Swirls of black make their lazy way down to the drain at the centre of the tub, catching my eye and providing a welcome distraction from the feel of his slender body pinned between me and the side of the wooden tub. "Oh, stop squirming. I'm just stripping the blackroot stain out of your hair, it's hardly torture."

Anger flashes in his eyes -- eyes that should have all the gentle sweetness of melted chocolate but which are, instead, as lifeless and cutting as shards of brown bottle-glass. "I like my hair the way it is!" Another trickle of black washes out of his hair, baring a hand's-breadth more of his natural colour. "The way it was, anyway. Why does it have to come out? Wh... whores dye their hair, too!" The ex-thief's too-pretty features twist into a bitter snarl of disgust at the mention of his role in my little trap.

Combing my fingers through his mahogany tresses as I get the last of the blackroot out, I shake my head. "Most whores would give their left hand to be blessed with hair like this. Only someone who doesn't want to be noticed would dye over a colour this lovely."

Dark eyes narrow in what is no doubt supposed to look like rage, but the faint tremble of his lower lip ruins the effect. He's pouting, and if he were my whore in fact as well as in name, I'd have him on his back on the floor right now. Sweet Mother Dark, that's a bad thought to be having right now, with my hips pressed so tightly to his... I pull away, and if he notices my excess haste, he doesn't say anything.

"I'll send a servant in with some hot water, and you can take a bath while I prepare a few things." It's an obvious peace offering, but one he accepts with a curt nod, not quite meeting my eyes. So much pain and rage in that compact, luscious little body... I wonder yet again what will become of him when this is over, and he finds himself still alive, against all expectations, and facing a very uncertain future.

*****

Every time I blink I worry that the mica-flecked soot covering my eyelids from crease to lashes is going to weigh them down too much for me to open my eyes again. Everything I eat tastes faintly of honey, thanks to the slippery, sweet gloss painted on my lips. Annoying corkscrew curls fall into my face every time I move my head and I desperately want to tear at the strings of jewels twisted through my hair, like some wild beast chewing its own leg off to free itself of a hunter's trap. But they're all watching me, and so much rides on this performance that I just smile vapidly and take another morsel of food from Satsujin's fingers.

Satsujin... murder. The head of the Assassins' Guild must have been young indeed when he chose a name so lacking in subtlety.

My throat locks as I try to swallow. I expected death when I came here, yes, but there's still something about knowingly eating poisoned food that sets my instincts to rebelling. And for what? To trap the man who desecrated Kouri's corpse by tempting him with my own? Hardly the blaze of glory I had hoped to die in.

"Well, little one, what do you say?" Satsujin's smooth voice recalls me from my wanderings and I finally manage to swallow. But what do I say to what?

He chuckles softly, the sound rich with affectionate tolerance. I know that it's an act, a mask over a cold and calculating drive, and still that laugh wrings a blush from me. "Well? Will you dance for us? Show my companions here a little of the legendary Gypsy passion?"

Gypsy. Mother Dark, but it's been a long time since I was called that, and just as long since I've danced for any audience of more than one. Damn him. "Of course, if you can provide me with suitable music."

He smiles again, this time smugly. Damn him a thousand times over, he's going to provide me with suitable music. Sure enough, from out of a hidden pocket he produces a small music box, of the magical variety. No chance of pleading that the music it plays is too tinny to have a proper beat -- such a device will play so clearly that there might as well be a full orchestra in the room with us.

The lid is opened, and the exotic sound of some foreign pipe fills the room as I rise and move to a wide, bare section of the floor. More familiar instruments soon take up the melody and, after a moment to get the feel of the music, I close my eyes and begin to move.

This music is a dramatic, whirling thing, and my blood warms to it -- my kin would love this music, indeed -- it is made for dancing, for wild abandon. The thin silk of my shift slides against my skin as my body loses itself in the ebb and flow of the melody -- now winding and swaying slowly to the gentle strains of the violins, now twisting and spinning to the staccato beat of the castanets.

Everything is building to a great climax -- the drums pound suddenly, the strings section wails its urgency, twining around the passionate notes of the brass section, and I spin, leap, whirl, bare feet hardly touching the ground for so much as an instant.

Even with my eyes closed, I can feel their gazes on my skin; my audience is enrapt, enspelled, their breath freezing in their throats as they both long for and dread the moment when the dance ends.

