She left her veils tucked away inside her shirt and exited barefaced.
This storeroom lay at a dead end, so she opened the other door and walked into a small guard room, with a cot, a few tables and three astonished women in leather armor dicing on the floor near the hearth built into the far wall. They scrambled up, shouting at her, when she walked through the other door and into a cramped, dark hallway. Lined with half-a-dozen doors it led to the right, away from the wall. The junction let out onto a single, wide hall spanning the length of the building on either side.
These had once been two buildings, with a courtyard in between—now roofed over—just above her with thatch and mud and lumber. Across the divide, more than twice her body length, rows of tiny cells with barred doors had been hacked into the structure on each story, like honeycomb in a hive. Some of the door stood open, all along the level just below. Prisoners let out for exercise, to clean their cells, or just empty because they had taken the route out that she had taken in.
From behind her and to either side, angry voices raised. Guards converged on her swiftly; brutal they might be but not fools. Sequa spun in a slow circle so everyone now advancing on her could see her face clearly. Sometimes such instant infamy became desperately useful.
The group to her right was closest, and contained a tall man in a metal breastplate and a man not much larger than herself in expensive clothing with ink-stained hands. She held out her bare hands, palm up, showing no weapons.
“Where is he?” Her harsh voice sounded cool and sharp, like ice water across the skin. The tall man’s eyes cut to his right and down for just an instant before he checked at the sight of her face, but the obvious clerk advanced with a peevish squint.
“And just who do you… Great Father’s Fires!” His voice went up on a childish shriek when he finally focused on her.
His companions looked sharply embarrassed. The man in armor paused and cleared his throat. “Champion,” he muttered with what sounded like actual respect. “We were told you might be coming… uh, the gate did not warn us… “
“Because they did not let me in. Take me to him, now.” She made no threats, no bargains. Let them imagine what might happen in thwarting her. The clerk gulped like he was trying not to vomit then turned and fled the way he’d come.
The armored man appeared distraught at this abandonment, looking from his back to her face and back again and then out at the other guards, as though trying to find someone to take responsibility for her.
At her back at least five armed men. The three women she had first seen on her right. On her left an open drop six stories down.
“Where?” she hissed again. Again, he looked across the wide gap between the two buildings and down.
Sequa hopped the railing without speaking.
Another chorus of yells accompanied the motion; they clearly thought she intended to jump the gap. Instead, she swung down onto the level just below, where the landing stretched empty to either side and strolled to the bridge way that connected the two halves of the structure. A boxy staircase circled around and around itself at the connection of the two and she took the flights three steps at a time, down to the ground floor where she could hear the massed voices of the prisoners gathered nearby.
Feet pounded down the stairs behind her but could not catch up before she made the ground floor and saw what she had been looking for.
Along the bottom level of the building closest to the outside wall a large gallery had been opened out. It had once been lined with arched openings; all but one now boarded up with a thick lattice of cane and scrap wood. Tables and chairs littered the space, rough and half wrecked, stained with evil-looking blotches. Men and a few women in ragged, dirty clothes lounged on benches and the floor, unconscious or asleep. They sat at the tables and threw clumsy, unbalanced dice or ancient knuckle bones for scraps of food or mugs of that cheap wine.
Guards lined the walls and lurked at the one entrance. Farther away, Sequa heard shouting and the smack of a leather ball against wood or flesh, some rowdy game played for exercise.
Against the far wall, the longest distance from the door, stood a tall figure with sandy brown hair. Cur. Still alive, his head swivelling from side to side almost in panic.
Her aching stomach contracted in strange gladness to see him alive, though his dead body would have freed her from all tedious obligations.
Everyone she saw faced in Cur’s direction. No one even looked her way, though they must have heard the shouting from above. The guards at the entrance weren’t even paying attention to her.
Motion swirled in the pack of human refuse, reminding her of a grass-cat stalking prey on the high plains. Cur had to be the prey.
Sequa reached the first of the guards and prepared to do something drastic and violent when a loud, imperious voice echoed from the base of the stair behind her.
For the first time, eyes turned her way.
“You there! You stop! You’re not allowed in here!”
Sequa turned her head just enough to look over one shoulder; she had instinctively turned her good side. A very fat man, dark hair going grey and peasant-pale skin, stood panting at the base of the stairs. The clerk and the tall man in armor followed just behind him.
His tunic and leggings were well cut, without the rumpling and sagging of a poor man accommodating his stretching flesh. Rings gleamed on several fingers, and a belt of shiny black leather crossed his bulging belly.
Warden. Sequa faced him though it made her spine and scalp itch to turn her back on Cur.
His voice, shrill under the heavy breathing, dropped a register as he came closer. “How did you even get in here?” He snarled at her, an implicit authority to his manner that she could respect. Moreover, he had barely reacted to seeing her face. He had to have known the front gate turned her away. More guards came down the stairs behind his tail and started to fan out to either side of her. Before she could be surrounded, she drew her weapons up over her shoulders and held them loosely pointed downward.
The armored man recognized the gesture and snapped a sharp word at his underlings, who stopped and faded back, grumbling slightly.
Over the warden’s shoulder, she met his eyes and nodded in professional courtesy.
