Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  “Move!” she rasped, then realized that the command had been given in Kommanzanu. “Get going,” she repeated in Fehinnan, uncertain this time whether it was a command or a plea.

  “Shkai’ra, we, ah, have a bit of a problem.” The Zak’s voice was oddly muffled, carefully calm.

  “Now this is revealed unto you?” Shkai’ra said, the rhythms of her cradle-speech rubbing through the tongue she had learned. The effort of talking helped to bring her back to herself a little.

  “The passage ahead of us—it goes almost straight down. And there’s water at the bottom.”

  Shkai’ra choked off a sound that might have been a whimper. Turning her head, she sank teeth into one arm hard enough to draw blood, then clenched a fist and slammed it across the three inches of space available into the side of the tunnel.

  The pain overrode fear; to a Kommanza, pain was deeply linked to discipline and mastery. “The ...” She hawked and spat. “The kinless cowget turd-eating Fehinnans build these tunnels shaped like a shuh rune. Down and then up again, farther up on the other side and out to the cellar levels.”

  The Zak felt sudden shock as if solidly stopping a blow and began to realize how close the tie between them was. I. Am. Not Afraid. Of small. Spaces. She put her head down a moment, her forehead on the weeping concrete. Sympathy so close would not aid them. “The bottom of an S-curve?” Already she imagined the icy feel of scummy water forcing its way into her lungs. “We don’t know how deep, either, after that fishgutted storm.” She drew a deep breath. “Well have to turn on our backs and go down head first, to bend around the curve.” She froze a second, then with a hurried scramble she edged around and started down the shaft, frantically forcing her body to do what was necessary. If I stop I’ll never make myself do this, she thought as the water oozed through her hair and touched the top of her scalp, rising only as fast as she could get purchase in the slime.

  The sick, tight feeling in her chest got worse as she forced her way under and something squirmed away from under one hand. It was as cold as the Dark One’s breath. She thought of breathing. The blood rushed to her head and pounded in her temples, the darkness behind her eyes pulsed red. There was no air. She scrambled and shoved through sludge. Her nails caught at projections and gave her purchase as she realized the curve was scraping past her knees. Fighting painful constriction, she lunged upward, striving for air, and life.

  Shkai’ra waited long moments before turning. Even so, it was not until the skittering from behind grew close that she drew a quick dozen deep breaths and pushed herself forward and down.

  If I’m going to be eaten alive, I want to drown first, she thought as the oily water closed over her face.

  She jackknifed her body to bend around the down-curve, braced her feet against the ceiling, and pushed with all the strength of her long thigh muscles. The impetus carried her to the bottom of the straight section, to where the shaft curved level once more at the bottom of the U. And there she stopped; the tunnel was partly blocked by sediment, and the buoyancy of the air in her lungs kept trying to drag her up and back. Her face scraped against the concrete of the tunnel’s roof, her shoulders jammed and sank into the slippery softness of the bottom. Outstretched before her, there was no room for her arms to gain leverage; only the strength in her fingers and wrists was in play against the slick-slimy surface. Her boot toes scrabbled, but her shins were still braced against the curve of the shaft, and it held her feet flailing almost uselessly in the water.

  She ignored the overwhelming urge to exhale, knowing that the burning in her lungs would be tenfold worse if she gave in.

  In the end, it was the mushy resilience of the fermenting waste along the floor that saved her; bone could not give way, nor concrete, but the thick organic mud flowed away from beneath her straining shoulders.

  Zaik, godlord, bad enough to drown, but to drown in shit.... An insane giggle at the thought almost killed her, filling her mouth with cold rancid water as she pulled herself along the bottom stretch. Little strength was left as she broke free and floated up the vertical rise; she might have drowned on the surface itself if fingers had not wound in her hair and held her mouth above water as she retched and coughed.

  Megan’s voice came from above her head, harsh and strained but with a note of relief. “Just think. If I hadn’t had you as a guide, I would have missed these glorious sights of this wonderful city. Do you take all newcomers through the best parts?”

