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“I don’t think I heard you correctly,” Gil said softly.

The youth leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I want you to kill me.”

Gil tossed the purse back to the boy, who snatched it neatly from the air. “If you’re looking to prove yourself with some exercise in ego, go somewhere else. I’m not interested.”

The boy’s gray eyes were hooded and smoldering as if from opium under the stained linen rag that covered his head. “I’m looking to die.”

“So cut your own throat, like everybody else does,” said Rat, standing at Gil’s shoulder.

The boy’s gaze dropped to his lap. “I’ve tried,” he said at last. “I have. It seems I am cursed by an overblown instinct for self-preservation. It’s stupid, really. I’ve sent so many to her, yet I cannot summon the courage to send myself.”

Gil scowled at him, stymied. Stupid wasn’t the word for this situation. Crazy was a better fit, but even that lacked a certain nuance of the absurd. “Just how many have you sent to the goddess?”

The boy pointed to his left ear, which boasted eleven gold hoop earrings running from the lobe all the way around the crest. “One for every lethal contract I have carried out.” He tilted his head so that Gil could see the four diamond studs in his right earlobe, so small they had to be genuine. “These were not for money, but for my own honor, and for justice.”

Not crazy, thought Gil. Surreal. There wasn’t a chance in hell that this puppy could have acquired such an impressive portfolio at his age. He couldn’t be more than eighteen, for the love of god! And he was claiming fifteen kills?

“This, of course, does not include the two professionals I employed in this present endeavor, who were unequal to the task.”

Seventeen then. Seventeen kills. Gil himself had only half again as many, and he’d been in this business for nearly ten years.

“Were they also contracted for duels?” he asked, wondering why he was even still talking to this lying pup. He ought to have gone back to his game with Rat the moment the boy had named himself as the mark. But there was just something so odd in the youth’s glittering gray gaze, something alien and unreal. It was so long since Gil had been intrigued by anything, yet this boy had his heart pounding like a fool’s. For a moment, Gil wondered if there might be something sexual in it. He’d experimented plenty with partners both highborn and low, and though he’d never found himself actually attracted to another man, one memorable incident years ago had him considering the possibility now.

The boy shook his head no. “I had a proxy handle the contracts. The Emissaries weren’t told who was paying for the job. They came at me the way I would have—a knife in an alley late at night, crawling in my window while I slept. I tried not to fight back, but…”

Gil nodded. If this boy had the kind of training he was beginning to suspect, defending himself would have been instinctive. “The body wants what it wants,” he said softly. “So this is your new plan, is it? Straight money for a straight duel.”

“I can see now that they failed because they didn’t know it was me who’d arranged the contracts. Or that I knew they would be coming. And they didn’t know I was one of their own.”

Gil snorted. “They didn’t know you for an Emissary? Forgive me, but I’m fairly certain I’m acquainted with every man in this city who shares my profession. I find it hard to believe the men you hired would not have known you, by reputation at least.”

The boy dropped his gaze. “I had not been…active in this business for almost two years. I met a girl on a job. She didn’t…approve of my work.”

The boy spoke so coldly, but his fingers were clenched together in his lap, the knuckles white.

Gil felt an odd twist in his stomach. “So,” he said, clearing his throat and shifting in his seat. “I know the who. Now all you need to tell me is the why. Why do you want yourself dead?”

It was a moment before the boy gave any indication that he’d heard the question. When he looked up at last his face was carefully blank, his eyes glittering but dry. Slowly he leaned across the small space that separated them, until his lips were inches from Gil’s ear. As he spoke, his breath stirred the hair at Gil’s temple, raising tiny pebbles on the skin along his spine.

“Three months after we were wed,” the youth said, his voice flat and emotionless and pitched for Gil’s ear alone, “four drunk, bored young noblemen broke down the door of our cottage. My weapons were put away in the attic. I never thought I would need them again. Worse, I had let myself get soft. Slow. One of them got behind me. When I came to, I was bound hand to foot, lying so close to Rhianna I could feel…” he faltered, recovered, “I could feel the heat from her skin on mine. It was clear she’d tried to fight them off. She was in worse shape than I was. They were taking turns…I screamed at them, begged, offered them every penny we had. They just laughed and beat me until I blacked out.”

The boy leaned back and turned his face to Gil’s, still close enough for his breath to fan Gil’s bearded cheeks. His expression was blank and impersonal, as if he spoke of nothing, a night’s lackluster entertainment or the price of a meal, but Gil couldn’t seem to get his heart to slow down. The boy’s eyes locked onto his.

“When I woke again, they were gone, and my wife was dead. They had left two pennies on the floor between us. As if she was a whore.” His gaze went hard, his face draining of all color. “Six months later, when I was well enough, I tracked them down, one by one. And for all the many long, painful, final hours of their lives, I made them regret that they had ever come to my cottage.”

The boy leaned back in his seat and turned his eyes to the fire. Gil watched him very deliberately unclench the hands that were clamped together in his lap, and lay them along the tops of his thighs.

Four noblemen. Four diamond studs. Despite the steadiness of the boy’s voice and the stillness of his face, Gil felt an unfamiliar pang. He’d never been the sentimental type, but he thought he understood now why this boy was so determined to die he was willing to pay for it.

“The nobility live in a different universe from us, boy. If they caught you, they’d call what you did murder. They’d put your neck in a noose, and save us all a deal of trouble.”

The boy shrugged. “I’ve been on the run since summer. I don’t intend to let them take me. A noose is no fit end for one of us—you know that. Nor do I wish to go screaming in chains at the mercy of a rapist’s vengeful kin. I’d as well die on the blade of an equal.”

Gil nodded. “Then I suppose you might as well die on mine.”

“You can’t be serious!” Rat snapped, startling Gil with his vehemence. “The only thing you know about this boy is that he’s not right in the head. His entire story could be a lie.”

“And what if it is?” Gil countered calmly. “His gold is real enough.” He turned back to the boy, who was still staring into the fire as if he saw absolution in the flames. “When?”

The boy didn’t smile, but sighed as if a weight had lifted. He turned his eyes back to Gil’s face, and the moisture that had been missing before was in them now. “No time like the present.”