Tarma's initial reaction had been to bristle with hostility—then, unbidden, into her mind came the odd, otherworldly voice of her trainer, warning her not to cast away unlooked-for aid. "As you will," she replied curtly. The other did not seem to be the least bit discomfited by her antagonism. "Then let us leave this place," she said, standing without haste. "There are too many ears here."
She waited while Tarma retrieved her horse, and led her down tangled streets to a dead-end alley lit by gay red lanterns. She unlocked a gate on the left side and waved Tarma and Kessira through it. Tarma waited as she relocked the gate, finding herself in a cobbled courtyard that was bordered on one side by an old but well-kept stable. On the other side was a house, all its windows ablaze with lights, also festooned with the red lanterns. From the house came the sound of music, laughter, and the voices of many women. Tarma sniffed; the air was redolent with cheap perfume and an animal muskiness.
"Is this place what I think it is?" she asked, finding it difficult to match the picture she'd built in her mind of the sorceress with the house she'd led Tarma to.
"If you think it's a brothel, you're right," Kethry replied. "Welcome to the House of Scarlet Joys, Sworn One. Can you think of a less likely place to house two such as we?"
"No." Tarma almost smiled. "The better to hide us. The mistress of this place and her charges would rejoice greatly at the conquering of our mutual enemies. Nevertheless, the most these women will do for us is house and feed us. The rest is all in our four hands. Now, let's get your weary beast stabled, and we'll adjourn to my rooms. We have a great deal of planning to do."
Two days after Tarma's arrival in the town of Brether's Crossroads, one of the brigands (drunk with liquor and drugs far past his capacity) fell into a horsetrough, and (bizarrely enough) drowned trying to get out. His death signaled the beginning of a streak of calamities that thinned the ranks of the bandits as persistently as a plague.
One by one they died, victims of weird accidents, overdoses of food or drugs, or ambushes by preternaturally clever thieves. No two deaths were alike—with one exception. He who failed to shake out his boots of a morning seldom survived the day, thanks to the scorpions that had taken to invading the place. Some even died at each other's hands, goaded into fights.
("I dislike this skulking in corners," Tarma growled, sharpening her swordblade. "It's hardly satisfactory, killing these dogs at a distance with poison and witchery."
"Be patient, my friend," Kethry said without rancor. "We're better off thinning them down somewhat before we engage them at sword's point. There will be time enough for that later.")
When the deaths were obviously at the hands of enemies, there were no clues. Those arrow-slain were found pierced by several makes; those dead by blades seemed to have had their own used on them.
(Tarma found herself coming to admire the sorceress more with every passing day. Their arrangement was a partnership in every sense of the word, for when Kethry ran short of magical ploys she turned without pride to Tarma and her expertise in weaponry. Even so, the necessary restrictions that limited them to the ambush and the skills of the assassin chafed at her.
"It will not be much longer," Kethry counseled. "They'll come to the conclusion soon enough that this has been no series of coincidences. Then will be the time for frontal attack.")
The leader, so it was said, ordered that no man go out alone, and all must wear talismans against sorcery.
("See?" Kethry said then. "I told you you'd have your chance.")
A pair of swaggering bullies swilled ale, unpaid for, in the inn. None dared speak in their presence; they'd already beaten one farmer senseless who'd given some imagined insult. They were spoiling for a fight, and the sheeplike timidity of the people trapped with them in the inn was not to their liking. So when a slender young man, black-clad and wearing a sword slung across his back entered the door, their eyes lit with savage glee.
One snaked out a long arm, grasping the young man's wrist. Some of those in the inn marked how his eyes flashed with a hellish joy before being veiled with cold disdain.
"Remove your hand," he said in a harsh voice, "dog-turd."
That was all the excuse the brigands needed. Both drew their weapons; the young man unsheathed his in a single fluid motion. Both moved against him in a pattern they had long found successful in bringing down a single opponent.
Both died within heartbeats of each other.
