by Amy Lane
Chaos. All battles were chaos. The boosters in the armor enabled him to leap over the heads of the first couple of men and land exactly where Nyx was: in the eye of the storm. For a moment there were shouts as the soldiers turned and looked at this new development, and some of them flinched from the armor, but the lokogos was not that green.
“Kill them both!”
Taern pulled his first punch back a little, remembering the man in the alleyway with his spine kicked through his spleen. But these men had armor too, and after the first pulled punch almost bounced off the soldier running at him full tilt, Taern ducked his swing with a short sword and planted a solid metal-denting slug in the man’s gut. He groaned and went down, and Taern swung backward with his foot, caving in the armor above the next soldier’s kneecap, and he fell screaming. Taern flicked his hands down to his side and pulled them up, armed with short, sharp knives. He sliced through the shoulder join in the armor of the man in front of him and then threw both arms back, knives pointed backward, and sliced through the metal and flesh of the two soldiers on either side. He whirled and kicked, knowing there would be a soldier behind him, and that man went flying, knocking the two men behind him into the street.
He laughed then, loud, exultant, and bloody, because there were more soldiers, many more, and he was ready to take them all on.
“Bimuit!”
The oath caught his attention, and he had enough breathing room to look over as Nyx, in a seemingly impossible move, squatted down and leaped, scattering soldiers in his wake. He came down on the head of another soldier. Before that soldier could crumple, Nyx pushed off of him to the shoulder of another, and another, running lightly across armored people like Taern had seen him run across rooftops. The smart ones dropped to the ground before he landed on them, but many of them waved their swords in the air and had their wrists broken when he grasped them in passing. His final leap was off the head of the lokogos, and he added a backward kick as he went, sending the man sprawling to the ground before he launched into a handspring and bounced up again, landing on his feet in time to take out the soldier advancing behind Taern.
“Nyx!” Taern gasped, sending a kick to the kneecap of the man in front of him.
“Prick Face!” Nyx panted, landing his own blow. “What in hell’s name are you doing here?”
“Came to fetch you!” Oh hells! These bastards didn’t know when to quit! Kick, punch, slice, duck, whirl, kick, punch, breathe. At his back, Nyx was doing the same, again and again and again. Taern was already tired.
“I would have made it home eventually!” Nyx was getting winded, and Taern didn’t blame him.
“Dinner got cold!” he snapped. “Karanos! Have you been doing this for three days?” His fury spiked and he used his blades this time, making sure the two men flanking him would not get up again. Some part of him might object to killing so easily, but that would be later, when he and Nyx were safe and this moment was far behind him.
“The soldiers are new,” Nyx replied evenly. His solid body faltered for a moment and then stabilized. “For niskets’ sake, boy, try bashing them on the head! The blood makes it slippery, dammit!”
Taern grimaced. Oh, yes. Everything had a price, even ending the lives of the mindless soldiers who had been pressed into service and were doing whatever duty came easiest.
“Bash ’em on the head! Got it, Nyx!” The next two he bashed on the head, but the one after that had a steam spear aimed directly at his gut. “Spear!” he yelled and leapt sideways. Nyx looked behind him and leaned backward, falling into Taern’s arms just as the spear was shot. The spear punched through the armor of the soldier who had been facing him, and the momentum shot the man backward to take out some more of his compatriots.
Taern shoved at Nyx’s shoulders, throwing him back into the fray, and both of them stood back to back again, ready to take on the rest of the fucking Thenis legion.
They may have done just that, but the lokogos, who had gone down from a kick to the back of the head, made his groggy way to his feet. He stood up and looked around and realized that more than half his battalion was down and many of them would not be getting up.
Apparently even morons have sudden shafts of clarity.
“Retreat!” the man screamed. “Retreat! Retreat! To the Forum! Run on the fringes, stay out of the gentry, ignore the civilians! Retreat!”
Taern and Nyx stood back to back, hands at the ready, as half a battalion ran screaming away from two men.
As the last one disappeared around the corner, Taern felt Nyx waver, just once, at his back.
