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

Throat torn out by steel fingernails, Matthas thought helplessly,poor bastard… she must have
climbed up him to do it . He looked up, nauseated—from the sight at his feet or Eforas's face? Both, he
decided. He said nothing; there was nothing to to say.
"But I'll be merciful,fessas ," Eforas said loftily. "You've been a useful servant to the Imperator, and
perhaps will be unto death. You are hereby dismissed from your positionhere . But we will not abandon
your little plan. These…women certainly acted with an alacrity suggestive of ill designs. You will act as
an operative, reporting to me alone. You will truth-drug them. You will find what information they have.
Since you've already wasted an extremely generous sum of Imperial resources on these four, three dead
and the other deserted, you will be provided with no more. It is all one to me how you do it, whether you
kill yourself, beggar yourself, have to swim all the way up the Brezhan after them clutching a vial of
truth-drug in your mouth, but you will do it yourself, or you will not return.Go !"
III
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Megan had promised Nikolakiaj she wouldn't wear any more grooves in his tables with her claws. She
was drunk, and so was Shkai'ra, beautiful to Megan's eyes, relaxed, candlelight softening the sharp
angles of her face, turning her copper hair a deep russet, sparking her nose-ring of thread gold wire. She
tossed bits of fish into the air for Fishhook to catch, velvet orange wings quivering and fluttering as the cat
bounced, making impossibly loud crunching and smacking noises for such a tiny mouth over bits of fish
with no bones.
The Knotted Worm was busy. Even the middle tables were full, though most people who drank here
preferred to keep their backs to walls. The pair had their usual seat against one of the tile stoves; Megan
leaned against the bee-hive shape and hitched her shoulders against the warm clay. "Pssst," Shkai'ra
whispered in her ear at the top of her lungs. "Let's test the mattress, hey?" Probably it hadn't been such a
good idea for the Kommanza to get so drunk, but they'd traveled hard down river, and then tonight's
back-alley skirmish…
Megan shook her head. "Always want to fuck after you fight. I wonder who those Arkans were,
anyway, and who sent them after us? They looked official. If you hadn't chopped up the last one, we
might have found out."
"I thought you were going to saveyour last one, not claw out his throat," answered Sakai' ra, then added
a cheery, "Oh well."
The tavern quieted; Nikolakiaj was on stage, holding up his hands, clearing his throat. It was Bard Night:
that either promised crooning or threatened caterwauling; which, remained to be seen. "Let's have a good
finger-snapping for Merikin Mara, of Selina," he announced, "who will regale us with song and news
both."
The bard was Yeoli. There was the crystal, strung around his neck on a thong, and the curly hair—sure
signs. Beyond that, he was flashy even for a bard, with flame-red hair in ringlets falling down long past his
shoulders, a streak of white like Megan's on one side-lock, a streak of black on the other, a tunic of
embroidered satin. On the stage he arranged himself, tuning a long curving harp with inlaid abalone in the
soundbox, and grinning a big grin.