Steelflower at Sea

by Lilith Saintcrow

  At intervals—sometimes shorter, sometimes longer—a shadow flitted over one edge of the rooftop or another, or drifted past in the street. D’ri or Atyarik, swimming silent as fish in dark water. Any assassin worth the name would look for the silent knife to match their pacing, but the kitchen chimney was a fool’s place to linger. For one thing, it left the entire front of the house out of sight.

  Even the great masters of the Guild, however, would underestimate a s’tarei. Or an adai who could thin the walls between her mind and the great cacophony of others thinking, breathing, and feeling to sense fierce determination or cold expectance. Shivers ran down my back, muscles gripping in waves as I held myself grimly to the task. The taih’adai could teach me the basics of controlling Power, but practice was the only way to achieve any mastery. There were still the final starmetal spheres to endure, but Janaire had said nothing of them since we made landfall.

  Many thoughts kept me company that long night. I could not fend off every assassin in the city, for one. For another, now that Ninefinger had been beaten into the street, he was in no little danger. I did not care overmuch, but I had not been able to question him. He might have been able to shed some light on the exact dimensions of the purse sent to buy Redfist’s death, and once I knew those borders, I would be able to decide how to make leaving the giant alone a more attractive proposition.

  The added benefit of interrogating the blond barbarian and possibly making his clan-name Eightfingers, or Five, was not to be dismissed, either.

  I also wondered what Redfist thought, his pallet in the cellar less comfortable than his room but certainly more secure. Puff-poison could be breathed through a reed under the door, but between Janaire’s healing and my admittedly imperfect knowledge of the toxins each throat-cutting clan liked to use, he stood a good chance of surviving even that. Hala, that black death, was expensive, and it was unlikely they would use it this early in the game.

  For such it is, when a thief or assassin sets herself to guard a precious thing, instead of taking it. That the stakes are higher than banhua does not make it less a board with rules to bend or flout to win.

  You must know the pattern before you may change the dance.

  My attention constricted, pinpointing an inky, dangerous dart approaching the villa. I did not tense, my breathing did not alter, but my pulse rose slightly, my eyelids fluttering.

  D’ri. The taran’adai bloomed inside me, a secret, almost-painful flower, a whisper blending with the wind. ’Ware, they come. I hoped it was his watch, and I was not waking him. The south wall held two blots, their quick feet avoiding sharp glassine shards set in mortar along the top to dissuade climbers less graceful or lucky; I located two more at one end of the street, loping easily for our villa. Last but not least, an almost-invisible shape blurred along the roofline, and if not for Janaire’s teaching I would have had only uneasy instinct to warn me.

  Travel-boots were no use and I had no glove-shoes, so it had taken me a half-candlemark to fashion felted strips, wrapped just tightly enough and tied in a particular manner over the instep, up the ankle as well. In winter, the Danhai wrap their feet thus before thrusting them into their boots, and it was a highly prized skill among both the army and the irregulars.

  You have to kill enough of them to study the wrappings, of course.

  I blurred silently along, bent double and parallel to the roofline, and felt D’ri’s answering warmth. No time for speaking, even in the taran’adai’s quickness, for I was already unfolding to catch the roof-runner—perhaps a lookout, or perhaps the main assassin, who could tell just yet—from behind. Roof-tiles shifted, slight betraying noises, and he had half-turned before I was on him, blackened knife sinking into the kidney with disconcerting milk-clot ease. Twisting, wrenching it free, my other hand cupping a muffled chin and yanking it aside, force transferred as his knees buckled and my mouth full of sourness. Hit with a clatter, breath forced from my lungs and the entire world wheeling, knife free and dragged across his throat, my legs snakelike around his waist as if we were lovers. Hot spray of blood pattering the damp tiles, he turned to deadweight and I pushed. Now I had to get free before he carried me over the edge—a crushing blow on my knee, my breath sucking in hard and harsh, kicking the small of his back and my fingernails splitting as I clawed at tiles, shedding momentum.

