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The alley echoed around them. The Elder sneered and checked the blood at his shoulder. “This is foolish,” he said, gritting his teeth. There was blood in his mouth too.

Sorasa’s pride flared. She gulped for air.

“I promise I will not harm you.” Again, the Elder reached out. “Come, Mortal.”

Death was a welcome friend to Sorasa Sarn. She and the goddess Lasreen had passed many years bound, hand in hand. One followed the other like night follows dusk. Sorasa had never felt her so close before.

Lord Mercury rose in her mind, white and terrible, his teeth sharp, his eyes distant. It was so like him, to give her a death this way. A death she could not outrun or outfox.

It was good Sorasa did not believe in absolutes. There was only opportunity, and opportunity could always be found.

“Come, Mortal,” the Elder said again. His fingers twitched.

“No,” she said, laughing as she bolted one last time.

Her sword lay forgotten in the dirt.

She landed in the chair hard, one foot propped on the taverna table. The other jittered on the floor, shaking with nervous energy.I look a wreck,she thought, noting the way the barmaid hesitated. She was covered in dirt and blood, one of her braids undone, hair spilling over her shoulder in a black curtain. A cut on her lip oozed. She licked away the blood. With a manic grin, Sorasa held up two fingers and the maid scurried to serve.

Sorasa was not the only patron of the port taverna who looked run through. There were a few battered men who she suspected had met her bulls. The rest were sailors half-dead in their ale. She recognized Ibalet sailors of the Storm Fleet, disheveled in their dark-blue sailing silks. They noticed her too and twitched fingers in hello, greeting a sister of Ibal.

She did not return the gesture.

Two tankards were set down in front of her a moment before the door opened, spilling light through the dark barroom. The sailors winced or cursed, but the immortal ignored them. He stood for a moment, framed in sunshine, his shadow stretching over her.

She did not move as he crossed the taverna and sat.

Without a word, she pushed the pewter tankard across the pitted table. He stared at the sloshing cup of ale, perplexed. Then, with oddly stilted motions, he took a gulp.

Sorasa kept still, her face blank. Her pulse thrummed in her ears.

The Elder glanced down at the tankard, staring into its golden depths. His brow furrowed. Then he drank again, draining it dry. For a second, Sorasa felt a burst of unseen triumph. It faded as he stared at her, unblinking. His pupils went wide in the dim light, black eating up the green.

“Did you know the Vedera are immune to nearly all poisons?” he said slowly.

The Vedera.She tucked the strange world into her mind and exhaled the last of her hope. “What a waste of arsenic.”

Part of her whispered to grab for her dagger, her whip, the last powders in her pouch. Another poison, another cut, another opportunity. For any and all things that might save her, even now. She felt as if a hole had opened beneath her feet.

I must choose to jump or fall.

Her body ached. She took a deep draft of piss-water ale and wished it wereibariliquor. To die with the bittersweet bite of home on her lips.For I will die here, at his hand, and at Mercury’s,she thought. It was almost a relief to admit.

The Elder searched her face, his eyes snaring on the tattoos crawling up her neck. Sorasa let him look. He did not know each tattoo as she did, its meaning and weight within the Guild.

“Three times you’ve tried to kill me today,” he muttered, as if astonished.

She drank again. “I’d say this all counts a single attempt.”

“Then you came close to succeeding thrice.”

“Thrice,”she sneered back, mocking his tone.As if we’re in a royal court, not a shitbucket bar.“Well, what now, Elder? How will you do it?”

He blinked, digesting her words, simple as they were. She thought of a child at the Guild, struggling through a lesson they did not understand. He clenched his jaw and sat back in his chair. Sorasa half expected it to collapse under his bulk. Slowly, he put both palms to the table, a display of peace.He treats me like a spooked animal,she thought, tasting fury.

“I told you before, it is not my objective to harm you.”

He reached to his side, throwing back his cloak. She braced herself for the song of a sword unsheathed. Instead he pulled forth a familiar blade.