The Painted Girl: An Assassin's Sight Story Read online

  Considering what I had lost in the pouch, it would not be enough.

  But simply stealing a necklace wasn’t reason enough to kill. Not for me and not for Davin. Too expensive, even for the thief-master. There was more this that I hadn’t learned.

  “Then it’s not your mother’s.”

  I licked my lips and tasted a hint of blood from where I had stabbed myself with the broken shard from the antidote.

  She shook her head. “It was her he bought.”

  As the words sank in, I shook my head.

  Damn.

  One of the things I hated about this part of the world was how women were traded. Some places, like this tavern below me, had women who sold themselves freely, letting the locals or the traveling merchants have their way with them for the right price. Prostitution like that was unheard of in Elaeavn.

  But there were other ways women were sold, and not as freely. An entire market for such trades existed, places I refused to visit. Courtesans. Slaves, really. Even the lowest merchant had rules about the women they sold, age limits.

  Most cities had laws against trafficking in courtesans but they were never enforced; too many officials had traded in the market, had courtesans of their own. Men like Davin were able to bribe or blackmail their way through those officials.

  “Where is she now?” I asked. We were getting to too many questions, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t mind the killing, but it had to be for the right reason.

  “Dead,” she said softly.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded slowly. “I was with before she died.”

  With her. That meant she had been bought as well. Now I understood her feeble attempts to seduce me.

  Damn.

  I sighed. The Great Watcher help me, but I couldn’t turn this girl away, send her back to Davin, not if she was one of his courtesans. How many more were there like her? How many underage girls had he bought?

  “Then it wasn’t just your mother he bought.”

  She looked down at the floor to keep from meeting my eyes. Next to her, Jaylen moaned softly. I understood what he had done, why Davin had wanted him dead. Stealing from him had not been enough; a necklace might have prompted Davin to have his fingers broken or, if he was angry enough, a hand taken off. But stealing one of his courtesans?

  Enough to kill for. Enough to hire me.

  Sometimes I hated that I had to know. There were other jobs, lower-paying jobs, that I took. But they didn’t pay the same. And if I simply killed blindly like most of the assassins, I wouldn’t struggle for income as I did. Taking a life needed a reason—a good reason, not simply vengeance.

  I pointed to the bed.

  She watched me and her eyes went wide but she lifted her dress and moved to the bed. She sat, turning to lean back against the headboard. She closed her eyes and let her legs fall apart. The dress bunched up along her legs, revealing thin and spindly legs.

  I pushed her legs back together. “I’m not going to touch you.” She didn’t even look old enough to touch, not like that—even with the paint that must have once smeared across her face, she wouldn’t have looked old enough.

  It disgusted me that Davin had kept her as a courtesan, that he could find such a young girl appealing. What was worse was that she had been with him long enough to think to seduce me.

  She opened her eyes and looked at me. A different fear now lived in her eyes.

  “Sit,” I said, motioning to the edge of the bed.

  “How did you find us?”

  I grunted out a soft laugh and looked at her. “I have certain abilities.” She met my eyes briefly, long enough for me to flare my Sight then she turned away quickly. “Why did you think you could hide in Eban?”

  Even though Eban was large, a sprawling mass of a city, there were only so many places you could run. They would have been better off leaving Eban, going east to Cort or north to Asador. They could have started over.

  “We had nowhere else to go,” she said. “And not enough money to run.”

  “How did you become a courtesan?”

  She closed her eyes. Her entire body tensed, as if the answer was painful. Small muscles in her cheeks clenched as she took small breaths. “I am not a courtesan.”

  “No?” I asked. “You seemed plenty willing to throw open your legs for me. Or did you wear the paint to look like your mother?”

  Her eyes flashed open and she spun, her open hand catching me across the face. Just like her brother, she managed to surprise me. Hot anger surged in her eyes and the determined tilt of her mouth as she waited for me to retaliate.

  “Go on,” I said. “Hit me again if you need to. It doesn’t change what she was.”

  She seemed to shrink.

  I cursed myself under my breath. The one thing I didn’t want to do was destroy what remained. “What did they do to you?” I tried to ask more softly but my voice was rough; even that question came out seeming agitated. She didn’t know the anger wasn’t directed at her.

  She shook her head. “Don’t make me tell you.”

  There was a little movement on the floor where her brother had fallen.

  “Was it Davin who did it or some other?”

  She nodded.

  The Great Watcher help me, but had Davin been in front of me it would have been him I would have killed. Bad enough to buy a fully-grown woman, but her daughter? A girl barely formed?

  I moved back and leaned against the wall, my head hammering. I wondered how much of that was after effects of the terad. Noise from the tavern below drifted up, a mixture of music and yelling. A few flickers of shadow drifted past the door; I suspected some of the painted whores from below had started bringing men back to their rooms. Soon enough the tavern would empty out. There wasn’t much time left before I needed to decide what I was going to do with them.

  I already knew I couldn’t kill them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tapping the door with my heel, I watched the girl through half-closed eyes. Somehow I needed to get them out of the tavern, out of Eban, and to safety. At least the girl. From what I had seen of him, I suspected the boy would be able to manage on his own.

