“Privy,” Honey prompted.
“No good. They’re keeping us stuck on this floor, though skies know how that trick of plumbing is being handled. And the window there is open, no glass to let the air in, but just about as wide as my forearm. Even if we could squeeze through, I doubt Enard and Tibal would make it, and there’s no way the guards would allow us to enter the privy one by one, each one vanishing just before the next. No. The privy’s out.”
“Fight?” Honey’s gaze had locked on the spoon in her hand. Ripka had seen the shiv Honey could carve from a wooden spoon. She’d hate to see what damage the woman could cause with a metal one.
Ripka winced. “I’d rather not harm the guards. They’re just doing their jobs, and not badly. And there’s no telling the positions of the other guards. We only know for sure that there are two in the hall – that might be all we have to worry about, or the other four could be patrolling the building, or waiting for us downstairs. Too risky.”
“Sick?”
“Now there’s a thought. Enard has some apothik training, just the usual first aid variety, but so do I, and they’d know that well enough as they’re all aware I was a watch-captain. I bet Tibal could fake an illness, but what we’d really need is an injury – something bloody enough to freak them out and send them into a panic. Make them run for an apothik without realizing they’ve split their numbers. Then we’d be two-to-four, or maybe three-to-four, and have surprise on our side. I’d prefer if they didn’t notice we were gone for a while, but that’s not looking likely now… Hmm. Yeah, that could work, but how to fake the injury? You got any sauce on that plate that looks red enough?”
“No,” Honey said, and stabbed herself in the thigh with the curved end of her spoon.
“Fuck!”
The tray of food flipped and scattered across the floor as Ripka lunged to her feet. Hot blood pumped down the woman’s thigh, bare below her nightshift, and pooled on the rug. Bubbles of blood popped, making a little gurgling sound, around the half-embedded shovel of the spoon, but the flow wasn’t strong enough to indicate an arterial strike.
“What the everloving fuck.” Ripka grabbed a napkin from the spilled tray and shoved it against Honey’s wound, trying to staunch the flow. It didn’t help much. They needed to get that spoon out of her, and the wound cleaned and packed with wool and salve before they could stitch it and bind it, and then –
Honey closed her hand over Ripka’s. “Better call the guards.”
There wasn’t the slightest tremor of pain in her voice, no beads of sweat-shock marred her brow. The crazy woman was just as calm as she’d been a moment before, throwing out ideas to spark Ripka’s imagination. Honey popped a greasy piece of bread in her mouth and chewed, slowly.
“You’re insane, you know that?”
Honey shrugged, though her smile was embarrassed.
No time to admonish the woman. She’d gone ahead and carved an opportunity for them all out of her own flesh, and it was up to Ripka to make the most of it. She scrambled to her feet and looked around. Honey kept on nibbling at her breakfast, calm as could be, the pool of blood spreading steadily around her, but not at a life-threatening rate.
They’d both been wearing plain linen nightshifts, and the bright blood looked rather dramatic against the beige cloth. Ripka tore long strips from one of the blankets and stashed them on the other side of the bed, where the guards would be slow to notice them. With the bloodied napkin clutched in one fist, she took a breath, worked up a false hysteria, and flung herself at the door, pounding with both fists.
“Help! Help! She’s bleeding out!”
Curses in the hall, the tromp of boots and the rattle of the key in the lock. The door jerked open and Ripka stumbled back from the guard pushing toward her, but not too quickly. She wanted the guard, the same woman who’d overseen their breakfast delivery, to get a good long look at Ripka’s blood-smattered clothes, and the dripping rag she held.
“What in the skies?”
“It’s Honey!” Ripka yelled straight into the woman’s face, working up a good tremble to add to the disturbance. The guard pushed Ripka aside and her eyes widened at the sight of Honey who had, thankfully, stopped calmly eating her breakfast.
“Ow,” Honey said.
“Pitshit.” The guard ducked back out into the hall and called at the top of her lungs, “Apothik!”
