A single patch of moonlight, brilliant and unwelcome here in the Maze, shone amid the rubble of what had been an altar. Holding her cloak as if it were the source of all bravery and courage itself, Cythen knelt among the stones and whispered: 'My life for Harka Bey!' Then, as no one had forbidden it, she drew her sword and laid it across her thighs.
Lythande had said - or rather implied, for magicians and their ilk seldom actually said anything - that the Harka Bey would test her before they would listen to her questions. For Bekin's sake and her own need for vengeance, Cythen vowed that they would not find her wanting. The slowly shifting moonlight fed her terror, but she sat still and silent.
The darkness, which had been a comfort while she had been a part of it, now lurked at the edge of her vision, as her memories of better times always lurked at the edge of her thoughts. For a heartbeat she was the young girl she had once been and the darkness lunged at her. A yelp of pure terror nearly escaped her lips before she pushed both memory and old feats aside.
Bekin had been her elder sister. She had been betrothed when disaster had struck. She had witnessed her lover's bloody death and then had been made the victim of the bandits' lust in the aftermath of their victory. None of the brigands had noticed Cythen: slight, wiry Cythen, dressed in a youth's clothes. The younger sister had escaped from the carnage into the darkness. Waiting until the efforts of drinking, killing, and raping had overcome each outlaw and she could bundle her senseless sister away to the relative safety of the brush.
Under Cythen's protection, Bekin's bruises had healed, but her mind was lost. She lived in her own world, believing that the bulge in her belly was the legitimate child of her betrothed, oblivious to their squalor and misery. The birthing, coming on an early spring night, much like this, with only the moonlight for a midwife, had been a long and terrifying process for both of them. Though Cythen had seen midwives start a baby's life with a spanking, she held this one still, watching Bekin's exhausted sleep, until there was no chance it would live. Remembering only the half-naked outlaws in the firelight, she laid the little corpse on the rocks for scavengers to find.
Again Bekin recovered her strength, but not her wits. She never learned the cruel lessons that hardened Cythen and never lost the delusion that each strange man was actually her betrothed returning to her. At first Cythen fought with Bekin's desires and agonized with guilt whenever she failed. But she could find no work to get them food, while the men often left Bekin a trinket or two that could be pawned or sold in the next village - and Bekin was willing to go with any man. So, after a time, Bekin earned their shelter while Cythen, who had always preferred swordplay to needlework. learned the art of the garrote and dressed herself in dead men's clothes. .
When the pair reached Sanctuary, it was only natural that Cythen found a place with Jubal's hawkmasked mercenaries. Bekin slept safely in the slaver's bed whenever he desired her and Cythen knew a measure of peace. When the hell-sent Whoresons had raided Jubal's Downwinds estate, the younger sister again came to the aid of the elder. This time, she took her to the Street of Red Lanterns, to the Aphrodisia House itself, where Myrtis promised that only a select, discriminating clientele would encounter the ever-innocent Bekin. But now, despite Myrtis' promise, Bekin was four days dead of a serpent's venom.
The pool of moonlight shifted as the night aged and Cythen waited. She was bathed in silvery light and blind to the shadows beyond it: undoubtedly the Harka Bey had chosen the rendezvous carefully. She held only her sword hilt and endured the cramps the cold stone left in her legs. Rising above the pain, she sought the mindlessness she had first discovered the day her world had ended and the future closed. It was not the fantastic mindlessness that had claimed Bekin, but rather an alert emptiness, waiting to be filled.
Even so, she missed the first hint of movement in the shadows. The Harka Bey were within the ruins before she heard the faint rustle of shoes on the crumbling masonry.
"Greetings,' she whispered as one figure separated from the rest and whipped out a short, batonlike sword from a sheath she wore slung like a bow across her back. Cythen was glad of the sword beneath her palms and of the sturdy boots that let her spring to her feet while the advancing woman drew a second sword like the first. She remembered all Lythande had been able to tell her about the Harka Bey: they were women, mercenaries, assassins, magicians, and utterly ruthless.
Cythen backed away, masking her apprehension as the woman spun the pair of blades around her with a blinding, deadly speed. By now, five months after the landing, almost everyone had heard of the dazzling swordwork of the Beysib aristocracy, but few had seen even practice bouts with wooden swords and none had seen such lethal artistry as advanced towards Cythen.
She assumed the static en garde of a Rankan officer - who until the Beysib had been the best swordsmen in the land - and fought the mesmerizing power of the spinning steel. The almost invisible sphere the Beysib woman constructed with the whirling blades was both offence and defence. Cythen saw herself sliced down like wheat before a peasant's scythe - and cut down in the next few heartbeats.
She was going to die. . .
There was serenity in that realization. The nausea dropped away, and the terror. She still couldn't see the individual blades as they twirled, but they seemed somehow slower. And no one, unless the Harka Bey were demons as well, could twirl the steel forever. And wasn't her own blade demon-forged, shedding green sparks when it met and shattered inferior metal? The voice of her father, a voice she thought she had forgotten, came to her: 'Don't watch what I do,' he'd snarled good-naturedly after batting aside her practice sword. 'Watch what I'm not doing and attack into that weakness!'
Cythen hunched down behind her sword and no longer retreated. However fast they moved, those blades could not protect the Harka Bey everywhere, all the time. Though still believing she would die in the attempt, Cythen balanced her weight and brought her sword blade in line with her opponent's neck: a neck which would be, for some invisible fraction of time, unprotected. She lunged forward, determined that she would not die unprotesting like the wheat.
Green sparks showered as Cythen absorbed the force of two blades slamming hard against her own. The Beysib steel did not shatter - but that was less important than the fact that all three blades were entrapped by each other and the tip of Cythen's blade was a finger's width from the Harka Bey's black-scarved neck. Cythen had the advantage with both hands firmly on her sword hilt, while the Harka Bey still had her two swords, and half the strength to hold each of them with. Then Cythen heard the unmistakable sound of naked steel in the shadows around her.
'Filthy, fish-eyed bitches!' Cythen exclaimed. The local patois, usually unequalled for expressing contempt or derision, had not yet taken the measure of the invaders, but there was no mistaking the murderous disgust in Cythen's face as she beat her sword free and stepped momentarily back out of range.