A large group of Shou men bearing tattoos that marked them as members of the Nine Golden Swords surrounded a young woman with copper hair at the end of the hallway. She fought against them, but the Shou held her easily. Shang-Li was surprised at how many men had been sent.
“Unhand me!” the woman yelled as she struggled against her captors. “Unhand me, or I swear to Umberlee you’ll rue the day you ever touched me!”
“You owe us, woman,” a brutish man snarled. He was in his middle years, thick with corded muscle, and had a mustache that curved down to his jawline. “You will pay us back for our losses.”
“You lost nothing!”
“That is not how my master views it,” the man snarled. He reached out to cuff her.
Ducking the blow, the woman twisted toward one of the Shou holding her and kicked him in the groin.
The man lurched to one side and dropped to his knees before throwing up.
“Well,” Iados commented dryly, wrinkling his nose at the sour stench of wine that suddenly filled the area, “he’d obviously been drinking before he arrived here.”
“Is that the ship’s mage?” Shang-Li asked, nodding toward the young woman.
“I’d say it’s a safe bet,” Iados said. “There can’t be two women in this dump that the Nine Golden Swords would try to grab.”
“Well?” Thava demanded.
Shang-Li sighed. “Out of all the criminals in Westgate, did she have to end up in the hands of these?”
“Ah, that’s right,” Iados said. “You have a history with the Nine Golden Swords.”
“Not exactly a history,” Shang-Li responded. “More like an understanding.”
“I understand that they have orders to kill you on sight.”
The brutish man noticed Shang-Li for the first time, then grinned coldly. “Shang-Li? The gods have favored me today. I now have two prizes to bring back. We owe you for the theft you made from us in the Pirate Isles. I’ll be happy to take your head as payment for our embarrassment.”
The heads of the other Nine Golden Swords turned to glare down the hall.
“Kill him!” the brutish man roared. “Ten gold pieces to any man that brings me his head.”
“Only ten?” Iados asked as he readied his sword. “I’d be insulted.”
The Nine Golden Swords rushed toward Shang-Li. One of them pulled a crossbow up to his shoulder and fired over the heads of his fellows. Shang-Li watched the quarrel as it leaped free of the weapon, then swept his left fighting stick out and broke the shaft before it hit Iados. The halves dropped to the floor.
“One of these days,” the tiefling said, “you’re going to have to teach me that trick.”
Thava yelled her challenge and drew her bastard sword. In the dim hallway, the blade gleamed and Shang-Li felt the chill of the magic that clung to the weapon.
Two of the Nine Golden Swords grabbed the ship’s mage. One slipped a blade beneath her jaw and held it against her throat. They opened the window behind them and forced her through it.
“The mage,” Iados said.
“I see her.” Shang-Li ran forward, then broke suddenly to the left and partially ran up the wall. He managed two long, deliberate strides before his momentum played out. Just before he fell from the wall, he dived and pushed himself forward to flip over the mob. Two swords slashed up at him, but only one of them was close and he batted it away with his fighting sticks. He landed on his feet behind the Nine Golden Swords warriors.
The mob instantly divided their attention between their front and rear. The brutish man stared at Shang-Li.
“Did you come to give yourself to me?” the man asked.
“I see you haven’t gotten any handsomer, Liu,” Shang-Li said. He parried the man’s blade with his left stick, knocking the blade down to the floor and striking with the right stick only an instant later.
Liu barely managed to get under the blow. He hissed a curse in surprise. At the end of the hallway, the two Nine Gold Swords warriors had disappeared with their captive.
“If I had known you were in the city,” Liu threatened, “I’d already have killed you.”
“You’ve tried to kill me before,” Shang-Li taunted. “Yet here I am again.”
“No more.” Liu took a two-handed grip on his sword and slashed repeatedly in carefully controlled blows.
Shang-Li dodged and weaved, forced back by the onslaught. One of the men behind him grew overconfident and lunged, following his sword to its intended target. “No!” Liu bellowed in warning.
The man didn’t have the chance to pull back from his attack. Sidestepping and bending his knee on that side to drop his shoulder, Shang-Li let the man’s sword glide over his shoulder without touching him. The sword almost pierced Liu’s stomach as Shang-Li batted away his last attempt.
Shang-Li stood, knocking aside the man’s sword behind him and then elbowing his opponent in the nose hard enough to lift him from his feet. The man was unconscious by the time he struck the floor.
As he repositioned himself, Shang-Li saw Iados and Thava filling the hallway as they combatted the Nine Golden Sword members. They stepped over the bodies of two or three of them. His father fearlessly trailed behind them.
“Did it really take this many of you to capture a young woman for your master’s vengeance?” Shang-Li asked. He batted a series of sword slashes aside, then stepped sideways and delivered a reverse roundhouse kick that knocked another opponent into the nearby wall.
The unconscious man dropped into a sitting position beside the wall, then fell over.
“A point had to be made,” Liu said. He feinted at Shang-Li’s face, then shifted and tried to skewer his midsection.
Shang-Li dodged out of range, but that only set him up for another series of blinding attacks. Liu’s sword clattered along the fighting sticks but didn’t manage to find a way through Shang-Li’s defenses.
“The way I hear the story told,” Shang-Li said, “the ship was lost at sea and the woman was skilled enough to get it back to this harbor before it sank.”
“The ship wasn’t supposed to be lost.” Liu stamped his foot and thrust again, following up almost immediately with a backward slash.
Shang-Li dropped into a low horse stance and the sword cut the air only inches above his head. He thrust his right fighting stick toward Liu’s chest, but the man blocked it with his free hand and set himself to strike again.
“If she had done her job, the ship would have been safe.”
“Shang-Li, are you going to let them take the ship’s mage?”
Recognizing his father’s voice, Shang-Li focused on Liu. The man attacked again and Shang-Li defended himself against a flurry of sword blows. Then, when Liu lunged in again, Shang-Li swept the sword aside and charged forward.
Turning sideways, Shang-Li planted his right foot and lashed out with his left. Liu managed to turn away his face, but Shang-Li’s foot caught him on the temple and the neck. Propelled by the force of the kick, Liu slammed into the wall with a meaty smack.
After a quick glance to make sure his father and his friends were all right, Shang-Li ran to the window and peered out. The two men struggled with the woman on the slanted roof only a few feet away. Their feet slipped and slid on the damp wooden shingles. Obviously the woman was no stranger to physical encounters, but she was up against skilled opponents.
Shang-Li put his fighting sticks away and stepped through the window onto the eaves. His foot slipped, then found purchase. He found his center, concentrated on his balance, and stepped forward.
One of the men released the woman while the other stepped behind her and held a knife to her throat. The man holding the ship’s mage stepped back toward the roofs edge. Unfortunately, the Splintered Yards hadn’t been built on level ground. Tucked into the side of the steep mountain that formed Tidetown, the inn hung over a drop of fifty feet on two sides. The Nine Golden Swords warriors had run in the wrong direction. Or perhaps they’d expected their companions to win.
“Take another step, you diseased monkey,” the swordsman threatened in the Shou tongue, “and Kim will slash her throat.”