“Ready to go home, Nyx?” he asked, throat tight.
“I’m feeling a bit peckish,” Nyx replied. “It’s been a long time since that sandwich.”
They took a moment; Taern slid his knives back up into the forearm sheaths of his gauntlets, and he was pretty sure Nyx was repositioning his weapons as well. As one, the two of them turned together ran for the shadows of the nearest yard. As they emerged from the space between two older houses, Taern realized the light was turning the faintest bit gray.
“You haven’t slept in my bed in four nights, Nyx,” he whispered as they slid to the next shadow. “You owe me.”
“Can I have dinner and a bath first?” Nyx asked a little plaintively, and while Taern’s breathing was starting to recover, he still sounded desperately winded. “We can discuss it then!”
There was a rabbit along the next street, a sure indication that they were in a better area, since the monorails were no longer maintained in the shabbier parts of town. They waited in the shadows for it to pass by and then made a run for it before the next one.
“No discussion,” Taern said as they cut through someone’s side yard and then scrambled over a fence to make it to the next block. Nyx made a sound as they were scaling the fence, and Taern looked down, realizing he’d left a smear of blood on the wood as he pushed up. He was, in fact, leaving a track of it through the increasing green of the better-manicured lawns. They landed in the backyard of a house Taern recognized, one not too far from the graveyard.
Taern edged out to the front of the house and looked both ways. “Come on, Nyx. If we run between the space of the houses, we don’t have to leap any fences. And this way leads directly to the stable.”
He led and Nyx followed, and it wasn’t his imagination—Nyx left blood with every footstep across the street. When they got to the next set of shadows, he stopped.
“Where are you bleeding?” he said, keeping his voice even. “We’ve got to stop it now, or anyone will be able to follow you back.”
Nyx took a labored breath. “Ah, hells. I think the question is, where am I not bleeding, Prick Face. Did the girls make it?”
It was such a non sequitur that it took Taern a moment to figure out he was talking about Evvy and Alla. “Yes.”
Nyx was putting more and more of his weight against the wall. His armor was torn in places, the supple metal peeling back like a violated flower, and the flesh under it didn’t bear thinking about, not now when they couldn’t do a thing about it.
“Good. Have them sneak down here with a bucket of water and rinse away our tracks. None of the gardeners start work until full sunrise, not this late in the fall.”
Taern nodded. “All right, then. Let’s move. Two miles to go, Nyx. It can’t be more than that.”
They turned around and started a slow trot. By the time they’d finished one block, Nyx was down to a labored walk. By the time they passed the graveyard, he was starting to sway. Taern muttered, “Fuck it,” and wrapped his arm around his higher, broader shoulder, and Nyx put his arm around Taern’s waist.
By the time they struggled to the back of the stables, Taern was bearing most of his weight, and they barely made it into the barn before Nyx collapsed on the straw.
“Fuck,” he muttered succinctly and started to struggle with the catches at his core.
Taern ripped off his gauntlets, careful of the repositioned knives at his forearms
, and started to quick release all of the catches in the armor, throwing the pieces in a pile as he went. When he was done, the Nyx was gone and what was left of Dorjan laid in his place. His sweat-soaked hair was plastered to his head, and his mouth was swollen from what looked to be repeated blows to the face. Taern thought detachedly that he was lucky he still had his teeth, but that wasn’t the worst of it. His blood-soaked smallclothes were rent in several places, the flesh underneath the holes torn or bruised as well.
Taern sat on his knees, looking at him for a moment, trying to keep from screaming. A gentle hand at his chin stopped him, and he grasped Dorjan’s fingers and lowered his arm.
“Don’t waste your effort comforting me,” he said gruffly, concentrating on Dorjan’s eyes. “As soon as you can stand, I’m going to beat the hell out of you. I don’t need your pity.”
“I don’t need you looking me like I’m dead,” Dorjan panted. He smiled a little, the expression so incongruous that Taern almost didn’t recognize it. “Go. Go get some warm water, some disinfectant, some linen. Get me some water, oh, Bimuit, please, some water, and some fruit juice or bread. Get me a change of clothes. I don’t want to frighten anyone, Taern. Let me wash, we can bandage my wounds. I’ll get to my room under my own power.”