  Eyes closed, a red mist rising behind my lids as a low deadly whistle clove the air. D’ri, night-hunting. A soft, choked gurgle from the south wall—Atyarik, perhaps? Two s’tarei, one with a bow, could wreak deadly havoc on invaders. As long as I kept the roof clear—

  Hit me hard, driving me up the slope and knocking my breath free for a single gasp-lunging moment. I had thrown myself into a crouch, so she did not manage to plunge her own black blade into my gut; something metal went skitter-chiming away. A breath of sickening annua smell—dear gods, the root would make her unholy fast, and now I knew it was female, because her labored breathing passed through a throat my size. I twisted her wrist, heard a crackle as bones ground together in my grasp, and threw my head back, hitting the bridge of her nose with the much-harder curve of my own skull. Padded by my braids and the masking fabric over her mouth, it was nonetheless a painful blow, and no doubt she saw pain-constellations whirling in a brief spangling dark.

  Lunging for my feet, fabric slipping and toes splaying, one of my toenails tearing with a brief hot pain, whirling to get my arm up as she stamped, hard, her glove-boots much better than mine and the inner edges decked with sharpwire. A clatter of greatbow pulleys, carrying in the chill damp air, and a dull splat a good threepace from me, a bubbling, evil green smell spreading. I inhaled, pitching aside again as her foot flicked—Mother’s tits but she was fast—and the spread of the dolquieua oil higher on the slope would force me down unless I could get past it.

  The thought of landing on the wall—or the courtyard’s flags and stone benches—brought me up and just as quickly down again, rolling past the greenish splotch. Calculating trajectory, likely angles—I ran crabwise up the slope, hoping the shifting shadows would throw off the bowman’s aim. More clatters and soft cries from below, stinging in my eyes—D’ri’s sweat, and my own. I had retained my own knife, thank the Moon, and dodged again instinctively. I felt the arrow pass, with an iron head instead of a friable poison-carrying one, and it plowed up a spray of tile-chips that stung as I dove through them, landing on my back with my left foot flicking up to help the female assassin on her leap. She had meant to close with me again, but I had vanished, and now my toes sank into her midriff. Had I been wearing boots I could have perhaps ruptured something instead of merely deflecting her a few critical degrees. She hit with a snap and a crunch, and I drew in my knees, then flung my feet out and was upright with a gut-tearing effort. Another thunking sound, and I threw myself backward. We were moving too quickly, or perhaps luck was with me, for that arrow—another slow, poison-freighted, fragile bulb at its tip—smacked into my opponent.

  Who let out the only scream of the roof-games, a high stuttering cry as the dolquieua chewed through fabric and flesh. It cannot puncture tile, and water will wash it into irrelevance, but in its first few moments in the open air after an impact, the “eating moss” is awful indeed.

  Kaia? D’ri, a flood of concern almost knocking me from my perch. I shelved it, sliding now, both feet out, slamming into the body with a jolt that robbed me of momentum. It tumbled, loose-jointed and still screaming, at the angle that would send it down into the courtyard.

  If she survived the fall, and survived the poison for a little while, I would question her. At the moment I was horribly exposed on the long incline, temporarily at a standstill, and there was an archer who had this part of the roof under the arc. Another effort, a small sound escaping me as I heaved myself aside, one of my knives jammed back in its sheath and my hand flicking up to catch my dotani’s hilt.

  The metal would glimmer, and throw off the archer’s aim.

  I plunged over the ridgebeam, the pul
ley clatter and twang of another bowstring releasing roughening my back with cold fearsweat. Dropping down and sliding, right foot snapping out to break the knee of the third roofrunner, probably the most experienced of the lot and almost invisible. For a moment I did not know why I had kicked, and my dotani sang a low note of air-cleaving. A solid tchuk, carving the fingers off this wiry deathbringer’s right hand, and to do him credit, he did not scream, not even when I tumbled him down into the ragged, winter-ready garden and Atyarik’s cruelly efficient blade. I finished on hands and knees, my sides heaving and my stomach a ball of roiling, and my dotani slid back into its home with reflexive, habitual speed.

  That was when the screaming began, so I did the only thing I could, tile-edges scraping my palms as I caught the edge of the roof, feetfirst through the deliberately unlatched shutter to Redfist’s room. I expected to shatter glass, but at least one assassin had taken the invitation, and the noise within was Janaire’s voice, high and terrified, breaking on a choking gasp.

