Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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"Of course you do. What else would you be doing for Shefenkas? You think I haven't done my
homework on you? Besides, I don't carehow you kill him, knife in the back or duel of honor, so long as
you kill himdead , andsoon ."
"I already told you, I won't leave my child an orphan. An iron-cycle is what I need!"
"You're telling me it would take you thirty days to acquire a poison?"
"Andestablish my route home."
"That's just a matter of thinking it out! You aren't convincing me, Whitlock. I know you'd love to stall, to
find some way to squirm out of this; you and I both know you have every reason to lie to me now. More
than I to you."
Fishhook? she thought.
goodmeatnobonesman?, the cat's thought came back.
followman,. "Look, Arkan, you can get messages to me. Give me what timeyou think reasonable, and
call me to account then, whether it's tomorrow or ten or twenty days from now. Is that reasonable
enough?"
"Very reasonable. What say we meet again in an eight-day, and we'll take it from there?"
"All right." Her voice was resigned.
Ihate you, I hate the ground you walk on and the air you breathe. I hate your guts and if I could
curse you, I would. I hope my ill-wish gives you pox and dysentery and leprosy, and that you die a
mass of painful sores .
She turned to walk away. "Good luck," he said. "I will pray for your success."Everything you make me
feel, you asshole, your people will feel, next time I go into the Arkan camp .
The intrigue is intriguing, thought Matthas, as he slipped back to his tent.But this trade has its pains.
Like dealing with the likes of her, and having my honor, my integrity and my race shot on by
same. After all these years, it shouldn't get under my skin, but somehow it still does; I guess at
least I haven't had all my innocence burned out of me .
Everyone thinks you're an asshole when you're a spy. At times in his career, -mostly early in it, he'd
wondered himself. He reassured himself by reviewing the ethic that required the work of him:I had a gift
for it, more than anything else. To do what you are best at is to serve your Empire, and the Gods,
best . Yet did he have that gift because he was in some way innately cruel, relishing the dirty work he so
often had to do? (It was, he'd noticed, generally against people who relished dirty work more than he, as
they plotted or wreaked harm on Arko. Such as Megan, most likely, and Shkai'ra, certainly.)
At the end of each bout of such doubts, he always came to the same conclusion, making him wonder
every time why he bothered thinking these things at all. He had to do his duty, as best he could. That was
virtue in itself, and—like it or not—what sort of person it showed him to be didn't matter.When I am
Aitzas, he thought,I'll have the luxury of moralizing . He looked forward to that. Likelier now; it