“If you’re so eager to be in here, freak”—the warden opened with a blunt attack—“I can find you a cell on the woman’s side any time.” He continued in that vein, insulting bluster following angry imprecation until it dawned on him she remained silent and still faced him, her weapons still down, and her posture relaxed.
When he trailed off, it seemed that the whole floor had gone quiet with him, only the fetid stink of unwashed bodies and un-emptied, slop buckets swirling around them.
“Do you intend to arrest me?” Sequa’s voice sounded calm under the rasp. She spoke so softly he visibly strained to hear her.
The blunt question surprised him, his eyes going wide and uncertain. Peasant born, no matter how much he might have enriched himself over the Measures.
From the direction of the main entrance, four men of the Iron Quarter hustled into view and stopped abruptly, staring at the little scene.
“Here, I will go quietly.” Sequa took both sticks in one hand and threw them to the armored man who caught them in deft reflex. She smiled just a little because it always distorted her face into a cool leer and turned, hands spread out and open, her gaze slashing across the face of the Iron Man in the lead. “Now I am arrested, I will join the rest of the population.” In perversity, she raised her voice enough that the newcomers would be able to hear. “I expect Anem will be here soon, and she can determine my sentence.”
Only one of them flinched, the big bulky one who had obviously never been a Child.
Holding the unsettling smile on her face, Sequa crossed the boundary between freedom and captivity in a pace.
She threaded her way through tables and chairs set in haphazard patterns, dodging around rough, angry men in dirty clothes. Most of the pris
oners looked gaunt and unhealthy, lives unnaturally truncated by bad food and worse quarters. A few, perhaps newer or more ruthless, appeared full-fed and alive with brutal vitality. The air, rank with unwashed flesh and bodily secretions, partially covered the stench still clinging to her clothing.
Cur stood still as any hunted thing against the far wall, his eyes shadowed but his mouth set in a hard, thin line. His arms crossed over his belly, one big hand clenched and white knuckled. It relaxed a little as she approached. She gestured to the table between them, rough square wood darkened with sweat and stains.
“Squirrel.” He nodded sharply when she came into earshot. She had to crane her neck to look him in the face, feeling the fool. “Didn’t expect you to come.”
She snorted. “Only one still calls me that.” She hooked a chair from behind her with a foot and sat down, her back to the rest of the room, her empty hands open on the surface of the table. Cur looked her dead in the eye for a long moment, searching. Not a literate man, nor a great mind but he had a large measure of cunning good judgement. His life had hinged for a very long time on reading the intent of others in their bodies and hands. Slowly, he pulled over his own chair and sat across from her. His face crinkled a moment in distaste. “What’s that smell?”
“They would not let me in the front gate,” she said evenly and let him work it out on his own, which took some time. At his eventual wince, she shrugged.
“I didn’t pull you from the gallows to let you drown in this sea of refuse,” she commented when the uncertain look became surprised respect. Behind her, the noise in the room had started up again and sounding far away, male voices snapped at each other in anger. She thought one of them might be the warden.
Sequa forced herself to relax, pulling each muscle along her back and shoulders into alignment by force of will. It would be heartbeats before the violence erupted. Whatever timetable there had been before her arrival had to be hastened, wreathed in uncertainty and panic, and these were not men used to delaying their whims and wishes.
Cur’s eyes cut to her right once, then his chin flicked upwards two times. So, one assailant to her right and two behind her. She knew him so well she saw his right hand tense, the tendons twitching from slack in a breath. He would take the side. She braced her feet, one to the side of the chair and one in front. Palms flat, just at the edge of the table.
Breath. Listen. Slide of cloth on wood under the raucous noise started up again to cover the attack.
Feel. Pressure wave of air. Close.
Sequa went straight up from sitting, left foot kicking the chair backward as she cleared it, not expecting it to be anything but a moment’s distraction. Right calf landing on the table top with a hairbreadth to spare, hands slap down, knees to chest and buck backward, pushing off in a wave with the full strength of back and arms.
To anyone watching—everyone watched now—the hiss of words cut off like a throat being slit. It would seem Sequa uncoiled like a striking snake to land a full step between and behind the two bruisers advancing.
As she cleared the table, Cur flipped it long end over into the path of the third male and exploded out of his own chair with a near-joyous howl of unleashed rage.
Sequa had a moment in the fray to study her opponents as they turned to face her. Both large and muscular but running to fat. Armed only with crude, shard knives. Very flattering. The constricted space would have been bad for her sticks—if she’d had them. Well played, if unnecessary now.
She registered in her far vision Cur slamming his single opponent into the wall, hands locked onto upper arm and throat, then forgot them.
Man on the left, shorter, turned faster. Metal gleamed in his right hand, rising up to punch forward at her face.
Amateur. Blade should already have been in attack position. Slow, so slow, like an old man against her racing blood. Her arms trembled with the effort of restraining the energy. If she got in front of him, this would fail.
Glide-shuffle forward, dominant hand out. Parry fist to the side, right hand guarding throat and chest, then reaching out as the attacking hand passes. Vision unobstructed but unprotected, desperately missed weight of metal as the lethal edge flashed past her scarred cheek.
