“How do you get your jobs? I’ve seen you on two now. How did you know someone wanted those men clipped?” My pile of grains and acid flamed for less than a second, then fizzled out.
“There’s a building near the town square with a single brick that’s loose and hollowed out behind. Anyone who has a job can leave me a message and the money behind that brick, and I collect the jobs and there you go.”
“Aren’t you worried someone will see you collecting the letters?”
“No, the letters drop down a hole. I’m sure people think the letters sit behind another brick, but they fall beneath the street. There’s a tunnel that leads to them. I check it every few days.”
“But if it’s illegal, how do people know about you?” I poured more gray dust and added some of the black powder. “Do you have a lot of jobs? Well, maybe that’s a dumb question, since you’re the serial murderer and all that.”
He grunted. “Sometimes I go months with nothing. Sometimes, like this week, I have two or three. Just because murder is illegal doesn’t mean people aren’t willing to pay to put an end to someone for one reason or another. Most of my jobs are people who have caused a grave offense. How does it work in Lovero?”
“There’s a guild with offices throughout the country. Anyone can walk in and request a job. They can open it to any Family or request a specific one. The guild contacts the Family when there’s a personalized request. Otherwise, we can check with the offices when we’re looking for work. The guild withholds payment until the job is completed. That way they can return payment to the client if a clipper refuses a job or it fails.”
He shook his head. “It’s so strange to me, how candid your country is about murder.”
“Murder is worship. You either become a clipper and do it yourself, or you allow clippers to do it for you. And maybe one day it’s your life they take. But if they do, you know Safraella rewards those who follow Her.”
“Rewards them with death, you mean.”
“Everyone dies. You could turn into an angry ghost and rage across the dead plains for all eternity. Or you could die at the hands of a clipper and Safraella will grant you the gift of a new, better life. Loverans understand this. And besides, you have a lot of murder here.”
Les guffawed, and I shot him a look.
“Oh, you’re serious?” he said. “How can you even compare?”
“Loverans are generally safe from clippers if they don’t anger someone enough to pay to have them killed. Here, I could walk home in the evening and some stranger could murder me for my purse or any other reason.”
“I don’t see how hiring a clipper in Lovero would curtail violence,” Les said.
“Because people talk. And if I wronged you, you would pay to have me killed and you would be right to do so.”
“Doesn’t it just start a cycle of murder and vengeance? What if my family hired someone to kill you after you had me killed?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes that happens. More so before. Now people understand that the murder of a loved one is an act of worship, that they’ll be granted a new, better life.”
Les shook his head. “You make it sound like Lovero is so morally superior, because everyone follows Safraella, but here you are, plotting to kill the Da Vias because they murdered your Family.”
I grimaced. He’d hit on an uncomfortable truth. “It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
“The Da Vias killed my Family, yes, but only a fool would think they did it as an act of worship. Maybe that’s what they want the common to think, but the other Families know that the Da Vias attacked us because they were the second Family and we were the first and by killing us they got power. Anything else was just a bonus.”
“Won’t the other Families punish them, then? Why wouldn’t they just rise up together and put a stop to the Da Vias if they’re so power hungry and less than faithful?”
“The others are cowards. Most of them, anyway. They feel safe at the bottom. And they’d need proof. Right now they may know the Da Vias killed more for themselves than Safraella, but without proof, they would never rise up against them.”
“Then it sounds like Rennes and Lovero have more in common than you thought.”
I ignored this barb and instead dripped a bit of the acid onto my dust pile. It flared up immediately into a bright flame.
I shouted and Les scrambled over. “What did you use?”
“Just the acid and those two powders!” I grabbed the jars and sprinkled a bit more of the dust onto the flames. They burned gleefully. With this mixture we could make a timed firebomb, not just a smoke bomb.
Les grabbed my hands and we jumped and danced around the fire, laughing and cheering. “Thank you,” I said to him.
He grinned. “For what?”
“For making me laugh.”
Together we watched the flames flicker in the early morning, and for a moment all the pain and guilt and loneliness from missing Lovero and my Family and Val just disappeared into the night sky with the embers of the fire—until it seemed the fire might burn another hole in my roof and we were forced to put it out with the bucket of water.