“Karanos, you arse! Would you stop giving orders for one bloody minute!” Taern felt his voice break. “That was really close, you know that?”
Dorjan laughed a little. “Have I thanked you yet? For hauling my bollocks out of the forge?”
“Not yet, you fucking prat.” Taern closed his eyes tightly. This was why Dorjan issued the orders—because someone had to keep his head. “I’ll be back, you hear me?”
Dorjan nodded and closed his eyes. “I trust you,” he said, still smiling, and Taern had to run out of there before he lost his composure completely and bawled.
KRISSA and Mrs. Wrinkle were up, literally pacing the kitchen floor in their dressing gowns, waiting for him. He ran in, saw them, and took a page from Dorjan’s book, issuing orders before he had a chance to get bogged down with questions. As Mrs. Wrinkle started heating the water and Krissa went off to fetch the linens and the extra clothes, he took Krissa aside and told her to ask the girls to rinse off the blood before the sun got much higher.
She looked at him, eyes wide and bruised from lack of sleep. “That’s ghastly,” she said quietly, and Taern grimaced.
“Well, wait until you see him.” They had both been young and had spent time living on the streets. “He looks worse than the last dead body I saw,” he said seriously, and she shook her head.
“Mine died of an overdose. As long as he looks better than that, I think we can manage.”
He rounded up some juice and some soft bread with honey, and by the time Krissa met him with the clothes, he was already outside with Dorjan again.
“You ready to get off your arse?” he asked as he knelt by Dorjan’s side and shook him gently.
Dorjan groaned and opened his eyes. “Right. Sure. We’ll run more races in the courtyard.”
Taern shoved an arm behind his shoulders and helped him sit up. Dorjan let out a whimper and Taern held up the juice, which he started drinking in strong, steady sips. He’d finished the cup and Taern was wondering if he could work the pitcher one handed when Krissa came bustling in with the bucket, gauze, linens, and smallclothes all balanced in her arms. She set the bucket on the ground next to Taern first and then set the rest down on the table that usually held the armor.
“Oh no, Taern,” she said briskly. “He looks much better than the last dead man I saw.”
Dorjan’s chest rose and fell. “Excellent. Glad to hear it. My lady Krissa, I do hope you won’t be offended, but I believe we’re going to have to cut my knit suit off.”
Krissa exchanged rolled eyes with Taern. “You do remember where you found us, right, Forum Master? It’s hardly been a fortnight!”
“I have no recollection,” Dorjan said with a straight face. “As far as I recall, you’re the children sent to me from one of the families in a nearby keep. Need to keep you safe, then. Precious to me.”
His voice faded with the bit of fanciful lying, and Taern used his fingers to push his forearm knife slightly out of its sheath. “C’mere, Kriss, and hold him up for me. We’d better start tending while he still has blood to keep in his body.”
Very, very carefully, he began to slice off Dorjan’s clothes.
It was both better and worse than he’d imagined. It was better, because the armor had done its job and holes in his flesh had missed anything major, but it was worse because the major parts of his body to which injury would have resulted in his death were nearly the only parts that weren’t rent, punctured, cut, abraded, or ripped.
“Karanos, Dorjan,” Taern breathed. “Would you like me to get some sandpaper and take off what skin you have left? You could start all over again; it would be like being reborn.”
“I’ll pass,” Dorjan said, grimacing. “You’re just going to have to stitch up the skin I’ve got!”
It took them more than two hours after Mrs. Wrinkle brought them the disinfected needle and thread. Krissa sewed with delicate, neat stitches, and Taern dumped disinfectant all over the cuts and cleaned out the gravel with water so hot, he kept his gauntlets on to stick his hands in the pot. Dorjan closed his eyes in the middle of all their tending—Taern wasn’t sure if he passed out or simply fell asleep, but when they were done with the stitching, they had to rouse him to sluice clean water over his head and wash him top to bottom. Then they dried him off and wrapped gauze over the cuts to keep them clean and absorb the seeping blood.
