Stuffed too full of joy for speech, Mehcredi grabbed the duffel and took off down the stairs two at a time.
Memorizing the numbers and symbols on Dai’s battered pack of cards wasn’t too difficult, though it took Mehcredi a couple of hands and the rough side of Florien’s gutter tongue before she figured out the actual purpose of the game. After that, the various strategies became clear enough, so much so that a few days later, she raked in the biggest heap of dried beans, while man and boy cursed and glowered.
“I won!” she caroled, dancing about the room. “I won!”
“Enough with . . . nice,” rasped Dai, reaching for another pack. “Cheating now.”
Learning how to cheat turned out to be as difficult as the nea-kata, and for similar reasons. Control, growled Walker every morning. Concentrate, woman.
“It all shows on yer face,” snapped Florien as he arranged his pile of dried beans. “Gotta control yer feelings, see?”
Feelings.
Sister in the sky, these days she was bursting with the damn things, as if she’d lost a layer of skin and all her nerve endings were exposed to the unforgiving air. Every night, she promised herself she wouldn’t do it, but the temptation was beyond her to resist. Pulse pounding, she’d bury her face in Walker’s shirt, inhaling the man-smell in deep gulps. The next few moments varied, depending on what sort of day it had been. Most often the tears flowed hot and salty, but sometimes she rubbed the fabric against her cheek, smiling. She hadn’t used the shirt to find release again. The experience had been so strange, so powerful, that whenever she thought of it she shuddered all over. Such an extremity of pleasure. Next time she might die and while it wouldn’t be a bad way to go, dead was nonetheless dead. Life had become a thing of color and interest, two steps forward and one step back.
She’d never been so happy—nor so angry and confused.
Mehcredi’s world shrank to the House of Swords, the swordmaster at its center, but at the same time, it had never been so large, so enormous with marvelous possibility.
10
The disciplined beauty of the nea-kata drew her in and frustrated her beyond measure. “It’s too hard!” she wailed to Walker. “I can’t!”
“No problem,” he said. “Give up and stop wasting my time.”
Every muscle complaining, Mehcredi scowled. Serafina had been stricken with a blinding headache, so she’d had to struggle with all the wet, heavy sheets by herself. “No!”
“Then do it again—the bridge of clouds—and this time, keep your elbow higher.” He lifted her arm into position with impersonal fingers. In fact, he touched her often, but always fleetingly.
With sweaty palms, she gripped the short wooden staff that was all he’d allow her and thought longingly of murdering her tormentor. Except that she didn’t want him to die. She wanted, she wanted . . . Oh, she wanted to dangle him over a chasm and only pull him up when he agreed to be her slave. Or, even better, she’d feed him a Magick potion that turned his stern features all puppy-soft and adoring. Then she’d laugh and kick him down the stairs.
“Your form must be perfect, every motion automatic,” said that quiet, inexorable voice. “Clear your mind, center yourself and start again. All the way from first posture to tenth.”
Grimly, she began, feeling floaty with exhaustion. But partway through, the floatiness morphed into something else, a lightness of being she’d never experienced before, a rightness where everything almost made sense.
When she finished, Walker unfolded his arms and said only, “Better.”
Mehcredi’s knees shook. Casually, she lowered her staff and leaned against the wall, dizzy with relief and pride.
That was the first glimpse.
After that, she took to sneaking off to quiet corners of the garden to practice. Inevitably, the dog would appear from somewhere and flop down in the shade to watch. He was a surprisingly restful companion.
Mehcredi discovered the hardest part of the nea-kata wasn’t control, it was letting go. As the days passed, a measure of peace stole into her soul. The first fragments came so shyly, she didn’t recognize them at first. The sensations were fleeting, but in those precious moments, she glimpsed something of such ineffable beauty that tears streaked her cheeks. Once or twice, she even found the quiet place at her very center.
One morning, Walker took her to the fighting salle, gave her a blunted practice sword and said, “The first level, every posture. Do it.”
Her heart banged about so hard, she couldn’t ground. Her thoughts swooped and skittered like demons on crazyspice.