The young man cleaned his blade carefully on their cloaks before sheathing it. (Some sharp eyes may have noticed that when his hand came in contact with one of the brigand's talismans, the young man seemed to become, for a fleeting second, a harsh-visaged young woman). "This is no town for a stranger," he said to no one and everyone. "I will be on my way. Let him follow me who desires the embrace of the Lady Death."
Predictably, half-a-dozen robbers followed the clear track of his horse into the hills. None returned.
The ranks of his men narrowed to five including himself and the sorcerer, the bandit leader shut them all up in their stronghold.
("Why are these—ladies—sheltering us?" Tarma demanded one day, when forced idleness had her pacing the confines of Kethry's rooms like a caged panther.
"Madam Isa grew tired of having her girls abused, and they were more than tired of being abused."
Tarma snorted with scorn. "I should have thought one would learn to expect abuse in such a profession."
"It is one thing when a customer expresses a taste for pain and is willing to pay to inflict it. It is quite another when he does so without paying," Kethry answered with wry humor. Tarma replied to this with something almost like a smile. There was that about her accomplice—fast becoming her friend—that could lighten even her grimmest mood. Occasionally the sorceress was even able to charm the Shin'a'in into forgetfulness for hours at a time. And yet—and yet—there was never a time she could entirely forget what had driven her here…)
At the end of two months, there were rumors that the chieftain had begun recruiting new underlings, the information passed to other cities via the arcane methods of his sorcerer.
("We'll have to do something to flush at least one of them out," Kethry said at last. "The sorcerer has transported at least three more people into that house. He may have done more—I couldn't tell if the spell brought one or several at a time, only that he definitely brought people in.")
A new courtesan, property of none of the three Houses, began to ply her trade among those who still retained some of their wealth. One had to be wealthy to afford her services—but those who spent their hours in her skillful embraces were high in their praise.
("I thought your vows kept you sorcerers from lying," Tarma said, watching Kethry's latest client moaning with pleasure in the dream-trance she'd conjured for him.
"I didn't lie," she answered, eyes glinting green with mischief. "I promised him—all of them—an hour to match their wildest dreams. That's exactly what they're getting. Besides, nothing I'd be able to do could ever match what they're conjuring up for themselves!")
The chieftain's sergeant caught a glimpse of her spending an idle hour in the marketplace. He had been without a woman since his chief had forbidden the men to go to the Houses. He could see the wisdom in that: someone was evidently out after the band's hearts, and a House would be far too easy a place in which to set a trap. But this whore was alone but for her pimp, a thin beardless boy who did not even wear a sword, only paired daggers. She should be safe enough. Nor would he need to spend any of his stored coin, though he'd bring it to tempt her. When he'd had his fill of her, he'd teach her that it was better to give her wares to him.
She led him up the stairs to her room above the inn, watching with veiled amusement as he carefully bolted the door behind him. But when he began divesting himself of his weaponry and garments, she halted him, pinioning his arms gently from the rear and breathing enticingly on the back of his neck as she whispered in his ear.
'Time enough, and more
, great warrior—I am sure you have not the taste for common tumblings that are all you can find in this backward place." She slid around to the front of him, urging him down onto the room's single stool, a water-beaded cup in her hand. "Refresh yourself first, great lord. The vintage is of mine own bringing—you shall not taste its like here—"
It was just Kethry's bad luck that he had been the official "taster" to a high lordling during his childhood of slavery. He sipped delicately out of habit, rather than gulping the wine down, and rolled the wine carefully on his tongue—and so detected in the cup what he should not have been able to sense.
"Bitch!" he roared, throwing the cup aside and seizing Kethry by the throat.
Kethry's panic-filled scream warned Tarma that the plan had gone awry. She wasted no time in battering at the door—the man was no fool and would have bolted it behind him. It would take too long to break it down. Instead, she sprinted through the crowded inn and out the back through the kitchen. A second cry—more like a strangled gurgle than a scream, which recalled certain things sharply to her and gave her strength born of rage and hatred—fell into the stableyard from the open window of Kethry's room. Tarma swarmed up the stable door onto the roof of the building, and launched herself from there in through that window. Her entrance was as unexpected as it was precipitate.
