The Nameless Assassins

More Awkward Conversations

Somewhat unsurprisingly, both Ash and I were in a celebratory mood that evening – so much so that we even splurged on dinner delivery from our favorite Brickston pub. (In other words, we hired one of Cortland's off-duty runners to jog there, order half a dozen eel pies, and bring them back in a gingham-lined basket. Brickston might be dirt poor, but even the nobility agreed that it had the most authentic Doskvolian eel pies – ones that were almost-maybe-just-about worth getting your hem muddy, your curricle scratched, and your pockets picked.) Bits of flaky pastry drifted down to coat our legs and the carpet as we ate, but Sleipnir happily mopped them up and stood on his hindlegs to wipe down our trousers with his tongue.

Partway through the meal, Faith floated in, tsked cheerfully at our barbarity, and daintily ate her pie on the table with a knife and fork and plate. I licked my fingers one by one just to annoy her.

Absently scratching our dog behind the ears, Ash asked out of nowhere, "Isha, what is your loyalty to Iruvia?"

"It is my homeland," I reminded him drily. "I do have a fairly strong preference for preventing an Imperial invasion."

"Good!" he praised, as if he were one of my tutors and I'd just answered a tricky question correctly.

(Which, given my background, wasn't quite as ludicrous a reaction as it might have been otherwise. At the very least, Mylera would have been shocked by my directness.)

Slouching down comfortably in his chair – part of the new, cushioned set that had replaced the ones he destroyed in his tantrum – Ash remarked, "Well, if I were the Imperium, the first concern I would address is the Iruvian leviathan hunters. How many do you have?"

"Last I heard, nine." House Ankhayat owned five, and House Ankhuset the other four. Once it had been five each, prior to that mysterious incident that Mylera might or might not have caused and for which she'd been crucified, but leviathan hunters were prohibitively expensive to build. The Ankhusets had not yet marshalled the resources to replace theirs.

Ash's eyes opened wide with surprise. "That's not a lot of ships."

As if Tycheros had any! "We maintain a fleet purely to ensure self-sufficiency," I retorted. "We're not exactly trying to set up our own Lockport."

Ash looked dubious about Iruvian business acumen if that were the case, but he dropped the matter. "Well. Doskvol has the best deep-water port in the Shattered Isles, but obviously that would be off-limits in a war. Could your fleet make it all the way back to one of your own ports without refueling here?"

"Yes, theoretically." Like all the other leviathan hunters, the Iruvian ships were based in Doskvol, which, in addition to being the largest and best developed deep-water port in the Imperium, also lay closest to the Void Sea where the leviathans lived. Our ships probably carried enough fuel to reach Bright Harbor, but that wasn't exactly an option at the moment given its occupation by the Imperial Fleet. "Unfortunately, there's no way to contact the leviathan hunters when they're at sea." Houses Ankhayat and Ankhuset were not nearly friendly enough with the demon-hating Hadrakin to hire telepaths for their ships. In fact, I had absolutely no idea how House Anixis had wrangled the services of two Hadrakin assassins. No wonder Sigmund (and Grandfather, and the Patriarch) had been, shall we say, irked when we killed them.

"A communications blackout is problematic," mused Ash. "Isha, I think we need to speak with my family...."

"About?" I asked sharply. Unless the Slanes' part-demon heritage allowed them to communicate telepathically through the ghost field, I didn't see how they could be of any use whatsoever.