She feels nothing as her husband’s swollen, purple-lipped face disappears into the dark water.  Another corpse in a heap of hundreds, whatever the fish haven’t eaten.  This old wreck was a graveyard for its crew long before it became the preferred dumping-ground of the sly and murderous in the area of Capria, and that long before she ever stumbled upon it.  Long before she became sly and murderous herself.  Was just murderous then, she thinks, and still feels nothing.  A little tired.

One small, silk-slippered foot pushes the stained sheets he died in after him, and then a tighter bundle, tied up as if to bind a vicious beast, weighted heavy enough to drag the sheets to the bottom with it.  The water below the wreck’s broken second deck is seawater, rising and falling about four feet with the tides, but it’s not the same ocean as the warm green sea that wears Capria’s coast for a crown.  This ocean is cold and black, and knows her well.  It drowned her once, and for a moment she looks down into the shifting darkness and weighs the percentage in letting it try again.  Still she feels nothing.  That seems altogether the wrong mood in which to kill oneself.  The thought is almost prim.  And then from another quarter of her mind comes another voice, this one like velvet and gravel: it was good enough for killing him, eh?

Before another round of an eternal internal argument can get rolling, she shudders with a sudden creeping terror.  Her drifting gaze across the black water below has snagged on a pale, moving apparition in the depths.  It’s an impossibly aged human face, raddled and wrinkled, and it’s staring back at her.  She grits her teeth on a rising shriek as the thing below her opens its own mouth, so much bigger than hers, and growing every second as it rises toward the surface - 

With an ugly sob of revulsion, she staggers back from the ragged edge of the deck and seizes the doorframe for balance, driving antique splinters into her palm.  She feels nothing, every sense devoted either to listening behind her for… that… to break the surface, or to the little cabin ahead, where her other hand plunges into nothingness and disappears.  It’s much warmer than the rest of her body, but not for long - she hurls herself at the wreck’s hull, through the tear in the air, and falls to her knees in sand still warm from Capria’s long afternoon.

Her head’s spinning, but she scrambles away, fetches up hard against the cave’s wall, and for a few minutes just watches the empty spot she came from, gripping her knees and trembling.  There’s no sign of the portal there but an unpleasant little sound, a tinny vibration that makes her teeth itch and her gorge rise.  

When she notices the blade hovering next to her ear, it’s probably been there for a minute already, and her violent jerk damn near does the assassin’s job for them.  The person holding the knife at eye level stands herself on eye level.  She’s a temple imp, full-grown at no more than three feet tall, with pointed ears and teeth.  She’s dressed in dark grey, her skin pale grey, her eyes paler still.  Her tone, too, is grey when she asks, “Meet the Old Man?  I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to see him.  When did you find the thread, and how?”

“T-thread?”  It’s hard to gather her thoughts, let alone focus her eyes - too many shocks tonight.

The imp looks impatient.  “The portal you just passed through, to the wrecked ship, where I presume you’ve been dumping all those husbands I’ve been helping you murder.”

This is so plainly and simply the truth that there’s nothing at all to say in response.  She recognizes the imp now - the proprietress of the tea shop on the docks, the one that doesn’t sell tea.  This woman, not much better-dressed during the day, deals in its actual product, the grease that keeps Capria’s government moving: poison.  

The imp’s impatience deepens as her quarry stares like a cow, but then she turns her wrist and tucks her knife away.  “You’ve been pulling this stunt every ten years or so for nearly a century, by my books, so you can’t possibly be as stupid - or as young - as you look.  Keshena, isn’t it?  Mrs.... excuse me, I suppose it’s Miss again now, hmm?  Miss Keshena Kelly?”

Keshena glances down at herself.  The slippers are Kelly’s.  The silk nightgown is the one her husband bought her for his birthday.  Her late husband.  “Just… just Keshena now,” she murmurs.

“Very well, Just Keshena - when and how did you find this thread?”

“I… it was an accident.  When I first came to Capria.  In the winter.  Was lost on the beach when I heard it, the - thread?”

The imp nods.  Her huge eyes scan Keshena up and down, what little there is.  “I’ve never met a human who could hear that sound.  But then, you’re not entirely human any longer, are you?  When were you Called?”