  Then I had to decide what to do about Davin.

  I could make it look like I had killed Jaylen, but Davin was one that liked proof. Forging the kind of proof Davin wanted involved skills I didn’t have.

  “How did Davin come to own you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. Her thin blond hair swished as she moved. In spite of the remnants of paint smeared on her face, damn if she still didn’t look so young.

  “She—we—were taken from our homes. My father had died, we had no other family. She is—was—a seamstress, but there was not enough business and father had not left us much money.” She choked back a small sob and looked down again at her brother. “Mother had gotten into debt with our village banker but couldn’t make the payments. Then…we were taken.”

  She almost cried but did not.

  I shook my head. “You were sold. In Eban?”

  “I don’t know. We were taken from our village.” Her voice fell to a whisper and caught as she spoke. “I remember something shoved into my mouth, my hands tied. It was dark. Someone had hit me when we were taken and my head hurt. My mother wasn’t there with me but I heard her.”

  I blinked slowly, creating the scene in my mind. Separated from her mother, this girl was forced to listen to the men that had taken them rape her mother as they were transported to become forced courtesans.

  That word didn’t convey what they truly were.

  “And your brother?”

  “He was left behind. They didn’t care about him, only mother.”

  “And you.”

  She shivered. “And me,” she agreed. “He didn’t know where we had gone. Eban is days away from our village. I hadn’t seen him in over a year when he found us. I still don’t know how he managed to learn where we’d gone.”

  I looked down at her brothe
r lying on the rough wooden floor. He breathed slowly, his back rising with each regular breath. Arms were bunched beneath him and his legs were flexed at an awkward angle. From where I stood, I Saw that he was not unconscious.

  “He never told you?” I asked. I kept my eyes on Jaylen.

  She shook her head.

  “How long have you been away from Davin?”

  I was hired two days ago. Two days to track him—them—to this tavern. Finding him had been easy. There are always signs if you know how and where to look. Few bother to keep their eyes open.

  “Not even a week.”

  “What were you planning?” I asked. “Just stay here and hide?” That was no sort of plan, not from someone like I was beginning to suspect her brother was starting to become.

  “Jay was going to get me out of the city, away from here. He said there was something he needed to do first.”

  I thought I knew, but decided that he should be the one to tell her. Jaylen knew what his sister had become; it was time she learned what had become of her brother.

  I looked down at him. “Tell her what you needed to do.”

  His breath caught, just the barest pause in the rhythm. Muscles tensing beneath his clothes told me that he readied to move.

  The girl just looked at me.

  Ignoring her, I stepped away from the wall and nudged him with my foot. “Tell her,” I repeated.

  He sat up and scooted backward. A knife appeared in his hand from somewhere and he slashed it toward me. The movement was quick, surprising since he had just been knocked out, and he angled it toward the long tendon of my leg.

  I had underestimated him before but was ready this time.

  The knife slashed toward my leg. A hard kick sent it flying out of his hand and it clattered against a back wall.

  Reaching down, I lifted him easily to his feet and threw him onto the bed next to his sister. She looked over at him with wide eyes.

  Dried blood caked around his nostrils and he breathed heavily out of his mouth. Hot hatred burned from his eyes. He sat tense and coiled, ready to strike again.

  “Jay?” she asked, looking over at him. “Are you—”

  “I’m fine.” He didn’t take his eyes off me.

  Inwardly, I smiled. At five talen, I had thought the price on his head too high. Perhaps Davin had priced him even a little low. The boy had training. That was how he had surprised me, explained how he had managed to slip past Davin’s guards to get into the courtesiary and steal out his sister.

  “You talked to the banker,” I said.

  Jaylen nodded once. “He talked.”

  His sister looked from me to Jaylen, face unreadable. “Jay?”

  “And now?”

  Jaylen shrugged. “He will sell no one else.”

  His sister gasped.

  “Why did you wait?” I asked.

  A flicker of emotion returned to his face. Sadness or shame, I couldn’t tell. “I had no choice.”

  I shook my head. Some day they would both learn that there is always choice.

  “How did you get her out?”

  Davin wasn’t the most powerful of the thief-masters—his domain was relatively small compared to some—but he was notoriously vicious about protecting what he considered his. Beyond that, he rarely came up from his underground home, preferring to stay hidden, work within the shadows. I understood that urge well.

  Men like him were usually well protected, surrounded by an entire coterie of guards. To get to him, to get to the courtesiary and his sister, Jaylen would have needed to slip past several layers of guards. Men hired and trained to kill.

  More than just the guards, though. Like most of the thief-masters in Eban, he lived deep underground, a maze of tunnels leading to his rooms. Only the most trusted were allowed into the depths of the tunnels alone; others were escorted and never left to wander.

  Jaylen stared at me and I stared back.

  “How?” I asked again. “Did you go under?”

  He shook his head. Next to him, his sister shivered. I wondered how long she had been under. Some treated their courtesans more like a mistress, bringing them with them wherever they went. Already I could tell that wasn’t the case with Davin.

