Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  The edge of a knife touched lightly over the wood-hard muscle of her outer thigh as it pushed her across the space, just parting the skin; for a moment she knew where the Adder must be, but the balance factors made a stroke impossible.

  Sheepraping dung of a noseless nomad pigdog, she thought in disgust as she landed. The bed should be just about two arm-lengths behind her, and the knifeman just beyond sword’s reach back toward the door; they had traded positions twice in the last six seconds. Sweat fell into her eyes, stinging; one or two passages of real combat wrung you out worse than half an hour of practice. She gaped her mouth wide, concentrating on keeping her breath soundless. There would be no second chances here, and it could not last much longer. Not in a space this confined.

  Megan considered for a long second: If I were them, I’d concentrate one on one. If I’m right then she (he?) should be coming up the long wall. The shriek from the middle of the room punched through her ears, and she used the unexpected sound to cover her motion around the corner of the desk, thinking irritatedly that Shkai’ra would be the only one making one hell of a noise. Now, she thought, carefully extending the knife before her and moving forward slowly, straining for a noise of some sort, let us see if we can persuade this one to spit himself. She heard a faint sound before her and dropped lower into her crouch, pulling the knife slightly closer to give her more play on the extension of the blade.

  The whisper of something swinging over her head, seeking, and she felt him almost walk into the knife. A down-swinging hand couldn’t stop the blade but wrenched it to one side, tearing. As the hammer blow of his arm sent her lurching off balance, she rolled forward, feeling bone smack sharply on her back muscles as he went over. She reached blindly with her other hand and slashed as he rolled to break his fall. Her claws caught and shredded something as she followed the motion that sent her skidding out into the room. She stopped on her stomach and inched to one side, the assassin choking back a cry as much of surprise as pain.

  Ah, Megan thought. She. We’ll see if the attack from below works again; I don’t think I hamstrung her. She crawled back and toward the desk half a meter, spreading her weight so that no boards would creak under even her slight weight.

  An easy job, they said, the assassin thought bitterly. Just back up Nevo, they said. She held her abdomen with one hand. Nothing strenuous now, or the cut muscle might split and it’d spill my guts. If the dagger nicked a bowel, I’m dead meat. What did she have on her fingers? Whatever it was, it was sharp.

  The Adderfang near Shkai’ra backed toward the door, sliding each foot a careful millimeter above the boards, then bearing down with infinite patience. The big barbarian would not expect him to continue back in a straight line; his stomach muscles contracted reflexively at the memory of cold knife-sharp sword metal touching him on the ribs as she lunged. But if he backed, he could circle along the wall ...

  A sharp sound came from his right, toward the far wall and across the bed. Tahlni had made contact! He shifted his weight more rapidly, covered by the hard smacking sound of a sweep-parry hitting a forearm and—there was something soft under his foot, but he was committed now, balance shifted back. Something round and soft, with a firmer core.

  ERRRRROWERREEEE!

  The Adder had a moment to stand frozen by the scream of feline outrage before ten claws and a mouth fastened themselves in his calf. A cat can turn at a very acute angle and attack, even with its tail pinned to the floor; and in any case, the confining weight shifted quite rapidly. If there had been light, the others would have seen a man in black dancing in place on the ball of one foot, with a leg flailing madly in the air.

  Ten-Knife-Foot was managing to produce an astonishing volume of sound, between mouthfuls. A random twist saved the Adder as a curved Kommanz sword split the place his abdomen had been a moment earlier. The same movement spun him to face the door.

  The oak door slammed open. A lean, blond figure in a loincloth stood there, with a long slashing sword in one hand, peering blearily from between sandy eyelids.

  “WILL YOU PEOPLE SHUTTHEFUCK UP I’M TRYING TO SLEEP!” he screamed, and slammed the door shut once more with a bang.

  None of the combatants moved, as the sudden blaze of light speared into dilated pupils. The Adder recovered just enough to see Ten-Knife-Foot streak through the closing slit of the door as he turned, did a vault-handspring over the bed, and rolled forward in the renewed darkness to come to his feet by the outer window. He explored the wound with the fingers of his left hand, not wanting to risk wetting his knife grip. The flesh was ragged and oozing, but not enough to weaken him with blood loss in the next few minutes; he could force the ravaged muscle to operate. And afterward, he would try the taste of cat.