And all at once, everything stops, my movements ending with the music, my heart and feet knowing the precise moment that the music reaches its powerful finale, though my ears have never before heard the piece.

Frozen, chest heaving with each breath, I wait in complete stillness. Then, as one, the watchers exhale, sighing in lust, in envy, in awe, and the spell is broken. Soft applause greets my bow, and then conversation resumes.

I meet Satsujin's eyes, and find myself trapped once more by their intensity. Lust, envy and awe are in his eyes, too, but there is also... what? Something else, something important, but I can't quite grasp what it is.

The first icy thread of pain coils around my heart, my lungs, and I gasp sharply in surprise. For a short time, I had started to forget that I die tonight. But even as my knees buckle and shadows crowd in against the edges of my sight, my gaze remains locked with his. I can barely feel it as his arms wrap around me, lowering me carefully to the ground. When did he rise from his seat and cross the floor to my side?

At the very last second, my field of vision narrowed to only the undimmed fire in his eyes, I recognize the emotion at the centre of that blaze. The very last thing I feel as I sink into the darkness is complete and utter shock.

*****

It's very dark. That much is as I expected, but the rest... the rest is all wrong. I feel none of the warmth or comfort that is supposed to come with one's return to the arms of Mother Dark; in fact, I'm cold, right down to my bones. Nor is it silent here, much less peaceful -- if I strain my ears, I can hear voices raised in outrage.

The longer I listen, the more distinct the voices become. Then one voice cuts through the babble and reaches me, saying, "Enough speculation. This room is to be sealed up and the kitchen staff questioned. Gently! It was most likely none of their doing, and you all know it -- some fool novice probably decided to try his hand at taking my place by poisoning me. Anyone else with the skill to penetrate our security would have done better research, and not used something I have built an immunity to." Satsujin's voice... and he's saying exactly what we planned he would say, after my death.

Except that it's becoming quite clear to me that I am not dead, damn him! I know what he's done now, and when the false-death wears off, I am going to kill him.

Awareness of my body is returning now, too, and I can feel strong arms lifting me off the floor.

"The medic won't be back until at least dawn, so you six will take watches over my Gypsy's body until then, while I attend to the investigation. When the medic returns, tell him that he is to be treated as if he were one of our own, fallen in the course of an assignment. Understood?" A chorus of surprised agreement follows Satsujin's words.

So. Now comes the crucial part of the trap... the Guildmaster's six most trusted aides, with whom we dined this evening, were also the only six people, aside from the medic, who would have had access to Kouri's body. Any one of them could have been the one to defile my brother's corpse.

A fanatic, angry over a thief being given funeral honours before being sent back to his own Guild for burial, or a disturbed mind with a lust for the dead -- either way, the body of a Gypsy whore being given not only funeral honours, but cremation and a place on the rolls of the Guild's own dead should be enough temptation to draw him out again.

It comes as something of a surprise when I feel Satsujin put me down on a hard, flat surface -- the table in the medic's workroom, no doubt; I had felt his arms around me, but no sense of motion as he carried me. Truly, this false-death is strange, and more than a little frightening; I can hear, but not see, I can feel my body but have no sense of the world around me. And the cold... Satsujin's hand burns like a brand against my chill flesh.

Time passes, but I hear only infrequent murmurs as the six lieutenants trade watches, one after the other. No one touches me, or even comes near enough for me to feel their heat against my skin.

"So then, he's to be cremated?" This new voice is not one I've heard before, at dinner or otherwise. The medic, then -- our last and most likely suspect.

"Yeah. Must have been one hell of a fuck to make such an impression on Tsu. Damn shame, this... he's one leftover I'd have happily taken on when Tsu got bored with him."

"Yes, well, be that as it may, I have work to do, if the ashes are to be cool enough to put in a display urn by sundown." The medic's reply is curt and professional, nothing alarming in his voice.

The door clicks shut behind the lieutenant and for a long moment there is complete silence. Then searing hands brusquely strip away my tunic and callused fingers brush a curl back off my cheek. "Such cold, perfect skin... never to wrinkle and sag, now. So lucky... to die young and beautiful, never to fade away into wretched age..."

