Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

Her hand dropped to the hilt of the sword she wore at her belt. She didn’t draw the blade. The glow from the enchanted platinum might attract attention. The falchion had been craving blood since the second she’d taken it from the secret crypt of her long-dead ancestor. The spirits in the house sensed it before she did and had been pushing her to use it on herself. They even suggested she kill the dwarf, but Phyrea refused.

Phyrea crossed to the next shadow and had to squat to keep herself out of the dim torchlight. She never took her eyes off the tent of the man she’d come for. She rested for a moment, bouncing a little to stretch her legs, and thought of the dwarf. It didn’t surprise her that she found herself smiling. Though she was horrified by the little man at first, angered-enraged-by his very existence, after a time, she’d come to respect his tireless work ethic and simple, genuine courtesy, and he had real respect for Ivar Devorast.

Vrengarl also knew where everyone in the camp slept.

She stood and started running in a single motion. Passing through one shadow after another, she went directly to the side of the man’s tent, stopping within arm’s reach of the dull gray canvas. She put her right hand on the sword but still didn’t draw it.

Phyrea had killed men before. It was a part of being a thief. There were guards, or witnesses, and had she let them live, they would have killed her or destroyed her in other ways, but to go out at night for the sole purpose of ending a man’s life for personal reasons was something else entirely.

She crouched and felt along the bottom edge of the tent. She could slip her fingers under it, but when she lifted gently there was only an inch or so of play. She wouldn’t be able to crawl under it. Cutting it, even with the exceptional sharpness of the enchanted sword, would be too loud. The front of the tent faced the tent across from it, and she would have to be in the light of the torches for at least long enough to slip inside.

They’re all asleep, she thought.

Phyrea waited a long moment, listening carefully, but there was no indication that anyone was moving around the camp. She stood again and stepped to the edge of the tent. She peeked out along the row of tents and didn’t see anyone. The precise moment she stepped out from the side a man came out of one of the tents.

Phyrea jumped back and her shoulder brushed the canvas. Her face was the last part of her to cross back behind the corner and she saw the man look up and toward her. Back in the shadow behind the tent, she held her breath and stood perfectly still.

It was quiet. The man wasn’t moving either.

She rested a hand on her sword again, but still didn’t draw it. Bending her knees a little, she made herself ready to move-to attack, run, kick, jump … whatever she needed to do.

The man started walking. His footsteps were heavy in the dry grass and scattered gravel of the campsite. She listened to them recede then edged her face around the corner of the tent-just barely enough to see the tent the man had stepped out of. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear his footsteps stomping off. Then he stopped and there was a brief silence before she heard the unmistakable sound of water trickling on the dry ground.

Phyrea wanted to sigh but didn’t. Silently, she cursed her luck and started to think.

She knew she could slip into the tent without the man seeing her. He’d walked a ways out of the tent rows, for obvious reasons, and since she could hear what he was doing she’d have ample warning before he came back. If she did slip into the tent, what if the man inside wasn’t asleep? If there was any sort of a struggle at all, the other man would hear and would certainly wake others. It would all go wrong.

He was finishing up, so Phyrea had to make a quick decision. She slipped around the corner and into the tent before the man started back to his own shelter.

Inside, she stepped to one side and disappeared into a deep shadow in the corner. The sound of the tent’s occupant’s breathing told her he was asleep, so she took a moment to close her eyes and let them adjust to the deeper darkness inside the tent. She listened to the other man return to his tent and go back to sleep. Her hand was on her sword the whole time, but she didn’t draw it.

Phyrea had to rely on what she thought of as a thief’s sense of timing. How long would it take the man to go back to sleep? How long could she stand in the cramped space of the tent with the man she’d come to kill before he woke up? She didn’t know how long that would take but trusted herself to simply feel it.

Her eyes began to adjust finally and shapes, if not details, revealed themselves. She could see the man lying on his side on a little folding cot, a blanket in a heap around his legs. There was a little trunk in the opposite corner from where Phyrea stood. The cot was against the back wall of the tent.

She knew she could slit the man’s throat quickly. In a single motion she could draw the sword, step forward, bring the blade down on the man’s neck, slice back, then reverse the blade and sheathe it. She could step back and spin out of the tent and ditch back around behind it before anyone could make it out of the nearby tents to see her, even if she made a sound loud enough to wake someone.

The problem was she wanted to say something to him before she did it. If the man died quietly in his sleep, it wouldn’t really even be murder, would it? For a peasant who worked all day in the blazing sun for a couple of silver pieces, that kind of death would be merciful, and she hadn’t gone there in the dead of night out of mercy.

There were ways to keep people from screaming, and she’d learned more than one of them in her time stripping the Second Quarter of its riches, but in the dark, it would be hard.

Phyrea smiled. It would be a challenge. She hadn’t been challenged in a long time-the disastrous seduction of Ivar Devorast aside.

She stopped smiling.

It had been a tenday since he’d come to her at Berrywilde. She saw him a few times when she’d spied on the camp from afar. She’d brought up his name with Vrengarl, who had told her that Devorast had-

The man rolled over. She couldn’t wait anymore.

She drew the sword so fast that even though it screeched a little coming out of the gilded scabbard it was so brief a sound that it might just have been a cricket. At the same time she stepped forward then fell to one knee next to the bed. It hurt her shoulder a little to make the angle work-the blade was somewhat longer than the short swords she’d grown accustomed to-but she jabbed down fast and hard. The tip of the blade sank an inch and a half into the front of the man’s throat. She twisted the blade just a little, as if scooping out a dollop of pudding.

The man’s eyes popped open, and he drew in a breath, which gurgled in his throat.

Phyrea stood, brought her knee up faster than the man could bring his hands to his throat, and she stamped down hard on his lower abdomen. The man doubled up on the cot, his hands stopping, torn between clutching his ruined vocal chords and his throbbing belly.

Hopping up and twisting in the air, Phyrea came down straddling him, trapping his wrists under her knees. The man’s eyes bulged in his head. His breath hissed out the hole in his throat when he tried to scream. Phyrea grinned at him and his eyes bulged even more. He looked at her with such terror, she felt an almost orgasmic thrill run through her.

She put the enchanted blade close to her face so he could see her in its glow.

When he could see her face better, some of the fear went away-had he thought she was someone else? He might have thought she was some kind of demon or devil come to steal his voice, then his soul in the dead of night.