ANNE BISHOP

By The Time The Witchblood Blooms

A Black Jewels Story

By the Time the Witchblood Blooms

It was a perfect place for my line of work. For both of my professions, actually, but I was there for only one of them.

The dining house catered to Blood aristos, so it ex­uded quality and comfort. The sunken main room had a rough-stoned fountain in the center that looked so natu­ral, you would swear they had built the room around it. Tables were scattered around the room with plenty of space between them—a sensible precaution, all things considered. The Blood's social structure is such a com­plicated dance, juggling caste, social rank, and Jewel rank, that an inadvertent nudge could turn into a violent confrontation in the space of a heartbeat. And spoil ev­eryone's dinner if the end result was a little too messy.

Not that I would mind, unless something nasty landed on my plate. I enjoy carnage, especially when it's an aristo male being torn into little pieces. Unfortunately, I’m too much of a professional to indulge in things like that very often.

On either side of the sunken main room were large, comfortable booths discreetly shielded from the tables below by a wall of ferns and lightly spelled so that con­versations remained private.

When I'd arrived that afternoon to look the place over, I'd chosen one of the booths for tonight's little game. The owner of the dining house graciously closed this section of the room so that I and my companion would have it all to ourselves. That wasn't difficult, since, even for the Blood, this was a late dinner, and the few people left in the main room were lingering over drinks by the time my companion arrived.

We settled into the booth, and the game began.

My companion was a Purple Dusk-Jeweled Warlord from an aristo family. That gave him some power. His serving one of the stronger Queens in this Territory gave him more. Enough so that he felt he could do anything to anyone as long as they didn't wear darker Jewels than his, didn't come from an aristo family, and didn't serve in a Queen's court.

Which was true. He could do anything to anyone and no one could touch him—unless, of course, they hired someone like me.

According to our most ancient legends, the Blood were given their power, their Craft, in order to be the caretakers of the Realms. The Jewels some of us wore not only acted as a reservoir for our power but also indi­cated how deep—and dark—that power was.

There are many words that could describe what the Blood have become. "Caretaker" isn't one of them.

Which is why, for me, business is so good.

My companion was a handsome enough man, if you found pigs erotic. Then again, whores don't choose cli­ents based on how they look.

Neither do assassins.

"So, I was your first?" he said, dipping his fingers into the bowl of stained shrimp.

Idiot. I'm half-breed Hayllian, who are a long-lived race. My eyes have too much green in them to be pure Hayllian gold, but the light brown skin and black hair: came from the son of a whoring bitch who had sired me.

I daintily cut one of my stuffed-mushroom appetizers "Ah, no, sugar. Not my first." I laughed, soft and husky, and flashed him a look from beneath my lashes. "Your great-great-grandfather perhaps."

He grunted, ate another stained shrimp, and licked the sauce from his fingers in a way, I'm sure, he thought was erotically suggestive. "Might have been old Jozef. I'm a lot like him, you know."

I didn't doubt that for a moment.

He finished the last stained shrimp. The sweet-hot sauce produced beads of sweat on his forehead. Patting his face with his napkin, he shrugged and said, "They make it too mild here." His eyes wandered back down to my décolletage. "I like things really hot."

Ah, Warlord, I thought as I smiled at him, soon enough you'll have all the fire you want.

While we waited for the next course, I rested my el­bows lightly on the table, tucked my chin in my laced fingers, and leaned forward to give him a better look at my breasts, which were barely covered by the silk of my dress. It was good he'd eaten all the stained shrimp. I would have hated for a serving boy to snitch the last one and suffer for it.

He patted his forehead with his napkin again. The look he gave me said the heat wasn't just from the stained shrimp.

"So now you're a tenant at a Red Moon house here?" He tried not to sound too eager, but his eyes wandered to my delicately pointed ears, the only physical evidence of my mother's mysterious race.

My ears make me unique, which means expensive, and I do have a reputation for being the best of the best. When I choose to settle at a Red Moon house for a while, appointments are made weeks in advance, which is something no other whore can claim. Only half of what I do in bedrooms has anything to do with sex, but it's such easy bait.

