Provenance

by Alex Archer

  So fast was the cut the swordsman probably felt no pain. Initially. She heard him gasp in surprise.

  His sword clanged tip-first off the blue-tiled floor behind him. He began to scream as terminal agony landed on him in an avalanche of pain.

  Annja continued the forehand stroke, bending forward with the strong muscles of her back and flat belly. Momentum and the blade’s sharpness buried her sword a hand’s-breadth into the second swordsman’s side, just above his left hipbone.

  She caught the hilt with her left hand, then thrust. The man howled as she drove the tip deeper. She felt its point tear through the skin of his lower right back.

  It took no more than the strength of her arms and a twist of her shoulder to slice the blade free into the air. The man fell, thrashing and shrieking.

  The man at the foot of the bed had fallen back. His mouth was an oval of horrified blackness against the dark face beneath his turban. Annja sprang to her feet. She ran down the bed at him, sword upraised.

  The man flung his heavy blade to defend himself against Annja’s downstroke. Steel rang on steel. The man’s sword sounded a second, reverberating musical note as it flew from his hands.

  He reeled back. Annja leapt off the end of the bed. She swung her sword around, out, up. Then she slashed downward and right to slash his arm.

  He looked down at his bleeding arm. Then he looked at her and wailed in horror.

  Annja went to the door and yanked it open. A man dressed in dark silk swung around to face her, sword in hand. His eyes went wide as he beheld a woman a head taller than he, confronting him from the open door with a sword in her hand.

  It was the last thing he saw. She ran him through.

  From above came shouts, the clash of weapons. Wira, Annja thought. A fresh adrenaline spike flashed like lightning through her blood and across her brain. Pulling the sword free she ran toward the sounds of battle.

  Her charge took her up a flight of stairs carpeted in green and gold. A pair of palace guardsmen in tailored khaki battle dress lay facedown by the door to Wira’s chambers in spreading pools of blood. From inside came shouts, the clang of steel on steel.

  Hair flying, Annja vaulted the corpses and charged through the door. A pair of men in black silk clothing with green turbans and black cloth wound about their faces stood just inside with their backs to her. With a one-handed slash, diagonally left to right, and a two-hand return cut at the level of Annja’s own shoulders both men went down.

  She had already taken in the scene beyond them in a flash—a large bed at the chamber’s far end, its clothes in disarray. The Sultan, bare-chested in brown silk pajama pants, stood his ground with a long scimitarlike blade in his right hand and a cutlasslike sword in his left. Both blades gleamed darkly in the yellow glow from bedside-table lamps, one of which had been upset and lay on the lush-carpeted floor. The young Sultan’s hair, unbound, hung about his shoulders in a dark cascade.

  Three figures sprawled about him, their blood seeping into the priceless rugs. A number of others circled in the shadows of the room’s perimeter like a pack of wolves closing on their kill. Annja suddenly widened her eyes and sprinted recklessly forward right through the circling attackers—and straight at the Sultan.

  From the corner of his eye Wira had seen the sword flash, saw the two unsuspecting terrorists fall. He turned toward Annja and her own eyes flew wide in amazement.

  She ran past him. The assassin who had crept in through the window by the head of the great bed launched himself at the Sultan’s unprotected back, his sword upraised in both hands.

  Annja simply pushed her sword out in front of her as she reached the foot of the bed. Descending from his heroic leap, the terrorist fell right onto its tip. It slid through silk and skin and flesh with a deceptively soft crunching sound.

  She saw the eyes go huge and round above the black facial wrapping as his momentum carried him down, impaling him on the blade. She grabbed the hilt with both hands, steering it to the right of her rib cage as his weight smashed into her and knocked her back and down. She heard floor tiles crack as the pommel hit.

  The black-clad man fell full atop her. The air rushed out of her. The light went out of his astonished, pain-filled eyes as he died.

  Annja’s blood was so supercharged with adrenaline that even having the air forced from her lungs could not slow her down. She drew her knees up beneath the man on her chest. He was dead weight, but he was small and wiry. She had six inches and a good twenty pounds on him.

