[Aaru POV]

  Anukhet seethed in the corner. The woman always seethed, especially of late.

  Aaru paid it no mind as she swept into the dingy room, pulling her kalasiris tight to keep it off the dirty floor. The gown was brilliant white, gold edging highlighting the piece, with opal beads accenting the seam that ran up her side. Her two belts, one above the waist and another below the bust, held the fabric in place, though it was shaped by her form more than anything. Her body was enough to turn heads, no accessories necessary.

  Why her sister insisted on meeting in such dire locations was a mystery to Aaru—did she not know how expensive this dress was?

  But of course she didn’t. Anukhet had always scorned the more complex methods Aaru preferred in their shared profession. She was a blunt hammer to Aaru’s fine sculpting knife, a simple plough to Aaru’s tax collection officer… the analogy was running away from her, but Aaru didn’t mind. It was less about what one said, she’d found, than it was about how you said it, and to whom.

  “Scraping the bottom of the barrel again, I see,” Aaru said, letting out an airy laugh to indicate amusement she didn’t feel in the slightest. Anukhet just huddled in the corner, staring back at her with burning eyes. Quite literally, fire danced in her irises. It may have been missed by one of mortal means, but Aaru was far from mortal. She was as deadly as the sullen woman huddling in the corner, though she accented her physical might with more subtle powers, too. In any case, her cultivation was enough to allow her to glimpse the fires burning hungrily away within Anukhet’s gaze.

  How that spiteful bitch had become even more miserable was a mystery that Aaru doubted even the priests of high Toth could unravel. The Knowledge Seeker was also the god of madness though, so perhaps Anukhet was the one that had been communing with him. She certainly seemed mad as a water phobic gator these past few weeks.

  To nobody’s surprise, Anukhet gave no reply, and Aaru brushed it off, pulling out a chair from behind the moulding wooden desk in the centre of the room. She considered it for a few moments, then pushed it back in, choosing to stand instead. A quick wave of her hand cleansed the table’s surface of the worst of the offending grime, and she rolled out a papyrus map.

  “I have received word from our contacts in the city—arrangements are in place for three weeks hence,” Aaru said, indicating the points of entry they had made available in the outer districts.

  “And you trust them?” Anukhet asked, her voice a tortured rasp. She sounded half-dead to Aaru’s ears.

  Looking up, Aaru took a closer look at her partner in this mission and winced internally, though she kept her face a serene mask. The woman had aged considerably. Her scars had always been ghastly, of course, but now her skin sagged from her jowls, leaving her cheeks hollow and her eyes sunken pits of bruised skin. Only the eyes themselves burned brightly in her skull, giving off a frankly garish visage. Even Aaru’s skill with powders and paint would struggle to disguise the abomination her companion had become.

  She shivered. Was there any single trait more offensive than ugliness? Perhaps Anukhet’s utter disregard for politics of any kind—ignorance was almost as inexcusable, after all.

  “Is that a genuine question?” she asked. “Of course I do not trust them. I do not even trust you. But I am assured that they will play their role when the time comes. I have dealt with their kind before and found them much like the river sharks that swarm the cataracts when the Nikea floods—when they smell blood in the water, they all swarm for a taste.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She pointed to the pre-planned routes through the city she had painstakingly crafted by way of careful manoeuvring and plentiful bribes these last few months, though her companion seemed uninterested. “There is no power behind the throne. We will strike while that remains true. Turn your worries to your own preparations. Are you ready? You are looking a little… sallow.”

  Anukhet ignored her friendly smile, glaring back with barely disguised contempt. In fact, Aaru suspected that no attempt whatsoever had been made by her fellow assassin to disguise her feelings. She displayed them as openly as she did her hideous face, when it wasn’t hidden behind rank hair, of course.

  There was a smell about her, too. Cloying and fetid. By Hittu’s bountiful breasts, was this woman determined to make working with her as disturbing as possible? Aaru sniffed daintily, a hint as subtle as a hammer blow to most people in most courts, and yet Anukhet seemed completely unaware. Of course.

  “I do not care for this,” the ugly woman said dismissively in her dead whisper of a voice. “Point me toward those I must kill. There are souls to harvest.”

  Aaru frowned. Sullen and spiteful the woman may have always been. Ugly and offensive her demeanour always was. Arrogant, and even ignorant, Aaru would happily have described her as… But she’d never been this eager for violence.

  Anukhet revelled in the kill, of course. Every member of the Scarlet Feathers did, in one way or another, and Aaru herself was no stranger to the thrill of death. It just so happened that her pleasure came from the anticipation of a plan coming together—the confirmation of a complex scheme unfurling just right set her spine to tingling—whereas Anukhet was more brutal and stupid in her approach. Knives, always so many knives. And so much blood left in her wake, too. One was a consequence of the other, she supposed.

  But they were kills of passion in the moment. Aaru had never heard this level of glee at the thought of it so distant before. And harvesting souls? Really? Who did she think she was? Some second-rate acolyte of Ren thinking themselves a necromancer because they imbued a couple of skeletons with the ability to stand and wave, it sounded like. Harvesting souls. Pah!

  Aaru raised a single delicate eyebrow from its usual resting position and favoured her partner with a beneficent expression. “Here and here are our two most likely points of ingress, my dear,” she purred, brushing over the strange exchange with expert aplomb. “We shall decide on the night itself, but have no fear, there will be many opportunities for you to whet your appetite when the time comes.”

  Anukhet’s smile was wide and cruel, the lamplight reflecting off surprisingly yellowed teeth.

  Aaru hesitated. Then, unable to help herself, she leaned forwards over the table. “I must ask, blessed Anu, are you well? You do not look it, if you’ll forgive the observation. Did the last contract have some complications? I heard that the Prefect is dead, so I assumed all was well, but…”

  All she received was a baleful glare, and eventually shrugged. “No matter then. We shall travel via Men-nefer and will need to leave within the tenday if we are to make it in time. I have arranged transport. We shall meet three days hence, yes? How does the temple of Wusis sound?”

  “No,” Anukhet rasped. “Here.”

  “Surely you jest?” Aaru protested. “If I spend another minute down here, my dress will be ruined and my hair shall smell for days. There are a number of more pleasant spots I could secure us access to, if only—”

  “Here. Three days,” Anuket interrupted her.

  Aaru bristled and was sorely tempted to push the issue. The disrespect really was intolerable. And yet… something about the dishevelled woman’s mien was unnerving. A half-feral energy about her, as if she may launch herself across the room at any moment to attack Aaru where she stood. Or even the walls, honestly. She looked mad enough to split her own skull open against the table, if she perceived it to have offered insult.

  Aaru looked into eyes that burned with an unholy glow, then nodded once. She collected up her map and turned from the room with as much poise as she could summon in such a grimy place. Better to leave now than spend another moment down here with the grime and the cockroaches and the dirty woman that stood huddled in shadow at one corner.

  At least the contract would be over soon. A tenday would pass, and a new province would be bereft of leadership. Glorious anarchy would follow, and in its wake, opportunities would rise. And most importantly, of course, Aaru would be paid in full.