Walker’s hand closed over hers on the hilt, his palm and fingers rough with the calluses of a professional swordsman, but warm. “You’ve worked hard, assassin,” he said. “Show me.”
Mehcredi swallowed, expelled a long gusty breath and steadied.
Then she flowed into the first posture.
She emerged as if from a dream to see the swordmaster standing in the middle of the floor, hands on hips.
“Well done,” he said, and she knew she glowed. “Third and sixth postures need improvement, but the rest was quite good.”
“Wrong,” rasped a voice. Dai stood at the door, grinning. “For a beginner . . . was bloody marvelous. Praise . . . where it’s due, man.”
He grabbed a wooden practice sword and flourished it. “Defend yourself, assassin.” Eyes gleaming, he advanced the length of the salle.
“Uh,” she said, backpedaling in alarm. “What the hell are you doing, Dai?”
“Just a taste,” said Dai in a rough croon. “See what you’re . . . made of.” And he struck at her throat, the movement so swift it was a blur.
She barely got her blade up in time. The impact ricocheted up her arm to the shoulder. “Dai. Stop, stop, I can’t—”
“Tygre crouching,” snapped Walker, seemingly in her ear. Panic freezing her mental processes, Mehcredi did the only thing left, flowing into the posture.
Crack!
She stepped sideways. Dai came on, his teeth bared in a wild grin.
“Spreading fan,” called Walker.
Dai’s blade slid down hers and glanced off. Mehcredi danced away, knuckles stinging.
“Keep your wrist steady.” The swordmaster was a shadow at the periphery of her vision. “Horse’s tail. Now! ”
But she was too slow and Dai caught her with a blow that rattled her ribs. “You’re dead.” He gave her a nasty smile.
“That hurt!” She glared.
Dai said nothing, attacking in a ruthless flurry that forced her backward, defending frantically.
“Bridge of clouds!”
She must have got her elbow at the right angle because Dai parried and then misstepped. Before she knew she was going to do it, Mehcredi bent her knees, ducked under his guard and poked him under the breastbone with the blunt tip of her weapon.
“Fuck!” Dai skipped out of the way.
Suddenly, Walker was between them, a solid wall of muscle. “Stop,” he said. “Now.”
Mehcredi pushed forward, gritting her teeth. “I’ll kill him, I swear.”
Rubbing his chest, Dai gave a whispery laugh. “What, again?”
“Enough!” Walker turned a cool gaze on the swordsman. “Got it out of your system?” he asked mildly.
“I guess.” Dai lowered his wooden blade, chest heaving, face pale. “Good test though.” He sank onto the bench under the window.
Shock, rage and hurt combined to rob Mehcredi of breath. Like a fool, she’d thought Dai was her friend. She fought off the familiar feelings of despair. She wouldn’t give up, she wouldn’t. “Test?” she managed.
Dai glanced at the swordmaster’s impassive face. “Tell her.”
A short pause, and Walker said, “We didn’t plan this, Mehcredi, but he’s right, it was an excellent test and you did well.”
“I did?” She must be staring like a half-wit.
“There’s only so much about swordplay that can be taught.” She had the sense Walker w
as choosing his words with care. “For some, the nea-kata will never be more than a form of spiritual and physical exercise. Not you.”
“Reflexes,” husked Dai. “Excellent.”
Mehcredi addressed Walker. “But I’m clumsy, you said so yourself!”
“Not when you stop thinking and let the nea-kata take you. Your instincts are good.”
“How good?”
Another lengthy pause, and Walker said, “Train hard enough and you could make a living at it.” When she opened her mouth, he frowned her down. “One day. Possibly.”
Dai pushed himself to his feet and laid his blade on the bench. Without a word, he walked quietly out of the salle and down the path toward the water stair.
Mehcredi stared after him, aching all over. She pressed the heel of her hand against the firm restraint of the breastband as if the pressure would help hold her together.
“You thought he’d forgiven and forgotten, didn’t you?”
She nodded, gulping. “How . . . how did you know?”
Walker shrugged. “It’s written all over your face.”
