No trace I have not chosen to leave, she thought, her lips curling with satisfaction.
A shadow, she descended into the temple district, weaving along domed shrines and godly towers. Dedicant priests walked their noon rounds, followed by peasants and sailors, their hands outstretched for blessings from the gods of Allward.
The villa was well behind her when the alarm went up, a strangled cry of guards calling for the city watchmen. Somewhere among the villas, a trumpet sounded. Sorasa grinned as it was drowned out by the tolling bell of Meira’s Hand, a looming tower ruled by the goddess of the seas. Sailors begged her mercy, fishermen her bounty.
Sorasa begged for nothing but the bell and the crowd. Both surged, as good as a wall between her and the corpse in his bed.
The crowd moved in a current, most following Meira’s blue priests down the main thoroughfare that cut Byllskos in two. They would hit the port soon, and on a market day no less.
An easy chaos to get lost in, Sorasa thought. All precisely to plan.
She navigated with sure footing, unaffected by the crowd and its stink. Byllskos was a bustling city, but a village compared to Almasad and Qaliram in Ibal, where Sorasa had spent the majority of her thirty years upon the Ward. She ached now for the baked stone streets and vibrant markets as far as the eye could see, for patterned silk, a sky like turquoise, the smell of fragrant blossoms and spice bazaars, the grand temple of sacred Lasreen, and the shade of the Palm Way. But all paled next to the memory of the sandstone citadel on the sea cliffs, with the hidden gate and the tearing salt wind, the only home she had ever known, her place since childhood.
She felt the shift of air over her a split second before a hand clamped down, its grip tight on the muscle between her neck and shoulder. Fingers squeezed and pinched, sending a jolt of pain through her body.
Sorasa dropped and twisted out of the well-known maneuver, one she had mastered years ago. Teeth bared, she glared up at her would-be attacker.
He did not attack.
“Garion,” she bit out. Around them, the parade of godly followers thinned.
Like her, the man was hooded, but Sorasa did not need to see his face clearly to know him. Garion was taller than she, his skin white even in shadow. Still a lock of mud-brown hair fell into his dark eyes, as it had when he was a boy. Where her clothes were plain, dyed in earthen colors easy for an eye to slide over, his own tunic and cloak were garish. Scarlet and embroidered silver were impossible to ignore. He sneered at her coldly.
“I did not take you for a thief, Sarn,” he hissed in Ibalet. Though he’d learned it young, it was not his mother tongue, and it still sounded odd in his mouth.
Sorasa waved him off. The black tattoos on her fingers matched his own.
“Perhaps that moral compass of yours needs adjusting,” she replied. “I stole a man’s life from you, and it’s the stealing that has you concerned?”
Garion pursed his lips. “By the Spindles, Sorasa,” he cursed. “There are rules. A guild contract is given to one and one alone.”
Such tenets were inked in her deeper than any tattoo or scar. Sorasa wanted to roll her eyes, but she had long since learned to school her expressions and hide emotion.
Instead she turned on her heel, setting off at a trot. “Jealousy doesn’t become you.”
He followed swiftly, as expected. It reminded her of different days. But those days were long ago, and she curled one hand in a fist, the other close to the dagger at her hip. Should he draw, she would be ready.
“Jealous? Hardly,” Garion said through clenched teeth. The pair wove deftly through the gathering crowd as they caught up to Meira’s faithful. “You have been named and inked. No amount of blood will rewrite what has already been written.”
The long tattoo down her ribs suddenly itched, the last marking not a year old. Unlike the many others, blessings and trophies, it had been given against her will.
“Thank you for telling me what I already know,” she said, throwing Garion a glance meant to wither a man to the root. “Go back to the citadel. Pace your cage until another easy kill lands in your lap. And I’ll steal that one from you too.”
Though her face remained still, Sorasa laughed inwardly. She would not mention that she already knew of his next contract and exactly how she would beat him to it.
“Have caution, Sarn,” he said. She heard a tremor of regret in him. He was always terrible at hiding his intentions. Such is the way with men. “Lord Mercury—”
Sorasa kept walking, her cheeks warm. She feared few upon the Ward. Lord Mercury topped a very short list.