“Get Tibal!” Ripka snapped. “He was in the Fleet, he has first aid training!”
The guard didn’t even blink. She thrust a finger at the guard manning the door to the boys’ room. “Get those men over here. We’ve got an injury.”
“What in the pits happened?” The other guard jangled his keys as he struggled to get the door open.
“Fucked if I know.”
“I fell,” Honey said. Ripka thanked the skies that her voice was too soft, and the guards too frazzled, for them to have heard her half-hearted explanation.
To keep from being noticed, Ripka hung back as the guards ushered Tibal and Enard, still in their bedclothes, blinking into the women’s room. They did not stay confused for long. Tibal caught sight of Honey seeping blood, her hand half-heartedly clasped against the wound, and sucked air through his teeth so fast he whistled.
Enard, however, went pale as a sheet the second he spied Ripka huddling between the two beds, her nightshift a mess of blood. He regained his composure in a breath, crossed to her side and took her by the shoulders, holding her at arm’s length to get a look at the damage.
“Are you hurt?”
“None of this is mine.”
He cringed at the implication, sparing a glance back over his shoulder to Honey. She’d taken up humming softly under her breath while Tibal tried to figure out the best way to extract the spoon from her leg.
“What in the pits happened here?”
Ripka slid her gaze slowly, pointedly, to the pile of sliced rags on the floor alongside the bed. Enard nodded.
“This looks bad,” Tibal said, infusing his voice with gravelly seriousness. “Don’t one of you guards have any serious medical experience?”
The woman said, “Eshon does–”
“But it’s just the two of us today!” the male guard snapped. “Bitter pits, I told them we should stay four on rotation at all times, but no, and now look what’s happened!”
Enard and Ripka locked gazes, understanding passing between them in an instant. Just two guards today. Two very flustered guards. They shared a grin.
Then lunged.
Ripka was over the bed in a heartbeat, shouldering the door to slam it closed. The guards shouted – the words didn’t matter. The man, who’d been nearest the door, grabbed Ripka’s shoulder, jerking her back so hard she lost her footing. No time to be neat about things. She stumbled into him and took the opportunity to jam her elbow, hard as she could, straight into the man’s ribs. He woofed air and doubled over.
She gave him no quarter. Clutching his wrist, she wrenched his arm around behind his back and turned with the movement so that she stood behind him, yanking up on that twisted arm as hard as she could. He lurched, his back slamming into her chest, and in that moment she felt him draw breath to cry out. There were no other guards about, but there were certainly enough civilians in the hotel to run and call for help from the local watch.
They needed time. Time they wouldn’t get if he got that shout out.
She struck him on the back of the head with the heel of her palm, felt his jaw snap closed and heard his teeth jar and clatter against each other. He gurgled a yelp, and before he could orient himself and try to pull away she stepped backward, overbalanced him, and spun, throwing him face-first onto the bed.
Blood smeared the sheets where his face connected. He bucked, trying to fling her off, but her legs were longer than his and she had them planted firmly while he was bent over, booted toes just barely dragging on the ground. With his face shoved in the blankets, she had control. She glanced up to see Tibal and Enard scuffling with the f
emale guard. Enard pinned her arms back while Tibal tried to get a strip of cloth around her mouth as a gag.
“Keep them silent,” Ripka ordered, and though she didn’t raise her voice it was whip-strong with the snap of command. Pits below, but that felt good.
Enard and Tibal wrestled the woman to the ground and got her tied off properly, then hurried over to help Ripka with her thrashing charge. With their help, it took no time at all to get the guard hog-tied, gagged, and blindfolded.
“Now?” Enard asked.
Tibal strolled back over to Honey’s side and made quick, easy work of removing the spoon and tying off the wound with a few leftover scraps of cut-up sheet. “Got a place to go to ground?”
“Yes,” Ripka said, unwilling to elaborate while the guards were within earshot.