There it was again. Feelings, faces. Well, shit! Why did she get to be the open book?
“Nothing’s written on yours,” she said resentfully.
Walker plucked the practice sword from her unresisting grasp. “Good.” He turned to slot it into the rack.
Her fingers itched with the urge to grab the tail of his hair in both hands and yank it like a bellpull, but then he said, apparently to the wall, “Give Dai time. His whole life has changed because of you.”
Mehcredi gnawed on a thumbnail. If she tried to speak about it she’d either scream or burst into tears. Instead, she asked, “Are we going on?”
When he glanced over his shoulder, one brow raised in inquiry, she waved a hand, encompassing the salle and the gleaming weapons on the walls. “With, ah, all these?” She straightened her spine, her heart thudding with excitement and hope. Walker fighting with the quarterstaff was all lethal grace, brute force and cracking blows. Gods, how she wanted that, to be complete like him, a thing of beauty and power.
“We’d better. Right now, you only know enough to be dangerous.”
She blew out an unobtrusive breath of relief, her whole being yearning to touch his shoulder, to thank him, but she was held inside her crystal prison, separate, different—and it wasn’t possible.
“Usual time tomorrow, assassin.”
When she didn’t move, Walker frowned. “Surely you have floors to scrub?”
Mehcredi stared, caught up in an astonishing discovery. His eyes weren’t black as she’d supposed. This close, even shielded by those extravagant lashes, she could see they were deepest, darkest, richest brown, and if she tilted her head . . . like . . . that, the light revealed fugitive gleams of gold. How pretty, she thought, but for once she managed to shut her mouth before the words escaped.
“What?” said Walker, and he sounded as if he might be annoyed. Everything was normal.
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t call me that. I’m not an assassin anymore, truly I’m not.”
The swordmaster studied her face for the longest time, while she wondered glumly what particular stupidity was written there for him to read.
“Tomorrow, Mehcredi,” he said at last, leaving her standing in the middle of the floor.
“You sent for me, mighty lord?”
Nerajyb Nyzarl clicked his fingers and a slave sidled out from behind a pierced and fretted screen. The same girl as before, thought the Necromancer, no more than a child really, her breasts just budded. “Sherbet,” growled the diabloman. The slave bowed and whisked herself away.
Nyzarl’s shrewd deep-set eyes returned to the shrinking figure of the little scribe. “Hmpf,” he grunted and then lapsed into silence, thick fingers drumming on his thigh.
Get on with it, you fat fool. The Necromancer schooled his features into a suitably obsequious expression. Galling, that’s what it was, waiting on the pleasure of a slug like this. But by Shaitan, power rolled off the man in dark heady waves. The Necromancer’s nostrils dilated with pleasure. He could sense Nyzarl’s demon, concealed by a fold in the fabric of reality, slavering and starving, hating its master with its whole black heart—or whatever passed for such an organ in that place.
“I am to be three-named,” said Nyzarl abruptly, as if he’d come to a decision.
The scribe dropped awkwardly to one knee. “My most humble congratulations, Pasha,” he murmured to the pattern on the tiled floor. “Richly deserved, if I may say so?”
“You think the honor overdue, do you, scribe?”
“Ah.” The Necromancer dithered, and hated it.
The other man stared, enjoying his discomfiture.
“It is not my place to think at all, mighty lord,” he said at last. “Only to serve to the best of my humble abilities.”
“Humble is right.”
The girl slave returned to kneel at her master’s elbow, infinitely more graceful than the scribe. The diabloman lifted the chased goblet from the tray she proffered. Its sides were misty with condensation.
The Necromancer ran a tongue over parched lips and purpose firmed within him. Nyzarl had been one among a number of possibilities. Now he was the only one. Imagining the heavy spice of the man’s death energy, he smiled on the inside. Not that it would be easy, not with the demon. He’d need Dotty, after all, the Dark Lord take her.
The diabloman broke into his musings. “Can you write in cipher, one-name?”
