Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(33)

Don’t think about Emile and how he’ll never get a chance to play games like this. How he’d never get a chance to dance with a girl at a masquerade or steal a kiss under the colored lights, their masquerade masks lifted, their lips pressed together.

I blinked, my throat tight. There was no use crying about it, wishing for things to be different. What was done was done. I could only worry about the future now, and how I could best make the Da Vias pay.

As the sun sank, the women gathered their laundry and children.

“Hurry now, before the ghosts take you,” one woman said to her dawdling daughter. Once darkness spilled across the streets, Yvain seemed as empty as the dead plains.

I sighed and picked at the hem on my cloak. My shoulder ached and itched. I stifled a yawn under my mask. If my uncle had been in Ravenna, I could’ve found him immediately. Rafeo would’ve known what to do. Rafeo would’ve found Marcello by now.

Below me a man stumbled out of the inn despite the late Yvain hour. He tripped and laughed uproariously. I frowned. I’d never alter my state of mind so much. Someone could be watching from the shadows, knife in hand and poison in their pouches.

On a rooftop across the street a shadow moved. I stilled my body, sinking deeper into myself. My spine pressed against the chimney of the inn as my cloak obscured my outline. I waited.

The shadow moved again and revealed itself to be not a shadow but a person, hiding in a hooded cloak similar to mine.

My uncle, Marcello Saldana.

He crouched on the edge of his building. The moonlight reflected brightly off the silver buckles on his boots and the weapons on his belt.

I frowned. Sloppy. Amateur mistakes. The cloak was to prevent accidental reflections and no clipper would ever leave the shadows if they had a choice.

Marcello watched the drunken man below. For a moment I recalled a similar night when I’d watched my own “drunk” stumble in the streets while Val snuck up on me.

Val. My heart clenched at the memory of his hazel eyes, his bright smile, the feel of his breath on my skin. But there was no Val here. And this time I was the hunter.

My uncle jumped off the building in a brazen move. He was either crazy or idiotic, and I scrambled from my post to peer down into the street.

Marcello landed directly on his target, slipping his knife into the man’s neck. The mark barely had time to react before he was dead on the ground, my uncle standing over him.

I quietly slid off the roof. No need to give away my advantage. Marcello nudged the dead man with a boot and grunted in satisfaction. He flicked his cloak over his shoulder and returned his knife to his belt. He froze at the prick of my dagger against his windpipe.

“So sloppy,” I whispered, loud enough to be heard through the mask.

Tension rippled across his body. He was taller than me by quite a bit, taller even than Val, but I’d spent enough time sparring with Val to handle someone with height on me.

His left hand twitched, and he moved it slowly toward his belt. A lefty then.

I tapped his wrist with a second dagger. “I wouldn’t try it.”

He opened his palm and raised his hand.

“Who are you?” His voice rasped as he tried to disguise his anger.

“I am death,” I whispered. “I am Safraella, come to collect what I am owed.”

He tried to turn his head.

“Ah, ah.” I pressed my dagger into his skin. His hood slipped, and the corner of his face caught the moonlight.

He wore no bone mask.

He wasn’t a true clipper then. He wasn’t my uncle. Just someone playing at murder.

Heaviness spread through my limbs. This had been my only lead. And now it was nothing.

I used my foot and shoved the false clipper in the back of his knees. He stumbled away from me. I wasn’t threatened by this fool.

He got his feet under him and pulled out his own knives. His eyes widened as he took in my leathers and the bone mask hiding my face.

My own eyes widened behind my mask. It was the boy from the market, who had stolen the fruit for me.

“You’re a clipper.” His mouth tilted in a crooked smile. He looked down at the knives in my hand, then returned his own knives to his belt. He held his hands before him, weaponless. Dumb, to trust me. Still, I relaxed my stance.

“You could teach me,” he said.

I wasn’t a nursemaid. I was a clipper. I didn’t have time to teach anyone anything. I needed to find my uncle, and though I’d missed my mark with this false clipper, I was willing to bet he knew where my uncle was. “I won’t be teaching anyone anything.”

“That’s unfortunate.” His eyes flicked to the left. Right. He was stalling.

I pointed my dagger at him. “Don’t move.”

Around me flashes of light burst in the night: pop, pop, pop, pop.

Smoke gushed from four different spots on the street until I could see nothing.

I spun around. He hadn’t thrown any smoke bombs. He had to have people with him, helpers.

But there was no one. No sounds, no movement, no attacks from different quarters.

How . . . ?

I charged through the smoke, my mask mostly protecting me from the bitter taste and smell. I dashed left, down an alley, the route I would’ve chosen had I been him.

I’d picked correctly. The fake clipper stood at the end of the alley, canal at his back, trapped.