The Nameless Assassins

Housekeeping Activities

Whatever Bazso believed or suspected about the nature of my relationship with Mylera, it didn't stop him from installing me in his spare bedroom for my convalescence. As if to convince me – or himself – that he trusted me, he even made a point of coming home in time for supper every evening so he could regale me with the latest developments in the Crow's Foot political landscape.

"Lyssa just isn't what Roric was," he concluded smugly after telling me how the Lampblacks had gotten the best of the Crows in a territorial scrabble.

That did seem to be the general consensus.

Taking advantage of his good mood, I observed, "Yes, Mylera feels the same way." Since his face didn't cloud over too much, I pushed my luck. "Bazso, have you had a chance to think more about working with the Red Sashes? Just for as long as you need to drive out the Hive?"

Busying himself with his eel pie and dropping bits of crust all over the floor, he shook his head without meeting my eyes.

"If you're worrying about her competence, you don't need to," I assured him, pretending that his assessment of Mylera's intelligence was the only concern here. "She's quite good at what she does." Quickly, I summarized what her network of informants had reported about bee-marked containers down at the Docks.

"Mmhmm," was his only response.

"You can't take on the Hive alone, Bazso," I persisted, trying to make him see sense. "You just don't have the resources. And neither do the Red Sashes. But together – together you can push them out and retake the Docks."

At last, he laid down his fork with great precision. "And why do you care so much, Isha?" he asked in that terrifyingly controlled way of his. I'd heard him use exactly the same tone while interrogating a Lampblack caught selling secrets to the Billhooks.

I poked at my pie while picking my words carefully. "Well, you know that I come from a big family, right?" I asked, knowing perfectly well that he knew no such thing. At the unexpected confidence, his eyebrows rose slightly. "There's...there's a lot of strife between the branches – " which was putting it mildly – "and it weakens the entire family...."

In my mind's eye, blood splattered across the walls glistened sullenly in the morning light. More blood squelched underfoot as my brother and I tiptoed across the carpet, hand in hand....

With more passion than I'd intended, I finished, "I'd hate to see it play out here."

It worked. Relaxing, Bazso picked up his beer mug. "But this is different. Mylera and I aren't family," he pointed out quite reasonably.

"But – " I scrambled for a rejoinder. "But you live in the same place. You...you have more in common with each other than with those rich bloodsuckers forcing their way in."

"What does Mylera plan to do?" he asked abruptly.

I shook my head. "Nothing concrete yet."

He shook his head too, albeit for a different reason. "Roric would have taken care of it," he remarked almost wistfully, as if recalling the days when he didn't need to be the biggest, baddest gang leader in all of Crow's Foot.

"Roric is dead," I reminded him tartly, "and Lyssa isn't what he was. Mylera knows this too – that's why she isn't even going to the Crows."

"And she might be willing to come to the Lampblacks?" Bazso's voice rose skeptically.

Well, not really. At least, not yet. "She's not entirely opposed to the possibility of working together in the face of a common foe," I said primly, adopting the most generous possible interpretation of Mylera's flat "I'll take it under advisement."