Nobody noticed the assassin stalking the palace.

  Some turned her way as she strode evenly towards the throne, but a light touch on the shoulder or a dextrous trip with the feet distracted them before they noticed her. Laughter tinkled around the arched room, combining with the ringing of glasses and susurration of low voices to create a murmur sufficient to cover her steps.

  Beneath that noise, she moved like a predator. Padding steps, even and unhurried. A gator slipping through the Nikea, barely disrupting the surface as she swam languidly towards unsuspecting prey.

  The Prefect—the seventh to hold such a title in the last hundred years—sprawled confidently in his throne at the centre of the room. He seemed to gloat as he looked down on his subjects, something in the set of his face just a little too smug to be truly handsome.

  Good. Anuket hated smug men, and she loved killing them. “Make of your passion a labour, and you will spend your life both rich and happy,” she had heard as a child. It seemed her father had been right about one thing at least.

  The thought of him made her scars itch, and she ducked behind a heavyset man in architect’s robes to scratch absently at her face, rolling her eyes as she overheard his conversation with a beautiful young server. What was it about fat men and young women?

  She resumed her inevitable march to the throne, and the target that lounged upon it. She watched as a priest approached, leaned down to whisper in his ear, and then retreat to stand behind the throne. The Prefect smiled at whatever he was told, and his eyes roamed the room with renewed interest.

  She weaved between groups, taking drinks and passing them off in a constant swirl of motion that disguised both her intentions and her appearance. A sly channel of Ren, and she transformed to the eyes of those who looked for her. One moment she was a serving girl, slim and meek as she handed out drinks, and the next she was a rotund trader slapping a friend on the back. Before he could turn, she had slipped past, a scholar making a beeline towards his fellows on the other side of the grand hall.

  Eventually, her dance came to an end. She had zigged and zagged, flown and twirled, and now she stood before the throne, unnoticed in her movement. The glamour fell from her form as the priest behind the throne spotted her, and he stepped forwards, the movement drawing the Prefect’s attention.

  His eyes widened, catching her own, but she was far too close, and it was already far too late. Her silver veil fell from her face and her daggers whispered their way into her hands as she sprinted up the marble steps that elevated the throne above the rest of the rabble in the palace.

  She ignored the scraping of bronze as the palace guard started to move from their positions around the edges of the hall. She had eyes only for her target now. Strangely, he didn’t panic as his gaze met hers. His lazy smile only widened as he saw her, and he made no move to escape.

  It wouldn’t have helped, of course. Anuket was paid handsomely even for a member of the Scarlet Feathers, and one didn’t rise high within that venerable order of assassins without merit. By the time he stood, she would already have a dagger sheathed in his neck.

  But he didn’t try to rise. It was the priest behind him that moved, and the speed of it was blinding. He had stepped forward and raised a hand her way, gnarled fingers clutching a polished symbol looking something like a yawning mouth, and then she was frozen. Her momentum stolen, she gaped as even the air in her lungs stilled, unable to blink or twitch or move a muscle.

  The Prefect’s smile grew, and he shifted, as if about to step forward. Arrogant bastard. There was nothing more predictable than an arrogant man though, so she didn’t mind. Things weren’t going well, but while her body might be restrained, her soul wasn’t. The Scarlet Feathers were hired by those who could afford it for good reason. She reached for the essence that pooled within her awakened aspects… and found it too frozen. Divine power, a god’s power: frozen. Bound tighter than bahara grass in a reed bundle.

  The priest pinned her with his gaze and his smile chilled her blood. He turned to the Prefect and nodded, withdrawing slightly to stand once more behind the throne. The young man, blonde of hair and just tall enough to look down his nose at her from where she hovered a few feet above the final step, grinned and clapped his hands.

  “Apologies all for the interruption! Please grace me with your attention for but a moment.” His voice was rich, and he spoke with the smooth confidence of an experienced orator. Not a surprise, considering he had been in power for nearly three decades. “We have a demonstration for you. Iahmesu—if you would be so kind?” he asked, gesturing to the tall priest that loomed behind him.

  The Prefect returned to his throne, the lazy smile still in place, while the priest scuttled over, straightening from his perpetual bow to his, admittedly impressive, height. He waved a hand, and Anuket felt the air around her shiver. She was pulled forwards, limbs and spine contorting until she was kneeling on the final step, head bowed before the Prefect.

