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But one side of his face was scarred, as if clawed to pieces.By what?she wondered, her stomach churning.

The sword and dagger hung at her side, begging for her attention like children pulling at their mother’s hands. Instead her fingers strayed for the coiled bullwhip, all leather and rage.

“I would like to speak to you,” her pursuer ground out in Paramount, the common language stilted and oddly formal for their circumstance. She tried and failed to place his accent.

While her heartbeat still surged, he showed no signs of exertion. Not even a single hair out of place.

“You’re speaking to me now,” she replied, adjusting her balance, both feet set beneath her. Her toes wiggled in anticipation. The whip loosed, trailing like a venomous snake.

Below them, the fruit vendor continued to yell in Tyri, but no one else stopped to watch. The Byllskos alleys were filled with fools. Two more were of little consequence.

The man did not blink, watching every tick of her muscles. “I would prefer to converse elsewhere.”

She shrugged and tightened her grip on the plaited handle of the whip, slipping the wrist loop into place. “That’s a shame.”

The man stretched out his hand, the palm as big as a dinner plate, the pale skin crossed with calluses and training scars.Won at the citadel, though I have never seen him before. Is he some pet of Mercury’s trained in isolation, a dragon to unleash on any of us who cross his will?

“I’m not here to harm you,” he said.

Sorasa scoffed low at the back of her throat. “I’ve heard that before.”

He curled his fingers into a fist. “But I will if I must.”

The wind stirred his cloak, revealing the heavy longsword at his hip. He was not a swordsman like Garion. The terrible blade was not meant for performance.

It would also be difficult to draw in such a precarious position, all but useless even for the most skilled swordsmen of the Ward.

Sorasa bared her teeth in a grim smile. “Try me, then.”

“Very well.”

Despite her decades of training, honing her body to the razor’s edge, Mercury’s dog was somehow faster. His reflexes, his reactions, his instincts. He was a storm. Her only recourse was to anticipate and predict, to move first.

The whip curled around a washing line as she jumped, before his feet left the plank. He leapt forward, intending to catch her around the middle. But instead of jumping over him, she swung around, using the whip and her own momentum to kick off the alley wall. The change in angle was enough to miss him by inches, leaving him to land hard on her perch.

The pole cracked through, splintering under his weight. The fruit vendor shrieked as a six-and-a-half-foot assassin crashed through his stall and crushed a pile of spotty oranges.

Sorasa cut the washing line, clutching the whip as she fell into the alley. With a practiced tumble, she absorbed the brunt of the fall and popped to her feet, a pile of clothes fluttering around her. She grabbed a patched aquamarine cloak from the heap and threw it around her shoulders.

When she looked back, peering around her new hood, she saw a blond head above the crowd, trying to shoulder his way through. The crowd pushed back, rallying against him. The vendor even pelted him with ruined oranges. He hardly noticed, scanning the alley like a hound picking up a scent.

Sorasa did not give him the chance and slipped back onto the main road, her pace even and unbothered. Just another body on the streets of Byllskos.

The cattle auctions continued in earnest, drawing a heavy throng of people and animals alike as traders stopped to observe. She traded the stolen cloak for a long, stained vest and hat from a farmer’s cart. Both hid her face and weapons well, though she looked worse than a peasant.Smell worse too,she thought with a curl of her lip.

One of her first and best lessons at the Guild concerned no weapon. No blade or poison. No disguises. No language. She excelled in those, of course. They were as necessary as rain and sunshine to a field of wheat. But the most important element, the most vital to fulfilling a contract, was opportunity.

It was not luck that Sorasa caught the merchant king asleep, his guards distant and slow. She chose that moment. And she would choose again here. Mercury’s assassin would not be so easily left behind. He would be on her again in a few minutes’ time, if he wasn’t following already. She did not breathe a sigh of relief as she walked. She did not uncoil or drop her guard. Sorasa Sarn was not so foolish.

Her heartbeat slowed, her muscles recovered, and her head cleared.

Opportunity lay ahead.

With a smile, she approached a pen of black bulls. They gleamed with sweat, packed tight like barrels in the hold of a trade galley. They could scarcely move even to swat off the biting flies. They were next to the auction paddock, ready to trample round and round for the traders. Slowly, she leaned up alongside their gate, one that opened to the dirt square. The lock was simple, a wooden draw bar. She glanced at it and removed her hat, baring her face for all the street to see.

The trap is baited.

One hand darted into her pack and she pulled out a peach, biting greedily into its oversweet flesh.