Food vendors sold skewers of spiced meat sizzling over charcoal fires. Bakers offered loaves of knotted brown bread. Two women stirred a steaming cauldron and ladled out bowls of what they called “kraken chowder,” a milky stew with thready seaweed, bobbing onions, and rings of tender suckers that had been sliced from some large tentacle.
Nicci walked at a brisk pace, uninterested in the distractions. Jugglers performed in the streets, gamblers placed bets on a game of shells and cups. A musician sat on an overturned pot eliciting caterwauling sounds from a flexible stringed instrument.
In the spice merchants’ district, men in long green robes haggled over the price of cumin, turmeric, cardamom. A toothless old woman squatted on a curb as she sorted lumpy roots of mandrake and ginger. When an errant breeze whispered along the street, the spice merchants rushed to cover their powder-filled baskets. One man bent over a clay bowl of red pepper, and the breeze feathered some of it into his face, making him cough and retreat, flailing his hands.
Tanimura was a crowded, vibrant city. Every person here was concerned with everyday living, but few of them considered the larger work of building and maintaining the D’Haran Empire. These people weren’t soldiers. They had lived for years under the Imperial Order. They had survived the turmoil of the long, bloody war, and now they might not even realize how fundamentally their existence had changed. If Lord Rahl’s rule endured, these people might never need to concern themselves much about it.
As she worked her way into the older, more crowded district just above the harbor, the streets grew tighter and more tangled. The buildings were tall and dingy, and every street degenerated into an alley. More than once, she found herself at a dead end of brick walls and garbage, forcing her to retrace her steps.
Nicci turned down a wider alley between leaning three-story buildings with cracked and stained walls. The buildings closed into shadows redolent of stagnant water, rats, and refuse. She pressed forward, supposing the passageway would open into a broader thoroughfare, but instead it turned along oddly skewed corners, and the passage narrowed.
Ahead, she heard a frightened shout and the sounds of a scuffle—curses, gruff laughter, the smack of a fist striking flesh, then the more muffled sound of boots kicking. She was already running toward the sounds when an outcry of pain joined what sounded like a little boy’s mocking laughter.
“That’s all the money I have!” It was a young man’s voice.
Nicci rounded the corner to come upon three muscular men and a wiry boy, all bunched around a young man of perhaps twenty years. It took her only an instant to gauge the tableau, identify the predators, the victim. The young man cornered by these thugs didn’t look like a Tanimuran. He had long ginger hair and pale skin covered with freckles; his hazel eyes were wide with fear.
He swung at his attackers, but the three larger men pummeled him with their fists. It was like a game to them, and they seemed in no hurry. The boy, no more than ten years old, pranced from one foot to the other, clutching a small sack of coins in his hand, obviously stolen from the victim.
One of the thugs, a heavyset man with short but extraordinarily muscular arms, planted a solid kick on the meat of the victim’s thigh. The red-haired young man went down, sliding against the slimy, stained wall. Even as he fell, he kept his arms up in an attempt to fend them off.
Nicci said, “Stop what you’re doing.” It wasn’t a shout, but hard enough to draw their attention like an unexpected slap.
The three men spun to look at her in surprise. The curly-haired boy’s eyes went as wide and bright as coins, and he bolted down the winding alley, disappearing as quickly as a cockroach revealed by the light. Nicci ignored the child and faced the three men, the real threat.
The thugs turned toward her, ready for a fight, but when they saw only an attractive blonde in a black dress, their expressions changed. One let out a guffaw. They spread out so they could come at her from different directions.
The squat heavyset man called after the boy, who had disappeared down the alleys. “There’s no need to run, you little bastard. It’s just a woman.”
“Let him run, Jerr—we’ll find him later,” said a second man. He was swarthy with a round face and bloodshot eyes that probably resulted from long familiarity with alcohol, rather than lack of sleep.
“We don’t want the little brat to see what we’re going to do with her anyway,” said the third man, with greasy brown hair tied back in a ponytail. “He’s too young for that kind of education.”
The ginger-haired victim tried to get up. He was bleeding from his nose, and his shirt was torn. “They stole my money!”
The man with bloodshot eyes smacked him hard across the face. The young man’s head hit the alley wall hard.
Although she felt coldness rise within her, Nicci didn’t move toward them. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I told you to stop.”
“We’re just getting started,” said Jerr, the leader. In unison, the three men drew their knives. Apparently, beating the young man wasn’t enough entertainment, and they had something else in mind for Nicci. Such men usually did.
Leering, they came toward her. The man with the ponytail slid around to cut off her retreat—but she had no intention of retreating. They obviously expected her to run in fear, but that was not something Nicci did.
“Nice black dress,” said Jerr, holding up his knife. “But we’d rather see you without it. Makes things easier.”
The young redhead tried to scramble to his feet, pressing a hand to his bruised thigh. “You leave her alone!”
The man with bloodshot eyes snarled at him. “How many teeth do you want to lose before this day is out?”
Nicci regarded the three of them with an icy gaze. “It has been several weeks since I had occasion to kill a man.” She looked from one to the next. “Now I have three in one day.”
The thugs were startled by her boldness, and the heavyset Jerr laughed. “How do you expect to do that? You don’t even have a weapon.”
Nicci stood with her hands loose at her sides, her fingers curled. “I am the weapon.” From within, she summoned her magic. She had countless ways to kill these men.
The redhead finally managed to stand, and he foolishly lurched toward them, calling out to Nicci. “I won’t let them hurt you!” He dove at the legs of the man with the ponytail, knocking him to the ground.
Bloodshot Eyes raised his knife and advanced toward Nicci, waving the point back and forth in the air in front of her, as if she was supposed to be intimidated. Jerr called out, “Cut her, Henty, but don’t hurt her too bad—not yet. I don’t want her blood all over me when I get between her legs.”
Nicci could have unleashed wizard’s fire and incinerated the three of them in an instant, but she might also kill the young man, as well as start a fire that could rage through the old town. That was unnecessary. She had other means.
Nicci created a wall of air that slammed into Henty, and he looked as if he had blindly smashed into an invisible tree. As he stood momentarily stunned, Nicci used the magic to fling him up and back fifteen feet above the ground. She was not gentle—she had no reason to be.
Bloodshot Eyes slammed into the high wall, and the impact crushed his head like one of the dark melons in the farmer’s oxcart. A splash of red painted a broad round splatter on the already stained wall; then the body traced a long uneven smear as it slid two stories down to the ground.