“Of course, Pasha.” He bowed once more, his hips paining him. He’d gulped the death energy of the original scribe in a single draft, but Hantan had been in his sixties and not particularly healthy at that. It had helped, but not enough. How old was the diabloman? Forty? Forty-five at the outside?
The goblet whizzed by his ear and bounced off the wall with a clang, its contents spraying across the floor.
The Necromancer looked up in time to see Nyzarl backhand the slave, sending her sprawling across the floor. “Melted!” he snarled. “Get another.”
Reminding the Necromancer of nothing so much as a beaten dog, the girl scrambled to her feet, snatched up the goblet and ran from the room, a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t made a sound.
Unpredictable as well as a hair-trigger temper. This just got better and better.
“The title comes with an estate on the southern border.”
Despite himself, the Necromancer’s eyes widened. Perfect—Shaitan, it was perfect!
Fleeing south to Trinitaria had been the obvious course. He’d had the forethought to secret not only cash, but the Technomage’s drawings and research results, in a concealed drawer in his office. But a night passage in a swift galley across the Three-Pronged Strait didn’t come cheap. Nor did food and lodgings for two. Nonetheless, he’d contrived. Given he’d been too weak to wield his Dark Magick, he flattered himself he’d accomplished the murders with aplomb, if not with a certain flair. He’d forgotten how much artistry could be invested in knife work.
Not bad for a man his age—first an elderly flower seller, too feeble to resist, though she’d had a few creds and her death energy to offer. After that, a dockworker, drunk and vomiting his guts up in an alley in the souk and then—Hantan, the scribe. This last was truly a stroke of genius, even if he did say so himself. Appropriating the trappings of the man’s livelihood had made all the difference, given him a reason to exist in Trinitarian society.
Once established, he’d drifted farther south, hauling Dotty along with him, a piece of baggage that muttered and mumbled and rocked back and forth. Thank the Dark Lord, the average Trinitarian paid zero attention to a female unless he needed to be fed or fucked. Gradually, the conviction stole over him that he was moving south for a reason. He began to dream, the same vision repeated over and over—a formless presence, nothing he could discern; many voices screaming in concert; strange high-pitched whining noises, and best of all, the sparkle and pop of souls winking out. He
’d wake trembling, covered in sweat, a hand shoved under the waistband of his trews, hungering.
He obtained maps, puzzled over them. What called to him had to be infinitely far away, deep in the southern desert. When he passed his fingertips over the area on the creased parchment, they tingled.
“The south, my lord?” he asked carefully.
Nyzarl removed his head cloth and ran his fingers through a head of shiny black curls. No gray, the Necromancer noted. The diabloman was propped up on a lavish daybed, supported by embroidered pillows.
“Used to be Shar country,” he said. “Wiped ’em out myself, the savages. Years ago.”
“The Grand Pasha, blessed be his name, is wise in his recognition of service.”
“As am I.” Nyzarl turned his head to watch the girl return. With her, carrying the tray, was a pretty young man wearing a loincloth. The youth knelt by his master, while the girl crouched to wipe up the spill. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and dripped down her neck, but she didn’t raise a hand to it.
“Every slave’s a spy,” Nyzarl rumbled. The smooth circular motion of the girl’s cloth on the floor paused for an instant, then resumed. “I do not tolerate spies.”
“My discretion is absolute, Pasha,” said the Necromancer. “I can assure you of that.”
“Hmpf.” Another narrow glance. “Let’s make sure, shall we?” Another click of the fingers. “Girl.”
The slave’s olive skin went a pasty green gray, but she rose and crossed the room dutifully enough. The young man moved hastily aside, the slave tattoo showing dark and vivid on his cheek. Idly, the Necromancer wondered where the girl wore hers. Somewhere inconspicuous, no doubt. Grabbing a fistful of hair, Nyzarl tugged her down to land hard on her knees by his side. Uttering a string of guttural syllables, he sketched a shape in the air with his free hand, spreading his fingers wide, then closing them slowly.
The Necromancer peered, fascinated. Acrid green fog flowed swiftly into the room, through what he could only call an aperture. He wrinkled his nose at the stench. Faugh.
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