A Kiss for Queens

“Do I look like a boat full of the enemy?” Rose shot back. “Now, can I get on with delivering the reports I’m supposed to? I’ve been scouting that excuse for a city for hours now. Can’t even find the flagship.”

She saw the man point.

“Over there,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Rose was good at pretending to be people she wasn’t. Some thought that assassins should be people who could fight their way through an army, or fire an arrow from further than a man could see. She liked stories like that. It meant that they weren’t looking at the innocuous figure next to them who had just put something in their wine.

“No chance of doing that this time though,” she said to herself.

She wasn’t sure that Milady d’Angelica had understood what she was asking when she’d sent her to do this. Frankly, she doubted the noblewoman cared. Yet there was a big difference between poisoning some rival in Ashton and sneaking onto a ship in the middle of a battle fleet.

Especially one where those who led it were rumored to have magic.

That was the part that terrified her in all of this. How was someone supposed to slip aboard a ship when people could read the murderous thoughts in her heart? When they could sense her coming and probably send phantasms shrieking after her soul? It meant that her usual strategy of disguise and lying was out, for one thing.

“I should just row all the way to the continent,” Rose muttered. What kind of idiot put herself in the middle of a battle like this by choice? She kept going in the direction of the flagship, though, for three reasons.

One was that she was being paid well for this. Too well to ignore it. Another was that, whatever her skills with a knife and a poisoned dart, she suspected that Milady d’Angelica would be a dangerous enemy to have. The third… well, the third was simple:

She was good at this.

Rose stopped the small boat well short of the flagship, in the space where it was just one more shadow against the dark. Taking off her Ishjemme colors to reveal black clothes beneath, she slipped into the waters of the bay.

The cold leached heat from her body, while she tried not to think of all the filth that spilled from Ashton’s gutters into its river and then the sea. She ignored the idea of the other things that might be in the waters too, the sharks and other predators that would be gathering to scavenge in the wake of a battle. Maybe their presence would even be a good thing, disguising her murderous intent with their own to any prying minds.

Rose crept forward with silent strokes through the water, ducking her head whenever she thought someone might be glancing in her direction, ignoring the foul taste of the seawater. It seemed to take forever to get close to the flagship, the roll of it pushing out a faint wash that buffeted her as she closed on it.

Finally, her fingers found the wood of the hull, searching for handholds the way someone else might have clambered their way up a rock face. Rose moved slowly, determined not to make any sound, even trying to still her thoughts so that they would not give her away to any of those there with magic.

She raised her head up enough to see a watchman moving along the deck. She ducked down, listening to the rhythm of his steps, letting him pass. Still, she didn’t move. Instead, she waited until he passed twice more, learning the pattern of it. Someone more foolish might have rushed out onto the deck the first time, and been caught for it. Rose had learned when to be patient.

The third time the watcher went past, she slipped into his wake, a length of garroting wire dropping from her sleeve. The man was taller than her, but Rose was used to that. She had the wire around his throat in an instant, jerking it tight and driving her knee into his back to bring him down. There was no time for him to scream as the wire cut deep, only for a brief gasp to escape.

Rose dumped the guard’s body in the water, trying to do it as quietly as possible. It was a shame to have to kill someone who was not her target, but the man’s watch had too few spaces in it, too few gaps into which she might slip when the time came to make her escape. She put her garrote away. She would not be using it for what came next.

“Quietly now,” she whispered to herself as she scurried below decks.

She might not have the magic that those here were said to have, to ferret out the thoughts of others, but she had eyes to pick out the shadows of coiled ropes and stacked weapons in the near dark, ears to seek out the breathing of sleeping men, differentiating carefully between those who were deeply asleep and those who might wake if she got too close. She moved on the balls of her feet, keeping to the shadows as she moved past the spaces where the ordinary soldiers lay, heading for the space where her target would be.

Rose opened doors in silence in the dark, looking at the sleeping figures there, watching for the one she’d been sent for. She found her target in a room marked with Ishjemme’s colors: the room of a leader, the room of a ruler. She pushed open the door in silence.

Ahead of her, a candle flickered into being, revealing Lars Skyddar, sitting on a sea chair, a sword across his lap.

“You’ve come for me,” he said.

Rose considered her options. Could she run? Could she get clear of this ship before this man brought a whole crew to face her?

“How did you know I was coming?” she demanded. “I know I made no sound.”

“A long time ago, I was told that I would face death on the night before our greatest battle, and that I must face it alone. I’ve known this moment was coming since my nieces arrived.”

“Are you going to call for them?” Rose asked, her hands moving down almost imperceptibly to her belt, considering which of the poisoned darts there might do the job best. Their deaths weren’t the plan for tonight, but Milady d’Angelica would probably reward her well if she managed it.

“I will not risk their lives,” Lars Skyddar said. “Yours, on the other hand…”

He leapt forward, almost fast enough that Rose couldn’t do anything. If he’d been twenty years younger, perhaps she wouldn’t have been able to do anything, and the sword would have hacked deep into her. As it was, it still caught her flesh as she dove aside, still left a smear of blood as she rolled back to her feet.

Ishjemme’s duke was already turning to attack her again, but Rose’s hand came up from her belt, flinging a handful of darts without caring which poison was on them, only caring that some, enough, would strike home.

Her foe gasped as they hit him. The darts held everything from sleeping poisons to the quickest of killers, and even the assassin had no clue what so many would do at once. It was enough that they were doing something. Even as she watched, the sword went clattering to the ground.

She slipped in close, drawing a dagger, not wanting to leave it to an uncertain combination of alchemy to finish the job. She pulled back her arm to deliver the fatal thrust…

And Lars Skyddar pulled her close, dragging one of the darts from his flesh and into hers.

Rose stabbed him on reflex, thrusting up into the man’s heart before abandoning her grip on the blade. She stared down at him, then at the dart sticking from her flesh, unable to contain her shock. He’d poisoned her with her own weapon!

Rose all but staggered from the cabin, trying to stay quiet but having no time for it. She didn’t know which poison had been on the weapon, but already she thought she could feel a sluggishness invading her limbs, numbness reaching into her fingertips.

She grabbed an antidote vial from her belt, not knowing if it was the right one, or if it would make things worse. She slipped up onto the deck, moving with graceless steps now, not even sure which way her small boat lay for her escape. She staggered to the railing, turning back briefly, glimpsing sailors looking in other directions, none seeing her.

She toppled from the ship, no art to it, no skill. She imagined that the splash of it would be enough to draw attention from all around if it weren’t for the press of so many ships in such a small space.

As the water closed over her, she had one thought: she’d done what was required of her. She’d killed the leader of the invasion, leaving only the untested and the young to do the job. She’d cleared the way for other plots too, the ones that Milady d’Angelica thought she didn’t know about.

She’d done all of that, and not one piece of it helped as the water swallowed her up.