  “Kaia he has a knife—” She clutched at her left arm as if it pained her, staggering into the wall next to the fireplace, the assassin howling as Power-fueled flames crawled over his clothing. Steaming smoke gouted, a sickeningly appetizing smell of roasting filled the room as this assassin beat ineffectually at the twisting, hissing tongues. A small shape in the corner—dark hair, too tiny to be an assassin or—

  I ducked the flaming man’s blind lunge, weight dropping into my back leg and the other flicking up and out, sinking into his stomach again. He promptly folded in half and began to vomit, water and other matter spewing from nose and mouth. “Douse the fire!” I yelled in G’mai, and to her credit, even with her wounded arm she had the presence of mind to obey.

  Smoke filled my nose, stung my eyes, I had the measure of the half-charred assassin now and tapped him behind the knee. He went down hard; it was a moment’s work to immobilize him and snap, “Cloth, rope, something! Something to tie him up with!”

  Janaire leaned against the wall, deathly pale, her braids askew. She was still dressed—what in the name of the gods was she doing in here?

  The moan from the corner froze me in place, and it was a good thing the burnt assassin was only semiconscious.

  For the small, wrongly-twisted shape in the corner was Diyan.

  Answers To Give

  “I told you. I told you both.” I tossed Atyarik a roll of bandaging-cloth, and examined Diyan’s side again, rolling him slightly aside on the small table that had survived the melee in Redfist’s room. Already the bruising had begun, flesh suffusing with blood in protest. The cut was ill-looking, but the boy was not gutsplit, thank the Moon and every foreign god. It looked painful. “Bar your door, stay there, do not come out unless your window is breached, I said as much!”

  The boy’s breathing was shallow and hollow, and his eyelids fluttered. I cursed in Shainakh, in Pesh, and to finish it off, wished ill on the assassin’s mother in rolling shipboard slang. Steadied my hands and sponged the blood away, carefully, wincing as the little one inhaled sharply. The broiled assassin was a lump on the floor, bound hand and foot and retreating into unconsciousness.

  He had to know what awaited him was likely to be painful, too.

  “He heard a noise.” A few dots of blood stippled Janaire’s flawless cheek, and her braids were mussed. She winced as Atyarik tested her arm. Probably broken, and it served her right. “I said not to...ssss, Mother Moon have mercy...” She sounded very, very young. “I said not to, but he unbolted the door.”

  “Stupid little farrat.” The G’mai words escaped my mouth whole, with a tender inflection that hurt my throat. No discoloration at the edges of the wound. Just the blood, and that horrific bruising. “Cha, little one, be still.” I slapped his hand down and away as he feebly struck out. The Vulfentown slang sat uneasily on my tongue. Dare I send for a Temple healer? Janaire could tend her own gods-be-damned arm; I gathered the boy’s weight in my arms and heaved. He was so limp, and had put on more weight—now, I could barely haul him from the table. Carrying him through the streets—I could hail a legwheel, perhaps?

  My frustration spiked, my hands gluing themselves to Diyan’s side as the boy flailed, perhaps in response to the pain of being touched. One slackened fist clipped the bridge of my nose with uncoordinated, impossible-to-divert speed, and the blow flung my head back. Now I was the one seeing constellation-patterns behind my lids, and a torrent of foul language spilled from my mouth, my hands burning, burning as if thrust into a well-made fire. Fingers cramped, bearing down, the darkness beating over my sight with soft downy wings.

  Slice, flesh parting along the blade, and the small body’s training made him drop away from the cold touch of steel. Perhaps it saved his life, but the blow came from nowhere, a kick right on the wound, tearing and clotting and bruising and the pain all through him, could not breathe could not breathe notbreathe notbreatheNOTBREATHE—

  I spilled to the floor, lungs laboring fruitlessly, a gigantic cramp seizing my left side. The damage ran deeper than I had suspected, and everything blackened, a faint sense of motion and noise far away.

  CRACK. A massive impact smashed into me, and I surfaced with a jolt, my side aching and heat roaring through my wounded cheek. Atyarik, his lean fist knotted in my jerkin, nodded, and dropped me next to a still-steaming, motionless almost-corpse.

  The s’tarei had slapped me, to shock me back into myself.

