Lynn Flewelling - Raven's Cut

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2024-11-24 0 0 19.48KB 6 页 5.9玖币

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Lynn Flewelling created the world you are about to enter in her highly acclaimed Nightrunner series and

will explore it further in a forthcoming trilogy. She assures us, however, that no prior knowledge,

passports, or inoculations are required to read this story.

The last glow of sunset faded to purple on the horizon across the broad bay. Up the beach in the

distance, the lights of sprawling Khouimir twinkled like a cloud of fireflies against the vastness of the

Zengati desert.

In this gentle, failing light, the brown young men sprawled comfortably around a fire in a sheltered circle

of dunes might have been mistaken for a group of merchants' sons, smoking kif and sharing tales away

from the heat of the city. All of them, that was, except the lighter-skinned Skalan man who commanded

his companions' attention just now. Tonight it was his turn to amuse the group.

"The best assassin I ever knew?" Fourteen pairs of dark eyes followed the young foreigner who called

himself Mijar—in their tongue, "stranger."

A frown creased Mijar's sunburned brow as he threw another stick of driftwood onto the fire and

set-tied back against the bleached log he was using as a backrest. "I don't know if I want to talk of that."

"Come on, Mijar!" his companions urged, offering him cups of wine and the stained kif pipe. What

performer didn't like to be coaxed?

This new guild mate of theirs was a middling assassin at best. He was quick and silent, spry as a mirka

when it came to housebreaking, but he wouldn't kill children or women, no matter how much was

offered, or use the slow poisons that brought agony to the victim and well-placed fear to those who

witnessed the death. No, it was his stories of the strange lands he'd traveled that had quickly endeared

him to the others in the months since his arrival in Khouimir. His heavily accented voice was as sweet as a

priest's, his thin, plain face wise and innocent as a child's as he spun out his tales. Who knew if he spoke

the truth or not? It didn't matter. The man was an artist of words.

Mijar took a long pull on the pipe and his strange blue eyes glazed a little. For a moment he seemed to be

listening to something—the murmur of the waves, perhaps, or the distant tinkle of mule bells.

"The best assassin?" he said again, and sighed. "I suppose that would have to be Raven, back in the city

of Rhiminee where I was born."

"He called himself after an animal?" young Tahan asked, all attention as he leaned forward in the firelight.

"Lots do, in Skala: Farren the Fish, Eelmouth Wil, the Rhiminee Cat. I was called Skut the Mouse back

in my thieving days. It was the fashion."

"Does such a name have significance?" asked bearded Zaghar, the eldest of the gathering.

Frowning, the foreigner took another deep pull at the pipe. "With him, it did."

Beautiful Rhiminee glitters like a wizard's illusion on her shining cliffs, but for those of us who lived in the

shadows of the lower city along the harbor front, life was hard, brief, and ugly.

I was a whore's castoff, abandoned so young I could scarcely remember my mother's name to curse her.

The closest thing I ever had to a protector was a thief named Tym. He was a mean bastard, but he kept

a bargain and paid what he promised. He was one of the best, Tym was, but he got killed all the same,

shoved off a roof during a job.

I wasn't quite eleven when he died, but by then he'd taught me enough to fend for myself. I was beaten,

buggered, starved, and pilloried more than a time or two, but still came up every morning in one piece

and breathing.

Skala went to war with Plenimar again about then—I remember because that made for lots of drunken

soldiers to roll. I did well for myself at that and as I got older and stronger, I began to think life might

have more to offer a fine fellow like myself, if I could only find out what. I hadn't counted on it being the

assassin's guild. They found me, rather than the other way 'round, but thafs how it works in Rhiminee.

You don't just walk into a tavern somewhere and say "Sign me up." No, they keep an eye out and make

their own choices.

I'd never given any particular thought to being a snuffer. I avoided fights when I could, and never thought

of killing anyone until one foggy spring night when a drunken noble dragged me into an alley for a quick

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Lynn Flewelling - Raven's Cut

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