A gaggle of women primped and gossiped. Some, who had been discussing the High King’s mistress, went abruptly tranquil a moment too late.
They stared at her for an instant before either offering pleasantries or snubbing her altogether.
Sena entered a stall and did her business. The silence in the room had spread and become more uncomfortable than if they had just packed it in and whispered. She flushed and walked out. They were staring at her, or pointedly not staring at her. All of them had gone totally silent.
Sena washed her hands and patted them dry.
Just before she left, she turned to the silent throng and said, “Whatever you’re thinking . . . it’s true.” Then she pulled open the door and stepped back into the hall.
There was a scream.
The huge guard appointed her by Zane Vhortghast reached out and roughly jerked her behind him. His sword ascended from its scabbard like a star. His great muscled body plowed through people like sheets on a laundry line.
Sena couldn’t see what was going on. The hall boiled with arms and legs and trampling falling people piling for the stairs. A woman in a frenzy came at Sena from the side, unintentionally crashing between her and the guard. The guard responded automatically, grabbing the assailant by her hair and tossing her back the direction she had come. Whether out of confusion or indignation, the woman charged again and Sena’s bodyguard punched her in the face, sending her to the floor with a broken nose.
He took Sena’s hand and dragged her like a child through the crowd. Frankly, she felt like a child. She allowed herself to be led. She didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t want to be a Shr
dnae operative. Since the Halls in Sandren, she didn’t dare to trust herself. No! Caliph’s bodyguards were well trained. She would let them take charge. As the huge man pulled her forward, her legs couldn’t keep up and she heard the narrow dress rip. Instead of coming free she stumbled. Tangled in the tube of satin.
Vexed by the slowdown, the guard noticed her dilemma and paused to reach down. He tried to tear out the kick pleat. It was an error.
When he crouched and turned his back on the mass of people something struck him from behind. He dropped to his knees with a chilling look of surprise.
Sena saw a tall thin man behind the guard, a slender stiletto in his hand, ugly pink eyes intent on her face. The guard had dropped his sword, slumped forward, sprawled out in the hall.
A sudden chunk sound, followed by the pink-eyed man’s head doing an abrupt forward nod, jarred Sena from her trance.
A crossbow bolt had entered Mr. Naylor’s head from behind and ruptured his forehead. He looked like an apple on a skewer. Sena followed the trajectory back to the box where one of the other guards cradled a light metal crossbow in his hands.
The truly horrifying part of it was that Mr. Naylor did not go down. His head popped back up and he looked around despite the gruesome trauma.
His distraction was momentary. The hand with the stiletto lunged for Sena. She launched backward off her toes, avoiding the knife but impacting an elderly man with a cane who had been shuffling in bewildered circles right behind her. The codger tipped over like a chair and Sena tumbled over top, landing on her back with her buttocks on his head and her shoulders on the floor.
It was too crowded to be graceful and her clothing was still an obstacle. By the time she had gotten to her feet, she had managed to pull off her high-heeled shoes. She looked up at the pink-eyed man just as a second guard tackled him from behind.
Mr. Naylor went down like a sled under the momentum of the flying guard. He slid across the carpet, crushed down and howling with rage. It looked so painful that Sena nearly screamed with disbelief when the guard was lifted up on the back of the rail-thin man like an enormous pack.
Mr. Naylor turned around, his head transfixed with metal, his arms pinned at his sides, a great pink rug burn trawling down the middle of his face. Despite the man encumbering his back, his powerful grasshopper legs moved him with ease over the fallen bodies toward Sena.
A second crossbow quarrel struck the opera house manager in the chest. This one took him to his knees. But the guards had no interest in anything other than getting the High King’s mistress out of the opera house unharmed.
The man riding Mr. Naylor’s back let go, grabbed Sena and pulled her toward the spot where Zane Vhortghast was motioning to a window.
The stairs were choked with people. But there was more to it than that. Sena saw why the spymaster had herded them toward the casement. Two other tall thin men with glassy strange-colored eyes were closing in on their position. The newcomers had bald heads and open mouths and seemed by their strange exaggerated motions to be climbing across the level floor, clawing at the air with arms in a bizarre mantis-like posture.
One of the guards pulled his trigger and a crossbow bolt plunged into the lead creature’s shoulder. Another bolt from the second guard pierced its head. Neither one slowed the thing down.
Like in a nightmare, the monster took hold of the quarrel in its face and pulled it out, tossing it aside carelessly.
Zane Vhortghast was shoving Sena through the window while his men drew their swords and engaged the seven-foot scarecrows in desperate melee. One had powered up his chemiostatic sword and touched the enemy with a vital thrust. There was a flash. The creature shivered as fire darted from its skin both where the electricity entered and from the explosive wound that appeared instantaneously on its foot.
Its ankle ruptured. The tibia burst through like a whitened spike. Still the thing came, walking on the knife-like point of its destroyed leg, dragging its foot behind.
The guard tried to power up his sword again but the superhuman hands were upon him, long thick fingers lifting him in a vise-like grip. The creature tossed him aside, searching for Sena.
Zane Vhortghast took one last look at the fearless almost-human-thing behind him before following Sena out the window. A fire escape clattered down in switchback fashion to a small wooden dock where Caliph, having been dragged off against all effort, stood furious but relieved to see her safe outside.
More men had pulled up in thin slender gondolas at the rear of the theater. They hauled Sena and Caliph on board as something thin and powerful emerged on the fire escape above. Crossbows thumped and a cloud of bolts converged on the creature, filling it like a pincushion. It fell from the metal stairs and landed brokenly at Mr. Vhortghast’s feet.
Sena thought she saw something pale and large jackknife with lethargic grace below the dark water as she passed from the dock into the boat. It vanished before she could get a proper look.
“There’s something down there! There’s something in the water!”
As she spoke the second gondola jerked sideways, throwing men in flailing profusion and great splashing blossoms of foam. The boat capsized and promptly began to sink.
“Out! Out! Out!” shouted the spymaster. He grabbed Sena’s wrist and pulled.
Caliph made a dangerous leap and hit the dock. Awkward. Bashing his shins against the planked edge. He yelped and cursed. Someone pulled him to his feet and shoved him toward a two-foot cornice.
The tremendous foundation from which the building sprung poked above the waterline, a vast slab that extended just beyond the dimensions of the opera house proper. It formed a ledge all the way around the lower extremities of the structure and allowed Vhortghast to goad Caliph through the darkness around the north side.
Caliph would have none of it. He was fed up with being steered around. He turned and shoved his way powerfully back to the dock, taking hold of Sena’s hand. By what dim light there was, she looked remarkably collected. Her face was unafraid.