The Ambassador’s Mission

Shifting his weight, he stretched the other leg. At times like this he was all too aware that he was getting older. He could not climb up the sides of buildings using only a few handholds or a rope, or leap the gaps between them so fearlessly. His muscles stiffened up quickly in the cold air, and took longer to recover from exertion.

And I don’t have a beautiful Sachakan woman nearby to catch me with her magic if the roof collapses.

Old, pleasant memories flashed through his mind. Savara. Mysterious. Seductive. Dangerous. A skilled fighter. The practice bouts he’d had with her had been challenging and exciting, and he’d picked up more than a few new tricks. She’d known too much about the deal he’d made with High Lord Akkarin to kill off the freed Sachakan slaves that the Ichani had sent to Imardin as spies, and to expose the Guild’s weaknesses. But he’d also sensed that he’d not easily get rid of her. That it was better to keep her occupied thinking she was helping him, without letting her get too close to the truth.

She’d worked that one out pretty fast. And then there was that night when they’d watched Sonea and Akkarin fight and kill an Ichani woman. The battle had caused the roof to collapse under them, but Savara had stopped him falling with magic. And then things had become much more personal…

After the Ichani Invasion she’d left, returning to the people she worked for. He’d never seen her again, though he’d often wondered where she was and if she was alive and safe. She would most likely have ventured into dangerous situations again and again for the sake of her people, so it was easily possible one had led to her death.

I was never in love with her, he reminded himself. Nor was she in love with me. I admired her, for both her body and mind. She found me a useful and entertaining ally and distraction. If she’d stayed we wouldn’t have…

A sound below drew his attention back to the present. Peering through the crack between the roof tiles again, Cery saw two people climb the stairs into the small room below. One he recognised instantly: Makkin, carrying a lamp. The other was a dark-skinned woman.

“Is that it?” she asked. Her voice was strangely accented and had the hoarseness of age, but she moved with the vitality of a younger person. The Thief Hunter is a woman? Cery thought. That’s… interesting. It seems I’m doomed to know or be the target of very powerful and dangerous women.

“Yes,” Makkin replied. “That’s it. They’re in there. But-”

“Open it!” the woman ordered.

“I can’t! They took the key. Said that way I couldn’t sell it to anyone else before they came back with the money.”

“What? You’re lying!”

“No! Nonononono!” The pawnshop owner threw up his arms and cringed away from her. His behaviour was a little extreme for someone a head taller than the woman stalking toward him. As if he knows she is more dangerous than she looks.

The woman waved her arms. “Get out,” she ordered. “Leave the lamp, get out of this shop and don’t come back until tomorrow.”

“Yes! Thank you! I’m sorry I couldn’t-”

“OUT!”

He tore back down the stairs as if a wild beast were in pursuit. The woman waited, listening to Makkin’s footsteps. The sound of the shop door slamming echoed up to Cery’s ears.

The woman turned to look at the safebox, then her shoulders straightened. She approached it slowly, then squatted before it and went still. Cery could not see her face, but he saw her shoulders rise and fall as she breathed deeply.

A moment later the lock clicked open.

Gol let out a quiet gasp. Cery smiled grimly. Locks don’t just open of their own will. She must have used magic. I have the proof I need that we have a rogue in the city. It wasn’t proof that she was the Thief Hunter, though, but what if she was? He felt a chill run up his spine at the thought. Was the woman below really the murderer who had killed so many Thieves?

She was examining the books within the safebox now. He recognised the one on magic. Opening it, the woman flicked through the pages, then muttered something and tossed it aside. Picking up another book, she examined it as well. When she had looked at all of the tomes she slowly stood up. Her fists clenched and she uttered a strange word.

What did she say? He frowned. Wait a moment. That was a different language. She’s foreign. But she hadn’t said enough for him to recognise the language or even her accent. If only she would speak again. A whole sentence, not only a curse word.

But the woman remained silent. She rose and turned her back on the safebox and its contents, now strewn about the room. Walking away, she reached the stairs and disappeared into the darkness of the shop below. The door slammed again. Faint footsteps faded in the street beyond.