Mikiva took a moment to collect her thoughts. If she was going to do this, then she had to tell the whole story. It wouldn’t make sense, otherwise. It was all too intertwined.

  “My mother died in childbirth,” she began, “and my father raised me alone. My father was not without his flaws, but he took good care of me, whatever else was going on in his own life. He tried to insulate me from his troubles. But one night, when I was about 7 years old, he finally failed.

  I was home with my father when someone came pounding at the front door. Even as young as I was, I could tell that he was afraid. He dragged me into the bedroom and pushed me down into the closet, behind the clothes. Closing the doors, he made me promise not to come out or to make a sound, no matter what happened, then he left me there. I remember hearing my father arguing with two other men. The arguing turned to pleading, and then the screaming started. Eventually, they dragged him back into the bedroom. I watched through the slats in the door as they beat him. More than once, they asked him where I was, but he refused to tell them. They tortured him for hours, and I waited there in the dark, too scared to even move. When they were finally finished with him, they slit his throat and dragged him out of the room.

  I stayed in the closet for a long time after that, afraid that they would eventually come back and find me. But they never did. When I finally got too hungry and thirsty to stay in there any longer, I snuck out and through a window into the alley behind the house. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I knew I needed to escape. As I crept around the front, I saw my father for the last time. He had been nailed to the front door of our home. His eyes were closed, and crosses had been carved into his eyelids. I didn’t really know how to deal with that, at the time… I doubt I would know now. But I felt like I had to do something, you know? So, I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I swore to him that I would avenge his death, however long it took, whatever the cost. It was an absurd promise, of course, I was just a child and completely alone in the world. What could I possibly do?

  That was when I first thought of the Scorpions. All the kids in Telvanar knew about the Scorpions; on the streets in the poorer districts, they were legend. We had all heard the rumors, that they would take in orphans and train them as assassins. To my young mind that seemed to be the perfect solution; they would teach me what I needed to know to avenge my father’s death, and they would even provide me with food, shelter and protection. I like to think that if I had been a bit older, I might have thought twice about pledging myself to an assassin’s guild, but at the time they simply seemed cool and mysterious. And I didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go. That morning, I showed up at their door and begged the guild master to take me in and train me. He asked only one question: why. I remember telling him that there was someone I needed to kill. He laughed and told me that his door was always open to those with the desire to learn. So, I pledged myself to the service of the Scorpions and began training the next day. And that was my life for the next seven years.”

  “What was it like?” Av’ry asked.

  “The training? I really enjoyed it, in truth. It gave me something to focus on, other than what had happened. To think of it was too painful. The only way I got through it was by single-mindedly focussing on becoming stronger, so that I could get vengeance. That kept me going, kept me sane. Ish. And, as it turned out, I was pretty good at it. The Master noticed my skills and early on he groomed me to be one of his elite.”

  “But didn’t he know that you were just there for revenge? That you would leave as soon as you succeeded in your goal?”

  “Well, it didn’t exactly work that way. When I pledged myself to the Scorpions, I swore the oath every guild member did: that I would repay every day of my training with a day of service, once I became a full member. Seven years of training meant that I owed seven years of service to them, doing whatever I was commanded to do and fulfilling every order I was given, without question. Only after I met these conditions could I move outside of the orders of the guild, though I was, of course, also free to stay. But until those seven years were up, I belonged to them, body and soul. And it was a price I willingly paid for the expertise that they gave me. A price we all paid. Anyway, when I was 14, the Master decided I was ready and he sent me to make my first kill.”

  “At 14?!” Av’ry blurted, shocked.

  Mikiva chuckled,

  “It’s the perfect age. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get close to people if you are a pretty, young girl. It was, literally, child’s play. I made my kill and returned to the guild a full-fledged assassin. After that, training was over, and the work began. I took the jobs given to me by my Master. I killed who he told me to, without question, emotion, or mercy. I was very good at what I did. At one point, I was probably the best they had, and I was proud of that, proud to serve. I took on some of the most difficult jobs, and I never failed.

