Still no-one troubled the faceless man. Messaline knew about Wizards.
Others were not so lucky, or so unmolested.
The Gage came out into the small square that surrounded one foot of the Blue Stone. It rose above him in an interlaced, fractal series of helixes a hundred times the height of a tall man, vanishing into the darkness that drank its color and translucency. The Gage had been walking for long enough that stars now showed through the gaps in the arch’s sinuous strands.
The base of the monument separated into a half-dozen pillars where it plunged to earth. Rather than resting upon a plinth or footing, though, it seemed as if each pillar had thrust up through the street like a tree seeking the light—or possibly as if the cobbles of the road had just been paved around them.
Among the shadows between those pillars, a man wearing a skirted coat and wielding a narrow, curved sword fought silently—desperately—valiantly—for his life.
THE COMBAT HAD every appearance of an ambush—five on one, though that one was the superior swordsman and tactician. These were advantages that did not always affect the eventual result when surrounded and outnumbered, but the man in the skirted coat was making the most of them. His narrow torso twisted like a charmed snake as he dodged blows too numerous to deflect. He might have been an answer to any three of his opponents. But as it was, he was left whirling and weaving, leaping and ducking, parrying for his life. The harsh music of steel rang from the tight walls of surrounding rowhouses. His breathing was a rasp audible from across the square. He used the footings of the monument to good advantage, dodging between them, keeping them at his back, forcing his enemies to coordinate their movements over uneven cobblestones.
The Gage paused to assess.
The lone man’s skirts whirled wide as he caught a narrower, looping strand of the Blue Stone in his off hand and used it as a handle to swing around, parrying one opponent with his sword hand while landing a kick in the chest of another. The kicked man staggered back, arms pinwheeling. One of his allies stepped under his blade and came on, hoping to catch the lone man off-balance.
The footpad—if that’s what he was—huffed in pain as he ran into the Gage’s outstretched arm. His eyes widened; he jerked back and reflexively brought his scimitar down. It glanced off the Gage’s shoulder, parting his much-patched garment and leaving a bright line.
The Gage picked him up by the jaw, one-handed, and bashed his brains out against the Blue Stone.
The man in the skirted coat ran another through between the ribs. The remaining three hesitated, exchanging glances. One snapped a command; they vanished into the night like rain into a fallow field, leaving only the sound of their footsteps. The man in the skirted coat seemed as if he might give chase, but his sword was wedged. He stood on the chest of the man he had killed and twisted his long, slightly curved blade to free it. It had wedged in his victim’s spine. A hiss of air escaping a punctured lung followed as he slid it free.
Warily, he turned to the Gage. The Gage did not face him. The man in the skirted coat did not bother to walk around to face the Gage.
“Thank...”
Above them, the Blue Stone began to glow, with a grey light that faded up from nothingness and illuminated the scene: glints off the Gage’s bronze body, the saturated blood-red of the lone man’s coat, the frayed threads of its embroidery worn almost flat on the lapels.
“What the—?”
“Blood,” the Gage said, prodding the brained body with his toe. “The Blue Stone accepts our sacrifice.” He gestured to the lone man’s prick-your-finger coat. “You’re a Dead Man.”
Dead Men were the sworn, sacred guards of the Caliphs who ruled north and east of Messaline, across the breadth of the sea.
“Not anymore,” the Dead Man said. Fastidiously, he crouched and scrubbed his sword on a corpse’s hem. “Not professionally. And not literally, thanks to you. By which I mean, ‘Thank you.’”
The faceless man shrugged. “It didn’t look like a fair fight.”
“In this world, O my brother, is there such a thing as a fair fight? When one man is bestowed by the gods with superior talent, by station with superior training, by luck with superior experience?”
“I’d call that the opposite of luck,” said the faceless man.
The Dead Man shrugged. “Pardon my forwardness; a true discourtesy, when directed at one who has done me a very great favor solely out of the goodness of his heart—”
“I have no heart.”
“—but you are what they call a Faceless Man?”
“We prefer the term Gage. And while we’re being rude, I had heard your kind don’t leave the Caliph’s service.”
“The Caliph’s service left me. A new Caliph’s posterior warms the dais in Asitaneh. I’ve heard your kind die with the Wizard that made you.”
The Gage shrugged. “I’ve something to do before I lie down and let the scavengers have me.”
“Well, you have come to the City of Jackals now.”
“You talk a lot for a dead man.”
The Dead Man laughed. He sheathed his sword and thrust the scabbard through his sash. More worn embroidery showed that to be its place of custom.
“Why were they trying to kill you?”
The Dead Man had aquiline features and eagle-eyes to go with it, a trim goatee and a sandalwood-skinned face framed by shoulder-length ringlets, expensively oiled. Slowly, he drew a crimson veil across his nose and mouth. “I expected an ambush.”
Neither one of them made any pretense that that was, exactly, an answer.
The Gage reached out curiously and touched the glowing stone. “Then I’m pleased to see that your expectation was rewarded.”
“You discern much.” The Dead Man snorted and stood. “May I know the name of the one who aided me?”
“My kind have no names.”
“Do you propose then that there is no difference between you? You all have the same skills? The same thoughts?”
The Gage turned to him, and the Dead Man saw his own expression reflected, distorted in that curved bronze mirror. It never even shivered when he spoke. “So we are told.”
The Dead Man shrugged. “So also are we. Were we. When I was a part of something bigger. But now I am alone, and my name is Serhan.”
The Gage said, “You can call me Gage.”
He turned away, though he did not need to. He tilted his featureless head back to look up.
“What’s this thing?” The Gage’s gesture followed the whole curve of the Blue Stone, revealed now as the light their murders had engendered rose along it like tendrils of crawling foxfire.
“It is old; it is anyone’s guess what good it once was. There used to be a road under it, before they built the houses. A triumphal arch, maybe?”
“Hell of a place for a war monument.”
The Dead Man’s veil puffed out as he smothered a laugh. “The neighborhood was better once.”
“Surprised they didn’t pull it down for building material.”
“Many have tried,” the Dead Man said. “It does not pull down.”
“Huh,” said the Gage. He prodded the brained man again. “Any idea why they attacked you?”
“Opportunity? Or perhaps to do with the crime I have been investigating. That seems more likely.”
“Crime?”
Reluctantly, the Dead Man answered, “Murder.”
“Oh,” said the Gage. “The poet?”
“I wonder if it might have been related to this.” The Dead Man’s hand described the arc of light across the sky. The glow washed the stars away. “Maybe he was a sacrifice to whatever old power inhabits... this.”
“I doubt it,” said the Gage. “I know something about the killer.”
“You seek justice in this matter too?”