  She was braced in the vertical upshaft, knees and back preventing her from sliding back down onto Shkai’ra. She looked up as the Kommanza braced herself. Faintly above, she could see a dim light that seemed brighter than the glowing slime rubbing off the walls. The comment drew nothing from Shkai’ra save a strangled “OUT. Get out of here.”

  They resumed the climb, the phosphorescence fading as they climbed higher. They had reached bare concrete when the shaft grew slightly wider. After the first few feet, Megan felt one hand slide again and knew that the dull ache spreading through her hands and knees was more than just the pressure of climbing straight up. A slight projection in the wall gouged into one kneecap, and she wished that she had her own leather breeches rather than this useless shift. The Zak levered herself up another foot on flayed knees and realized that she could see the wall in front of her.

  Another foot, and another. The light was strong enough for her to see the damp patches where her hands had touched the roughness of the concrete; a little brighter, and she would be able to make out the redness. She was cold and sweating with effort. Her hand hit the wooden grill covering a side passage and clung to the hard smooth bars as to the promise of salvation.

  “Zailo Unseen, don’t stop,” Shkai’ra panted behind her. Leather saddle-trousers had left her knees at least in better condition than her comrade’s, but the need for escape was a physical hunger now. Below she could hear a plopping and splashing as the first tiny fanged heads broke the surface of the water; soon claws would scrabble at the walls. The gators were still following.

  “There’s a grating,” Megan explained as her fingers ran over it. Woven tightly, it would pass water and air but nothing living larger than a flea. The surface of the wood was oddly slick under her hands, treated somehow to shed the damp and resist rot.

  “Of course there’s a grating! You think folk want to wake up with the little crawlers sharing their straw? Open it!”

  Megan braced herself and strained; her face was pressed to the unyielding surface, and she could see dimly up a sloping square tunnel. “I can’t ... budge it,” she gasped!

  Shkai’ra made a sound, mostly a groan but with the hint of a whimper in it. “It’s meant to keep things out and let offal through—there’s a spring holding it closed; it hinges in. Pull.”

  Megan cursed herself silently. Anger made her wrench sharply on the grille; there was a rending pop as the laminated wooden spring gave way.

  “Just a few feet, and then into a lighted room,” she whispered back to Shkai’ra. Goddess, to be clean ...

  Chapter XVIII

  The Adderchief slammed a palm down on the polished surface of the table. The sound fell into a silence that filled the cellar room among stolen finery and bare, dew-weeping walls.

  Around the table, the aristocracy of the Adderfangs sat, their eyes lost in the shadows of their hood-masks. They were the elite of their kind; aristocrats among thieves, assassins, alley bravos; overlords of protection rings, banks, the houses that satisfied tastes so curious that even Fehinnan law looked askance. Their organization was ancient by Illizbuah reckoning, which stretched back to times when the shape of the continents themselves had changed. There were rules, laws, a tradition of decorum. This display of emotion was unseemly. Behind the masks, certain calculations of power began to shift.

  “Two of our best dead,” the Adderchief continued. “On a standard mission, with only two clients—” she used the antiseptic terminology of the trade “—and those sleeping. An Adderfang killed in plain view
—with his own fungus grenade.”

  They winced at the humiliation. Face was important; their reputation was their livelihood. The North-side Serpentchief spoke, greatly daring:

  “The red-haired barbarian ...” He let the phrase trail off, no need to remind the Adderchief of the fiasco at Raisak Staaiun last year; no doubt the reference would not be lost on those considering new leadership, either.

  The Adderchief’s voice was much calmer when she answered, and for the first time that evening the man was frightened.

  “That,” she said in carefully measured tones, “is not spoken of in my presence. Not more than once.”

  The gathering tension was broken by a voice, but not from any of the six darklords. They rose to their feet and spread out with smooth economy; any observer would have noticed that they had lost little of the alley skills in their years of mastery.

  The sound came from the garbage chute, in the wall against which their council table had been pushed. “... hinges in,” they heard. “Pull.”

  There was the click of a miniature bolt-gun being cocked, and the first bolt slid from the magazine into the groove, its point black and tarry.

