No further fights presented themselves. Javre stood by the chandelier’s wreckage, her dirty white coat spotted with blood and the twisted bodies of a dozen thugs scattered about her. She had another bent over with his head wedged in the crook of one arm, and yet another pinned against a table by his neck at arm’s length, kicking and struggling to absolutely no effect.
‘Things must be going downhill.’ And with a twitch of her face and a flex of her muscular arm she snapped the first man’s neck and let his body flop to the floor. ‘The temple used to stretch to a better class of thug.’ She dipped her shoulder and flung the other one bodily through a window and into the street, tearing the shutters free, his despairing squeal cut off as his head tore a chunk from a supporting pillar with him.
‘The best I could find at short notice,’ said Weylen, reaching behind her back. ‘But it was always going to come to this.’ And she drew a curved sword, the long blade looking to Shev’s eye to be made of a writhing black smoke.
‘It need not,’ said Javre. ‘You have two choices, just as Hanama and Birke did. You can go back to Thond. Go back to the High Priestess and tell her I will be no one’s slave. Not ever. Tell her I am free.’
‘Free? Ha! Do you suppose the High Priestess will accept that answer?’
Javre shrugged. ‘Tell her you could not find me. Tell her whatever you please.’
Weylen’s mouth bitterly twisted. ‘And what would be my other-’
‘I show you the sword.’ There was a popping of joints as Javre shifted her shoulders, boots scraping into a wider stance, and from inside her coat she drew a bundle, long and slender, a thing of bandages and rags, but near the end Shev caught the glint of gold.
Weylen lifted her chin, and did not so much smile as show her teeth. ‘You know there is no choice for us.’
Javre gave a nod. ‘I know. Shevedieh?’
‘Yes?’ croaked Shev.
‘Close your eyes.’
She jammed them shut as Weylen sprang over a table with a fighting scream, high, harsh and horrible. She heard quick footsteps on the boards, rushing up with inhuman speed.
There was a ringing of metal and Shev flinched as a sudden bright light shone pink through her lids. A scraping, and a croaking gasp, and the light was gone.
‘Shevedieh.’
‘Yes?’ she croaked.
‘You can open them now.’
Javre still held the bundle in one hand, torn rags flapping about it. With the other she held Weylen up, her limp arms flopping back, steel-cased knuckles scraping the floor. There was a red stain on her chest, but she looked peaceful. Aside from the black blood pouring from her back to spatter on the boards in spurts and dashes.
‘They will find you, Javre,’ she whispered, blood specking her lips.
‘I know,’ said Javre. ‘And they each will have their choice.’ She lowered Weylen to the boards, into the spreading pool of her blood, and gently brushed her eyelids closed over her green, green eyes. ‘May the Goddess have mercy on you,’ she murmured.
‘May she have mercy on us first,’ muttered Shevedieh, wiping the blood from under her throbbing nose as she approached the counter, dagger at the ready, and peered over. The inn’s owner was cowering behind and cringed even further as he saw her. ‘Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!’
‘I won’t.’ She hid the dagger behind her back and showed him her open palm. ‘No one will. It’s all right, they’ve …’ She wanted to say ‘gone’ but, glancing around the wreckage of the inn, was forced to say, rather croakily, ‘died. You can get up.’
He slowly stood, peered over the counter, and his jaw dropped open. ‘By the-’
‘I must apologise for the damage,’ said Javre. ‘It looks worse than it is.’
Part of the far wall, riddled with cracks, chose that moment to collapse into the street, sending up a cloud of stone dust and making Shev step back, coughing.
Javre pushed her lips out and put one considering fingertip against them. ‘Perhaps it is exactly as bad as it looks.’
Shev heaved up an aching sigh. Not the first she’d given in the company of Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp, and she doubted it would be the last. She pulled the pouch from her shirt, undid the strings and let the jewel roll onto the split counter, where it sat glinting.
‘For your trouble,’ she said to the gawping innkeeper. Then she wiped her dagger on the jacket of the nearest corpse and slid it back into its sheath, turned without another word, stepped over the splintered remains of the door and out into the street.
Dawn was coming, the sun bringing the faintest grey smudge to the eastern sky above the ramshackle roofs. Shev took a long breath and shook her head at it. ‘Damn it, Shevedieh,’ she whispered to herself, ‘but a conscience is a hell of an encumbrance to a thief.’
She heard Javre’s heavy footsteps behind, felt her looming presence at her shoulder, heard her deep voice as she leaned to speak in Shev’s ear.
‘Would you like to skip town now?’
Shev nodded. ‘Yes, I think we’d better.’
Hell
Dagoska, Spring 576
Temple ran.
It was hardly the first time. He had spent half his life running away from things and most of the rest running back towards them. But he had never run like this. He ran as though hell yawned at his back. It did.
The ground shook again. Light flared in the night, at the corner of Temple’s eye, and he flinched. A moment later came the thunderous boom, so loud it made his ears ring. Fire shot up above the buildings to his left, mad arms of it, reaching out and scattering liquid flame across the Upper City. A piece of stone the size of a man’s head thudded into the road just in front of him, bounced across his path and smashed through a wall in a cloud of dust. Smaller stones rained down, pinging and rattling.
Temple ran on, heedless. If Gurkish fire plunged from the heavens and ripped him to specks that could never be found, there was nothing he could do. Precious few would mourn him. One little drip in an ocean of tragedy. He could only hope God had chosen him for saving, even if he could not think of one good reason why.
There was not much he was certain of, but he knew he did not want to die.
He reeled to a stop against a wall, caught by a sudden coughing fit, his chest raw from breathing smoke. From days of breathing smoke. His eyes ran with tears. From the dust. From the fear. He looked back the way he had come. The walls of the Upper City, broken battlements cut out black against the fire. Men struggled there, tiny figures lit red.
It was hopeless. It had been hopeless for days. But still they fought. Perhaps to protect what was theirs. Their property, their family, their way of life. Perhaps they fought out of love. Perhaps out of hate. Perhaps there was nothing else left.
Temple had no idea what could make a man fight. He had never been much of a fighter.
He scuttled down a rubbish-strewn side street, tripped on a fallen beam and skinned his knees, staggered to the corner, one hand up as a feeble shield against the heat of a burning building, flames crackling, smoke roiling skywards into the night.
Fire, fire everywhere. I have seen hell, Verturio said, and it is a great city under siege. Dagoska had been like hell for weeks. Temple never doubted that he deserved to be there. He just didn’t remember dying.
He saw figures crowding about a door, a man swinging an axe, the sound of wood splintering. Gurkish troops somehow broken through the wall already? Or looters taking their chance to snatch something while there was something still to snatch? Temple supposed he could hardly blame them. He’d snatched plenty in his time. And what did blame mean now, anyway?
When there is no law, there is no crime.
He scurried on, keeping low, torn sleeve across his mouth. You would never have known that his acolyte’s robe had been pure white. It was as frayed and filthy now as the beggar’s rags he had worn before, stained with ash and dirt and blood, his own and that of those he had tried to help. Those he had failed to help.