  But all that time, I never lost sight of my goal. I was always on the lookout for information on the men who had killed my father. It seemed like it would be difficult, at first. I hadn’t seen the men’s faces and I knew little about my father’s life. He had always protected me from the worst of his problems. But, as it turned out, it didn’t really matter, because the person I was looking for hadn’t intended to keep it a secret. As I spent time in the underworld, I eventually learned that the way he had been killed was designed to send a specific message, and as such, was meant to be easily interpretable by those in the business. Those crosses carved into his eyelids were the calling card of a man named H’arlic Jellaver. He was the head of an extensive illegal gambling ring in the Telvanar underground market. He also provided loans to gamblers, that they were to pay back with massive interest.

  As it turned out, my father had been something of a problem gambler. By that last day, he was in massive debt to H’arlic, debt he would never be able to repay. Now, H’arlic was a canny businessman, he knew you couldn’t get money from a dead man, so he always gave people an option to pay him back in more… creative ways. In my father’s case, he had been offered him the chance to wipe his slate clean by simply giving them his daughter. A young girl can go for quite a sum in certain markets, H’arlic might have even made his money back, selling me. But my father refused. He told them he would rather die than give up his child. So H’arlic obliged. And if he couldn’t get anything valuable from a debtor, H’arlic would instead use him as an example for others. So, he sent two of his men to torture and kill my father and nail him to his own front door as a warning about what happened to people who crossed him.

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  The truth, of course, only increased my motivation. Whatever his flaws, whatever his mistakes, my father had died protecting me. And now that I knew who had ordered him killed, I simply needed to wait for my contract to be up so that I could go after him. When I was 21, my Master granted me my freedom, and asked me what my plans for the guild were. I told him that I was going to stay, as long as he allowed me to attend to some personal business on the side. He gave me his blessing, along with a new assignment, and said nothing more about it.”

  “Why did you say you would stay?” Av’ry asked. “I mean, you had what you needed from the Scorpions, why stick around?”

  “Where else would I go? I had no other life, no other family. The guild was all I knew. In the years since, I have realized that they count on that, when recruiting. Most of the children they train will serve them willingly for their entire lives, not just for the time that they owe. You make good money, use the skills you worked hard to hone and spend your time with the only people who really understand you and what you do. Why would they leave?

  It is a much better business model than attempting to keep assassins through threats, or force. All that earns you is resentment, and if there is one thing few people want, it is the ire of a pack of trained killers. No, the Scorpions are good to their people. To act otherwise would be… extremely foolish. Sure, a few assassins leave here and there, but overall, a peaceful retirement is preferable to them trying to kill their way out in anger or desperation. Truthfully, I had always planned to exact my revenge and then spend the rest of my life in service to the guild,” Mikiva looked to the ground. “But it didn’t exactly work out that way.”

  “What happened?”

  “H’arlic Jellaver happened,” Mikiva sighed.

  “You went after him?”

  “Of course I did. Although, it took me a long time to prepare. Years, in fact.”

  “Why so long?”

  “H’arlic was not just some back-alley thug. He was rich, powerful and the head of a veritable criminal empire. He was also very cautious and notoriously paranoid, likely a consequence of his line of work. There was no easy way to get to him, and though I wouldn’t have hesitated to risk my life, what I couldn’t risk was failure, because if I died before I could kill him, there would never be justice for my father.

  So, I spent a long time studying him, his movements, his security measures. And it also took me some time to save up the money I required to bribe certain guards and informants. I wasn’t rich, after all. I couldn’t afford any mistakes, and I had already waited so long, there was no reason not to bide my time and do it right. Really, you would think that the passing of years would have cooled my anger, but I had nursed my grudge, nurturing it and protecting it, so if anything, by then it was stronger than it had ever been. Every night, I dreamed of the moment that I would end his life, because even back then I understood that every person I had killed up to that moment had just been a substitute for him and the men he had sent all those years ago.