A finger leaves a burning trail down the inside of my thigh, and suddenly panic overwhelms me. To be aware and helpless for this violation is more than I can stand. Lips as hot as branding irons press against mine. "Yes, so lucky... not like me. Middle-aged, plain... I would have been as good as invisible to a beauty like you, yesterday. But now, with no soul left to despise my ugliness, your body fragile will yield to me..."

I want to scream, to thrash and kick and bite in raw, primal fear and fury, but I can't move, can't produce so much as a whisper... so the strangled cry of pain that cuts through the air can't be mine. Something wet and hot splashes against my arm and the hands touching me vanish.

*****

It's hard to see. Everything is filtered through a red haze of rage. The medic is still reeling, clutching at the knife in his gut and wailing in pain, and all I can think is that even a belly-wound is too quick a death for him.

When did the kind man who tended to my childhood cuts and scrapes change, when did he become this sick... thing, this monster that would force such intimacies on those who do not, can not, consent? What does it do to a soul to look down from a seat at the Mother's side and see the body they lived in for so long being violated, disrespected and used carelessly for another's pleasure?

My hands are around his throat before I even realize it. His eyes bulge grotesquely as I strangle him, squeezing and releasing slowly, prolonging it as much as possible. When his body at last goes limp, I still feel as if it was too clean, too swift... but even for this abomination, I will not dirty myself by resorting to torture.

I let the corpse slither to the floor and hurry to my ex-thief's side. "It's over, little one. Rest, and wake soon." Gently, carefully, I dress him again and arrange his slack limbs more comfortably.

Then I'm back out the door and hollering for my lieutenants, shocking my servants to the core by so openly displaying my temper. The first to arrive is Jihi, and to him I give the orders. "The medic is dead. Take his head and prepare it to be sent to the Thieves' Guild. Have the body thrown to the dogs. Don't send the head until I'm done writing the letter that is to accompany it. Most importantly, when my Gypsy wakes, have him sent to my rooms."

He stares at me for the space of several heartbeats, then asks only, "Will you explain what's happened, later?"

"Yes. In fact, call an assembly at sunset. Attendance is mandatory for every assassin in this city. Spread the word."

Jihi nods, willing to obey for now, as loyal and patient as he's always been; I'm glad it wasn't him, that I didn't have to kill him. I know I can trust him to explain my orders to the others, when they arrive, so I return to my chambers to start writing my formal apology to the Thieves' Guild.

*****

Satsujin is sitting at his desk when I enter, frowning over a letter or report of some kind.

My limbs still feel stiff and sluggish, but I make it to his side without falling over, at least.

"Who was Yonaka's successor?" His question stuns me, knocks the breath out of me as surely as a fist to the gut, and I can't answer. But my silence tells him something, apparently, as he turns then to face me, putting down his quill. "I see. Have you any idea to whom I should address this letter, then?"

"... Houseki. He was well-liked, experienced and highly intelligent. They'd have chosen him to lead." It's finally hitting me, now... I have to go on. I'm not dead, as I expected to be, and so I have to keep living. I was supposed to die in the process of avenging Kouri, but I didn't, and now I have no life to go back to.

"I'm asking them to declare you dead, and so end the hunt for you. You saved us all from a war between Guilds, and for that, they owe you at least this much. So, my would-be killer, you are dead. What will you do now? Who will you become?" Again, he meets my eyes, his thoughts laid bare for me to see. He wants me to say that I will stay here, with him, and yet he knows that I can't.

But... even as he asks, I realize that I do know what life I might have, who I might become. "I will travel with my kin, for a while. The Rom always welcome a dancer."

"What name shall I listen for, then, as I set my spies to hunting for tales of the most beautiful Gypsy dancer ever to live?" His lips twitch into a self-deprecating little smile, and my chest aches, because I know how he feels and it simply is not in me to feel the same. Not now.

"Tsukiyo. My name will be Tsukiyo." I can't think of anything else to say to him, and I can't bear to see that look in his eyes any longer, so I turn to go.

When my hand is on the door's latch, he asks softly, "Do you think that your kin might someday wander into my hall, to dance for my men?"

To come back to this city, where Yami's life ended in misery and blood... can I do it, someday, once Tsukiyo has learned who he is? I think of the golden-haired man behind me, of his passionate gray eyes, his insufferably smug smiles and his infuriating tendency to see right to the very heart of things, and I know my answer. "Someday, they very well might."