  Megan threw herself back into a crouch as the room was again plunged into darkness, wiping streaming eyes. The sight of the room a second ago was burned into her mind, and she knew that the desk and the folding screen lay close by. The Adder had seen her on the floor, so the place to be was high. She leaped to the surface of the desk, a board cracking under her as the weight shifted. The Adder would be coming from that direction. Let her come to me. She toed a paperweight off the desk to keep the other coming and felt the change in air pressure as someone lunged past her at the noise. With a wrench, she pulled the light wickerwork and paper screen down on her and followed up with the dagger. She felt the blade catch on a rib, and the knife-hand, driven deep, touched cloth. Blood splashed hotly on her skin, and she sprang to the floor by the wall. Lousy merchant, she thought. He swore left and right that the poison he sold for my claws was quick-acting. That one’s still thrashing around. Her fingers took stock of the knives left in the harness: three. If Shkai’ra finishes the other one, this one will likely be alive to give us some answers ... but how can I help her other than simply by staying out of her fight? I’d get us both killed. She stood in the dark, feeling powerless.

  Shkai’ra tried to follow the Adder’s probable path, running lightly in the dark and blinking her eyes against the smarting and watering. But the confusion had thrown off her sense of distance; the hardwood rim of the round bed barked her painfully on the shins. It was a solid, substantial sound, heavy wood fiber pounding into the bone and hard rubbery muscle of her leg between knee and ankle.

  That would bring the shivman. She dropped to the ground and rolled under the bed, easing herself backward until only the spread fingers of her left hand edged out from underneath, and the poised tip of her saber, slanting up.

  I should have realized this earlier, she thought happily. No mistaking who I touch: we’re both stilt naked.

  Here, close to the floor, she discovered that she could just make out the creaking of cork-soled sandals as the Adder approached. There was a sudden crash from the corner and an involuntary grunt of pain. The stealthy footsteps approaching the bed halted, and her hand snot out, to close around a tattered trouser leg, wet with blood. Her blade flashed upward, under a knife stroke that just split the skin along her collarbone, to go in just over the pelvic arch.

  Close, she thought as she felt the soft yielding resistance against her sword. If that knife had been a tenth of a handspan higher, it would have opened the vein in her throat even as she killed him. She held the thrust, up into the rib cage from below, until the point sank into a shoulderblade at a glancing angle. Then she used the leverage of his ankle to whip the blade back and forth in the massive wound; it was rare for a single sword stroke to kill immediately, but then this was an unusual angle.

  Blood and fluids poured down and spattered face and shoulders and breasts; she could taste the coppery salt as she panted in the dark. The sword slid free with a wet sound, and the stink of cut bowel flooded out into the humid warmth of the room. The Adder’s body slid limply to the ground.

  Against the wall, Megan heard the body fall and hoped that it wasn’t Shkai’ra’s. Powerless, she thought: Then: Power? Of course. Light we need and light we shall have. She set her back against the wall, pulled ou
t the last three daggers, and concentrated. At equal distances around the room, a solid chuck sounded as a dagger vibrated in the walls. Each glowed a low, eerie red. A necessary risk.

  Shkai’ra looked up, blinked. The Adder lay before her, very thoroughly dead. The odd position had meant that she’d wrenched the outer cutting edge of the blade up through his ribs, acting like a giant scissor blade. It was Minztan steel from the far northwest, the curved cutting surface forge-hardened and mirror-polished on a softer core; there was no metal that would take a better edge. This had sheared through bone, from the floating rib to the throat; he lay staring on one side, and the whole contents of his body cavity had slumped out onto the floor, a stew of organs in a bath of blood, more blood than Shkai’ra had seen from one corpse before. The body had bled out like a deer strung up on a rack. She picked herself up, her body glistening darkly from chin to hips.

  “Don’t worry, not much of it’s mine,” she said at Megan’s quick glance. She raised an eyebrow at the cold flickering glow from the knives. “Interesting, but why did it take you so long?”

