The Nameless Assassins

Disguises

A quick stop at the Sweetwater Coffee Shop and a few words with Odrienne Keel assured me that she'd already mentioned my fake name to the playwright, and that he was expecting (or at least wouldn't be surprised by) a visit from one Syra Hakar. At the Silkshore address she provided, I rang the doorbell and prepared a calling card for the butler.

Instead, the front door creaked open to reveal a middle-aged man wrapped in a faded, obviously much-loved silk dressing gown. Under a shock of chestnut hair that was streaked with grey (which I didn't remember from the night of A Requiem for Aldric), Ian Templeton's bright hazel eyes looked perplexed at the card I extended. However, he gamely accepted it and seemed reassured that the name on it matched the one that Odrienne had mentioned.

He tucked the card into one slouchy pocket. "Please, come in, Miss Hakar." His voice was melodic, the kind that would sound pleasant raised in song during an evening with friends, but that didn't quite meet the standards of Spiregarden Theater.

He waved me into a somehow charmingly messy parlor-turned-study. In front of a window overlooking the street sat a giant wooden desk, scattered with drafts, pens, and empty bottles of ink. Even all the mismatched bookcases that lined all four walls couldn't hold his entire collection of books, notebooks, and loose sheets of paper. While he cleared off his single, well-worn armchair, mumbling apologies the whole time, I wended my way among precarious towers of notebooks and scanned the books. Unsurprisingly, a large number covered Skovlan and the Unity War.

"Please, have a seat," Templeton invited, straightening awkwardly with an armful of books.

While he searched for somewhere to put them, I perched on the cushion and smiled shyly. "I've been a huge fan of yours for years, Mr. Templeton," I explained haltingly. "I was at the premier of A Requiem for Aldric."

The playwright looked suddenly stricken, as if I might be an Imperial agent come to trick him into self-incrimination.

To reassure him, I gushed, "It was so beautiful, so moving!"

Ducking his head, he dropped the books onto his desk with a thump. "Oh, well, that...that is very kind of you. I – it was a pity we never got to the second act."

It really was.

"Do you think you'll ever publish it?" I inquired. "I have the rest of your plays."

Still wearing that sickly expression, he replied, "Oh, I...well, I'd love to publish it someday. It's the greatest thing I've ever written. But I'd also love not to go back to the Hook ever again, so, as you'll understand, I'm a little hesitant...."

I sighed with genuine regret. "Fair enough."

Relieved that he'd headed off that potential trap, Templeton sank into his desk chair.

"How do you come up with ideas for your plays?" I asked, gesturing around his study. "What inspired you to write about Skovlan?"

At the mention of his writing process, the playwright's eyes lit up, and he started rambling away about how he'd stumbled across a book of Skovlander sagas at a secondhand bookseller's in Nightmarket: "Beautifully illustrated with the most remarkable woodblock prints – oh, where did I put it? Where is it? Ah, here you are!" And he deposited a massive leather-bound tome in my lap, thumbing through the pages upside down until he came to the specific illustration he sought, of a princess with flowing tresses that reminded me of Queen Alayne's wig in the performance. "You see?" he asked reverently, brushing the page with his fingertips.