When the cleaning up was finished, he leaned on Taern and slipped into the clean smallclothes. Krissa got on his other side, and they helped him in the house. They were at the foot of the stairs when Areau came out of his room, complaining loudly.
“Krissa! Krissa, is nobody eating break—” He stopped. “—fast?” He came down the stairs, looking at Dorjan in confusion. “You’re home,” he said, and he smiled.
It was a normal, plain, sane smile, and for a moment, Taern saw a concerned friend and a boyhood companion. In that moment, he saw someone worth all of Dorjan’s pain.
“Sorry I’m late,” Dorjan said, going limp in Taern’s arms, probably under the weight of that smile.
“Yes, well, we didn’t hold dinner.” He looked at Taern and Krissa. “Are you two really necessary?”
“Without them, I’m not sure if I could make the stairs,” Dorjan said softly, and Areau did something unexpected.
“Well, they’re both doll-sized. You need a man’s help, Dori. Here, let me.”
“I’ve got him!” Taern hissed, tightening his arm around Dorjan’s waist until Dorjan’s breath caught.
Areau rolled his eyes. “You look like hell. What have you been doing, wallowing around in—”
“Buckets of Dorjan’s blood, Areau,” Krissa muttered. “And some of his own, if he’s honest. Are you going to help us or not?”
Taern had never minded being small and wiry. It had served him well in his former profession, and he knew without conceit that when he’d trained some more, he would be as fast or faster than Dorjan, because his body was built to be quick and light. But Areau was a big man, a few finger-widths taller than Dorjan, with wider shoulders, and when he stepped forward and thrust his arms under Dorjan’s knees and took his shoulders from Krissa and Taern, he carried that weight easily, making it up the stairs far faster than they could have if Dorjan had walked on his own.
Taern growled under his breath, and Krissa said, “He’s being nice, Taern, don’t be an arse. You can hardly stand up as it is.”
“I was out there for one night. Dorjan was out there for three.”
“Yes, well, he’s had more practice. When we get up to his room, how about you draw a bath for yourself. I’ll bring you up some food before you fall asleep, how’s that sound.”
Taern looked at her. She was tired, cross, and giving ord
ers just like Dorjan. “I saw M,” he said out of nowhere, thinking that the bath and the food sounded heavenly.
“What’d she say?”
“She said he’s not just mine. He’s bigger than that. The city needs him.”
Krissa sighed. “M’s very wise.” They reached the landing then, and Taern hurried to pass Areau so he could go draw back the covers. It was something, he thought, feeling pathetic. Anything so Dorjan would know that he might belong to the city, but Taern belonged to him.
Almost Everything
DORJAN startled awake, reaching for his knife. “Taern?”
“Sh,” Krissa murmured. “He’s asleep next to you, do you see?”
Dorjan turned and there he was, curled up under the blankets, his black mop of hair visible but nothing more. His form under the sheets was rising and falling, and Dorjan put his hand out on top of it so he could feel the boy’s breath.
The moment he felt it, he fell back against the pillows with a groan. “Bimuit—how long was I unconscious?”
“A couple of hours, no more. Areau insisted we take turns to watch over you for the first day. Said he’d never seen your wounds this bad. Is he right?”
Dorjan groaned, and tried to remember. “They’ve been worse,” he confessed, thinking of the increased security immediately after his first exploit with the assassin. “But I was younger, and Areau was apparently more self-involved.” He’d found a chirurgeon who had doctored his hurts for enough silver to leave the city.
“Well, I’m sorry, then, if you’ve been hurt worse than this,” Krissa said softly. “Here, drink some more juice. We’ve laced it with some painkiller, and it will help replace the blood volume you lost.” She shuddered. “I’ve helped women give birth, you know. I’ve doctored hurts after street fights. I’ve seen dead men in the gutter. I’ve never seen that much blood. I don’t know how you’re still awake, much less talking to me.”