‘You,’ she spat. ‘The lap-dog. I'd hoped for the lap itself.’
Possum smiled. ‘I like to think of myself as a lap-guard-dog.’
‘Save your poor wit.’ The woman straightened, crossed her arms. ‘I know what you want and I'm not going to give it to you.’
Edging one foot forward, Possum scanned her carefully. A dangerous mage, an adept of the D'riss Warren. Together the two siblings had run many dangerous missions for Kellanved. Yet he detected no active magics. What was this?
She hissed a long breath through her clamped teeth. ‘Hurry, damn you. I'm losing my nerve.’
Possum darted forward. He hugged her to him, slipped his longest stiletto up through her abdominal cavity. She clung to him with that startled look they always get when cold iron pricks the heart.
‘At least you can stab straight,’ she gasped huskily into his ear.
Faces nearby turned to them. ‘The heat,’ Possum said. ‘Poor woman.’ They turned away. He brought his face close to hers. ‘Why?’
The woman's expression relaxed into a kind of wistfulness. ‘There he goes, they will say,’ she whispered. ‘He took Janelle, they will say … but you'll know. You'll know what you have always known,’ she took a shuddering wet breath, ‘… that you are nothing more than … a fraud.’
Possum lowered her to the ground, kneeling over her. Damn the bitch! This was not how things were supposed to go. He stepped away from the body, slipped behind bystanders, edged his way slowly to the opening of the street of Opals. As he went he relaxed his limbs, allowed himself to merge with the crowd streaming from the square. Behind him the meat that had been Janul was being chopped to pieces and those pieces thrown into a fire to be burned to ashes. Ashes that would then be tossed into Unta Bay.
He walked as just another of the crowd, jostled, head down. But all the while he wondered at the iron self-control it would take, when all that mattered was lost and there was nothing left, to somehow turn even one's death into a kind of victory. Could he manage the same when his time came? Denying one's killer everything; even the least satisfaction of a professional challenge. He couldn't imagine it. A fool might dismiss the act as despair but he saw it as defiance. And was the difference so fine as to reside in the eye of the beholder?
He recognized the calloused bare dirty feet walking along beside his and straightened from his musings.
Laseen too was quiet. Her hands were clasped behind her back. He imagined she too was thinking of the dead woman – dead compatriot – Possum corrected himself. And thinking of that, how far back together might the three of them have known each other? Something not to forget, he decided.
Glancing about, he noted the bodyguard now walking with them ahead and behind. A bodyguard selected by me since Pearl's disaster on Malaz took so many.
After a time Laseen nodded to herself as if ending an internal conversation. She cleared her throat. ‘I want you to personally look into a number of recent things that have been troubling me. Domestic disturbances. Reports of strengthened regional voices.’
‘And the disappearances in the Imperial Warren … ?’ He'd heard much talk of this from the Claw ranks.
‘No. I'm sending no more into that Abyss.’
‘I believe it's haunted. We know almost nothing of it, truth be told.’
‘It's always been unreliable. It's these rumours from the provinces that trouble me. Is anyone behind all the troubles? Who? Put as many on it as it takes. I must know who it is.’
Possum gave a slight bow of the head. So, internal dissent. Rising graft and perhaps even feuding within the administrative ranks. An emboldened nationalist voice here. A large border raid there. Old tribal animosities rekindled. And the Imperial Warren becoming increasingly dangerous. Connected? By whom? She is worried. She is wondering. Could it be them? After so long? Was it now because she is alone?
Or, Possum considered with an internal sneer, could it simply be plain old boredom on their part?
He stopped because Laseen had slowed and halted. She glanced to him. ‘We once were friends you know,’ she said, almost reflective. ‘That is, I thought we understood each other …’ She looked away, the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes tight.
So why did she do it? Why did she betray you? Is that what you're wondering? Or, what did they know that you do not?
Laseen's jaw line hardened. ‘So. You brought her down. Very good. I didn't think—’
‘That I could?’
Laseen blinked. Her lips drew tight and thin. ‘That she would go so quietly.’
Possum shrugged. ‘I surprised her.’
Her gaze snapped to him, sidelong. Possum refused to acknowledge the attention. Let her imagine what she may. Had she not been his right hand? Was he now not hers? Let her wonder, and consider.
Without a word the Empress moved on. Possum followed.
Atop a wall of Reacher's Square a spiked skull laughed but no one heard.