There was the slightest crunch of gravel under one of the statues. Agon turned and without thinking gripped his sword.

“Don’t bother,” Durzo Blint said.

Agon whipped back around. Durzo was standing not two feet away. Agon stepped back.

“The noisy one was one of yours. Not me.” Blint smiled wolfishly. “But wait, didn’t I tell you not to bring men?”

“I didn’t,” Agon said.

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’re late,” Agon said. He had his equilibrium back now. It was unsettling dealing with a man who didn’t value life. He believed that Blint really didn’t, now. There was a rationale behind it, too. The only way he himself could deal with Blint was to realize that he could be killed but that that wasn’t important; his life or death wasn’t why he had summoned Blint; his life or death wasn’t vital to what they would talk about. Still, a part of him asked, how can wetboys live like this?

“Just making sure I knew where all your soldiers were hidden,” Blint said. He was wearing a killing outfit, Agon realized queasily. A tunic of mottled dark gray cotton, thin but cut for easy movement, pants of the same material, a harness with a score of throwing weapons, some of which the general didn’t even recognize. What he did recognize was that the points of some of those weapons bore more than steel. Poison.

Is he bluffing? Agon hadn’t brought soldiers. Even if his life wasn’t vital to this discussion, he wasn’t going to throw it away. “I keep my word, even to a Sa’kagé thug,” he said.

“The funny thing is, I believe you, Lord General. You’re many things, but I don’t think you’re either dishonorable or stupid enough to betray me. Are you sure you don’t want me to kill the king? You have the army. If you’re smart and lucky, you might be king yourself.”

“No,” Agon said. “I keep my vows.” If only those words didn’t burn as I spoke them.

“I’d give you a discount.” Blint laughed.

“Are you ready to hear the job?” Agon asked.

“It seems we’ve had this conversation before,” Blint said. “My answer remains the same. I only showed up because I miss your smiling face, Lord General. And to show that your—let’s be honest—rather pathetic defenses still can’t keep me out should you choose to try to make my life difficult.”

“You haven’t even heard what the job is. The king respects your talents now. He will pay better than anyone has ever paid you. He wishes you—”

“To protect his life. I know. Hu Gibbet took a contract on him.” Durzo ignored the stricken look on Agon’s face. “Sorry. I won’t take the job. I’d never take a job for that foul sack of wind. Let’s be honest. Aleine Gunder, who ridiculously fashions himself ‘the Ninth’ as if he had any connection to the previous eight kings who bore the name Aleine, is a waste of skin.”

Someone burst out from under the tall statue of Duke Gunder behind Agon. Agon’s heart sank as he recognized the man’s gait.

Aleine Gunder IX threw back his hood. “Guards! Guards!”

Archers and crossbowmen sprang up from every balcony, bush, and shadow in sight. Others came running from the perimeter of the garden.

“My liege. What a surprise,” Blint said, sweeping into a perfect court bow. “Who would have expected to find you hiding in your father’s shadow?”

“You shitting …shitting! …shit!” the king yelled. “What are you doing?” he yelled at the guards. “Surround him!” The guards surrounded Durzo, Agon, and the king in a tight circle. They looked nervous to have the king standing so close to a wetboy, but none of them dared invoke the king’s ire by forcibly separating them.

“Your Majesty,” Agon said, stepping in front of the king before the man tried to hit Durzo Blint. Tried to hit Durzo Blint!

“You will work for me, assassin,” the king said.

“No. I’ve said it before, but maybe you need to hear it yourself. I’m willing to kill you, but I won’t kill for you.”

The guards were less than pleased by this, of course, but Agon held up a hand. With the guards pressed so close, the archers were useless. Brilliant, Your Majesty. If it came to bloodshed, both he and the king would die, and he’d give even odds that Blint wouldn’t.

“Fine, then,” the king said.

“Fine, then.” Blint smiled joylessly.

The king smiled back. “We’ll kill your daughter.”

“My what?”

The king’s smile grew. “Look into it.” He laughed.

A dangerous second stretched out and Agon wondered if he was about to be holding a dead king in his arms. Then there was a blur of motion. Even though he was looking right at him, Durzo Blint moved faster than his eye could follow. He flipped up over the circle of soldiers, caught a statue and changed his trajectory.

A moment later, there was a scuttling sound up the side of the castle wall, akin to a cat’s claws scraping as it climbed a tree.

Startled, one of the soldiers discharged his crossbow—mercifully, it was pointed into the air. Agon shot a look at the man.

The man swallowed. “Sorry, sir.”

The king walked inside, and it was only two minutes later that Agon realized how close Durzo had brought him to speaking treason in front of the king.

Kylar felt the air stir as someone opened the front door of the safe house. He lifted his eyes from the book in front of him and reached for the short sword unsheathed on the table.

He had a perfect view of the door from his chair, of course. Master Blint wouldn’t set up his workroom any other way. But he would have known it was Master Blint just by the sound: click-CLICK-click. Click-CLICK-click. Click-CLICK-click. Master Blint always locked, unlocked, and then relocked every lock. It was just another of his superstitions.

He didn’t ask his master about the job. Blint never liked to talk about a job right after it. The Night Angels didn’t like it, he said. Kylar interpreted that, Let my memories fade.

The vial of white asp venom was sitting on the table with the rest of Blint’s collection, but to distract himself as much as Blint, Kylar said, “I don’t think it’ll work. I’ve been looking over your books. They haven’t got anything about this.”

“They’ll write a new book,” Blint said. He started putting the poisoned blades in special cases, and wiping off the ones bearing poison that spoiled over time.

“I know animals can eat some poisons and it doesn’t make them sick. And I know their meat will make you sick if you eat it. Our experiments have proved that. But then your deader’s just sick. That’s fine as far as it goes, but this dual poison thing—I don’t get it.”

Blint hung up his weapons harness. “Your deader eats the pork, he feels nothing. Maybe a little tipsy. He eats the quail, he gets dizzy. He eats both, he gets dead. It’s called potentiation. The poisons work together to reach their fullest potential.”

“But you’ve still got to get an entire pig and a flock of quail past the food tester.”

“Big places use multiple tasters. By the time they suspect anything, the deader’s dead,” Blint said.

“But then you poison everyone in the room. You can’t control—”

“I control everything!” Blint shouted. He threw a knife down and walked out, slamming the door so hard it set every weapon on the wall jingling.

Elene stared at the blank page and dipped the drying quill back into the ink pot. Further down the table in the Drakes’ dining room, Mags and Ilena Drake were playing a game of tiles. Mags, the older sister, was concentrating intently, but Ilena kept glancing at Elene.

“Why,” Elene said, “do I always get crushes on unattainable men?” Elene Cromwyll had been friends with Mags and Ilena Drake for years. The gap between a servant and a count’s daughters should have precluded friendship, but the Drakes counted all as equal before the One God. As they’d grown older, the girls had become more aware of how odd their friendship was, so it had become more private, but no less real.