  The fallen screen rustled as the wounded assassin stirred and groaned. A quick stride took Shkai’ra to the spot. She gripped the fallen woman by the back of the neck, searched her with swift efficiency, and dumped half a dozen assorted weapons onto the floor. Then she seized one arm and broke it over her knee.

  “I don’t like people who try to sneak in and kill me in my sleep,” she said. Her bladed palm slammed down twice, breaking the collarbones; then she pinned the other’s jaws in one hand, propped them open with her sword hilt, and probed. “An, poison tooth—but we want you to talk to us first. Why should we let you die before you earn your favors?” Megan came up behind and said mildly, “Treat her too roughly and we won’t have her company for long anyway. Perhaps if we pulled her soul out and asked questions of it?” She had a distracted look on her face as she held the light high enough to see by, and the woman would never know that she was bluffing. Anything not able to reflect the red light must be black, scarlet and darkness. She put a hand on Shkai’ra’s shoulder and leaned over to look more closely at the writhing assassin, the scarlet light dancing in her eyes. “Well?”

  Shkai’ra stiffened slightly, then forced herself to relax. The assassin’s eyes flickered wildly; her captor brought her face up to eye level, thumbs on the shattered collarbones. There was an unpleasant grating, grinding sound, much like that of two roughly shattered pieces of wood being forced together. Blood and matter dripped off her onto the captive.

  “I think you’d better tell us who put the engagement out on us,” she hissed. “Or I’ll let my friend do some interesting things to you ... and she doesn’t have to stop when you die.” Unconsciously, Shkai’ra’s hand made the warding sign against magic and ill luck, but she had never been the sort to reject anything useful. As the Warmasters said, the true warrior could make grass and sand serve as weapons.

  A glow matching the color of the knives appeared, puddled in Megan’s hands. She pulled her hands apart, drawing it into a rope-like strand that looped and coiled in the air before the assassin’s face. A humming came from it, a low deep note, eager as the light-snake strained toward skin drawn tight with pain and slick with blood and mucus. The Zak’s voice was cool and reasonable, dropping like the water that wears away granite.

  “Priest’s ... gold,” the Adderfang said at last, in a husky whisper. She swallowed, choked, fought for air. “Guildmasters ... Adderfang brothers ... merchant’s letter. Wi ... wizard’s letter! You took ... told to recover. Kill you.” She rallied suddenly. “Kill you!” she snarled, and spat pink foam at Megan. The racked body went boneless, and the black eyes glazed. Her final words were almost too faint to hear.

  “Curse you ... witch.”

  “Ah,” Megan said. “The poison was fast-acting after all.”

  The taut look of power faded from her face as she walked over to the bed and slumped down with a creak of the rope springs. The red light faded to ember glow.

  “I’m very tired,” she said. Pain shot through her head, spearing from behind her eyes to explode off the back of her skull. Small use sorcery if it makes you feel like this, she thought wearily.

  “Shkai’ra, could you get a conventional light going? This tires me, and I’d rather explain to the innkeeper about bodies than magic.” She stared down into the flickers of red that danced around her fingers. When she spoke again it was softly, in a musing tone: “I wish I could call up a gentler color than this. Green perhaps, or blue. If I had the power.”

  Shkai’ra looked at her for a moment, then sighed and laid the limp body on the floor, wiping her hands on the black cloth.

  “It’s a swamp in here,” she said, pushing a lock of hair back from her forehead and clearing a pale streak in the blood on her face. Opening the shutter, she flooded the room with moonlight. The distant snouts of the watch slaves over the body of the first assassin below on the street came through it; the Kommanza whipped her head back as a tiny feathered dart flashed past her cheek, and slammed the shutter again.

  “Zaik Godlord!” she said. “Blowgun, poisoned dart—that message must be important, for them to want us dead so badly. The brotherhoods don’t hire cheap, and they sent four, for the two of us; they boast two of theirs are enough for four strangers.”

  She moved, winced, and looked down at the cut along her collarbone. It was shallow; the edge of the blade had just touched the skin, cutting only because it was honed to a thread. Still, it could infect if not cared for soon. There were streaks and patches of sticky, thickening blood over her breasts and stomach; she could feel it clotting in the ends of her long mane and the pubic triangle. She grimaced. “It will be good to be clean again. More slowly. “If it’s worth this much to guard the secret, how many must be willing to pay for it?”

