Horald spread his palms. ‘A man simply can’t prosper in business without owing debts to someone.’
Shev felt her relief being overcome by an uneasy queasiness. ‘Who do you owe?’
‘Among other people …’ Horald licked his teeth as though he was far from happy about it. ‘The High Priestess of the Great Temple of Thond.’
Shev’s eyes went wide. ‘Javre, get-’ She spun towards the door they had come through, but there was a woman standing there. A tall, lean woman with a hard face and a shaved head and a long sword in her tattooed fist. Another woman, huge as a house, was already ducking under the lintel to join her. Shev caught Carcolf’s sleeve and took a step towards a door at the far side of the yard. It swung gently open and a heavy-muscled woman stepped through, her thumbs tucked in a great belt from which two curved swords hung. Another with her white hair gathered into a hundred tiny braids followed grinning after, arms folded across her chest.
A shrill whistle came from above and a figure flashed down from the top of the wall, turning over, landing with hardly a sound in a ready crouch and standing tall, taller even than Javre, fine blonde hair shifting in the breeze across her face, so all Shev could see was the gleam of one eye and the glisten of her perfect teeth as she smiled. She plucked a spear from the air as it was tossed down to her without even looking, its long blade shining, blinding, mirror-bright.
Shev swallowed as she glanced about, trying to make it the thief’s glance that hardly seems to look at all but probably failing. She usually did fail, when it came down to it, for all her boasting. Some best bloody thief in Styria, while she was playing at the hero she’d blundered straight into a trap and dragged the one real friend she had into it with her.
There were two more women on the walls above, a pair of twins with great bows draped across their shoulders like milkmaids’ yokes, wrists hooked over them as they smiled blandly down. Seven in all, and each, Shev had no doubt, a Templar of the Golden Order, and far beyond her fighting skills even if she hadn’t used half her tricks on those fools upstairs.
‘Fuck,’ she said, simply. Sometimes no other word will cover it.
Horald shifted somewhat nervously as he glanced at the scarred, sinewy, tattooed, heavily armed women now surrounding him on every side. They looked deadly, and Shev knew they were a lot deadlier than they looked. ‘Have to say I feel a little outnumbered,’ he muttered.
Javre gave a weary nod, ran her tongue around her mouth and spat. ‘I, too.’
‘Javre,’ came a deep voice.
As if it was a spoken command, the Templars all bowed their heads as one. Another woman stepped through the door. A big, broad-shouldered woman in a sleeveless white robe, moving with such wonderful poise she appeared to glide more than walk. ‘It has been too long.’
A great string of beads was looped around and around her thick neck until it covered half her chest. Grey showed in the orange stubble on her shaved scalp, her sharp-boned face with deep lines in the cheeks and about the eyes. And what eyes they were. Calm and blue as deep water. Bright as stars. Hard as hammered iron. And ruthless as a backstreet knifing.
Javre watched her sit at the table opposite Horald. ‘Never would have been too soon for me, Mother.’
Shev cleared her throat. ‘I’m guessing “mother” in this case is a term of respect due to the High Priestess of-’
‘Javre is my daughter.’ The woman raised one brow. ‘And she has never been all that interested in terms of respect.’
Shev stared. She found herself doing that a lot, lately. There was indeed a strong resemblance, if only in the muscle that squirmed in the woman’s arms as she crossed them over those rattling beads. ‘So we’ve been chased across the breadth of the Circle of the World for fourteen years by … your mother?’
‘She can be extremely stubborn,’ said Javre.
‘So that’s where you get it from,’ murmured Shev. ‘I finally see the upside of being an orphan.’
There was a tense, quiet moment, then. A couple of dry leaves chased each other across the cracked flagstones as the wind swirled around the yard. The High Priestess pursed her lips as she looked her wayward daughter up and down. Fourteen years, Shev and Javre had been running, and now they stood before the two people who had done the chasing. After that long, it was bound to be something of an anticlimax.
‘You look …’
‘Like shit?’ ventured Javre.
‘I would have tried to be more diplomatic.’
‘I fear the time for diplomacy between us is long past, Mother.’
‘Like shit, then. Never was a woman more blessed by the Goddess than you. It grieves me to see you treat her gifts with such scant respect. Did you really run away from me … for this?’
‘I left so I could choose my own path.’
Javre’s mother slowly shook her head. ‘And you chose to wallow in your own filth?’
‘Having murderers chasing you every hour of your life does rather limit your options,’ snapped Shev.
She felt Carcolf’s hand on her shoulder, gently drawing her back into the shadows. She shook her off, moved instead to stand beside Javre. If she was about to die, that was where she chose to do it.
The blue, blue eyes of the High Priestess slid over to her. ‘Who is this … person?’
Javre drew herself up to her full height then, puffing up her chest, and put her hand on Shev’s shoulder. ‘She is Shevedieh, the greatest thief in Styria.’
Shev might have had a foot less height and about a quarter of the chest that Javre did, but she drew up and puffed out what she had. ‘And I am proud to be Javre’s sidekick.’
‘Partner,’ said Javre, and gently guided her back. ‘But leave her out of it.’
The eyes of the High Priestess drifted towards her daughter. ‘Believe it or not, and in spite of all the pointless bloodshed between us, I have never wished to harm anyone.’
Javre stretched her neck out one way and the other, then put her bandaged hand on the rag-wrapped grip of her sword. ‘I will tell you what I told Hanama, and Birke, and Weylen, and Golyin, and all your other lapdogs. I will be no one’s slave. Not even yours.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Especially not yours. I would sooner die than go back with you.’
‘I know.’ Javre’s mother wearily puffed out her cheeks in just the way Javre did when she and Shev had their endless theological debates. ‘If the last fourteen years have taught me anything, it is that. Even as a girl you were stubborn beyond belief. All my efforts to make you bend, with smiles, with entreaties, with threats, with blows, and finally with blades, have done nothing but temper you. There are some wearying patterns to life that, try as we might, we never can seem to escape.’
Shev could hardly deny that. Here she was, outnumbered and facing death once again. How many bloody times now? She made a show of holding up one hand, as if to check her fingernails, and slipped the other towards that vial at her belt. One lucky throw might blow two of those Templars to the hereafter they were so fond of and maybe bring one of the towers down to boot. A spectacular note to end on, if nothing else …
‘The Goddess teaches us to embrace them.’ The High Priestess glanced towards Shev. ‘You can leave that vial alone, my child. I have another choice for your partner. There is something that I need.’
Javre snorted. ‘You have never been one to bridle at taking what you want.’
‘This thing is not easily taken. It is in the possession of …’ And Javre’s mother worked her mouth as though there was a sour taste there. ‘A wizard. A Magus of the Old Time.’
Shev leaned close to Javre. ‘I don’t much like the sound of-’
‘Shush,’ she said.
‘Deliver this thing to me, Javre, and you are free. I, and the guards of my temple, will pursue you no longer.’
‘That is all?’ asked Javre.
‘That is all.’
Shev caught her by her big bare arm. ‘Javre! We don’t know what this thing is, or where it’s kept, and I really don’t like the sound of this whole Magus of the Old Time business-’