He curled his fingers into a fist. “But I will if I must.”

The wind stirred his cloak, revealing the heavy longsword at his hip. He was not a swordsman like Garion. The terrible blade was not meant for performance.

It would also be difficult to draw in such a precarious position, all but useless even for the most skilled swordsmen of the Ward.

Sorasa bared her teeth in a grim smile. “Try me, then.”

“Very well.”

Despite her decades of training, honing her body to the razor’s edge, Mercury’s dog was somehow faster. His reflexes, his reactions, his instincts. He was a storm. Her only recourse was to anticipate and predict, to move first.

The whip curled around a washing line as she jumped, before his feet left the plank. He leapt forward, intending to catch her around the middle. But instead of jumping over him, she swung around, using the whip and her own momentum to kick off the alley wall. The change in angle was enough to miss him by inches, leaving him to land hard on her perch.

The pole cracked through, splintering under his weight. The fruit vendor shrieked as a six-and-a-half-foot assassin crashed through his stall and crushed a pile of spotty oranges.

Sorasa cut the washing line, clutching the whip as she fell into the alley. With a practiced tumble, she absorbed the brunt of the fall and popped to her feet, a pile of clothes fluttering around her. She grabbed a patched aquamarine cloak from the heap and threw it around her shoulders.

When she looked back, peering around her new hood, she saw a blond head above the crowd, trying to shoulder his way through. The crowd pushed back, rallying against him. The vendor even pelted him with ruined oranges. He hardly noticed, scanning the alley like a hound picking up a scent.

Sorasa did not give him the chance and slipped back onto the main road, her pace even and unbothered. Just another body on the streets of Byllskos.

The cattle auctions continued in earnest, drawing a heavy throng of people and animals alike as traders stopped to observe. She traded the stolen cloak for a long, stained vest and hat from a farmer’s cart. Both hid her face and weapons well, though she looked worse than a peasant. Smell worse too, she thought with a curl of her lip.

One of her first and best lessons at the Guild concerned no weapon. No blade or poison. No disguises. No language. She excelled in those, of course. They were as necessary as rain and sunshine to a field of wheat. But the most important element, the most vital to fulfilling a contract, was opportunity.

It was not luck that Sorasa caught the merchant king asleep, his guards distant and slow. She chose that moment. And she would choose again here. Mercury’s assassin would not be so easily left behind. He would be on her again in a few minutes’ time, if he wasn’t following already. She did not breathe a sigh of relief as she walked. She did not uncoil or drop her guard. Sorasa Sarn was not so foolish.

Her heartbeat slowed, her muscles recovered, and her head cleared.

Opportunity lay ahead.

With a smile, she approached a pen of black bulls. They gleamed with sweat, packed tight like barrels in the hold of a trade galley. They could scarcely move even to swat off the biting flies. They were next to the auction paddock, ready to trample round and round for the traders. Slowly, she leaned up alongside their gate, one that opened to the dirt square. The lock was simple, a wooden draw bar. She glanced at it and removed her hat, baring her face for all the street to see.

The trap is baited.

One hand darted into her pack and she pulled out a peach, biting greedily into its oversweet flesh.

He was not difficult to spot. The assassin towered over most of the market crowd. He was taller even than Garion, and paler besides. She guessed him to be of the far north—Calidon, or perhaps the Jyd. He had the look of a snowborn raider, with his white face, giant frame, and golden hair.

He barreled on with singular focus, his great strides closing the distance between them.

Savoring the taste of fruit, she tossed the peach and slid the lock, throwing open the gate to the bulls’ pen. A nearby man grabbed her arm, but she broke his hold without thought, sending him howling into the dirt with a mouthful of missing teeth.

Ten feet away, the assassin’s eyes widened.

Sorasa cracked her whip over the pen.

The herd burst forth, heavy as a thundercloud, with hooves and horns like striking lightning. On and on they poured, the great flanks and shoulders jostling against their fence, threatening to break loose. They rolled toward him in a black tide, bucking and frothing mad with every crack of the whip. Opportunity, she thought, satisfied.

She expected him to run. Or dodge. Or simply be trampled, his bones shattered beneath a hundred pounding hooves.

Instead the assassin set his feet and put out his hands. It was a truly ridiculous sight, but Sorasa’s breath caught in her teeth.

His hands closed around the horns of the first bull, his knuckles turning white, heels digging into the dirt. He tossed the beast with a grunt, sending it sprawling onto its side. Its head lolled, the neck snapped. Sorasa gaped as the rest of the herd broke around him, a wave around a pillar in the sea. He stood firm and unafraid. His eyes never left her, alive with green fire.

Elder, her brain screamed in realization.

Immortal.

She ran as she had never run before. Through alleys, over rooftops, between walls so tight even the sun could not reach the ground. Cloak after cloak fell from her shoulders, in all colors. Anything to confuse him, to slow him down, to steal another second out of his hands.

She circled, trying for the docks, but he was always there, keeping her from her ship, from any ship. Her pouch of tricks was nearly empty, leaving blue, white, and green smoke trailing the streets of Byllskos. She dared not try the black.

Unyielding, unbeatable. The few things she knew of the Elders came rushing back from a lesson learned long ago. Unbelievable beings born of a lost realm.

Her body burned with exertion. Her nails tore on brick and wood; her fingers bristled with splinters. She felt little pain, most of it trained out of her. Adrenaline and fear ate the rest. She climbed; she leapt; she tumbled and spun. Fruit carts and barrels of wine exploded in her wake. Dedicant priests cursed her as she parted their ranks. She even debated sprinting back to the villa of the murdered merchant, to the guards and watchmen, who would make a fine shield between herself and the immortal monster.

None of the guild had ever killed an immortal. None had been foolish enough to try. Few had even seen them. How did Lord Mercury manage to wrangle one into his service?