The Impossible Contract by K. A. Doore

Author:K. A. Doore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

18

“No!”

Mo moved first, raising her makeshift staff as terror flashed across her face. The Empress lifted her palm. The deaf Atrex and his sword didn’t move.

“What’s this? You allow your slave to make such outbursts, Sametket?”

“She’s not his slave!” said Thana, despite the blade pressing against her neck.

Heru half nodded, half shrugged. “She accompanied me from Ghadid, that is true.”

“And this other?”

Thana’s stomach dropped as she met Heru’s gaze. He’d sold her out before, when he’d had little to lose. Now that he was in Na Tay Khet in the presence of his precious Empress, what would he do? Thana could see the words that spelled her death forming on his lips: spy, liar, assassin. In another moment, Atrex’s sword would separate her head from her body and it’d all be over. Everything she’d done, everything she’d endured, just to become a headless corpse far from home.

“The same, in a fashion,” sasid Heru. “If you must, I would prefer if you didn’t behead her here. There will be quite a lot of blood and I’ve already had my sandals cleaned once since arriving.”

Thana watched the Empress, waiting for the signal that would end her life. Then her mind wrapped around Heru’s words and she turned her stare on him.

The Empress frowned. “You know this slave?”

Heru measured Thana again with his gaze and she could all but see the calculations behind his eyes. He was summing up every ounce that she could give him and deciding whether or not she was worth keeping around, alive. He’d already made clear that to him she was a resource, a pawn—not a person. But then Mo began to speak and his gaze slid to the healer and sharpened.

“She came with us, mai,” said Mo. “Please don’t kill her. She was there when the—the thing happened. Tell her, Heru.”

Heru nodded to himself, as if he’d just decided something, then he straightened and met his Empress’s gaze. “She might have additional insight into the problem. Perhaps you should put off executing her until we’ve extracted that knowledge.”

The Empress touched a finger to her forehead. “If she came with you, then why does she wear the clothes of an Imperial slave, if poorly?”

“The three of us traveled to Na Tay Khet together from Ghadid, your Imperial Highness,” said Thana. “We were separated at the city gates.”

“And why was that?”

“A misunderstanding, mai.”

The Empress’s finger slid up until her whole palm rested against her forehead. “That still doesn’t explain your presence in our library, pretending to be a slave.”

“I was trying to catch up, mai.”

The Empress stared at her for long enough to become uncomfortable, but Thana didn’t flinch. She didn’t dare; the guard’s blade still hadn’t moved. “A normal person might have sent word through our stewards at the front of our palace.”

“Yes, well,” said Thana. “A normal person would’ve had to wait days for an answer, and even then been refused admittance. As a foreigner with neither name nor station, I wouldn’t have been granted even that. By the time I’d received an answer, Heru and Mo would’ve been long gone.

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