Keshena feels old reflex making her muscles tense.  Most places she’s been, that’s a word people throw like a punch.  But the imp has her pinned from almost every angle at the moment.  Besides, looking into those ageless eyes, she knows lying won’t help.  Takes one to know one.  The imp has a geas too.

“When I was twenty-five, about two hundred years ago.”

A low whistle from the imp. “Haven’t found your purpose in all that time, hmm?”

There’s something contemptuous in the sharp little face, and Keshena curls her lip with sudden rage quite unbecoming in this nightgown.  “Listen, are you here to turn me in for murder, or just having a romantic midnight stroll with your favorite knife?”

“That would be fairly stupid of me, wouldn’t it?” the imp drawls.  “And pointless.  There’s at least one man in each house of government who could be executed on the evidence in there, which means there’s not a one of them who’d let you get that far.  You’re not a bad little assassin - well, you used to be more clever; this one is a bit of a mess, isn’t it? - but you’re not good enough to survive what would happen if either one of us opened up this open secret any further.”

Flattening her hands against the wall, gritty with wet sand, Keshena pushes herself upright.  Now she’s looking down at the imp, but somehow the imp still manages to look down her nose at Keshena.

“You have become a bit of a liability, though.  It’s a classic moment - the student distinguishes herself such that the Master must either put her down as a threat… or take her on and train her obvious talent, putting off the threat until much later, making it much greater.”  The imp grins, showing a great number of pointed teeth.  “You’ve played it beautifully.  You were an actress, weren’t you?”

She feels the same cold fear in her belly that the monster brought up from the depths of the sea.  “How…”

“You’ll save us both time if you don’t get into the habit of asking me how I know things.”  The imp offers a hand that looks oversized on her short arm.  “Villi Selannor.  I recruit for the Kumani on occasion.  Rarely.  How do you feel about being recruited?”

Keshena examines the imp’s hand thoroughly before shaking it.  Her own looks small on her much longer arms, making them oddly of a size.  “As opposed to being stabbed and dumped in that hole?”

“It’s called a thread, and yes, that is a fair description of your options at the moment.”  The imp hasn’t stopped grinning, and it’s not making either option any more enticing.  

Still… an old fatalism rises inside, and Keshena raises her chin.  “How d’you know I’ll die?  Drowning didn’t do it.  Fire didn’t do it.  Two battleaxes, two hammers, six separate swords and a bear didn’t do it.  I might not know who’s keeping me alive, but I’m willing to keep gambling on it.”

The imp’s ageless eyes don’t stop smiling, but her mouth does.  “You’d rather make me show you what a curse immortality can be?”

Keshena shakes her head, and shakes the imp’s hand again before releasing it.  The resistance was token, part of the game.  She’s already decided.  “In that case, I believe I’ll feel flattered by being recruited.”

“Excellent choice.”  The imp extracts a small notebook from somewhere about her extravagantly pocketed person, and a pencil from somewhere else.  Her moment’s intense scribbling allows Keshena to attend herself, brushing sand from her hands, nightgown not riding up around the hips; gods forbid we be indecent during our midnight murder-conscription escapade.

Villi tears the page from her book and passes it to Keshena.  “I assume you meant to leave Capria fairly soon?  The state you left that house in, this one won’t stay quiet.  You won’t get his money.”

Keshena nods.  “I know.  I was going to... I don’t know what I was going to do, but I didn’t intend to stay.”

“Well, good; now you have a useful destination, I have a clever recruit who will stop committing messy murders near my summer home, and Mr. Kelly has been delivered to his eternal resting place.  I call this meeting a success, and adjourn.”  Villi conjures her knife again and gives it a twirl before aiming it at Keshena.  “Our Speaker Lin will see you in the Kumani guildhall in Lion’s Reach - follow those directions - in three days’ time.  Go on now, and don’t wait for me to follow, there’s a good girl.”

Keshena curls her lip at the imp, but since she’s already turning to leave, Villi doesn’t see it.  Kelly’s quick little mind is already planning her flight from town.  If she runs, she can get back to the estate for her jewelry before the guards arrive.  Enough for the train.  It means running again, but... she’s never had a destination before.  That’s something.

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