"No, I'm not a tenant," I said. "This is a pleasure trip. I'm just passing through." Which I had told him when I invited him to dinner.

He still looked sulky and disappointed—because, of course, he hadn't believed it. His kind never do. Then a sly, calculating look came into his eyes. "But you won’t be leaving until morning, will you, Sorrel?"

"Surreal," I said, correcting him. The bastard knew perfectly well what my name was. He was just trying to goad me into thinking I was too insignificant to remember so that I would be willing to prove I'm everything my reputation says I am.

That was fine with me. I was willing to let him play out his game, since it fit in with my own.

I smiled at the serving boy who brought the prime ribs. He placed my dish in front of me, the sharp blade of the knife carefully tucked beneath the meat. I glanced at the knife to confirm there was a small white enamel spot in the handle. My companion's knife had a small red spot.

Perfect.

Giving the boy a flicker of a warning smile, I picked up the knife and began to eat.

The Warlord grunted. "If the owner's going to have a dining house without rooms upstairs, the least he could do is have serving boys who aren't surly." He gave me a leering grin. "Or serving girls."

I gave him a saucy smile in return. "If you want to fill your belly, you come to a dining house. If you want to fill something else, you go to a Red Moon house. Besides, who wants to play with amateurs?"

A vicious light filled his pale eyes. "Playing with ama­teurs can be quite entertaining."

I just stared at him. He probably thought the vicious light in my own eyes was due to jealousy.

Fool.

I used Craft to chill the air around me, indicating my displeasure, and began to eat my dinner.

He chafed at the quiet censure, and his expression changed to thwarted-little-boy-turned-mean before he remembered that if a man wanted to be accommodated by a whore of my skill and reputation, part of the price was the illusion of courtesy.

Hiding his temper, he picked up his fork and wiggled it against the meat. "Meat's good. You can cut it with a fork."

I made a moue when meat juice splashed on the linen tablecloth. Finally realizing I wasn't impressed by his vigorous wrist action, he picked up the knife.

I flashed him a wanton smile of approval and settled down to eat.

His conversation was boring, being centered entirely on himself, but I didn't allow my attention to wander. Who knew what interesting tidbits he might let drop as he bragged about his connections?

I was admiring the bloodred, black-edged flower tucked into the fern pot opposite our booth when my companion noticed my gaze wasn't fastened on him.

"What's that?" he grunted, tearing a roll apart and dunking a piece into the butter bowl.

I looked away from the flower and shrugged. If he didn't know witchblood when he saw it, I wasn't about to tell him.

"Pretty," he said, probably thinking it would please me.

I almost laughed.

The meal, thank the Darkness, finally ended. After the brandy was served, he returned to his hoped-for agenda. "Listen," he said, leaning forward so he could stroke my wrist with his fingers, "since you say you don't have a room and this place is lacking in the finer points of service, I know a place—"

"Regrettably, Warlord, the hour is late, I'm expected elsewhere tomorrow, and my Coach leaves shortly."

His face immediately changed from leering soft to cruel hardened. Despite my youthful looks, I'm not a girl easily frightened into submission. I'm far more of a witch than he ever was a Warlord, and he was just a prick-ass who enjoyed hurting women, especially young women.

I dropped my right hand into my lap and used Craft to call in my favorite stiletto. It would have been a shame to gut him publicly, particularly after I'd gone to such trouble to do the thing so neatly, but he was going to be dead either way, and that was the point.

"What's this?" he growled."You approached me. You think you can get me to spend good marks to fill your belly and then just—"

"As you say, I invited you for dinner." I leaned for­ward, looking at him with wide-eyed earnestness. "I wanted to meet you. You've a reputation among the ladies. In fact, one girl was left speechless after a night with you. Can you wonder why I'd want to meet you?"

"Since I changed my plans for this evening in order to come here, I expected something more than just dinner."

Of course he had. And he was going to get more than dinner. It just wasn't what he expected.

When he finally believed that I wasn't going to go anywhere with him, he started getting nasty, so I cut off his words. There were plenty of other things I wanted to cut off, but I restrained myself. "Since I invited you, it will be my privilege to pay for the meal in exchange for your company and conversation. Besides, I told you this was a pleasure trip, and I don't mix business with pleasure."