  She got her bare soles against his chest. The silk squished unpleasantly. She drove upward with all the strength of her long, lean-muscled legs. The corpse was driven right up the straight length of her blade and off to fall to one side. She felt a flash like a burn along her right shin and realized she’d cut herself on the sword.

  She paid no mind. Arching her back she jackknifed herself to her feet. As her hair flew up in a cloud about her head, shot through with red highlights from the faint light, she saw a man charging in from her left.

  She spun to face him, flinging up her sword. His blade clanged against the flat of hers. His eyes blazed with fury.

  She whipped her shin up between his legs. The kick lifted him up onto his toes. The angry eyes bugged out. She whipped her blade free and cut him down as he bent over himself.

  Glancing back over her left shoulder Annja saw two men rushing at Wira. He swung the terrorist’s sword he held in his left hand up counterclockwise, knocking aside the weapon hacking at his head. His own sword slashed downward right to left across the masked face.

  The second would-be assassin rushed forward, a step behind his comrade. Wira pulled the sword held in his right hand to his right across his body as his left-hand blade rang against the sword the black-clad man was swinging in an overhand stroke. He guided the cutlass down and to his right, pivoting his hips clockwise.

  His right-hand sword swung up and chopped down. It split the black turban and the skull beneath. The man dropped to his knees and toppled to the side.

  The nocturnal killers fell back to regroup. Wira glanced back over his bare shoulder at Annja. He showed her a somewhat manic grin.

  “You do have unlooked-for talents, Ms. Creed,” he said.

  They were still outnumbered seven to two by the black-swathed swordsmen. “I’ve got this side,” she said tersely.

  Back-to-back they fought as the assassins darted in, tried to strike. Annja chopped down to cut through a blade slashing at her side. The swordsman fell over backward to avoid her counterattack. It worked—she didn’t dare break away from the young Sultan for fear of being surrounded. The fallen assassin kicked himself backward. Then he caught up a sword dropped by one of his fellows who no longer had a need for it and rejoined the fray. But cautiously, this time, Annja noted. He was hanging around the edges as if awaiting an opening.

  She heard steel ring behind her. Wira grunted. A man screamed. She dared not look behind as two men lunged for her, one from her left, the other coming around to the side of the bed to attack from as far to her right as he could.

  She parried a slash from the man to her left, shaving a slice from the belly of his blade but failing to sever it. The man to her right thrust at her vulnerable side. Anticipating his attack she was already wheeling toward him. She parried with the flat of her sword, blade down. The cutlass slid just past her hip.

  Cat-quick, the man drew back his sword. Annja sensed more than saw the attacker to her left moving on her again. She pivoted, whipping up the point of her sword, stepping into her assailant and thrusting.

  She caught him with arm upraised, the sword slid into his belly. The man screamed but brought his arm forward and down in a desperate hack at Annja’s skull. She caught him right beneath the elbow of his sword arm with her left hand. Then stepping back with her right foot she torqued her hips sharply clockwise again, using her assailant’s own momentum to hurl him past her by his arm and the three feet of steel thrust through his stomach. He slammed into h
is partner as that man attacked. Annja ripped her sword free as the two men fell in a tangle.

  Another assassin charged. She turned and engaged him in a crashing, ringing exchange of cuts.

  The door, which apparently one of the intruders had shut, flew open. Annja looked toward it even as she fenced with her foe. Men in battle dress burst in. They carried MP-5 machine pistols.

  The uniformed men shouted in Malay. Annja parried high. Then she released her sword and front-kicked her opponent in the chest. He staggered back. The sword vanished into thin air.

  The palace guardsmen opened fire. Their guns were shatteringly loud in the bedchamber. The man Annja had kicked backward was chopped down. The assassins still on their feet died.

  The man who had fallen under his skewered comrade threw the body off him, leapt up and tried to bolt to the open window. As he reached it bursts of gunfire plucked at the back of his black silk blouse. He threw up his hands at the impacts. Then he toppled forward, out the window, to fall screaming to the lawn three stories below.