  It was a shock to be free of the confining tunnel. Megan lay for a moment, panting, under the table before turning to help Shkai’ra. It was then that she heard the small sound. She froze. That had been a weapon, a weapon like ... She looked up and stared along the shaft of a bolt into the eyes of a crouching figure in a black hood. From beneath the table, she could see the legs of five more.

  Shkai’ra followed her, staggering as she crawled with the aftershock of adrenaline exhaustion. Slowly, she looked up and sighed.

  “Oh, sheepshit.”

  * * *

  The Adder kicked the last of their clothes into a corner and turned to finish tying Shkai’ra. Megan’s breath hissed between her teeth as she pulled on the bindings. Her arms were strained behind her back, hands tied to feet and thumbs to toes. Lying on her back, her full weight lay on her wrists, sending sharp, random pain shooting up her arms. One Adderfang inspected the shot-pistol he’d taken from Shkai’ra.

  “We go to pick grapes and the rivers run wine.” The Adderchief laughed softly. “Five thousand gold we will get from the General Staff. Three thousand from the tight-arse priests.” Her voice caressed. “Revenge best of all.” She leaned forward and began heating a knife blade in the glass chimney of the alcohol lamp on the table before her. “A shame to spoil the temper of a good blade, but guests are always dropping in before the facilities are ready. Thoughtless of you, Red-hair ... and for the love of the Sun’s shadow, throw some water over them; meeting over a sewer is bad enough, without it crawling in with us.”

  The one had finished with Shkai’ra and rolled her on her back, her knees spreading in an uncontrollable reflex to ease the pain of unnaturally strained limbs. He gripped her above the hips and looked up at the leader.

  “Not yet,” that one laughed, muffled behind the black hood. “Later, when she needs cheering up.”

  Megan felt hate and rage flare up in her. She strained again, gasped as the icy water splashed over her, shook her head, and spat at the figure before her. “Kouritz H’Rokatsk! Your mother died of leprosy before you were conceived!”

  The Adder backhanded Megan casually as she turned to watch their chief. A green light flared in Megan’s eyes, and she fell silent, seeking something, anything, to fix her power on. The Adderchief knelt by Shkai’ra, considering. The others gathered closer. Shkai’ra’s face was expressionless as the metal touched and sizzled briefly on the upper curve of one breast. The Adder gave a deep sound of satisfaction. “Don’t talk too soon,” she said happily.

  Megan pulled harder on the twine securing her thumbs, as the sizzle filled her ears and the scent of scorched meat drifted out into the humid closeness of the room. She could feel the stiff, harsh fiber cutting into the skin, but if only she could pull ...

  She sagged a second; then what? A roomful of armed assassins against her. She strained again, and her nails grated on the stone beneath her. At the harsh sound everything went still. Pull? she thought. The directionless fury cooled suddenly to an icy knot within her, and her mind stopped its fruitless thrashing. By straining her hand, she could just use her nails ... so. She ignored the cramping in her hand and felt the threads stretch and snap as she snicked through the first few. Not allowing her hands to fall free, she turned her gaze around the room and assessed her chances. We are going to die, she thought, but which one goes with us? The one tormenting Shkai’ra was just too far away, with others between. She turned her head to look at the one who had struck her and slowly began to shift her weight.

  One of the black-clad figures glanced up uneasily. “Ah, Darkness,” he said. The Adderchief looked up. “I think I can hear the little crawlers in the waste chute.”

  There was a barely perceptible stirring motion, quickly checked. The Adders spent much of their working lives below the surface, in the huge network of runnels, sewers, and blind basements that spider-webbed beneath the streets, pumped free by the giant windmills along the walls. The labor of generations had pushed through new connections; there were chambers down below that had no direct connection with the light, and many a householder lived unknowing above. There were boundaries and territories in the sunless roads, and wars fought in darkness. The crawlers were the fear that never left those who passed their time below; no menace when you could shut a barrier on them, or run, but to be trapped with no way to block an entranceway ...

  Irritated, the Adderchief lifted the knife blade and studied it for a moment before reheating. “The grate is closed, and the spring is new,” she said.