“Right. Lass is good to walk, but you’ll be hurting a bit, won’t you, dear?” He helped Honey to her feet and she shifted her weight over to her injured leg experimentally. Her grimace was all the answer any of them needed.
“I’ll carry her,” Enard said, “she’s light enough.”
“Good man.” Tibal stroked his chin, eyeing both women. “New Chum and I can stroll out of here without raising any eyebrows, but you two look a mess.”
Ripka flicked the bloodied hem of her nightshift. “I doubt either of you could walk out of here. They saw us all walk in, remember? And who knows who’s on staff this morning. We’ll need to harness the same confusion – use the shock of the blood to our advantage.”
“The uniforms?”
“Perfect.”
It wasn’t easy going, stripping the guards of their uniform jackets, but between the four of them – and a carefully applied knife by Honey to gain compliance – they managed to get all the coats clear without letting either of the guards get too close to escape.
“Sorry about this,” Ripka said as she peeled the sleeve off the last of them. The sharp edge to the woman’s muffled voice told her all she needed to know to understand her apology was most certainly not accepted.
“You boys,” she chucked the coat to Enard, as Tibal was already donning the man’s jacket. “Make a good show of things, eh?”
Tibal and Enard shared a grin, and went to work.
They burst down the stairs of the hotel, Tibal dragging Ripka by falsely bound wrists. Her blood-spattered nightshift stuck to the tops of her thighs as she snarled and twisted, making the best show she could of trying to break free of Tibal’s hold while he swore under his breath and dragged her along. Her bare feet skidded on the floor, and she was glad the hotel went to the trouble of keeping it swept clean. She was even gladder to know that underneath Tibal’s coat was a sack of the woman’s clean clothes.
“Make way!” Tibal barked.
Patrons screamed, swore, and generally made a mess of things as they leapt from tables and scurried to the sides of the room, cleaving a wide path down the center of the hotel’s common room.
“What is the meaning of this?” A woman with finer clothes than the regular barmaids stalked toward them. She caught sight of Ripka’s bloodied clothes, hesitated a step, then pushed herself forward. Respectable, if irritating, woman.
“Got a fight on our hands,” Tibal snapped, holding his head to the side and keeping his hat tucked down. “Move off now, injured girl coming.”
The woman stepped to the side, peering up the stairs. “Injured? Shall I send a runner for the apothik?”
“A runner!” Tibal spun on her, yanking Ripka’s wrists as he did so. “This woman is bleeding, ma’am, she’d be bone dry by the time your runner got there and back. We’ll take her ourselves, it’s faster. But mark me, don’t you dare touch a thing in those rooms upstairs. The two remaining prisoners are restrained, but that’s an active crime scene! Touch nothing until after the watch arrives to begin their investigation, and then only after they have told you it’s all right to do so. Do you understand?”
“Ye – yes? You’re leaving, with prisoners still locked up here?”
“They’re contained, I swear it. Touch. Nothing. Now move!”
Their patroness paled and scurried away as Enard stomped down the stairs. He carried Honey in his arms easily. For all that muscle, the woman was surprisingly light. As he strode into the common room gasps sounded all around, every last eye glued to the figure being carried, not to the man carrying her. If they were lucky, no one would realize the two guards who had checked in were a man and a woman, not two men, until they were well away.
Honey mustered up a little groan so pitiful Ripka wondered if the pain was finally starting to get to her. Enard didn’t hesitate a breath. He strode right past Tibal, hustling as if the woman’s life depended on it, and kicked the door of the hotel open into the brilliance of the day.
The street in front of the hotel was lightly trafficked, and every eye that landed on them was quickly averted. The black cloak of the Honding family’s private guard was enough to grant them some degree of anonymity. No one would look too hard at a Honding guard, and they certainly wouldn’t stop to question one.
Still, as they progressed through the neighborhood, Honey whispering subtle directions into Enard’s ear as he held her, Ripka’s skin began to itch with the attention they were drawing. A palace guard may be untouchable, but the presence of two in the city was something to remark upon. And two of them escorting two bloodied women even more so. She imagined rumors spreading outward from their position like wildfire, and shivered.