  A guardsman ran to the window to look out after him. Others came crowding in through the door. Some moved swiftly to examine the fallen assassins. Others stopped to stare openmouthed at Annja.

  “What?” she said.

  “Look at yourself,” Wira said, sounding amused.

  Annja stood in a T-shirt and underwear, her long legs fully exposed. She was covered in blood.

  She looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Well,” she said, “it’s the latest fashion.”

  27

  Like the bedroom, Annja found the Sultan’s adjoining bathroom large and luxuriously appointed. But not hopelessly gaudy or decadent, as she expected a South China Sea potentate’s bathroom to be.

  She showered for a long time. It took time for the multiple jets of water, which she had turned to stinging heat and strength, to flush away the sensation of having her skin covered in blood.

  When she emerged from the shower stall she found a fluffy white robe and fresh towels had been placed on the green marble counter by soft-footed servants. Wrapped in a sense of floating unreality, she toweled herself mostly dry, put on the robe and wrapped her hair in another towel.

  Then she emerged. The room had been completely cleaned. Sprays of fresh flowers, including lilacs, had been placed in niches on the wall, in planters on the floor and on most horizontal surfaces. They did a startlingly effective job of masking the harsh scents of disinfectants—which in turn did a pretty fair job of masking other, even less congenial smells.

  The stained rugs were gone. The tile beneath cleaned up readily. The bedclothes were so fresh she could smell them. She suspected the very mattress beneath, huge as it was, had been replaced. With a little bit of express-elevator sensation in her stomach it occurred to her to suspect that somewhere in the great gleaming onion-domed pile of the palace, or the vaults beneath, was a storeroom stacked with replacement mattresses wrapped neatly in plastic, for just such eventualities as this. Cleanup after failed assassination attempts.

  And, she supposed, those that succeeded as well. That was one thing that decisively linked the mightiest monarch to the most miserable beggar—when they fell, life went on. The major difference was the amount of energy other people put into pretending otherwise before getting on with it.

  At the big bed’s foot sat Wira. He wore new pajama bottoms, these of pale orange silk. His hair, still unbound, hung to either side of his face like heavy dark curtains.

  As she came into the bedroom he raised his head and smiled at her. His smile had a haunted quality to it, as did his eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” she asked, approaching. She got within six feet of him and stopped. She was unsure how to proceed. She felt cleansed but extremely drained.

  He laughed softly. “Saving my life. It was a very professional attack. The intruders were inside the grounds in force before anyone discovered them. They left teams to delay my bodyguards getting to me. Almost long enough.”

  She came and sat next to him on the bed. That seemed harmless enough. He certainly didn’t draw away.

  “Why did they use swords?” she asked. She didn’t bother asking how the assassins had gotten in undetected—it was an inside job. That was so apparent there seemed little point in bringing it up. Rooting out the traitor or traitors, and dealing with them—that was his problem, his and Purnoma’s. She was pretty sure she didn’t want to know the details, anyway.

  “The langgai tinggang,” he said. “That translates as, ‘the longest tail feather of the hornbill.’ Very poetic, really. It’s a type of Dayak parang. You’re familiar with the Dayak?”

  She nodded. “Borneo tribesfolk,” she said. “Some of them tend to be pretty resistant to the modern world.”

  She could feel his warmth. She smelled soap on clean masculine skin, realized he’d showered as well. She felt honored he had let her use his personal facility while he went elsewhere, even if it was one door down the hall, as was likely. The odd, courtly courtesy seemed so typical of him.

  “You’re very knowledgeable. Although I suppose it is your line of work. And ‘resistant to the modern world’ is a nice way of putting it.”

  “Being quick with a euphemism about native peoples is one of the skills we learn in anthropology if we don’t want to be ostracized. Most times it’s justified. Sometimes it goes too far. Were these men Dayaks, then?”