  Janaire’s soft weeping mixed with Diyan’s sobs. The boy all but wailed, and Janaire sought to hold him with her good arm, seeking to comfort. Atyarik felt at her arm again, and I closed my eyes, heart and lungs functioning again, everything else protesting in the strongest possible terms. I had not filled my trousers, though, as some do when death brushes past.

  A sellsword is grateful for such things.

  I pushed myself up, shakily, on hands and knees.

  “This will hurt,” Atyarik said, very softly, in G’mai. His adai did not flinch.

  “Do it.” The words broke on a sob, and he made a swift, violent motion to seat the bone in its proper space. Power rasped and slid against the parts of me still raw from the healing, and my forehead hit wooden floorboards. My small piping cry was lost in the larger noise, Janaire’s scream swallowed halfway and Diyan’s frightened howl bespeaking an ecstasy of fear.

  I did not blame him.

  The wood was cold, and felt good against my fevered palms and forehead. I uncurled, slowly, cautiously. Other than an angry ache in my side and the nips and aches of roofside combat mouthing my limbs, I was well enough. My face hurt, and I would no doubt look like a painted Rijiin courtesan in a little while.

  A cricket-buzz, something tickling inside my head. Darik’s voice, very small. Kaia?

  Are there more? Pushing the words through the icy fog surrounding me was difficult, and the ringing left in their wake was disconcerting. I shuddered, forced myself to stillness. It had not been this difficult to reach him before, but then again, we had not tried to communicate through walls.

  Or had we? I could not remember just at the moment.

  A fuzzy sense of worry, strained through multiple layers of cloth like altan dye. None. For now.

  Keep watch. It was unfair to place the burden upon him, but at the moment I could not move.

  It took a short while before I could. When I straightened, wincing at the hot metal buried in my side, I saw Diyan on the table, his upper half resting against Janaire, who steadied him with her unbroken right arm. Atyarik had his hand clamped around the break on her left—high up, the large bone in the upper part of the limb—and was sweating, as well. A sheen stood out on Janaire’s forehead; she stared up at her s’tarei, trust and open hope stamped on her soft riverland features.

  She could have died, had she not had the presence of mind to light the last assassin on fire.

  Diyan’s big dark eyes shone with tears. He in turn gazed adoringly up at the Gavridar lowlander, snot bubbling on his upper lip, and he perhaps t
hought she had healed him. Well enough.

  “Move them.” My tone was a harsh croak. “Down to the cellar, with Redfist. Guard them.”

  Atyarik nodded. Janaire shut her eyes, Power feathering lightly over her arm, sinking in. With Atyarik to steady her, she could perform a deeper healing and be well in a few days, the bone mended seamlessly.

  I watched him half-carry Janaire, Diyan leaning against her other side as if he had been at mead, and did not move to help. Followed the sounds of them moving through the house with my eyes closed, my entire body a taut string, and heard other creaks and stealthy movement, too clumsy to be one of the Guild or the clans.

  When I opened my eyes, Gavrin peered at me from the half-open door. I exhaled sharply.

  How was I to protect them if they would not listen?

  “I heard...” He was deathly pale. “Kaia...”

  “Go back to your room, or come in and help me.” I took stock of my weapons, my feet, my aching muscles. I would have to hope more dancers would not arrive for a short while.

  I bent to the steaming ruin on the floor, told my back it was simply going to have to accept the punishment I was about to deal both it and the rest of me, and began to think about how I could prop this lucky assassin in a chair.

  Before he died, he had answers to give.

  No Songs Of This

  I am not an artist of pain. But I survived two winters of the Danhai campaign, and when my home is invaded and those under my protection wounded, I am willing to match anything I saw in those icy or broiling but always violent seasons. Gavrin vomited once, when I cut the man’s jerkin and shirt free and the full extent of the burns became visible. Even in the low firelight, the lacerated, steaming meat was enough to unseat any stomach’s cargo.

  Fortunately—I suppose—once the man regained consciousness and began moaning, the burns were worth more than any amount of additional havoc I could wreak on his physical frame. He told me, between gasps and pleadings, everything I needed to know, and when I was certain there was no more, I applied pressure on both sides of the large pulse in his neck until he was unconscious again, then slit his throat. It was a measure of mercy; the burns were fatal, and their murder of him would be far more protracted and painful.