"I don't have a–"

  The vendor glared at me. I gave up trying to explain. Besides, I kept thinking the word assassin over and over again in spite of myself. The vendor turned toward a customer, his face breaking into a smile, but he kept glancing over his shoulder as he filled the order. Keeping his eye out for thieves, like any vendor.

  I coughed again, turned, wanting to get back to the inn, with its coating of dust and its view of the desert. The street leading away from the night market was emptier than it should've been, and quiet too. Halfway down I stopped and eased my knife out of my boot, and then I hobbled along, wishing I could walk faster, or run – but something had my joints stiff and creaking as an old woman's.

  The shadows moved.

  I froze.

  So did the shadows.

  I stood there for a few seconds listening to my heart beat and to the distant strains of music floating out of the night market. Papa's old assassin stories worked their way into my head – that old detail about how they moved through darkness and shadows the way a fish moved through water. I loosened my grip on the knife, holding it proper, the way you're supposed to, and dreaded the moment when the shadows would move again.

  Nothing.

  I slid forward, just a couple of steps in the direction of the inn. That stirred the shadows up. They slid along the buildings like snakes. My body ached worse and worse or else I would've taken off running; instead, all I could do was creep along, my heart hammering and my breath short and my skin cold and hot all at once.

  My head cleared.

  It happened real sudden, as if a latch had been sprung, and I saw the whole world as clear and crystalline as if I were still at sea beneath a shining blue sky. A man was following me. I whirled around and caught sight of his robes, dyed the color of the night sky, fluttering back into the liquid shadows. I'd no idea what had broken the spell, but I was grateful for it.

  "You want to fight me? Come out and fight me!"

  My voice bounced off the buildings. Eyes glowed pale blue in the darkness.

  My head started going thick and fogged again. The magic crept in. The eyes burned on and on. My fear was a thick coil in the pit of my stomach holding me in place.

  It was an assassin.

  "Fight me!" I shrieked, and I could feel the hysteria in my voice, like my words were splintering into pieces.

  The assassin glided forward, black on black except for the strip of silver at his side. He didn't seem to be in much of a hurry. I forced myself forward, through the magic, and it gave me a pain in my spine that set me screaming, and my scream amplified up out into the starry night, rising up over the buildings, transforming into an explosion of white light that showered sparks and brightness down upon us both.

  No one was as surprised as me.

  I collapsed onto the ground, but for a second I saw the assassin like it was daytime: the grain in the fabric of his robes, the bump of his nose beneath his dark desert mask, the carvings etched into his armor. He was glaring at me.

  "You're from the Mists?" he hissed. The bastard spoke perfect Empire.

  "The what?"

  The assassin jerked his head around like he was looking for somebody. I wanted to see where he was looking but I also didn't dare take my eyes off him.

  "Who are you?" he said, though before I could answer he spat out a word in a language like dead flowers, beautiful and terrible all at once. Then he darted out of the glow of the light and melted into the shadows, all too quick for me to see.

  For a few minutes I waited to die.

  It didn't happen. The light I'd somehow screamed into existence burned away. I sat there in the street and remembered Papa's stories: they always kill their victims. But he hadn't killed me. He'd just melted into the shadows.

  I didn't let myself get too cocky about that, though. Cockiness is useful to fake on occasion, but it'll only get you killed if you believe it. Maybe the man hadn't been an assassin assassin, just some hired knife sent by Captain Hariri. But then what about the moving shadows and the fog in my head and his eyes? Ain't no crewman on the Hariri able to pull off that trick with the eyes.

  And my voice turning into light… Ain't no way that was me. That sort of protection spell was basic magic, and I couldn't even get the hang of basic magic back when Mama was trying to teach me.

  I shuffled toward the inn, working things over in my head, clutching the knife to my breasts like I was some scared merchant's wife who had no clue how to use the damn thing. Everything was so dark. It took me a minute to realize none of the magic-cast lanterns were burning, and that sent another quake of chills vibrating through my spine.

  It wasn't until I was dragging past the empty day market that I remembered the shopkeeper. The woman who bought my dress.

  You're going to need my help. Don't delay.

  I stopped. The night was quiet and still. I couldn't even hear the night market anymore.

  I don't trust beautiful people. But Papa always told me you sometimes got to trust the one person you don't want to trust. "Just be smart about it," he'd say.

  Well. I'd managed to avoid the only kind of death. I figured I could be smart about the woman at the dress shop, too.

Mama tried to teach me magic, meeting with me down in the belly of the ship after my first menses showed up, but it turned out that I took more after Papa, who's completely untouched: better adept at stealing and sneaking and charming and fighting, all talents borne of the natural world. But unlike Papa, I can at least recognize magic when I see it and when I feel it, and I know better than to mess around with it.

  I went to the woman's dress shop straight away, climbing over the day market fence and skittering through the empty streets till I found the sign with the arrow. The woman sat outside the shop eating a honey pastry, a lantern illuminating the lines of her face. She looked tired.

  "Good," she said when she saw me. "You didn't delay."

  "It was you, right? That's my thinking right now and I want to know for sure." I paused, rubbed at my dry eyes. The woman took a bite of pastry. "Earlier tonight," I said. "When the assassin attacked me."

  The woman set her pastry in her lap. "You know that by all rights you should be dead."