Kethry slowly regained consciousness in her bed in the rented room. She hurt from top to toe—her assailant had been almost artistic, if one counted the ability to evoke pain among the arts. Oddly enough, he hadn't raped her—she would have expected that, been able to defend herself arcanely. He'd reacted to the poisoned drink instead by throwing her to the floor and bearing her with no mercy. She'd had no chance to defend herself with magic, and her sword had been left back at the brothel at Tarma's insistence.
Tarma was bathing and tending her hurts. One look at her stricken eyes, and any reproaches she might have uttered died on Kethry's tongue.
"It's all right," she said as gently as she could with swollen lips. "It wasn't your fault."
Tarma's eyes said that she thought otherwise, but she replied gruffly, "Looks like you need a keeper more than I do, lady-mage."
It hurt to smile, but Kethry managed. "Perhaps I do, at that."
Four evenings later, all but three of the bandits marched in force on the inn, determined to take revenge on the townsfolk for the acts of the invisible enemy in their midst. Halfway there, they were met by two women blocking their path. One was an amber-haired sorceress with a bruised face and a blackened eye. The other was a Shin'a'in swords-woman.
Only those two survived the confrontation. "We have no choice now," Kethry said grimly. "If we wait, they'll only be stronger—and I'm certain that sorcerer has been watching. They're warned, they know who and what we are."
"Good," Tarma replied. "Then let's bring the war to their doorstep. We've been doing things in secret long enough, and it's more than time that this thing was finished. Now. Tonight." Her eyes were no longer quite sane.
Kethry didn't like it but knew there was no other way. Gathering up her magics about her, and resting one hand on the comforting presence of he sword, she followed Tarma to the bandit stronghold.
The three remaining were waiting in the courtyard. At the forefront was the bandit-chief, a red-faced, shrewd-eyed bull of a man. To his right was his second in command, and Tarma's eyes narrowed as she recognized the necklace of amber claws he wore. He was as like to a bear as his leader was to a bull. To his left was the sorcerer, who gave a mocking bow in Kethry's direction.
Kethry did not return the bow, but launched an immediate magical attack. Something much like red lightning flew from her outstretched hands.
He parried it—but not easily. His eyes widened in surprise; her lips thinned in satisfaction. They settled down to duel in deadly earnest. Colored lightnings and weird mists swirled about them, sometimes the edges of their shields could be seen, straining against the impact of the sorcerous bolts. Creatures out of insane nightmares formed themselves on his side, and flung themselves raging at the sorceress, before being attacked and destroyed by enormous eagles with wings of fire, or impossibly slim and delicate armored beings with no faces at their helm's openings, but only a light too bright to look upon.
Tarma meanwhile had flung herself at the leader with the war cry of her clan—the shriek of an angry hawk. He parried her blade inches away from his throat, and answered with a cut that took part of her sleeve and bruised her arm beneath the mail. His companion swung at the same time; his sword did no more than graze her leg. She twisted to parry his second stroke, moving faster than either of them expected her to. She marked him as well, a cut bleeding freely over his eyes, but not before the leader gashed her where the chainmail shirt ended.
There was an explosion behind her; she dared not turn to look, but it sounded as though one of the two mages would spin spells no more.
She parried a slash from the leader only barely in time, and at the cost of a blow from her other opponent that did not penetrate her armor, but surely broke a rib. Either of these men was her equal; at this rate they'd wear her down and kill her soon—and yet, it hardly mattered. This was the fitting end to the whole business, that the last of the Tale'sedrin should die with the killers of her Clan. For when they were gone, what else was there for her to do? A Shin'a'in Clanless was a Shin'a'in with no purpose in living. And no wish to live. Suddenly she found herself facing only one of them, the leader. The other was battling for his life against Kethry, who had appeared out of the mage-smokes and was wielding her sword with all the skill of one of Tarma's spirit-teachers.
