“I should think it would take more time to acquire the level of killing mastery you are reputed to have, not to mention the bloody reputation to accompany it.”
“It only takes two acts of real fucking depravity to make a reputation.” Sebastian counted off on his thumb and forefinger. “The first to get everyone’s attention and the second to show you were serious the first time.” He took a drag off his cigarillo. “I’ve been for hire for ten years.”
“Ten years? If I recall, you reserved your most delicious depravity for the Zak’reth, just after the war, and I haven’t heard word of your exploits in almost four years. Taken time off, have we?”
Sebastian hardly heard the question. The Zak’reth. Memories of the war arose at once, summoned by the name and filled with blood. He could see thousands of warships, and red armor-clad men swarming over his home island, like locusts, ravaging and burning and consuming all until there was nothing left. Nothing left of his home. Of his father or sister.
Mina…
Sebastian blew a perfect smoke ring, and reburied the memories before they could reveal themselves on his face. “A man’s allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labor, isn’t he?”
“You have to understand my reservations,” Zolin said. “Before I entrust the infamous Sebastian Vaas with this task—and pay him a bloody fortune in gold doubloons—I want to make certain I’m getting who I think I’m getting.”
Sebastian held up his hands. “You take my word or you don’t. But I’m getting tired of sitting in this dark, smelly dungeon waiting for you to tell me just what it is you want.”
“I want,” the High Vicar said, “for you to get your bloody feet off my table.” He made a fist and then opened it again. “Krystak.”
A shaft of ice lanced out of his palm and struck Sebastian’s nearest boot, riming it with frost and giving his foot an excruciating chill. The little blast caught him by surprise for exactly half a heartbeat.
Sebastian righted himself, drew the knife from the catch on his wrist and lunged forward, like striking lightning. Zolin reared back, drawing another breath to call ice, but Sebastian flipped the knife in his hand and laid the tip onto the table. With a deft flick of his wrist, he sent it spinning; a silver sliver that danced in the crescent moon-shaped light cast on the stone table.
Then he disappeared into the dark.
In the space of a moment, he’d crept up behind Jude, silent as the shadows that concealed him. He snaked one arm around her neck and thrust upward so that her chin was tucked into the crook of his elbow. He squeezed and twisted, contorting her neck to the point of snapping it. Her sword hung from nerveless fingers. Before she dropped it, Sebastian wrapped his hand over hers and laid the tip of her blade against Zolin’s back.
“I wouldn’t,” Sebastian warned the other Bazira, the young man whose face was concealed in shadow. The man backed off. Zolin remained still, but at ease, as if waiting. The knife on the table spun.
“You smell of cinnamon,” Sebastian told the woman in his grasp. “Cinnamon is a common spice on Isle Juskara. The sand barons make a bloody fortune off it. I know this, because it was on Isle Juskara that I learned to move among shadows.” He gave her head a jerk. “But not this maneuver. This maneuver will put you to sleep in a minute and kill you in three. I learned this on the Isles of the Painted Kings. They enjoy hand-to-hand combat there. The painted kings feel that killing a man ought to be done bravely, with bare hands and not with the advantage of blades and certainly not with the cowardice of pistols. I can appreciate that. But I use everything. I use it all.”
Zolin chuckled, watching the dagger spin.
Sebastian released Jude and she fell to one knee, gasping for breath. He disappeared into the shadows and reemerged to take his seat. The dagger was wobbling now. Sebastian caught the point between two fingers and put it back in its place, up his sleeve.
“Any other questions as to my qualifications? Or can we get to the bloody point of this meeting?” He leaned back, knocked the ice from his boot and lit another cigarillo, his first having fallen to the ground in the flurry.
Zolin laughed heartily. “Quite so, quite so.”
Jude got to her feet and, despite the redness marring her neck, favored the assassin with an approving smile before retreating into the shadows.
The High Vicar poured a second glass of red wine and slid it across the table.
“Bloody Bastian, in the flesh. I have to tell you, I had my doubts. Not just because of your youth, but the speed in which you agreed to this meeting. There are many words one could use to describe Sebastian Vaas. Desperate is not usually one of them.”
Sebastian thought of his Black Storm. How the sails needed mending, his crew needed paying. How four years of odd jobs—menial, humble labor— weren’t filling his strongbox fast enough. Honest work, turns out, didn’t pay as well as murder-for-hire.
Sebastian held up his hands. “I happened to be in the vicinity.”
“And good fortune for both of us that you were.” The High Vicar took another long draught from his wine glass. “The job I have for you is lucrative but far more dangerous than those you’ve been accustomed to, I’m sure.”
“Try me.”
“My informant on Isle Lillomet tells me that the Alliance has sent an Aluren Paladin to kill two of my adherents. One of my Bazira is no longer welcome in our fold. Accora has long outgrown her usefulness to me. By your hand or the Aluren’s, she may die. But Bacchus is another matter. It would displease me to lose him.”
“Who’s my mark?”
“The Aluren bitch sent to kill them, of course. She can succeed in her first endeavor; she must die before she accomplishes the second. It will not be easy for you,” Zolin said. “She is a tremendously powerful Paladin.”
Even though his face was mostly swathed in shadow, Sebastian fought to keep it expressionless.
An Aluren and a woman. Bloody bones and spit, what did you expect from the Bazira?
He took a drag on his cigarillo and mulled this information over.
“To be clear, you want me to wait to kill the Paladin until after she kills Accora?”
The High Vicar smiled through his words. “I’m not one to presume to tell you how to do your job.”
“Well, that’s a different job altogether,” Sebastian said. “It means I have to trail the Aluren until her first target is dead. That’s going to cost more than a straight hunt-and-kill. A lot more.”
“We are prepared to compensate you accordingly.”
Good. This could be good, Sebastian thought. This, my last job. My last…
“What happens if my target fails to kill Accora?” he asked. “What then?”
Zolin snorted. “Accora is weak and cannot hope to defeat Selena Koren.”
“Selena Koren.” Sebastian tasted the name. He did not find it unpleasant.
“Yes,” Zolin replied. “Although, like you, she is known by another name: the Tainted One.”
“Why?”