“Harkvaldsson,” he spits, furious.
A tall figure steps out of the shadows, dressed in black. They pull off their cloth mask, revealing a face Khadse hasn’t seen in years—a dour, Dreyling face, one eye dim and dull.
“Well, you’ve certainly aged well,” spits Khadse, grasping his bleeding hand. “I’d hoped the world had the good sense to shit your rotten Dreyling self into oblivion.” He leans closer to the pistol on the floor.
“No,” says Sigrud. He raises his right hand, which is holding a pistol. “And drop the knife.”
Khadse, still growling with fury and pain, complies. “Taking me alive? Taking me in for killing your filthy whore Komayd? Is that it?”
Sigrud’s face is impassive, indifferent. Khadse had always hated that about him back during their Ministry days.
He tosses a pair of handcuffs at Khadse’s feet. “Put those on.”
“Fuck you.”
Sigrud sighs with an air of bored politeness, as if waiting for someone to make a play in a game of cards.
“Fine,” mutters Khadse. He crouches and, groaning as he does so, clips the handcuffs over his bleeding hands.
“Walk,” says Sigrud. “Down the stairs. And I know you, Khadse. One move and I shoot.”
“Yes, but not to kill,” says Khadse, laughing savagely. “If you wanted me dead, you would have done so.”
Sigrud says nothing.
“Your conversational skills,” says Khadse, turning to the stairs, “have not improved.”
Khadse walks down the stairs, thinking rapidly. He watches over his shoulder as Sigrud pauses to pick up his knife, pistol still trained on Khadse’s back.
“You’re not here on real Ministry work, are you, Harkvaldsson?” asks Khadse.
Sigrud is silent.
“If you were,” says Khadse, “you’d be here with a team. A whole army. But you’re not, are you? You’re all on your lonesome.”
Still silence.
“And you want to get me out of here,” says Khadse, “to some secondary location, because you know the rest of my crew will come here to look for me.”
Still silence. Khadse surveys the terrain ahead, the shifting shadows, uneven stairs, the concrete pillars.
“Are your skills still top-notch, Harkvaldsson?” says Khadse. “You’ve been out of circulation for what, ten years? My, my. How many traces did you leave behind? Someone will find me or you, surely…”
“If they have not found you,” says Sigrud, “after killing Shara—then odds are they won’t have networks wide enough to find me.”
“Are you so sure it’s the networks?” asks Khadse softly. “Are you so sure you aren’t wading into the affairs of much, much bigger players than the Ministry?”
Khadse can feel it: the faintest flicker of uncertainty in Sigrud’s bearing as he considers the implications of this.
In that one split second Khadse jumps forward, plants his feet on a concrete pillar, and shoves himself backward, hard.
He wasn’t sure it’d be far enough—Sigrud was wise enough to keep his distance—but he just barely makes it, the top of his head crashing into Sigrud’s belly. The pistol goes off just above Khadse’s head, the harsh snap deafening him, but Khadse’s already scrambling forward, pulling out his hidden knife from the sheath at his leg.
But Sigrud is faster: he raises the pistol, and fires.
Khadse cries out. He feels an immense warmth bloom in his right shoulder. He tries to gauge the damage done, grabbing awkwardly at his arm with his chained hands.
Yet there’s no blood. Then he notices that—strangely—there’s no pain, nor any shock. And as someone who’s been shot before, Khadse knows he should be feeling these things.
Khadse and Sigrud both look at his right shoulder.
To their utter confusion, the bullet is hovering in the air about a half inch from the surface of Khadse’s coat, just above where he’s clutching his bicep. It’s rotating very slightly, like a record in a phonograph, a slow, dreamy rotation.
Then, as if suddenly aware of their gaze, the bullet drops to the ground with a soft clink.
“What the fuck,” says Khadse, bewildered and elated.
Sigrud fires again. Khadse flinches.
Again, a heat in his chest. Again, the bullet hangs in the air just before the surface of his coat—this time right above Khadse’s heart—before falling away.
Khadse and Sigrud stare at each other, unsure exactly how to handle this development.
So that’s what this coat does, thinks Khadse. Why didn’t the bastard tell me that?
He grins at Sigrud and springs, stabbing forward with the knife.
Sigrud leaps back and avoids the blade, but he’s too slow: Khadse manages to catch the pistol with his handcuffs’ chain and rip it out of his grasp. Then Khadse’s on him, slashing in, down, up. Sigrud ducks one stab, then another, then he rolls away and pulls out his own knife. Khadse, cackling, feints to the left, then the right. Sigrud draws back, unsure what other miraculous items Khadse has on his person.
“Bit off more than you can chew, eh?” says Khadse, laughing.
The two men circle each other, trying to determine which one will give ground first. Khadse jukes forward, then springs wide and almost slices open Sigrud’s shoulder. Sigrud ducks, thrusts his blade up and around—a clever move, one Khadse wasn’t expecting—but the point of his black knife bounces harmlessly off the back of Khadse’s coat, as if the fabric were made of thick rubber.
Khadse rolls forward, laughing, delighted with this turn of events. He presses his full advantage, slashing in, down, to the side.
Sigrud makes an unwise play, trying to strike Khadse’s head—the only exposed area he can attack anymore—but Khadse ducks away and rakes his blade across Sigrud’s arm, slashing it open. Sigrud roars in pain, falls back, and sprints down the hallway.
Khadse, laughing, follows. He had no idea he’d been so empowered with such protections. If he’d known this damned coat made him indestructible, he’d have killed Komayd’s guards and gutted the woman with his bare hands.
Sigrud’s faster than he expected, fast for a big man, running ahead into the warrens of the old warehouse. Sigrud turns down a set of narrow stairs, and Khadse speeds up, trying to keep pace, intent on putting his knife into the big Dreyling’s neck one way or another.
As he crosses the last step he feels something strange at his ankle. A resistance, somewhat, as if he caught his pant leg on something…
His eyes widen. A tripwire?
Then a crash, a tremendous bang, and everything goes white.
The next thing Khadse knows he’s lying on the stairs, groaning. There’s a ringing in his ears, even louder than when the pistol went off next to his head. The world is white and bursting with black bubbles, and he can hardly think or move.
A flash-bang. That bastard led me right into it….
He can feel things, though, reverberations in the wooden stairs below him. He can feel a door open nearby, feel footsteps coming toward him. He tries to stab forward with the knife, but he’s so stunned he merely stumbles forward.
Then there’s pain. A lot of it. Pain in his hands, forcing him to let go of the knife. A snap as someone stomps on his ankle, making him howl, though he can barely hear his own voice. Then he feels big hands grasp him, undo his handcuffs, and rip his coat off of him.