Nemesis

Tariel shook his head. “Koyne is not a вЂ˜he’. It’s not male or female.” He frowned.

“Not anymore, anyway.”

“The ship will heal… it. And once our poisoner joins us, we will have our

Execution Force assembled…” Kell trailed off.

Tariel imagined he was thinking the same thing as the sniper; and what then? The

question as to what target they were being gathered to terminate would soon be

answered—and the Vanus was troubled by what that answer might be.

It can only be—

The thought was cut off as the man in the kimono returned with another person at

his heels. Tariel determined a female’s gait; she was a slender young woman of

similar age to himself.

“By the order of the Director Primus of our clade and the Master of Assassins,”

said the man, “you are granted the skills of secluse Soalm, first-rank toxin artist.”

The woman looked up and she gave a hard-edged, defiant look at the Vindicare.

Kell’s face shifted into an expression of pure shock and he let out a gasp. “Jenniker.”

The Venenum drew herself up. “I accept this duty,” she said, with finality.

“No,” Kell snarled, the shock shifting to anger. “You do not!” He glared at the

man in the kimono. “She does not!”

The man cocked his head. “The selection was made by Siress Venenum herself.

There is no error, and it is not your place to make a challenge.”

97

Tariel watched in confused fascination as the cool, acerbic mien Kell had

habitually displayed crumbled into hard fury. “I am the mission commander!” he

barked. “Bring me another of your secluses, now.”

“Are my skills in question?” sniffed the woman. “I defy you to find better.”

“I don’t want her,” Kell growled, refusing to look at Soalm. “That’s the end of

it.”

“I am afraid it is not,” said the man calmly. “As I stated, you do not have the

authority to challenge the assignment made by the Siress. Soalm is the selectee.

There is no other alternative.” He pointed back towards the doorway. “You may now

leave.” Without another comment, the man exited the room.

“Soalm?” Kell hissed the woman’s surname with undisguised anger. “That is

what I should call you now, is it?”

It was slowly dawning on Tariel that the two assassins clearly shared some

unpleasant history together. He looked inward, thinking back over what he had

managed to learn about Eristede Kell since the start of their mission, looking for

some clue. Had these two been comrades or lovers, he wondered? Their ages were

close enough that they could have both been raised in the same schola before the

clades drew them for individual selection and training…

“I accepted the name to honour my mentor,” said the woman, her voice taking on

a brittle tone. “I started a new life when I joined my clade. It seemed the right thing

to do.”

Tariel nodded to himself. Many of the orphan children selected for training by the

Officio Assassinorum entered the clades without a true identity to call their own, and

often they took the names of their sponsors and teachers.

“But you dishonoured your family instead!” Kell grated.

And then, for a brief moment, the woman’s mask of defiance slipped to reveal the

regret and sadness behind it; suddenly Tariel saw the resemblance.

“No, Eristede,” she said softly, “you did that when you chose to kill innocents in

the name of revenge. But our mother and father are dead, and no amount of

bloodshed will ever undo that.” She walked by Kell, and past a stunned Tariel,

stepping out into the perfumed jungle.

“She’s your sister,” Tariel blurted it out, unable to stay silent, the data rising up

from his memory stack in a rush. “Eristede and Jenniker Kell, son and daughter of

Viceroy Argus Kell of the Thaxted Duchy, orphaned after the murder of their parents

in a local dispute—”

The Vindicare advanced on him with a livid glare in his eyes, forcing Tariel back

against a cage filled with scorpions. “Speak of this to the others and I will choke the

life from you, understand?”

Tariel nodded sharply, his hands coming up to protect himself. “But… The

mission…”

“She’ll do what I tell her to,” said Kell, the anger starting to cool.

“Are you sure?”

“She’ll follow orders. Just as I will.” He stepped back, and Tariel glimpsed a

hollowness, an uncertainty in the other man’s eyes that mirrored what he had seen in

the Vindicare’s sister.

98

* * *

The Iubar had decks filled with cogitator engines that hummed and whirred like

patient cats, gangs of progitors moving back and forth between them with crystalline

memory tubes and spools of optic coil. According to Hyssos, the devices were used

to gather financial condition data from the various worlds along the Eurotas trade

routes, running prognostic models to predict what goods a given planet might require

months, years, even decades into the future.

“What are we to do with these things?” asked Daig. He’d never been comfortable