  She picked up a lighter from the table and chuckled. “And how highly they must think of us!” The round ceramic ball that held alcohol, with the cotton wick and thumb-struck flint, sparked, and she set the flame to the fishtail methane lamp fixed to the wall by the door.

  Blood pooled on the floor, bright liquid red already turning to scum at the edges, soaking darkly into the rugs. The room smelled of blood, excrement, and musky fear sweat, overpowering in the enclosed space. Shkai’ra wrinkled her nose slightly, but hers were not a fastidious people.

  “Best we get someone in to clear up the mess,” she said. Megan looked up, rubbing her temples, leaving a blood smear on one cheek.

  “No need—hear the uproar down the hall? I think that someone finally noticed something wasn’t quite right.” She got up and pulled her daggers free 01 the wood paneling. The door opened a crack; light spilled through as the house slaves relit the lanterns in the halls. A watchslave’s eye peered in, then gave place to a member of the kinfast that owned the Weary Wayfarer. A black shadow padded through and sniffed disdainfully before settling at the edge of a red-brown pool of coagulating blood and lapping.

  There was a long silence. “Oh, gods!” Sarlee, one of the less likable members of the inn’s kinfast, groaned, clapping her hands to the sides of her face and staring at the carnage. “Sweet Sun, Beneficent Light, look at my floors! The rugs are ruined!”

  She shook a fist at the ceiling, as servants crowded around the doorway, peering in awe. “Protection money! Protection money!” she raved. “Ten percent before taxes we pay—to every daggerguild in the city and the Watch as well we give our hard-earned trade-metal, and look what happens! You can’t even get them to protect you against themselves.”

  She opened her mouth to continue the tirade, then hesitated and trailed off as she caught the looks everyone was giving her, even her own slaves. Shkai’ra nodded, finished cleaning the blade, and nudged her cat aside from the blood.

  “Stop that—it’s probably diseased,” she said, picking up the animal and draping him around her neck. “Now, if we could finish our night’s rest ...” she said to the innkeeper, who bowed. The servants drag
ged the bodies out, after an expert search revealed a round dozen weapons, sealed vials, and instruments neither Megan nor Shkai’ra could identify.

  “Sleep would be easier if this mess were cleared up,” she concluded.

  The innkeeper considered them, and then the Adder-fangs and their reputation. “Of course,” she said, rubbing her hands on her tunic. “And of course, consider the ...” She winced. “Consider the week’s rent abated, for the sake of the disturbance.” A pause. “I will have bowls and towels sent, as well.”

  Later, Sarlee stood in the corridor, shaking her head and sighing. Perhaps the kinfast should go into something more peaceful: secret fencing of pirates’ loot, for example, or counterfeiting.

  Across the corridor, the slender fair-haired man closed the door of his room with a silent whistle. And I nearly blundered into that, he thought, stroking a small mustache with paint-stained fingers. Well, he had been lucky. That sparked a thought; he shrugged back into his tunic and began searching for his dice-box. Luck like that didn’t come your way that often, and the game might still be on....

  As the door closed behind the servant, leaving the bowls of hot water, Megan turned on her heel and walked into the other room, kindling a light there. Shkai’ra followed curiously and found her rooting to unearth the pouch from its hiding place. She crossed to the smaller woman and took the sack, tossing it in her hands. “I think that someone wants this rather badly.” Megan snagged it out of the air.

  “It nearly got us killed in our sleep. I’m going to try again to find out what is of such importance. If someone wants to send me to hell, I want to know why so I can put up an argument.” The headache had subsided to a dull pounding that she savagely suppressed. The anger helped. It also called to mind an earlier comment by the Kommanza. She turned on the larger woman and said, “Look, my friend, you can say what you like about my use of Power once you know the manrauq yourself and how long it takes to use it ...” Her voice faded in the face of Shkai’ra’s wry grin as she realized that the comment had not been meant to prick. She sighed and turned away, unknotting the pouch. “You don’t have to stay and watch. Not that there will be much to see either way.”