‘It would appear,’ murmured Shev, leaning towards Javre, ‘that the scum who double-crossed us have been double-crossed by some other scum.’
‘Yes,’ whispered Javre. Her whispers were louder than the usual speaking voice of most people. ‘I find myself conflicted. Who to kill first?’
‘Perhaps we could talk our way out?’ Shev ventured hopefully. It was important to stay hopeful.
‘Shevedieh, we must face the possibility that there will be violence.’
‘Your prescience is uncanny.’
‘When things get underway, I would be ever so grateful if you could attend to the flatbowman on the balcony just there?’
‘Understood,’ muttered Shev.
‘Most of the rest you can probably leave to me.’
‘Too kind.’
And now the unmistakable tread of heavy boots and jingling metal echoed from the back of the inn, and Tumnor’s face grew even more drawn, beads of sweat rolling down his cheeks.
Javre narrowed her eyes. ‘And the villain is revealed.’
‘Villains tend to love a bit of theatre, though, don’t they?’ muttered Shev.
When she emerged into the shifting candlelight, she was lean and very tall. Almost as tall as Javre, perhaps, her black hair chopped short, one sinewy arm bare and covered in blue tattoos and the other with plates of battered steel, a gauntlet like a claw at the end, curving nails of sharpened metal clicking as she walked. Her green, green eyes glinted as she smiled towards them.
‘It has been a while, Javre.’
Javre pushed her lips out. ‘Oh, arse of the Goddess,’ she said. ‘Well met, Weylen. Or badly met, at least.’
‘You know her?’ muttered Shev.
Javre winced. ‘I must admit she is not an entire stranger to me. She was Thirteenth of the Fifteen.’
‘I am Tenth now,’ said Weylen. ‘Since you killed Hanama and Birke.’
‘I offered them the same choice I will soon offer you.’ Javre shrugged. ‘They chose death.’
‘Er …’ Shev held up one gloved finger. ‘If I may ask … What the hell are we talking about?’
The woman’s emerald-green eyes moved across to her. ‘She did not tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
Javre winced even more. ‘Those friends of mine I mentioned, from the temple.’
‘The temple in Thond?’
‘Yes. They’re not so much friends.’
‘So … neutral towards you, then?’ Shev ventured hopefully. It was important to stay hopeful.
‘More enemies,’ said Javre.
‘I see.’
‘The fifteen Knights Templar of the Golden Order are forbidden to leave the temple except on the orders of the High Priestess. On pain of death.’
‘And I’m guessing you had no such permission to go?’ asked Shevedieh, looking around at all the sharpened steel on display.
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Not in so many?’
‘Not in any.’
‘Her life is forfeit,’ said Weylen. ‘As is the life of anyone who offers her succour.’ And she extended her steel-taloned forefinger and drove it into the top of Tumnor’s head. He made a sound like a fart, then dropped forward, blood bubbling from the neat wound in his pate.
Shev held her empty palms up. ‘Well, I’ve offered no succour, that I promise you. I like a succouring just as much as the next girl, if not a good deal more, but Javre?’ She worked her hand gently, making sure the mechanism was engaged, hoping that it looked like nothing more than an expressive gesture. ‘No offence to her, I daresay she’ll make several men a wonderful husband some day, but she’s not my type at all.’ Shev raised her brows at Weylen who, it had to be said, was much closer to her type, those eyes of hers really were something. ‘And, you know, not wanting to blow my own horn, but once I offer succour? I generally get all the succouring one woman can-’
‘She means help,’ said Javre.
‘Eh?’
‘Succour. It is not a sexual thing.’
‘Oh.’
‘Kill them,’ said Weylen.
The flatbowman raised his weapon, candlelight glinting on the sharpened tip of the loaded bolt, as several other thugs burst from the shadows brandishing a selection of unpleasant-looking weapons. Though what weapons look pleasant, Shev reflected, when brandished at you?
Shev twisted her wrist and the throwing knife sprang into her hand. Unfortunately, the spring was wound too tight, and it shot straight through her clutching fingers and thudded into the ceiling, neatly cutting the rope that held the chandelier. Pulleys whirred and the huge thing began to plummet towards them.
The flatbowman smiled as he squeezed the trigger, aiming straight at Shev’s heart. A thug raised a huge axe above his head. Then a great weight of wood, glass and wax crashed down upon him, crushing him flat, the flatbow bolt shuddering into the side of the chandelier an instant before it hit the ground with a shattering impact, taking two more thugs with it and sending dust, splinters, shards and candles flying.
‘Shit,’ whispered Shev, stunned and blinking as the echoes faded. She and Javre stood together in the centre of the chandelier’s circular wreckage, apparently entirely unhurt.
Shev gave a whoop of triumph which turned, as many of her triumphant whoops did, into a gurgle of horror as an uncrushed thug sprang over the ruins of the chandelier with his sword a blur of hard-swung steel. She leaped back, tripped over a table, fell over a chair, rolled, saw a blade flash past, scrambled under another table, dust filtering around her as someone beat it with an axe. She heard crashes, clashes, loud swearing and all the familiar noise of a fight in an inn.
Bloody hell, Shev hated fights. Hated them. Considering how much she hated them, she got into a lot of them. Partnering up with Javre had not helped her record in that regard or, at a brief assay, any other. She slid out from under the table, sprang up, was punched in the face and sprawled painfully against the counter, spluttering and wobbling and trying to blink the tears from her eyes.
A snarling thug came at her overhand with a knife and she jerked back at the waist, steel flashing by her and thunking into the counter. She jerked forward and butted him in the face, knocked him staggering with his hands to his nose, snatched his knife from the wood and sent it whirling through the air in one smooth motion, burying itself in the flatbowman’s forehead as he levelled his reloaded weapon. His eyes rolled up and he toppled off the balcony and onto a table below, sending bottles and glasses flying.
‘What a knife-thrower,’ Shev muttered to herself, ‘I could have- Urgh!’ Her smugness was knocked out of her along with her breath as a man cannoned into her side and sent her reeling.
He was a big man of surpassing ugliness, swinging this way and that with a mace almost as big and ugly as he was, smashing glasses and furniture, filling the air with splinters. Shev whimpered every curse she could think of as she weaved and dodged, scrambling and jumping desperately, not even getting the chance to look for an opening, running steadily out of space and time as she was herded towards a corner.
He raised his mace to strike, broad face twisted with rage.
‘Wait!’ she wailed, pointing over his shoulder.
It was amazing how often that worked. He jerked his head to look, pausing just long enough for her to knee him in the fruits with all her strength. He gasped, tottered, dropped to his knees, and she whipped out her dagger and stabbed him sharply at the meeting of his neck and his shoulder. He groaned, tried to stand, then sprawled on his face, welling blood.
‘Sorry,’ said Shev. ‘Damn it, I’m sorry.’ And she was, just as she always was. But it was better to be sorry than dead. Just as it always was. That lesson she had learned long ago.