Page 16 of The Barbarian King's Assassin (Magic and Kings 1)
I froze instead as his lips curved. “I never introduced myself. I’m Konstantin.”
“Don’t care.” I pushed up from him.
“Odd name.” He didn’t try and stop me.
Getting to my feet, I replied haughtily, “My name is none of your business.”
“What if I were a client in the market to buy a weapon?”
I eyed him up and down, his clean but simple garments. Nothing about him screamed wealth. Then again, a mercenary—even a big, annoying, dumb one—might have interesting news. I pursed my lips. “You may call me Ilyana.” I didn’t say “lady” because while we lived in a wealthy district, we didn’t have a noble title we could legally use.
He sprang to his feet. “That’s a nice name.”
“We’ll see if you remember it when you come to buy from my father’s shop.”
“I think you’d be very hard to forget.”
The giant flirted with me. I’d yet to figure out why. Unless… He’d watched me retrieving the sword. Could it be he recognized its worth and wanted it? “Are you planning to rob me?”
A grimace tugged his features. “I’m not a thief.”
“Says every thief. Try and take it and I will gut you.”
His lips curved. “Are you always this feisty?”
“Do you always harass women trying to run errands?”
The smile widened. “You’re interesting.”
“You’re right, I am. You, however, are not.” With that, I pushed my way through the dock crush to a free boat.
I returned to the shop with my prize, finding the door unlocked and a stranger behind the sales counter. He was an older gent with a bad leg, who stood and favored his good side.
“You must be Master Jrijori’s daughter. I’m Smythe.” He held out his hand. “Here to help.”
I eyed the scars on his hand, the kind that came from training with weapons. “You used to be a fighter? How long?”
“Eleven years before I fell off my roof trying to fix it in a storm and shattered my leg.”
“Family?”
“Not anymore. Fever took my wife and daughter.” Soberly spoken.
“Pets?”
“Hungry men don’t have pets.” Meaning no ties, making him harder to threaten. A good choice to have around as an extra set of hands.
“Don’t do anything to make me kill you,” was all I said as I took my prize to the back and dropped it into a stone basin that I stoppered.
I filled it with vinegar and a handful of crushed herbs that reacted with it. The fizzle chewed at the grunge, and I walked back to the front.
Smythe went to stand.
I waved a hand. “We work together so that kind of idiocy isn’t needed. What I would like is information. Any word of the royals’ arrival?”
It was expected the emperor’s daughter would be last to make an entrance and, according to the latest reports, was due to arrive before the end of the day. No one had yet seen the Barbarian King.
Smythe shook his head. “Word is she’s not far but has paused. She’s likely waiting for him to arrive first. There’re wagers going on. The most popular one is he’s not going to show in order to start a war.”