  So, I was patient, and finally, my opportunity came. Twice a week, H’arlic selected one of the women from his gambling clubs to, well, service him. He considered it a privilege, a gift from himself to them. It was one of the few times that he was alone, without his bodyguards. He liked his privacy when he was with his women. Normally, it would have been easy to substitute myself for one of them, I had done similar things many times over the years, but even in this, H’arlic was careful. He chose only ladies who had worked for him for years, his bodyguards always knew which he had chosen, and substitutions were never allowed. But just when I was about to give up on that plan entirely, I caught a small break. There was one woman in the club who bore a passing resemblance to me; similar build, similar hair. Of course, it wouldn’t have been enough, but for the fact that she performed for him as a fan dancer, wearing elaborate costumes and makeup.”

  Av’ry smiled knowingly,

  “Enough to hide the differences?”

  “More than enough,” Mikiva laughed. “You really should have seen that outfit, then you would understand. The only problem was that the girl was terrified of H’arlic. I tried to bribe her, but no amount of money was enough to convince her to let me take her place.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “Well, I certainly wasn’t going to let this unique opportunity pass me by, so I did what any reasonable person would do in my shoes, I knocked her out, tied her up and stole her costume and makeup.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Av’ry observed wryly.

  “Hey, I didn’t kill her,” she shrugged. “After putting on her gear and making a few modifications, I went to present myself at H’arlic’s love nest. As I expected, no one noticed that anything was amiss, they just let me pass right into his quarters. H’arlic himself didn’t notice I wasn’t the girl he had chosen. I had done my homework, watched her perform dozens of times to get her movements and mannerisms right. And once I was in, the hard part was over. H’arlic just lay there, waiting for fun and games and I wasn’t about to disappoint. I roughed him up a bit, smacked him around and when I was done, I tied him up with silken cord, just the way he liked it. He was totally helpless then, we were alone, and there was nothing left to stop me. But I couldn’t just kill him, I needed a few things from him before I did that.

  I sat down on the bed next to him and told him who I was, and why I was there. It wasn’t enough for him to die, he needed to know why. Then, I pulled a rib out of one of the fans I was carrying, I had replaced the flimsy paper ribbing with thin metal blades, to sneak a weapon in. I held it to his throat and told him I was there to take his life. I relished the moment he realized what was happening,” even now, Mikiva grinned as she relived it. “Sometimes I still see it in my dreams. All the blood drained from his face, he started struggling against his bonds, but there was nothing he could do. Realizing that, he begged me for his life, offered me money, power, anything I wanted. I asked him for only one thing: the names of the people he sent to kill my father. The pathetic cur didn’t even hesitate to rat them out. He told me that, though he didn’t remember my father specifically, he always used the same men for those types of jobs, and he had for many years. He gave me the names, and once I had everything I wanted from him, I drove that steel blade through his throat. I looked him right in the eyes and watched as the life faded from them. It wasn’t quick and I was glad for that. Then I slipped out the way I came, and the guards didn’t even look at me twice.”

  “And did you go after the people he named?” Av’ry asked.

  “Well, I did briefly consider leaving it at that. Walking away and considering my revenge complete. H’arlic was, after all, the main architect of my misfortune. He was the one truly responsible. Sometimes, I wonder who I would be now if I had just been satisfied with that. If I had never found them, learned who they really were. What they were,” Mikiva sighed. “But I still remembered that night, alone in the closet, listening to my father’s screams. I remembered my fear. Remembered hearing their voices as they mocked him, tormented him. I needed them gone from this world. I needed their voices silenced forever. And so, yes, I went after them.”

  Mikiva paused and took a deep, unsteady breath.

  “Are you alright?” Av’ry seemed concerned.

  “I just need a minute.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose, gathering her thoughts. The next part, she knew, would be especially challenging to relive.