Free The Assassin's Curse by Cassandra Rose Clarke

swamp yirrus, and it wasn't even midnight yet. So I followed a dock away from the lights of the city, all the way out to its edge. Boats thumped against the water, that hollow wooden sound I always found so reassuring. Nobody was out but a single dock-guard, and he didn't pay me no mind. Not like one person can steal a boat anyway.
      I sat down on the pier, the bag filled with Naji's supplies in my lap, my feet dangling out over the ocean. Mama used to tell me the sea had an intelligence all her own, though I'd never been able to feel it like Mama could. I loved the ocean, don't get me wrong, but for me and Papa it was just water, huge and beautiful and strong and bigger than everything in the whole world, sure – but never something I could sit down and chat over my problems with.
      When I was younger I'd get up early sometimes and climb to the top of the rigging so I could watch Mama work her magic with the sea. Sometimes she stripped naked and swam in it, and the waves would buoy her around like a jellyfish. Other times she sang and threw offerings from our merchant runs – small things, like a few coins of pressed metal, or a necklace, or a bangled scarf. And the offerings wouldn't float away like jetsam, neither. The sea sucked them down to the depths, leaving a wisp of foam in their wake. Once Mama lowered a jar into the water and scooped that foam up and then drank it down. Three days later, we defeated the Lae clan in a battle everyone, even Papa, thought we'd lose.
      Thinking back to my childhood, and to Mama and her magic, and even that horrible battle, I started getting real sad. And I didn't want to be on the docks no more, sea spray kicking up along the hem of my dress. So I gathered up my bag and made my way back to the twinkling lights of the night market. My melancholy left me feeling distracted and confused, and I didn't know I'd taken a wrong turn until I realized I was back in the city proper – not the night market.
      I cursed and turned around, intending to follow my steps back to the docks. But the buildings all looked the same in the dim light of the magic-lanterns, and when I started going one direction I was sure it was the wrong way, so I turned and went another – and after doing that a couple times I realized it was hopeless. I was lost, and in a city, unlike the open ocean, it's best to just ask somebody for directions.
      Course, all the buildings were locked up tight for the night. I wandered for a while, kicking at stones in the street, fiddling with Naji's charm at my throat. Nothing.
      Then I caught the scent of incense.
      Incense means a temple, and the temples are always open for prayers and sanctuary. Figured the priestess wouldn't mind giving me directions, neither.
      I followed the incense for a few minutes, losing it on the wind and then finding it again, until I came across a little temple wedged up between a key-maker's shop and the office of a court magician. The lamps over the door burned golden with magic, and when I stepped inside, the light had a gilded quality that reminded me of the evening sun. There wasn't nobody praying at any of the portraits, but a priestess stepped out of the archway, her sacred jewelry chiming as she moved.
      "You look like you belong to the sea," she said, slipping languidly into the light. Priestesses always talk like that, like everything they say has got to be poetry.
      "That's right," I told her. "And I need to get back to it. Can you tell me the way to the docks?"
      She gave me a disapproving smile. "You mean the night market?"
      "No, I mean the docks. I gotta meet someone there."
      "Why don't you ask the gods for help?"
      Hell and sea salt. Figured I'd get a priestess who took her duties seriously.
      "The gods like to take their time answering, and I need to get back straightaway."
      She looked almost amused, but she handed me an incense stick and swept her arm out over the temple. I sighed and