Slapping her hand with the flat of his bollock dagger, Kylar launched the knife out of her grip. He dodged a grasping hand and got behind her in a moment, clapping a hand over her mouth.

“It’s me. It’s me!” he said as he had to twist this way and that to dodge flying elbows. He couldn’t hold a hand over her mouth and pin both arms and stop the kicks she was aiming at his groin. “Be quiet or your mistress dies!”

As she seemed to regain her sanity, Kylar finally let Elene go. “I knew it!” she said, furiously but quietly. “I knew I couldn’t trust you. I knew it was just going to be you.”

“I meant your mistress will die because your noise will bring the wetboy here.”

Silence, then, “Oh.”

“Yes.” In the dim moonlit room, he couldn’t be sure, but Kylar thought he saw her blushing.

“You could have knocked,” she said.

“Sorry. Old habit.”

Suddenly awkward, she picked up the cleaver off the bed and put it under her pillow. Looking down at her nightgown, which was disappointingly chaste, she seemed embarrassed. She grabbed a robe and turned her back while she pulled it on.

“Relax,” Kylar said as she turned back to face him. “It’s a little late for modesty. I saw your statue. You look good naked.” Why had he twisted that last bit to make her sound like a whore? Even if she was sleeping with the duke, what choice did she have? She was a servant in the man’s house. It wasn’t fair, but Kylar still felt betrayed.

Elene folded as if he’d hit her in the stomach.

“I begged her not to display it,” Elene said. “But she was so proud of it. She said I should be proud too.”

“She?”

“The duchess,” Elene said.

“The duchess?” Kylar repeated stupidly. Not the duke. Not the duke?

He felt at once vastly relieved and more confused than ever. Why should he feel relieved?

“Did you think I’d model naked for the duke?” she asked. “What do you think, that I’m his mistress?” Her eyes widened as she saw the expression on his face.

“Well …” Kylar felt like he’d unjustly accused her, then felt mad that she was making him feel embarrassed for drawing a perfectly good conclusion, then felt mad that he was wasting time talking to a girl when a wetboy was probably waiting out in the hall. This is madness. “It happens,” he said defensively.

Why am I doing this?

For the same reason I’ve watched her from afar. Because I’m intoxicated by her.

“Not with me,” Elene said.

“You mean you’re a …” he was trying to sound snide, but he trailed off. Why was he trying to sound snide?

“A virgin? Yes,” she said, unembarrassed. “Are you?”

Kylar clenched his jaw. “I—look, there’s a killer here.”

Elene seemed about to comment about Kylar avoiding her question, then her look darkened as the joy leached out of it. “Two,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“Two killers.”

She meant him. Kylar nodded, again feeling a lump in his throat, and suddenly he was ashamed of what he was. “Yes, two. I saw Hu coming in, Elene. Is the Globe safe?”

He was watching her eyes. As expected, they darted to where she’d hidden it: the bottom of her closet.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s …” her voice died. “You’re going to steal it.”

“I’m sorry,” Kylar said.

“And now you know where I hid it. You set me up.”

She was naive, but she wasn’t stupid. “Yes.”

Anger built in her brown eyes. “Is there even an assassin, or was it all a lie?”

“There is one. I give you my word,” Kylar said, looking away.

“For all that’s worth.”

Ouch. “I am sorry, Elene, but I have to.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain,” he said.

“I spent all day being embarrassed about everything I’d ever written to you. I spent all day feeling terrible how much you’d given for me. I didn’t even tell the guards you were coming because I thought—I thought …You’re a real piece of work, Kylar,” she said. “I guess Azoth really did die.”

Not like this. Not like this.

“I really do have to take it,” he said.

“I can’t let you do that,” she said.

“Elene, if you stay here, they’ll think you helped me. If Hu doesn’t kill you, the Jadwins might. They could throw you in the Maw. Elene, come with me. I couldn’t live with myself if they did that.”

“You’ll manage. Just take a new name. Throw money at whatever makes you feel guilty.”

“They’ll kill you!”

“I won’t repay good with evil.”

He was running out of time. He had to get out of here.

Kylar exhaled. So everything was going to go the worst possible way tonight. “Then I’m sorry for this,” he said, “but it’s to save you.”

“What is?” she asked.

Kylar punched her, twice. Once in the mouth, hard enough to draw blood. And once in her beautiful, piercing eyes, hard enough that they would blacken and swell shut, so they wouldn’t see what he did. As she staggered backward, he spun her around and clamped her in a chokehold. She flailed vainly against his grip, doubtless thinking he was killing her. But he merely held her and jabbed a needle in her neck. In seconds, she was unconscious.

She’ll never forgive me for this. I’ll never forgive me for this. Kylar laid her on the floor and pulled out a knife. He cut his hand and dripped blood onto Elene’s face to make it look like she’d been beaten. It was gross, and the contrast of her beauty with the ugliness of what he was doing made him uncharacteristically squeamish, but it had to be done. She had to look like a victim. Looking at her there, unconscious, was like eating his own little slice of the bitter business. The bitterness of the business was the truth of the business. Even here, when he hadn’t killed, when he didn’t have to bathe in the all-permeating odors of death, Kylar had closed the eyes that saw the truth of him, blackened the eyes of light that illuminated the darkness in him, had bloodied and blinded the eyes that pierced him. Who says there are no poets in the bitter business?

Finished, Kylar arranged Elene’s limbs in a suitably graceless pattern.

The silver ka’kari was tucked in a slipper in the bottom of the closet. Kylar held it up to examine it in the moonlight. It was a plain, metallic sphere, utterly featureless. In truth, it was a little disappointing. Despite the metallic sheen, it was translucent, which was novel. Kylar had never seen anything like that, but he’d been hoping the ka’kari would do something spectacular.

He tucked the ball into a pouch and moved to the door. So far, so good. Well, actually, so far tonight had been pretty much an unmitigated disaster. But getting out should be relatively easy. If he couldn’t sneak past the guard at the bottom of the servants’ stairs, he could walk right up to the man and pretend that he’d been looking for the toilet and had needed to go so badly that he’d gone for the first available one. The guard would give him a warning that the upstairs was off limits, Kylar would say they should have guards at the bottom of the steps if they didn’t want anyone to go up them, the guard would be chagrined, and Kylar would go home. Not foolproof, but then, tonight Kylar would have distrusted anything that was foolproof.

Looking through the keyhole, he watched the hallway and listened closely for thirty seconds. There was nothing out there.

The moment he cracked the door, someone kicked the other side with more than mortal strength. The door blew into him, hitting his face first, then his shoulder. It launched him back into the room.

He almost kept his feet, but as he flew back, he tripped over Elene’s unconscious body and went down hard. He slid across the stone floor until his head collided with the wall.

Barely holding onto consciousness, black spots exploding in front of his eyes, Kylar must have drawn the pair of daggers on pure instinct because his hands protested in pain as the daggers were knocked out of them.