Or was he flirting with me? That thought seemed even more incomprehensible than the joke.
But, I reminded myself, it was good for my mission if he wanted me. Another avenue to his trust.
If I was a better Arachessen, I would have seized the moment. Instead, I awkwardly pulled away, startled by the strange double beat in my chest but showing him no sign of it.
“Nor should you forget it,” I said, which earned another one of those peculiar almost-smiles.
He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.
“Fine,” he said. “Tell me, formidable assassin, how this plan of yours would work.”
Tarkan was an eccentric individual—a Pythora broker who had managed to climb the ranks of the Pythora King’s regime until he became one of his most trusted and most vicious mentees. He had carefully cultivated an image of himself as a god-chosen oracle. It was, of course, all bullshit—the peculiarities that he claimed were ancient customs were actually grossly twisted or misinterpreted, and most were complete fabrications based on nothing but his power-hungry whims.
One of them was that he liked the faces of his concubines, both men and women, covered as they entered his palace—to feel as if he owned their very visage, to be looked upon by no one but him and those he chose to share them with.
Revolting.
But useful, given my appearance.
Before leaving for Vasai, I veiled myself. My clothing was the weakest part of my act—Atrius had sent back to Alka for more of the clothing from Aaves’s prostitutes, and while those dresses were certainly fine, they were… of a very different style than what Tarkan liked his to wear.
I was not especially crafty, but I was resourceful. I’d managed to assemble something halfway appropriate from one of the long gowns and a series of silk and chiffon scarves that I arranged over it in sweeping drapes—including one over my head and face.
When Atrius saw me in this, he outright snorted. Like an amused horse.
“What?” I’d said. “Not appealing to you?”
“Humans are so strange,” he muttered.
I couldn’t bring myself to argue with that.
But I hoped that Tarkan or those of his inner circle wouldn’t laugh, too, when they saw me. It had been years since I’d seen one of Tarkan’s concubines in person. My attempt at recreation might not be accurate—or be easily exposed as a disguise. I knew if I had to, I could slip away and kill my way through the castle—though I’d prefer not to have to.
Once my costume was intact, I took my path into the city. The route was just as I remembered it: a little gap in the walls that led to the dense streets of the inner city, not far from the steps of the Thorn Palace.
Right away, the sounds and smells of Vasai assaulted me. I was grateful I could let my little stumble be a part of my role—the concubines usually could not see more than vague shapes through their shrouds, so they often clung to the arm of a handler as they moved through the city. I was alone, and sagged against a dirty brick wall instead.
A sudden, intense wave of anger pulsed through me—anger at myself and at my past. Fifteen years of training, fifteen years of meticulous study and devotion. I was just as good as my Sisters, just as hardworking, just as committed.
And yet.
One whiff of that salty, sweat-thick air, one moment of those city sounds that had not changed in twenty years, and the past yanked me back to its side as if by a collar around my throat: You thought you escaped, but you will always be mine. Look at all these marks you cannot wash away.
Places had souls. The threads that connected us to locations were just as alive as those that ran through living beings. And the soul of Vasai was rotten. Sick and tangled and festering with the broken dreams of the people who lived here.
It was every bit as bad as it had been all those years ago. For every shouting voice of a marketplace vendor or jovial joke of a drunken gambler, there was a slurred moan from someone slowly dying of Pythoraseed use—or withdrawal. For every scent of a food stall or blacksmith, there was the sour-sweet, nostril-scalding aroma of decaying Pythora burned and re-burned too many times by desperate addicts.
This entire place smelled like death. Like a corpse—a fresh one, one that still held some tragic trace of the life ebbing away.
Those memories did not belong to Sylina, I reminded myself. That rot did not belong to me. I could leave it on the skin of another little girl I left behind a long time ago.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, straightened my back, and continued through the city, stumbling across the congested cobblestones.