though he’d learned it young, it was not his mother tongue, and it still sounded odd in his mouth.
Sorasa waved him off. The black tattoos on her fingers matched his own.
“Perhaps that moral compass of yours needs adjusting,” she replied. “I stole a man’s life from you, and it’s the stealing that has you concerned?”
Garion pursed his lips. “By the Spindles, Sorasa,” he cursed. “There are rules. A guild contract is given to one and one alone.”
Such tenets were inked in her deeper than any tattoo or scar. Sorasa wanted to roll her eyes, but she had long since learned to school her expressions and hide emotion.
Instead she turned on her heel, setting off at a trot. “Jealousy doesn’t become you.”
He followed swiftly, as expected. It reminded her of different days. But those days were long ago, and she curled one hand in a fist, the other close to the dagger at her hip. Should he draw, she would be ready.
“Jealous? Hardly,” Garion said through clenched teeth. The pair wove deftly through the gathering crowd as they caught up to Meira’s faithful. “You have been named and inked. No amount of blood will rewrite what has already been written.”
The long tattoo down her ribs suddenly itched, the last marking not a year old. Unlike the many others, blessings and trophies, it had been given against her will.
“Thank you for telling me what I already know,” she said, throwing Garion a glance meant to wither a man to the root. “Go back to the citadel. Pace your cage until another easy kill lands in your lap. And I’ll steal that one from you too.”
Though her face remained still, Sorasa laughed inwardly. She would not mention that she already knew of his next contract and exactly how she would beat him to it.
“Have caution, Sarn,” he said. She heard a tremor of regret in him.He was always terrible at hiding his intentions.Such is the way with men.“Lord Mercury—”
Sorasa kept walking, her cheeks warm. She feared few upon the Ward. Lord Mercury topped a very short list.
“Go home, Garion,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to draw blood. She sorely wished to be rid of her once friend and ally. This road was easier walked alone.
He ran a hand over his head, pulling back his hood in frustration. Sweat beaded on his pale brow, and there was a fresh sunburn across his cheeks.A northern boy, even now,Sorasa thought. Decades in the desert could not change his flesh.
“This is a warning,” he said grimly, drawing aside his cloak. At his belt, a dagger like her own glinted, with a hilt of black leather over worn bronze. He had a sword too, far too close to his hand for her liking. She lamented her own, hidden in a dingy room.
Half a mile to the inn,she thought.You’re faster than he is.
Her hand strayed, fingers closing around familiar leather. It felt like an extension of her own body.
“Would you like to do this here?” She tipped her head to the crowd of priests and worshippers. “I know you don’t mind, but I prefer not to have an audience.”
Garion’s eyes trailed from her face to the dagger, weighing them both. She read his body keenly. He was lean as she remembered. The sword at his hip was thin, a light blade of good steel. He was not a brawler like some they’d trained with. No, Garion was an elegant swordsman, the assassin you wanted on display, to duel in the street. To send a message. Not so with Sorasa: a knife in shadow, a poison on the rim of a cup. Her muscles tightened as her mind spun through her options, lightning quick.Back of the knee. Cut the muscle, then the throat as he falls. Run before he hits the dirt.
She knew Garion read her in the same way. They stared for a moment longer, half coiled, two snakes with their fangs bared.
Garion blinked first. He eased backward, his palms open. The cloud of tension between them lifted. “You should disappear, Sarn,” he said.
She raised her chin, angling her head to the hot sun overhead. The shade of her hood retreated, revealing her face. Her black-rimmed eyes caught the sunlight and flashed like liquid copper.Tiger’s eyes,the others used to say when she was young. Garion’s gaze felt like fingers on her skin. She let him see the long year written in her flesh. Bruise-like circles beneath her eyes, sharper cheekbones, a dark brow drawn tight. A jaw set at a hard, unmoving edge. Sorasa had been a predator since childhood. She’d never looked it more.
His throat bobbed as he stepped back. “Few of us get the chance to walk away.”
“Few want the chance, Garion,” she said, raising a hand in farewell.
The crowd swallowed him whole.