  “An assassin,” the priest called out in an aged voice. “From the Scarlet Feathers, by the looks of it. Someone has paid handsomely for our Steward’s head. Let us find out who sent them.”

  Another wave of his geriatric arm, weighed down by bangles and jingling with enough gems to make a treasure hunter salivate, and suddenly she could speak again. She gasped, letting air refill her body with vital breath, and prepared to launch another bid to escape. A long finger pulled her head up by the chin, and the glimpse of the priest’s eyes, rheumy and softly glowing, assuaged any such ideas.

  She had heard rumours of the high priests of the various cults that littered Amansi like tumours on a plague victim. Dangerous, mysterious, enigmatic individuals that had delved deeper into esoteric lore than any mortal should in an effort to grow closer to their chosen gods. Some considered them the true powers of the land, beneath only the undying Pharaohs—the few that still ruled, that is—and possibly the itinerant masters that roamed the wastes.

  Anuket had dismissed such rumours, having rubbed shoulders with what she had erroneously considered the true powers of the lands. The lords of the Scarlet Feathers, and their many clients that by definition ranked among the most influential and powerful in high society.

  When she met the eyes of this priest, she knew instantly that she had been mistaken. The power that blazed from within his soul was all-consuming. A bonfire of baleful intent, channelled directly from the Otherworld. A land of decaying gods and unspeakable horrors should not be so close to the surface of reality, but within his eyes, she saw a gateway.

  No wonder he restrained her with such ease, despite her own channelled gifts. What was a man like this capable of?

  “I… cannot… tell you,” she gasped.

  The Prefect scoffed, turning to the priest and raising an eyebrow. “Does she speak the truth, Iahmesu?”

  The old man shook his head though. Slowly, carefully, as if worried it might fall from his spindly neck if he was too vigorous in his motion, but he did shake his head. Anuket winced as the old man’s eyes drilled into her own. She tried to avert her gaze, but her body was locked down tight by whatever greater magic he wielded.

  “She does not, your eminence. Do not despair just yet though, I suspect we can learn all we need without a word from her lips.”

  Anuket laughed. “You’ll get nothing from me, priest of bones,” she spat, with as much venom and bravado as she could. It wouldn’t help, but once you’d been captured you wanted to keep your captors as far from level-headed as possible.

  It was only once her throat constricted once more and the air in her lungs stilled, that she paused to wonder at why she had been allowed to speak at all. The priest smiled.

  “Oh, but I disagree, my young friend,” he replied, eyes twinkling with unearthly light. “You’ll give me everything I need, right here in this hall.”

  The Prefect smirked and lounged back in his throne, beckoning for some grapes from a nearby servant. The varied members of high society gathered closer to hear the words, eagerly awaiting the show. And before them all, the priest began to step carefully around her, keeping her pinned with his unnatural gaze.

  “I know that you are a member of the Scarlet Feathers, that famed assassin’s guild,” he started, voice crackling liked aged papyrus. Somehow though, it carried to every corner of the room. “I know that you have never met a man you could not hate.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Her eyes, though the rest of her remained inhumanly still, widened in surprise.

  “I know that you grew up with beautiful auburn hair, but when the comments from older relatives became too pointed, you hacked it off. I know that your father was the first to betray your trust. ‘His little lily’ he called you, even as you starved yourself to divert his attentions. I know that when that failed, you took his comments on your lovely nature to heart and made of yourself a thistle.”

  He had circled her once by now, and came to rest before her, lifting her chin in one gnarled old hand and leaning in until she could smell the acrid waft of death on his breath.

  “A barbed thing. A vicious thing. Made of sharp angles and off-putting cruelty. I know that that too failed. You tried so hard, in the way only a child can, to make of yourself something unlovable, because the love you deserved was withheld, and something darker given in its place. And I know that it has scarred you.”

  He traced the swirling ridges that covered her cheeks, and the scars itched at his touch. She couldn’t fight it though, couldn’t flinch away or move at all. All she could do was stare into those eyes, those doors to the Other yawning wider with each moment. Sucking, hungry, an abyss of power and emotion that called to her with the howling of tortured throats and unspent rage. A match for her own heart.

