Free The Prince of Shadow by Curt Benjamin Page B

hold off on the short spear,” he said in his most efficient voice, passing the spear to the woman, who slipped it into her sleeve. “Now try the close-in weapons.”
    The woman watched Llesho with the hypnotic fascination of a cobra, and with about as much emotion. Llesho gave Den a pleading glance, but his teacher’s blank mask did not change.
    â€œNo one is going to hurt you,” Jaks urged him. “We just want to know how to train you that most ensures your success.”
    That was only half the truth. Llesho didn’t know where the other half lay, but he knew he couldn’t see his way to it through the secrets clouding the air between them. He followed the direction Jaks indicated with the tilt of his head, and considered the weapons spread out on the table. A knife rested there, older than the others, with a haft that seemed alien among the scattered blades. He reached for it, felt the weight settle in his hand, flipped it to an overhand grasp, and held it above his head, shifting through an exercise that reminded him of the prayer forms Den led in the morning. Knife and hand were one, flowing into his arm, and he stepped though the form with slow grace, then snapped through it with lightning speed that surprised even himself. When he had come to rest again, Jaks took the knife out of his hand and set it down. “No knifework,” he said with finality, “What else suits you?”
    But Llesho would not let it go this time. That knife was a part of him, and he wanted, needed to know how. “What is it?” he asked Jaks, seizing the knife from its place on the table and holding it up in confusion. “I know this knife! But I don’t remember—”
    The woman reached across the table and touched his wrist with the same stroking fingertips that had brushed the tattoo on Jaks’ arm. “You will,” she said, with something like hunger in her voice. She wrapped her fingers around the blade of the knife and tugged it from his hand. Llesho released it quickly, shrinking from the cold, white fingers that did not bleed though the knife should have cut them deeply. When the blade had disappeared after the spear into her sleeve, Jaks took him by the shoulder and turned him back to the table.
    â€œTry something else.”
    Llesho glared at him. He wanted answers he could understand, but the hand on his shoulder triggered one of those flashes of almost-vision, confused images like memories of things he’d never seen. This one showed him Jaks’ arm, but clean of the marks that banded it. Somehow, the vision related to the woman and the knife.
    â€œYour arm,” he nodded at the tattoos on the arm that held his shoulder. “What do the tattoos mean?” He couldn’t believe he’d asked, but the visions drove him with their own need, and he gritted his teeth and waited for the next flash, or for his teacher to knock him into the dirt for his impertinence.
    Jaks refused to answer, but his expression turned to stone.
    â€œThey are his kills.” The mysterious woman answered his question and he shivered, wishing she had ignored him as well. “Each stands for a death.”
    â€œIn the arena?” Llesho turned to face Jaks, wanting explanations from his teacher, not the cold threat in the voice of the stranger. And he wanted the answer to be yes, clean kills, in equal combat.
    The woman shook her head, once, slowly, her cobra eyes devouring him with their cold stare. “Assassina tions,” she said. “The simple bands for lower ranked targets, the more complex bands for targets of a higher rank.” She smiled. “Jaks excels at his profession.”
    Llesho trembled. He was out of his depth, way out of his depth, and had been since Lleck’s spirit had appeared to him in the waters of the bay.
    â€œWhat do you want of me?” he asked, though he dreaded the answer. He’d been on the wrong end of an