Making one more try to get what he had come for, he looked at my mouth and suggested that the booth was private enough for me to give him some small com­fort. On any other night, those words alone would have earned him a knife in the gut, but tonight I simply de­clined. Mumbling something about my reputation hav­ing gone to my head to think I could waste a Warlord's time and not be accommodating, he left to find a Red Moon house with more compliant game.

When I was sure he'd gone, I slid out of the booth, plucked the flower from the pot, tucked it into my water glass, and settled back into the booth. While I waited, I called in a pen and the second of my little black books, and made careful notations about what I had done. Since the ingredients could be found almost anywhere in the Realm of Terreille, this would be another of my little recipes for death.

I vanished the book just as the owner of the dining house approached, a snifter of brandy in each hand. He set one in front of me before gingerly slipping into the booth.

It was always like this. Before, my clients are eager for the deed to be accomplished, and I'm treated with the deference due my skill. After ... After, they begin to wonder if they might not one day be on the receiving end.

I stroked the witchblood petals and waited.

"It's done?" His voice shook a little.

"It's done." I continued to stroke the petals. "Legend says that the reason witchblood can't be destroyed once it's planted is that its roots grow so deep they're nour­ished in the Dark Realm."

"A plant from Hell?" He swallowed the brandy. "I want no ghosts or demons here."

Of course he wouldn't. "How is your daughter?"

"The same," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Always the same since that... since he ..."

"How old is she?"

His mouth quivered with the effort to speak. "A child," he finally replied in a broken whisper. "A girl just beginning to be a woman."

Yes. I was twelve the first time I was thrown on my back, but the man was only strong enough to take my virginity. When he was done, I still had my Craft, still wore the Green Jewel that was my Birthright. I came away from that bloody bed still a witch, not just a Blood female. I've been paying men back in their own coin ever since.

The owner pushed a carefully folded napkin across the table. I lifted one edge, quickly counted the gold marks. As a whore, even with the fees I charge, it would take almost a month to earn this much. As a first-rate assassin, it was a pittance of my usual fee. But even I, at times, do charity work.

I vanished half the marks and pushed the napkin back across the table. The owner looked troubled—and a little frightened. I sipped my brandy. "Use the rest for the girl," I said with a gentleness harshened by my own memories. "A Black Widow is the only kind of witch who can heal what's left of your daughter's mind and possibly give her back some semblance of a life. One with that much skill will expect to be paid well for her services."

"That has nothing to do with your fee," he protested.

I studied the witchblood. The plant will grow any­where a witch's blood has been spilled in violence or where a witch violently killed has been buried. It's true that once it takes root over such a place, nothing can destroy it.

It's also true that if the petals are properly dried, it's a sweet-tasting, unforgiving poison that, like a flower opening to the sun, slowly lets its full force be known before blossoming into unrelenting pain. It is virulent and undetectable until it's far, far too late.

At this point, the Warlord would be feeling nothing more than a bit of a bellyache, and if, as I suspected, he was already entangled with a young whore, he wouldn't even notice.

The owner cleared his throat nervously. His son, who had insisted on being the serving boy tonight, placed two more snifters of brandy on the table, and then shifted from foot to foot. Glancing from his father to me, he said, "What should I do with the knife?"

"Cleanse it as I showed you," I said, "and then bury it deep."

The youth hurried away.

Actually there'd been nothing on the knife the War­lord had used but a glaze made from roots and herbs that would cause the mild bellyache. But they had wanted to see death being made, and since I wasn't about to tell them about the powdered witchblood I'd slipped into the bowl of stained shrimp, the mess I'd created in the kitchen that afternoon while I concocted the glaze had sufficiently impressed them. Besides, the Warlord will associate the bellyache with overindulgence and then forget it. By the time the witchblood blooms, no one will think of this place ... or me.

I turned my attention back to the owner. "As for my fee, I'm keeping enough for expenses. I don't want the rest."

"But—"

"Hush," I said, smiling at him as I raised the brandy snifter in a small salute. "I was on a pleasure trip when you approached me, and"—I laughed, truly delighted— "as I told my arrogant dinner companion, I don't mix business with pleasure."