  He shook his head. His hair brushed his shoulders. They were wide shoulders, she noticed, with well-defined musculature beneath bronze skin.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Sword of the Faith. For some reason that’s the weapon they’ve adopted as their literal sword of the faith. They fight with swords as a point of honor. As do my own forces, as you’ve seen.”

  He smiled a lopsided smile. “In a strange way, I believe the assassins were honoring me. Despite my embrace of Western ways, measured though it is, I am apparently worthy of a most traditional death.”

  “I’m a little surprised your guards didn’t try to take any prisoners,” Annja said.

  “They did,” he said. “The guards in your room. Neither in particularly good shape. The Sons of the Sword, as they call themselves, do not surrender. Nor do they talk. As I’m sure you realize, torture’s no use for getting actual information. The mere threat works fine on the weak-willed—but Sword of the Faith weeds those out in ways you probably could imagine, but shouldn’t care to, I think. For the others—” He shrugged. “Torture can serve for punishment, to terrorize others, or to generate false testimony.”

  “I know,” she said. She didn’t meet his eyes. For some reason she thought of Cyrus St. Clair, his narrow balding head, his pale indeterminate eyes, his white Panama hat.

  “Also,” the Sultan said, “I suspect my guards felt chagrined that they were so late to the scene—especially since they found their work being done for them by a foreign woman. A very beautiful one. With a Crusader-style broadsword.”

  He looked at her curiously. “Where did you get that, Annja?”

  “What do you mean? I managed to wrestle one of the swords off the assassins who came to my room. I’ve practiced sword-fighting a lot. It’s one of the reasons I decided to become an archaeologist. Even if my specialty did wind up being documents. And really—”

  He smiled gently. “I know what I saw,” he said softly.

  Annja shook her head and tried to make her eyes go ingénue-wide. “Maybe I grabbed it off a wall. Events are a bit of a blur.”

  “Annja, dear,” he said, “there are no straight-bladed, cross-hilted swords in this palace. I may be a modernist and a moderate, but I am a Muslim. To us, the cross-hilted broadsword is the dominant symbol of Crusader aggression. And all this begs the question, where did the mysterious thing go?”

  She looked him in the eye. She noticed they had long lashes. Beautiful eyes. She felt her cheeks grow warm and her breath grow short. Her skin took on a tingling sensation.

  “Does it really matt
er?” she asked, more breathlessly than she intended.

  “No,” he said. His own voice had dropped half an octave. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

  He reached for her. Drew her to him with a hand on her shoulder. She turned to meet him.

  Their mouths joined in a kiss. It went on and on.

  When they broke away she stood before him.

  He took her hand, kissed her palm. “I have to go,” he said. “A helicopter waits to take me to my flotilla, which is already under way. I won’t see you until I get back. You may stay here as long as you wish. You’ve the run of the palace, my dear.”

  “Be careful,” she said, before rushing out of the room feeling a flood of emotions.

  Because she had learned the value of rest the hard way, Annja actually went back to sleep as Wira went off to dress and then head out as the first rosy light stretched its fingers over the city and the harbor overlooked by the bedroom window. She slept no more than an hour. When she opened her eyes, not exactly refreshed but at least more rested, Wira was gone.

  She had her own arrangements to make.

  Twelve hours later, she was slipping over the gunwales of the power junk she had chartered, into a black Zodiac boat bobbing in the chop as a swollen red sun plopped into the dark Celebes Sea.

  28

  The weather scans showed a new storm system spinning its deceptively slow way south of the Philippines out of the wide Pacific. Annja didn’t think it would reach them before morning. It would leave time. She hoped.

  Waving goodbye to the worried-looking Philippine captain and crew whose dark faces lined the rail, she throttled up the outboard engine and putted away. Kind of sweet of them to worry about me, she thought, since there’s nothing to connect me to their vessel. Some activity in accounts under names other than the one on her birth certificate had led to a pure cash transaction to hire a fast-powered craft out of the fishing town of Tawi-Tawi, off toward the end of the Philippines’ long, narrow Sulu Archipelago near Rimba Perak’s neighbor Sabah.