  “I know who cut those marks into your flesh, and I know why they did it. An adult’s will, but a child’s choice.” He leaned forwards to whisper in her ear. “I know everything about you, Anuket,” he said, pausing just a moment on her name, tasting it like a new treat that needed puzzling out. Not savouring. No, this man savoured nothing, but he still took his time dissecting the syllables of her name.

  And then he leaned back, and she could move again.

  She leapt forwards, blades already scything through the air. Her hands were still rising from the marble step beneath her as the daggers flew at their targets. One for the Prefect, in his golden throne. One for the guard standing too close to her right, one for a servant that was just in the way, and the final three for the priest that had peeled back her psyche and laid it raw and bleeding at the feet of everyone present.

  She’d make the bastard pay. Others might wear lecherous looks or rage-mottled skin, but this man was the most dangerous. He wore humanity like a cloak, flesh draped over something rotten beneath. Her daggers flew with the force of her empowered soul, and the screams and shrieks of chaos began to rise high into the air.

  It ended too quickly. The Prefect dead, the soldier dead, the servant dead. Not the priest though. He was very much alive, even now brushing shards of shattered metal from his robes, unhurried and unharmed.

  She looked around, taking stock of the panicked masses, and then ran. Across the grand hall, between the great pillars, out of the fine windows, and then she was speeding through busy streets and down abandoned alleyways. It wasn’t until she had made it to her pre-arranged drop point, squirrelled herself away into one of the barrels, and been loaded onto a barge, that she finally began to relax.

  Her thoughts churned, trying to find a method in the madness of the last half hour, but eventually she let the rolling of the boat and the slapping of water against the hull lull her to sleep.

  She saw his eyes when she dreamed. Baleful, gleaming with inhuman light, they scrunched at their edges as he smiled. “I know you,” his voice rasped in her head. “I see you, Anuket. You are MINE!”

  She jerked awake with a gasp as the barrel she was in was rolled across the ground. She wasn’t sure how long she had been out for, but based on the mild crick in her neck, it couldn’t have been long.

  Something was wrong, and while it was tempting to think the prickling of the hairs on her arm could be blamed on the strange dream, she knew better. She’d been killing for years, at this point, and her instincts were as sharp as any blade. She knew when to wait, and she knew when to act.

  She kicked the lid from the barrel and slipped out, straightening from her folded position like a crane emerging from the water. She was already drawing fresh daggers, already pulling the power from her soul to wreak havoc around her, when she saw where she was.

  A small room, sparsely furnished, with a large desk and austere bed in one corner. The altar that dominated the south side of the room was anything but austere, however. Lined with golden thread, the lacquered wood of the large toothed maw—the symbol of the cult of Sebek—stood proudly on a plinth of green moonstone, occult fetishes arrayed around its base. Incense smoked softly nearby, contrasting with the sharp scent of pulped logan berries in a mortar bowl. The mixture had been smeared onto the stone floor of the room in archaic symbols and patterns, and Anuket knew that to stay here was to die.

  It didn’t matter though—her body wouldn’t respond. Once more, she felt the familiar sensation of air freezing in her lungs and eyes stilling in her skull.

  “Anuket,” the priest breathed, ushering a burly sailor out of the room with a jangle of coins and a grateful nod. “Thank you for joining me.”

  Once the door clicked shut, he raised a small staff, almost as gnarled and twisted as his spine, and chanted a few words. The room thrummed with a pulse of power, and then he placed it down and turned towards her. A lazy wave and she could breathe once more.

  “You may speak as you wish,” he said, a false smile on his wicked face.

  “Fuck you,” she spat, wrenching her head back and forth in an attempt to break her body free of the arcane restraint that ensnared her from the neck down. “I hope you burn for this, priest! I hope the Gobbler herself comes for your soul, and you are split between the thousand burning scarabs. I hope the crows dance on your meagre grave and the pigs bleat at the sound of your name for eternity as they recall the feast that you gave—”

  He sighed and waved again, her voice cutting off with an audible pop as the air was once more frozen inside her throat.

  “As much as I admire the sentiment, I do not have time for this. I have brought you to me for a specific purpose, Anuket. Do you know what that is?”