  Shkai’ra’s eyes snapped back from the infinitely remote place within her where they had been focused. Consciousness returned, and there was a hard, delighted malice in the carrying tone she used.

  “Not since we broke it climbing in,” she said.

  The Adderchief hesitated as the others wheeled to stare at the opening in the wall. The first of the crawlers dropped with a click to the flagstones of the floor and scuttled, seeking the blood-scent from Shkai’ra’s leg wound. Her hand wound in Shkai’ra’s hair, and she tensed to draw the other woman forward onto the glowing iron. That moment, frozen between fear and hate, was her undoing. The Kommanza’s head snapped sideways and her teeth sank into flesh; she could feel tendon and artery beginning to yield as she gripped and worried, heedless of the pain in her bound hands. The assassin lord shrieked, as much in surprise as in pain; it took her long moments to free herself, and blood trickled thickly from the ugly wound on her knife hand.

  At the assassin’s cry, Megan leaped, her hands arching out in a swift slash that tore through her target’s face from brow to chin. She felt fluid spray across her fingers and her claws catch, slowed by the muscles but sinking to the bone as fatty tissue shredded away.

  The woman staggered back screaming, hands clasping the ruins of her face. “My eyes! My eyes!” The black hood showed ragged, sodden edges through her fingers, and bright blood splattered her hands—blood and other fluids.

  More crawlers had dropped from the hole, lashing in the feeding frenzy brought by the scent of blood. The assassins were moving with the speed that was their safety. Megan’s cramped limbs failed her as she tried to finish the one, and she staggered. She never saw the blow that felled her; she only felt the stunning pain that blossomed in her back, a spinning kick knocking her into the wall. The world blacked out for a second.

  The Adderchief alone paused at the door. “Remember me: Jahlini Buhhfud’s-kin,” she taunted. “As long as the crawlers give you time. They won’t eat your hair; the priests will pay us for that, at least. Hearty appetite!”

  The door slammed on the sound of her laughter, leaving them in the darkness and the sound of scales on stone. Below, the grate hung loosely against its moorings; each scrambling push of crawlers forced it open long enough for a few to pass, before the weight of the others dropped it back agai
n. Soon the press passing through would float it wide open on a sea of backs; for a moment, only a hand of the tiny reptiles could pass at a time.

  Shkai’ra twisted to crush one of the crawlers that had found her in the dark. “Megan! Megan!” she called, then, “Yie! Cowget bastards! Megan!”

  “No ... no need to shout,” Megan gasped, desperately trying to regain the wind that had been knocked out of her as she levered herself up, first on her forearms, then knees, finally staggering to her feet.

  Shkai’ra heard the table go over with a crash and a sliding, scrunching noise as it was pushed against the wall. “Say something, so I can find you,” Megan said.

  “Get me loose!”

  It was an instant’s work to free Shkai’ra, and a bit longer to relight a lamp. They spent a hurried moment bracing the table; the tunnel was narrow, and there would not be enough of the reptiles pushing on the surface of the wood blocking the entrance to shift it. The crawlers already in the room were easy enough to deal with; a hard quick stamp and a sound halfway between a crunch and the bursting of a ripe tomato. Even this close to the sewers, the smell was heavy; the ruptured digestive tracts were foul with the food the crawlers scavenged from the city’s wastes.

  At last they paused, silent except for deep panting breaths. Shkai’ra leaned back against the wall, wincing but accepting the pain for the support. Her eyes strayed to the door, and a meditative look came into them. Slowly, a smile flashed among the bruises and drying blood, and she shared it with Megan.

  The guards outside the council door were bored. It was a high honor to guard such a meeting; common shivpushers could not dream of it, and there had been excitement enough, when all the dark ones had come boiling out. The Southside Serpentchief had been badly wounded by someone or something. But the cryptic command to guard the prisoners while the crawlers finished them had been baffling. What prisoners?

  Still, they knew better than to question an order from Adderchief Jahlini herself, especially with one of her supporters removed from power so suddenly.