  “Then how?”

  Without looking over at her, he answered. “After I learned where they’d been sold, I came to Eban. It took me weeks to even see Davin, but once I did, I followed him.”

  He trailed off, as if that was answer enough.

  I was impressed that he managed to find Davin in the first place. Few managed to do so. It was a measure of his determination that he had.

  “And then?”

  “I found who worked for him. Followed them. I knew they’d have to come up sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  His face hardened. Now he looked nothing like the soft young boy I had first thought when I found him in the room. Instead, he looked more like a man willing to do what was needed. A desperate man.

  “To see the healers.”

  His sister tensed and I waited for one of them to say more, but neither did. Perhaps that was best. Already I had images in my head I wouldn’t be able to remove.

  “You took her from the healers?” Not as daring as it might have been, but still more than most attempted. Most courtesans spent the rest of their lives as little more than slaves to the whims of their owners.

  He nodded.

  “And you came here,” I said.

  I looked around the room. With the painted whores in the tavern, they could hide for a while, but his sister would not blend in for long. And Davin was determined. Hiring me proved that.

  “Just until…” He started, but never finished.

  He didn’t want the girl to know. She deserved to know. Especially after what happened to her mother.

  “Tell her what you planned with Davin.”

  He glared at me. “Nothing more than he deserved.”

  I had slid back to the door and leaned against it, tapping my foot along the wall. The Great Watcher knows Davin deserved whatever it was that Jaylen planned for him, but this boy wouldn’t be able to slip past his guard a second time. He hadn’t really slipped past Davin’s guard the first time, managing to get to his sister by luck and careful planning. What he intended was different. More dangerous. And likely to fail.

  I turned and looked at his sister. Youth had been stolen from her and turned her into someone she was never meant to be. I could not help but agree with Jaylen. Davin deserved what he planned.

  “You think you can simply sneak past his guard? Go under?” Jaylen glared at me. “What will getting killed do to help your sister? She’s out. Leave the city, keep her safe. Use what you have learned to protect her.” I leaned away from the wall and made sure he met my eyes. He held them long enough for me to make my point. “Don’t risk yourself for revenge.”

  Jaylen sat and watched me, careful not to look at his sister. She perched on the bed, her dress now pushed down to her ankles, her thin arms wrapped around her legs.

  “I can’t let him keep treating them like that. There are others, some younger,” he said softly.

  Part of me winced. I couldn’t help that I did.

  “I won’t let him keep at it. Not after what he did to my mother. Not after what he did to Esha.”

  His sister pulled her legs closer toward her and closed her eyes. It occurred to me that I hadn’t even wondered why she had been visiting the healers. She seemed uninjured, so I couldn’t tell what had Davin done to her.

  But then I made the connection. And wished I hadn’t.

  I looked at her, Saw faint traces along her face, the lines of her stomach, the way she held herself close. Could she really be old enough?

  Damn.

  “No,” I finally agreed. “You can’t. And neither can I.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I didn’t think Jaylen really believed I would help. Not that I could blame him; after all, I had been hired to kill him. Davin had said nothi
ng about the girl, though. Had he thought I would simply kill her as well? Or did he hope I wouldn’t, hope that leaving her behind would let him reclaim her for his courtesiary, leaving her thinking there was no place left for her to go?

  I was not the only assassin Davin could hire. I had a reputation as being somewhat…difficult…to work with, though my results were what mattered. When the price and the job were right, there just wasn’t another local assassin that could do the job as I could. Other than me, there were a handful of skilled assassins that worked Eban. A few more could be called in from outside the city, one that rivaled my own skill.

  Of those I knew, I suspected most would have killed her as collateral damage. Had Davin known I would not or had he simply hired me because I was the best?

  I sat at the intersection of the two narrow streets, mostly ignoring the traffic around me as I stared at the tavern. A simple stout two-story building with a small sign hung over the sunken doorway I couldn’t read from my angle. A few candles flickered in the upper windows but for the most part they were black. In spite of that, I Saw movement behind one near the center—closest to the stairs—and I knew that they were still in the room.

  Probably discussing and debating. Esha had not wanted Jaylen to come with me; she still thought it some kind of trick. Had I been in her place, I would have thought the same.

  Who would expect the assassin that came to kill you to help instead?

  I sighed, glancing up to the sky. As it was so often, the sky was cloudy and overcast. The air smelled of the hint of rain. I had grown used to the frequent rains of Eban, though still didn’t care for it; such rain was uncommon in my home of Elaeavn, and when storms came they were usually violent. What remained of the sun filtering through the clouds sank toward the horizon behind me, casting long shadows across the street.

  Workers spilled into most of the streets, filling the air with the noise of their conversation or boot steps and the stink of sweat or perfume. Now, near the end of the day, they either returned home or ventured out toward the plentiful taverns of Eban to eat or drink or fuck. All could be had in the taverns for the right price. They jostled past me, paying no mind to the way I sat crouched against the rough stone of the candlemaker’s shop, ducked beneath the window and in the shadows, my dark cloak falling loosely around me.