Her own right hand, slipping up the length of his arm palm down, turned up and extended, fingertips bladed out to slash across his eye. Liquid resistance, like plunging the hand into rotting vegetables.
For an instant, she could see the line her nails scored across the orb, a stick drawn through spilled dye. Then jelly deliquesced down his cheek. The pain struck and the violation became real to his thinking mind at the same moment. He went down, out, no longer anything but screaming meat to trip over.
First strike.
Deep in her belly the slick pleasure-heat flared, lungs drawing shallow sips for a moment.
Never forget, this is your birthright, this too is the dance.
The second man, faster and better, had his weapon already up and striking as he wrenched around.
Nothing there to hit. His sharpened, metal strip cut air as she dropped onto her knees next to his fallen partner, snatched up his discarded blade and struck on an upward surge to the inner thigh with her eyes closed because of the blood spray about to hit her in the face. The fresh, hot liquid buried the lingering stink of the body chute for the first time since she had entered the End of the Road.
Second strike.
Scarred mouth curved in a rictus reflex, Sequa rose up as the second man, the corpse-that-didn’t-know-it-yet, collapsed into the rapidly forming crimson pool.
Cur struggled with his man, as tall as he and carrying more muscle. They spun away from the wall, and the eyes of the two ex-slaves met over the attacker’s shoulder.
If she had been feeling flashy, she would have thrown the shard of metal in her hand. But crude, ill balanced distance weapons—not her gift under perfect circumstances. Instead, she hopped lightly over both her fallen chair and the half-blinded man at her feet to drive the tip of the weapon upward into the left side of his back, the quickest route to the heart while avoiding all those nasty, hard bones in the chest plate.
Cur’s opponent convulsed, gurgled and went down.
Last strike.
They stared at each other, the two former Runners, both wide mouthed and gasping for air. Cur had shallow cuts to his shoulders and neck that bled freely; her hand was gore to the wrist and her eyelashes drooped, occluded with drops of blood. More blood dripped off her shirt and onto her leathers, making wet splotches on her skin as it soaked through.
Like two wolves brought to bay, they turned to face the rest of the room. One sound, a low, thrumming growl, issued from both their throats. It nearly echoed across the space between them and the hardened killers, thieves, rapists, thugs that made up the population of this jail.
Sequa gestured at the entrance with her free hand, contemptuously tossing the blade over her shoulder as she did so. By luck or divine humor, she heard the musical solid thock hmmmmm of the blade striking the wood and sticking.
Haughty, blood dripping from her chin, creeping salt and cloying across her lips, Sequa walked out of the room with Cur close at her shoulder, the crowd pulsing and clearing before them. By the side wall, several prisoners and at least one guard were adding the sour smell of vomit to the miasma of death.
In the open, Sequa came face-to-face with the warden again. To her intense gratification he jerked, blanched, and utterly failed to conceal his horror at her face and clothing drenched in blood. As grim and evil looking as her face seemed normally, at the moment she must have looked like the Empty made flesh, all carnage and scars.
“They attacked us,” she said simply. “We defended ourselves. This did not perhaps go as planned for them. Where can I wash?”
“He can’t go—” the fat man frothed at her, indicating Cur.
“He is palpably not safe in there, where he should never have been. He is coming with me now to a private place where we will speak and then
perhaps be out of this place entirely.”
At that exact moment, Anem came slamming into the front door of the jail, her body a study in cold fury, ripping off her helmet. Parri and a ten-squad of Iron Guards nipped at her heels. Sequa smiled at her as she stormed across the wide hall. A dead man’s blood dripped into her mouth, staining her teeth pink and leaving a greasy film on her tongue.
Parri went green then pulled his helmet back down protectively, three of the fighters stood dead in their tracks and Anem herself went an interesting shade of white. Then she saw the four men of her guard who had brought Cur here and her eyes went dead and still. But she went to Sequa, Cur and the warden first.
“Your blood?” Anem said, her face impassive.
“No.”
“And not his,” Anem said, looking at Cur. “Well, that must have been a spectacular failure.” Her nose wrinkled and she looked at the warden. “It certainly smells like a disaster. Have someone show the lady and her companion to a washbasin. Then come and speak to me in your office.”
As though that settled the matter—to all intents it did—Sequa let the twitching, terrified clerk lead her and Cur away, a thin trail of blood drops following her like a faithful pet.
~ * ~
They had been led to a small, unused office on the top floor, away from the open gallery of cells and trapped in a warren of narrow corridors. A disgusted and visibly frightened guard had brought an inadequate amount of water and a few not very clean scraps of fabric.
Sequa had been intent on getting the blood off and not really paying attention to Cur, save to make sure he remained behind her on the way there. Once the door closed behind them, she ignored his troubled pacing and air of agitation.
“You were…” Cur trailed off with his usual hesitancy. Not until she looked at him, reading the tension in his shoulders, did she realize how acutely concerned he must be. She put down the length of coarse cloth she had been using to scrape the blood off her face and waited patiently in silence.
It took quite some time before he straightened a little. He still could not meet her eyes. “You were fast.”
As A God Page 13