Malkum's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Malkum had six days left on the contract, and he still did not know when the tyrant king ate breakfast. He sat in the back of a dim tea shop in Lacuna's fifth district and counted the names of dead men in his head. Twenty-two assassins in nine years. Every one of them had walked into the palace on guesswork, and every one of them had come out in a sack. Malkum meant to be the twenty-third name or the last. The contract paid enough to buy a small country, but that was not why he took it. His sister had been one of the king's early examples, hung from the bridge on the river road when Malkum was fourteen. He had trained for eleven years to earn the right to try. He would not waste that training by charging blind at a man behind three rings of guards. Jolt Jinx slid into the chair across from him and set a wire cage on the table. Inside sat a rabbit with a coat the color of fresh blood, ears up, eyes bright. "Palace kitchen buys one every week," she said. "Same breeder, same day, same courier. The king eats it Thursday nights. Alone. In the west solarium, ninth bell." Malkum looked at the rabbit. The rabbit looked back. "You're sure," he said. Jolt Jinx pushed a folded paper across the table: three weeks of delivery slips, a courier's route, a servant's name, a floor plan of the solarium with one window circled. "I followed the cage, not the king," she said. "Nobody watches the food going in." Malkum folded the paper into his coat. He paid the tea bill, lifted the cage, and walked out into the street with Thursday four days away and a route into the palace resting under one hand.