He looked at her.
Something shifted in his expression — not recognition exactly, but the quality of a frequency registering something adjacent to it, a note that resonated without knowing why it resonated.
"Zolani," he said. Like testing the sound of it.
A branch cracked.
South-southeast. Close.
They both heard it.
Both turned.
Back to back without deciding to.
She felt him behind her — the warmth of a body, the specific rhythm of someone who was not afraid, who was alert and calibrating, who had done this before and was not performing the not-being-afraid.
"How many left?" he said. Low.
"One of mine," she said. "The silent one. She's the dangerous one."
"One of mine," he said. "Maybe two. They scattered when the gun came out."
"How many rounds?"
"Two."
She thought about that.
"Save them," she said.
"Planning to."
The forest did something — the quality of it shifting, the specific quality of spaces that had more than one thing in them and the things were close now. Thread-sight giving her locations. Two presences. East and southeast.
"East first," she said.
"I have southeast," he said.
A nod that passed between them without a nod.
They separated
Ilsa had walked away from the job in the wine merchant's room with the coin in her pocket and interesting target in her mouth and she had known — she had always known, in a way after doing this long enough to have accurate intuitions — that something was wrong. But Borath and Davan didn't seem to mind. She didn't want to be the one backing down.
After all because she was a woman it would be perceived as a sign of weakness.
And she didn't want the years of hardwork she put into making sure they saw as equals go down the drain for a small gig.
It was just a child after all.
What is the worst thing that could happen?
Though she wondered why Borath and Davan didn't catch her yet. Probably slacking off and letting her do all the heavy lifting again.
Only to take the credit. She couldn't help but roll her eyes. Trying to simmer down the irritation she felt from the thought.
She was good. She could do it without them. And this time around she would make sure to talk to them about her payment being increased. If it didn't work. Violence would set them straight.
She had always been good — better than Davan, better than Borath, better than most of the people she had worked with in eleven years of this work. She was small and she was quiet and she had learned to use both of those as tools rather than limitations.
That was why she had found the girl in the trees so easily.
Too easy infact.
She had been tracking her for eight minutes — the patience of it, the discipline she had learned from years of failure, that patience was the difference between finding your target and finding a problem.
She had the girl in her sights. There was no escaping.
The girl had not found her.
She moved forward.
Felt something odd.
A change in the air.
It was static then cold and the girl's attention suddenly swung towards her like a compass finding north, and she had not known how that was possible, had not known the girl had that kind of perception, and the not-knowing was the last miscalculation.
The girl was already turning. She had a knife.
Fuck.
She tried to change her direction. But the velocity of her body as she fell from the tree towards Zolani was inevitable. Her eyes looked for an alternative and saw a blue haired man moving towards her target.
An idea forming if she killed him while using his body to reduce the force, the quick moment of surprise the Draveth girl would feel would be the opportunity to kill her.
.
.
The thread-sight showed Zolani where the assassin was before she even saw her.
The assassin came from the northeast, between two trees that were close enough to provide concealment, from behind where Zolani had thought the second presence was. Where the man she met focused on.
She twisted the knife she aimed at the falling body at a specific angle — not the back, the side, the kidney, a location she had taken the time to study where was fatal and decided it would be her target.
But then the assassin seemed to figure out her thoughts.
And she did not aimed at Zolani, anymore.
What?
Her head turned to see why.
The Blue haired man!! He was coming towards her grinning stupidly. He was not aware his death was fast approaching.
What did he say his name was again??
Um.. Rake?
"Get the fuck out of the way now!! Rake!!!"
He paused his eye brows raised. "RAKE?!! Did you just call me that? How can you forget my name in the space of few minutes, milady?!"
He huffed with a sigh, his voice rose an octave higher.
This bloody imbecile!
The assassin was aiming at the space where Blue haired was about to step into view, four feet to Zolani's left, coming back from the southeast, not yet visible, not yet aware.
He doesn't know she's there, the thread registered. He will step into it.
Fuck. A bloody fool!!
She moved. Her lungs burning. She hasn't exerted her body in a long time and it was just yesterday her body fully recovered from waking up from death. Now she was subjecting it to manual labor!
Her body moved not toward the assassin — between.
A risky decision.
She put herself between the blade and where Blue haired was about to be, and she had the knife up, and the bodies were close enough that there was no room for anything elegant, and what she did was far from elegance,
She drove her knife deep into the woman's eye.
She felt everything.
She did not look away. She did not close her eyes. Her body made her feel every part of it — the resistance, the terrible absence of resistance, the sound, the specific quality of a life ending at the other end of her hand — and her sick mind told her to remember this.
All of it.
You do not get to do this and not remember it.
The body fell. The warm gush of red liquid splashed her face, her vision and dropped down her hands.
Everywhere was red. Inside her head was screaming.
Her body fell too.