  He looked patiently at her, and the sand grains drained away before he started, chuckling to himself and waving once more.

  She gasped. “Fucking pink—” she began, before cutting herself off at his raised finger and taking a moment to compose herself. She took in the unholy runes and sigils marring the smooth stone beneath and around her, the many ritual accoutrements, and those ghastly shining eyes, and she gulped.

  His ghoulish smile widened and she saw the hint of rotting teeth, just for a moment before his thin lips covered them once more.

  “I see that you do. Good.” He began to pace again, as seemed to be his habit. “You have served your purpose well so far, Anuket. Don’t look so surprised, of course that fool needed to be killed. He had begun to forget that the power rests behind the throne in this province, and three decades was quite enough without a symbolic changing of the guard. Now…”

  He leaned forwards, bending down over her shoulder, and she winced to feel his fetid breath upon her cheek, though she could not turn away.

  “As I have already made clear, I know you. I see what is in your soul and recognise your desires. I know that you will not like what is to come, but it need not hurt you. I can even give you what you want, if you but listen and understand.”

  “I don’t see much of a choice,” she whispered, some of the fire in her earlier statements dimming as she realised how outclassed she truly was. “You wanted me to kill the Prefect? Why not let me do my job and leave, then?”

  “My motivations are not important here, little lily, only what I can offer you. Given the arc of your life, I knew that you would lash out rather than run when backed into a corner. Just as I know now that you will accept my offer.”

  He circled around once more, a shark in the water, until he stood before her, leaning down in a way that brought his face close to her kneeling form, but looked somehow like a natural consequence of his stooped figure. “I want you to change. I will summon creatures from the Other into this world, using you as a vessel. You will be ravaged, body and soul, nothing more than a pathetic sack of meat and broken dreams and hot rage. And you will agree to this.”

  He paused. “Do you know why?”

  “Why?” she croaked, face drawn in horror.

  She knew the type of ritual he spoke of, had seen the abominations that resulted with her own eyes before. Husks, full of sin and dripping with all manner of evil. She’d seen their tortured faces and pitied them even as she fled their wake. How many times had she lied awake at night since, wondering what possessed those people to hand over their souls to such horror?

  “Because you have been abused by this world, Anuket. It has taken from you all that is good, and given you nothing but trauma and pity. And every time you have responded the same way. You have turned that hatred upon yourself. Hacked hair, starved sick, scarred skin and acidic attitude. You see the viciousness of this world, and you cut yourself into shape until you match it.”

  Anuket had stopped caring for harsh words as a child. No words can make up for certain actions, and she had found those that acted abhorrently tended to have some of the prettiest words saved up to cover them. But this tirade made her flinch, unable to face the barrage of scenes that played through her mind at his brief summation of her pitiable life.

  “Your efforts were doomed from the start because you forgot to account for two things. Firstly, they were never interested in your hair, figure, face or attitude. That was what got you noticed, but it was your fire that they wanted. Some people fear the flame, and so they seek to bank it. They lose their own spark and find another’s to control in the hopes it will keep them warm. I do not blame you for this misapprehension, since you were simply a child.

  “No, the folly that I do not forgive is the second. You forgot that there is always a greater monster out there. No matter how you cut and mutilate and twist yourself into the form of danger, you are not the terror in the night. You are just a scared little girl, swinging small swords at the ghosts of her past. You drown in a sea of monsters, and you are nothing but a pink little lamb to us, Anuket.”

  Tears stained her cheeks as she watched his eyes dance. His mouth continued to move but she barely heard him, thoughts lost within the swirl of the identity crisis he had forced upon her.

  “And here is what you must understand. You will give your soul to me, and gladly. You will become the tool I need to unleash upon my enemies, and you will agree to it here and now. You take in the pain of the world and transform yourself in its image. What will happen if I take a knife and begin to cut, little lily?”

  He leaned away, gesturing casually at an assortment of cruel-looking instruments laid out on a nearby table.

  “How many horrors must I inflict upon you before you become the very horror I seek to summon from beyond our world? It will not take much for you to change, and I believe it would be better for you to simply accept. You have hatred in your heart, child, and I will give you the power to see it made manifest.”

  What could she say? He was right.