She was too stupid to be down here alone at this time of night, all right. She came back! All solicitous she was, and his hand moved a little to the left and came out with a flat-bladed knife while his left hand clamped her right wrist, the unbraceleted one. The point of the knife touched the knot of her expensive cerulean sash.
'Do not scream. This is a throwing knife. I throw it well, but I prefer not to kill. Unless I have to, understand.me? All I want is that nice little snake you're wearing.'
'Oh!' Her eyes were huge and she tucked in her belly, away from the point of several inches of dull-silvery leaf-shape he held to her middle. 'It-it was a gift...'
'I will accept it as a gift. Oh you are smart, very smart not to try yelling. I just hate to have to stick pretty women in the belly. It's messy, and it could give this end of town a bad name. I hate to throw a knife into their backs, for that matter. Do you believe me?'
Her voice was a squeak: 'Yes.'
'Good.' He released her wrist and kept his hand outstretched, palm up. 'The bracelet then. I am not so rude as to tear such a pretty bauble off a pretty lady's pretty wrist.'
Staring at him as if entranced, she backed a pace. He flipped the knife, caught it by the tip. His left palm remained extended, a waiting receptacle. The right hefted the knife in a throwing attitude and she swiftly twisted off the bracelet. Better than he had thought, he realized with a flash of greed and gratification; the serpent's eyes appeared to be nice topazes! All right then, he'd let her keep the expensive sash.
She did not drop the bracelet into his palm; she placed it there. Nice hard cold gold, marvellously weighty. Only slightly warmed from a wrist the colour of burnt sienna. Nice, nice. Her eyes leaped, flickered in fear when he flipped the knife to catch it by its leather-wrapped tang. It had no hilt, to keep that end light behind the weighted blade.
'You see?' he said, showing teeth. 'I have no desire for your blood, understand me? Only this bauble.'
The bracelet remained cold in his palm and when it moved he jerked his hand instinctively. Fast as he was he was only human, not a striking serpent; the bracelet, suddenly become a living snake, drove its fangs into the meaty part of his hand that was the inner part of his thumb. It clung, and it hurt. Oh it hurt.
The thief's smile vanished with his outcry of pain. Yet he saw her smile, and even as he felt the horror within him he raised the throwing knife to stab the filthy bitch who had trapped him.
That is, he tried to raise the knife, tried to shake his bitten hand to which the serpent clung. He failed. Almost instantly, the bite of that unnatural snake ossified every bone and bit of cartilage in his body and, stiffly, Gath the thief fell down dead.
His victim, still smiling, squatted to retrieve her property. She was shivering in excitement. She slipped the cold hard bracelet of gold onto her wrist. Its eyes, cold hard stones, scintillated. And a tremor ran all through the woman. Her eyes glittered and sparkled.
'Oooohh,' she murmured with a shiver, all trembly and tingly with excitement and delight. 'It was worth every piece of silver I paid, this lovely bauble from that lovely shop. I'm really glad it was destroyed. Those of us who bought these weapons of the god are so unique.' She was trembling, excitement high in her and her heart racing with the thrill of danger faced and killing accomplished, and she stroked the bracelet as if it were a lover.
She went home with her head high in pride and continuing excitement, and she was not at all happy when her husband railed at her for being so late and seized her by the left wrist. He went all bright eyed and stiff and fell down dead. She was not at all happy. She had intended to kill only strangers for the thrill of it, those who deserved it. Somewhere, surely, the god Vashanka smiled.
'The god-damned city's in a mess and busy as a kicked anthill and I think you had more than a whit to do with it,' the dark young man said. (Or was he a youth? Street-wise and tough and hooded of eyes and wearing knives as a courtesan wore gems. Hair blacker than black and eyes nearly so above a nose almost meant for a bird of prey.)
' "God-damned" city, indeed,' said the paler, discomfitingly tall man, who was older but not old, and he came close to smiling. 'You don't know how near you are to truth, Shadowspawn.'
Around them in the charcoal dimness others neither heard nor were overheard. In this place, the trick was not to be overheard. The trick was to talk under everyone else. A bad tavern with a bad reputation in a bad area of a nothing town, the tavern called the Vulgar Unicorn was an astonishingly quiet place.
'Just call me Hanse and stop being all cryptic and fatherly,' the dark young man said. 'I'm not looking for a father. I had one - I'm told. Then I had Cudget Swearoath. Cudget told me all I -all he knew.'
The other man heard; 'fatherly' used to mean 'patronizing', and the flash of ego in the tough called Shadowspawn. Chips on his shoulders out to here. The other man did not smile. How to tell Hanse how many Hanses he had known, over so many years?
'Listen. One night a while ago I killed. Two men.' Hanse did not lower his voice for that statement-not-admission; he kept it low. The shadow of a voice.
'Not men, Hanse. Hawk-masks. Jubal's bravoes. Hardly men.'
'They were men, Tempus. They were all men. So is Hanse and even Kadaki - the prince-governor.'
'Kitty-Cat.'
'I do not call him that,' Hanse said, with austerity. Then he said, 'It's you I'm not sure of, Tempus. Are you a man?'
'I'm a man,' Tempus said, with a sigh that seemed to come from the weight of decades and decades. 'Tonight I asked you to call me Thales. Go ahead, Hanse. You killed two men, while helping me. Were you, by the way? Or were you lurking around my horse that night thinking of laying hands on some krrf?'
'I use no drugs and little alcohol.'
'That isn't what I asked,' Tempus said, not bothering to refute.
Dark eyes met Tempus's, which impressed him. 'Yes. That is why I was there, T Thales. Why "Thay-lees"?'
'Since all things are presently full of gods, why not "Thales"? Thank you, Hanse. I appreciate your honesty. We can -'
'Honesty?' A man, once well built and now wearing his chest all over his broad belt and bulging under it as well, had been passing their small round table. 'Did I hear something about Hanse's honesty? Hanse?' His laugh was a combination: pushed and genuine.
The lean youth called Shadowspawn moved nothing but his head. 'How'd you like a hole in your middle to let out all that hot air, Abohorr?'
'How'd you like a third eye, Abohorr?' Hanse's tablemate said.
Abohorr betook himself elsewhere, muttering - and hurrying. Both Hanse's lean swift hands remained on the tabletop. 'You know him, Thales?'
'No.'
'You heard me say his name and so you said it right after me.'
'Yes.'
'You're sharp, Thales. Too ... smart.' Hanse slapped the table's surface. 'I've been meeting too many sharp people lately. Sharp as...' .
'Knives,' Tempus said, finishing the complaint of a very very sharp young man. 'You were mentioning that you were waiting for me to come out of that house-not home, Hanse, because you knew I was carrying. And then Jubal's bravoes attacked - me -and you took down two.'
'I was mentioning that, yes.' Hanse developed a seemingly genuine interest in his brown-and-orange Saraprins mug. 'How many men have you killed, Thales?'