“This can’t hold,” she whispered to Tibal.
He nodded, grim-faced. Probably he’d realized that from the second they stepped into the street, maybe even before. This type of game was his speciality, after all.
“We’ll find a quiet place to adjust in,” he said, then coughed subtly to alert Enard to fall back to his side.
They abandoned the path toward Latia’s house, winding though it was, and decided to veer in the opposite direction, lest the rumor of their presence eventually lead their future pursuers to Latia’s doorstep. At the first sight of a narrow alley free of windows and nearby pedestrians, they ducked down the shadowed street, and took a moment to catch their breaths.
Ripka and Honey changed as best they could, covering their nightshifts in long, thin robes that they’d found in the hotel chests. They didn’t look like proper day clothes, but they covered the blood well enough, and neither one of them had anything to wash with.
“The jackets?” Enard asked.
“Ditch them,” Ripka said. “They draw more attention than we’d like.”
“The four of us draw more attention than I’d like.” Tibal stripped off his jacket and tossed it in a heap against the alley wall. The men, at least, wore thin trousers and shirts, if not any shoes. Luckily going barefoot was not an uncommon sight in Hond Steading – their streets were smooth and free of firemount glass.
“You’ve a point,” Enard said. “Especially with Honey’s injury and both of your, ah, appearances. Forgive me.” He flushed.
Ripka snort-laughed. “We’re a mess, it’s true. All right. Honey and I know where we’re going, so we should split up with you boys. Honey, Enard’s about your height, do you think you can walk if he gives you his shoulder?”
“That’s fine,” she said, poking at her leg absently.
“Don’t overdo it.” Honey just looked at her, doe-eyed, so Ripka turned to Enard and said, “See that she doesn’t overdo it.”
He gave her a flimsy salute and offered his arm to Honey, who hobbled over to accept it. Tibal watched her intently, no doubt understanding that she’d split them this way to keep him by her side. She had no reason to doubt Enard and Honey’s loyalty, but Tibal was another story. Despite his recent interest in her plans, he could just as easily disappear into the city right now.
And if he did that, she knew deep down that she’d never see him again.
“See you there,” Enard said, oblivious to the tension thickening between her and Tibal. The pair shuffled their slow, painful wa
y out into the street.
“Better give it a moment,” Tibal drawled. “Wouldn’t want anyone seeing us come out right after.”
“Right.”
“Or you could tell me where we’re going, and it’ll look even less suspicious, us waiting to leave one right after the other.”
There it was. The challenge she’d felt was coming since he’d given her that hard look while she bundled Honey off with Enard. She straightened the lay of her robe’s tie. “Better if we stick together, in case of trouble. Two sets of hands are better than one.”
“You expecting trouble?”
She held her arms out in a gesture that illustrated just how ridiculous she currently looked. “You seen me lately? I’d half expect the watchers to pick me up to evaluate my mental health if I were walking around alone.”
He snorted. “And if we get separated?”
Well then. She didn’t have anything to answer to that, aside from the fact that she feared that he’d fake separation just to get away from her. But subterfuge was Detan’s game, and she was tired of being on delicate footing with Tibal.
“Would I ever see you again?”
He blinked at her, real slow, the most surprised expression she’d ever seen on his weathered face. Took him a moment to register she wasn’t fencing with him any more: she’d laid the tension between them bare at his feet and bade him have a long look. So he did, in his own mind, tugging on his whiskery mustache with one hand while he thought. It occurred to her then that he hadn’t shaved since the Remnant.
“What’s for me, there?”
“You know what,” she said, unable to hide her frustration. “I’m trying to do right by this city. Trying to keep it from falling into the same pit Aransa did. We have a chance here. We’re prepared. To walk away now… I could never live with myself.” And I don’t think you could either, she didn’t say, but the words stretched out between them anyway. Some things didn’t need to be said to be clear as a spring rain.
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