Tarma had just enough thought to spare for a moment of amazement. Everyone knew sorcerers had no skill with a blade—they had not the time to spare to learn such crafts.
Yet—there was Kethry, cutting the man to ribbons. Tarma traded blows with her opponent; then saw her opening. To take advantage of it meant she must leave herself wide open, but she was far past caring. She struck—her blade entered his throat in a clean thrust. Dying, he swung; his sword caving in her side. They fell together.
Grayness surrounded Tarma, a gray fog in which the light seemed to come from no particular direction, the grayness of a peculiarly restful quality. She found her hurts had vanished, and that she felt no particular need to move from where she was standing. Then a warm wind caressed her, the fog parted, and she found herself facing the first of her instructors.
"So—" he said, hands (empty, for a change, of weapons) on hips, a certain amusement in his eyes. "Past all expectation, you have brought down your enemies. Remarkable, Sworn One, the more remarkable as you had the sense to follow my advice."
"You came for me, then?" It was less a question than a statement.
"I, come for you?" He laughed heartily behind his veil. "Child, child, against all prediction you have not only won, but survived! No, I have come to tell you that your aid-time is over, though we shall continue to train you as we always have. From this moment, it is your actions alone that will put food in your mouth and coin in your purse. I would suggest you follow the path of the mercenary, as many another Sworn One has done when Clanless. And—" he began fading into the mist, "—remember that one can be Shin'a'in without being born into the Clans. All it requires is the oath of she'enedran."
"Wait!" she called after him—but he was gone. There was the sound of birds singing, and an astringent, medicinal tang in the air. Tarma opened eyes brimming with amazement and felt gingerly at the bandages wrapping various limbs and her chest. Somehow, unbelievable as it was, she was still alive. "It's about time you woke up." Kethry's voice came from nearby. "I was getting tired of spooning broth down your throat. You've probably noticed this isn't the House of Scarlet Joys. Madame wasn't the only one interested in getting rid of the bandits; the whole town hired me to dispose of them. My original intention was to frighten them away, but then you came along and ruined my plans! By the way, you happen to be lying in the best bed in the inn. I hope you app
reciate the honor. You're quite a heroine now. These people have far more appreciation of good bladework than good magic."
Tarma slowly turned her head; Kethry was perched on the side of a second bed a few paces from hers and nearer the window. "Why did you save me?" she whispered hoarsely.
"Why did you want to die?" Kethry countered. Tarma's mouth opened, and the words spilled out. In the wake of this purging of her pain, came peace; not the numbing, false peace of the North Wind's icy armor, but the true peace Tarma had never hoped to feel. Before she had finished, they were clinging to each other and weeping together.
Kethry had said nothing—but in her eyes Tarma recognized the same unbearable loneliness that she was facing. And she was moved by something outside herself to speak.
"My friend—" Tarma startled Kethry with the phrase; their eyes met, and Kethry saw that loneliness recognized like, "—we are both Clanless; would you swear bloodoath with me?"
"Yes!" Kethry's eager reply left nothing to be desired.
Without speaking further, Tarma cut a thin, curving line like a crescent moon in her left palm; she handed the knife to Kethry, who did likewise. Tarma raised her hand to Kethry, who met it, palm to palm—
Then came the unexpected; their joined hands flashed briefly, incandescently; too bright to look on. When their hands unjoined, there were silver scars where the cuts had been.
Tarma looked askance at her she'enedra—her blood sister.
"Not of my doing," Kethry said, awe in her voice.
"The Goddess' then." Tarma was certain of it; with the certainty came the filling of the empty void within her left by the loss of her Clan.
"In that case, I think perhaps I should give you my last secret," Kethry replied, and pulled her sword from beneath her bed. "Hold out your hands."
Tarma obeyed, and Kethry laid the unsheathed sword across them.
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